Reasons to hope we are in a post truth world: Difference between revisions

Commentators are given to bemoaning the loss of confidence in truth —

The argument turns out to rest upon a few questions that don’t deserve to be begged. Such as, ''really''? What was this consensus, because I sure can’t remember it. Was it some time before the end of history, before the Cold War — hang on, the Second World War — hang on, before the rise of Fascism — First World War — Colonial era? The JC is no more than an armchair historian, but has a hunch you would have to go back a fair way to find this elysian utopia of shared truth. And what was this concord about? Philosophical pissing marches go back into the dark ages. They are still not resolved — apparently further from resolution than ever. Even that arbiter of justified knowledge, Science has continued to change its mind about fundamental things. Even apparently mechanical, mathematically measurable things. If we cannot agree on the greatest ever footballer — as objectively measurable a human achievement as there can be — Pele? Beckenbauer? Maradona? Messi? Rapinoe? — what chance have we with the conflict in Gaza or Ukraine?

One could go on. But it is less tedious to say, no, Truthists, your claim of mythical prior general accord is ''denied'', pending your provision of receipts and plausible substantiation.  

“Without truth there is nothing —”

Fears of “untruthiness” — notice how the complaint is not untruth per se, but untruthiness in concept — arise when one power structure infringes on the territory of another. For years, the “liberal arts” power structure chuntered happily along, confined to the critical studies modules of sociology and feminist studies departments where it originated. Only the white collar revolution — a side-current of the information revolution, whereby manual workers, forced off the production line, had no choice but to educate themselves , and reorganised into weaponised human resources departments, have these tenets started to interact with those of the guilds.

It is good to challenge our conventional wisdom. The critical theory paradigm has made — and continues to make — the guilds think long and hard about things they haven't. Externalities. Fairness of opportunity, the exclusion from “the guilds” of those at the margins. ''This is how complex systems work''.  

If your sacred cow value is under attack from a conflicting viewpoint from outside your power structure, we would expect you to complain, first, about the post-truth world. But isn’t that to go crying to Matron? Isn't the grown-up thing to do to listen, adjust where necessary and restate your idea in the marketplace of ideas?  

These pronouncements authoritative as they are strike one as somewhat desperately clinging onto this idea as the last bulwark against total degeneration as if the world without objective truth can carry no meaning, represent no justice, and deliver no amity. As such arguments tend not to address the merits pro or con, but carry straight on to the obvious and dire consequences of letting them go.

Things claimed in its name are usually not, on closer inspection, quite so free of truthiness as they seem. And things we take as articles of enlightenment faith at not quite as truthy as they seem. So let us draw and have a closer inspection.

If we needed a good scheme for transcendental truth, we had one, and we tossed it.

The Spanish Inquisition asas a great example of what happens when the People in power are Truthy.