Fake news, Post-truth and Lies

by Madeleine Kando

 From very early on in life, we are told that lying is bad and telling the truth is good. These values are imprinted in our genes and they are one of the pillars on which any society is founded, since without truth, there can be no trust and without trust we would soon all be at each other’s throat.

But the past year has shown that the truth is no longer what motivates a large segment of Americans to make political, social or even personal decisions. What Donald Trump has shown is that the truth exists to be manipulated. He has taken the idea that the truth is relative and not absolute to a whole new level.

Plato and Aristotle already argued about this a long time ago. Plato pointed out that relative truth is logically unsound, since it refutes itself. If your truth is different from mine, then I can say that my truth is true and yours is false. Equally, you can say that my truth is false and yours is true, which means that neither one is real. (See: Plato's Critique of Cultural Moral Relativism). Sounds familiar? Does Fox News report the true news or is it the New York Times? No wonder we no longer trust the news.

Fact-checking
Who would have thought that the 'information age' would morph into a 'misinformation age', where we have to fact-check everything we read or view. An entire ‘truth detective’ industry has emerged comprised of fact checking sites like FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com, as well as on-line open source investigation organizations such as Bellingcat. For instance, Bellingcat’s investigation showed that a Buk ‘brought in from the territory of the Russian Federation’ launched the missile that shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in 2004 in which 298 people died. Russia tried to cover up the facts of course. (See: Revelations and Confirmations from the MH17 JIT Press Conference).

Another development is the rise of Citizen Journalism or Guerilla Journalism, described by Wikipedia as "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another.” In other words, because there is so much toxic information out there, we need these new efforts to make up for the loss of truth.Fact or Opinion?
The world of social media, by its very nature, is blurring the line between fact and opinion and is fertile ground for fake news. Facebook is no more than a glorified version of the ‘telephone game’ that children play. Any fact is doomed once it gets ‘shared’ and although a viral post is unquestionably viewed as true, it should actually be marked as the most suspect. But who can blame us? We are told to embellish our truth all day long, by advertisers, politicians, parents and friends. Without embellishment, life would be too boring. So, a little lie here and there won’t hurt anybody, right? Until it does. As Obama said after Trump won the election: “I don’t believe in apocalyptic—until the apocalypse comes. I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world” …

Are we witnessing a litmus test, a split in the road where we will have to choose between a world where universal values of fairness and justice still matter or one in which everyone can choose their own version of the truth and spin it to make it look real?

Universal versus relative truth: Plato’s three-part soul
Plato said that there are three parts of the soul: the rational and moral part that loves truth, justice and good, the spirited part that loves worldly achievement, riches and victory and the appetitive part that craves food and carnal gratification. The rational part of the soul should be in charge, as it is most in tune with moral value. But Plato also admitted that aligning all parts of the soul is not easy, and many people fall by the wayside, giving in to baser urges and impulses. So, to all you moral relativists out there, morals have nothing to do with culture, they have to do with which part of one's soul is in charge.

Relativism - moral, cultural and otherwise - has often been discussed for the past few decades under the heading of post-modernism. There is a lot of literature about this - always about how post-modernism no longer believes in any absolutes, absolute values, etc. In many quarters (especially at universities), cultural relativism reigns supreme, and is viewed as the mark of open-mindedness and progressive thinking. Have we inadvertently created this post-truth society in the name of the ‘new values’? Telling ourselves that we should not be biased against any ‘truth’?

I personally feel that there is an absolute truth out there that makes us humans tick and that once we drift away from those core values, we are at the mercy of forces that we can no longer control, like a boat without a rudder.

Use of Language
The English language is partly to blame for the spread of our post-truth politics. In the Tuyacan language, when you say ‘John sang’, it is assumed that you either saw or heard John sing. If you were in another village at the time of John’s singing, everyone will know that you are lying and your reputation will be shot forever. In other words the truth (evidentiality) is embedded in the grammar of the language.

Unfortunately, the truth does not make for a good story. After all, 99% of plots in fiction are fueled by lies, which slowly unfold to uncover a truth. In fact, the basic premise of writing a good story is to start out with a statement that slowly gets proven to be a lie. It is fundamental to suspense.

How is the truth related to trust?
When we actually are faced with the truth, we don’t always like what we see. Stanford Political scientist Francis Fukuyama attributes our lack of trust in government and corporations to an increase in transparency. Although police shootings have declined, we trust the police less because we are exposed to more of what’s going on behind the scenes. In other words, the institutions that give our social and political life structure are no longer trusted because they have become too transparent and in the process have lost much of their authority.

Democracy
What is most troubling about our post-truth society is how it undermines our trust in our democratic institutions and the values they represent. Francis Fukiyama talks about what happens once you breach the norms that separate truth from fiction. ‘We have entered undefined territoty where anything can go. This ‘post-truth’ society is a reflection of something deeper, which is the decline of authority of institutions.’

The trust in our police force, unions, churches, and even political parties is diminishing and when someone like Trump comes along and spews lies, it does not shock people. They normalize it by saying ‘well, everybody else lies, what’s the difference?’

One final point: Maybe I should distinguish between LYING and IGNORANCE. We want to believe that the millions who voted for Trump are ignorant of the facts and once they are told the truth, they will see the error of their ways. But if facts no longer matter to them, which has been shown again and again, there really IS no distinction between lying and ignorance. leave comment here