Post-Truth has well and truly ascended the throne, earning itself the distinction of being crowned the word of the year 2016 by the Oxford dictionary. The dictionary definition of post-truth, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”, sounds fairly innocuous, but couched within it is a drastically changed relationship of the world to the notion of “truth”. The word ‘post’ does not, as one might be led to assume, indicate “after truth” but calls attention to the sheer irrelevance of “truth” in the context.
Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the President of the United States, recently used the term “alternative facts”.
Going by global events, it is abundantly clear that “facts, evidence and data” have very little to do with what people believe in and decide to do. Nations and states across races, cultures and geographical boundaries are happily feeding themselves on a diet of half-truths, innuendoes and blatant lies.
And so, I decided to “self investigate”. My explorations reveal that the underlying dynamics and assumptions of the post-truth world are completely different.
The new purveyors of truth
In his insightful book on Leadership and Culture , Edgar Schien, Professor Emeritus at MIT, Sloan, outlines the criteria that cultures use to determine the truth. One of the criteria is “revealed dogma or wisdom”, which essentially means that “truth is what authority structures, the wise and the experienced may provide us”.
Here is perhaps where one notices the greatest shift in mindset. Many of the “informed elite” seem to dismiss the traditional media as “having an agenda”, “bought media”, providing “fake news” to accusing them of downright and deliberate lying. Even the New York Times advertises and seeks to reassure us by asserting, “We are passionate about Truth”.
The trust in other government institutions and pronouncements is also abysmally low The Edelman group’s survey across 28 countries finds that only 43% respondents trust the media and even fewer (41%) trust the governments across the world. The President of the U.S. himself won the election trashing the media and casting grave doubts on the truthfulness of established institutions. The resonance for that view is clear and resounding. In essence, I and only I can determine the truth.
Like-sourced, not crowd-sourced
So how is truth determined?
Robert Cialdini in his influential book titled Influence, explains that when situations are ambiguous, we rely heavily on “Social Proof” — in essence, do as others do. But there is a subtle but profound difference in how people’s ideological views get framed by social proofing.
A dear friend captured it succinctly. “I follow a set of people’s blogs, Twitter feeds, articles and they are more honest than the traditional media.” But explore the “influencers” they follow, and yes, you guessed it — they follow only those that clearly and loudly hold “similar” views as theirs, be it right, left, liberal or conservative. In short, truth is told by those who I follow. And I follow people who have views similar to mine. Recursive loop, anyone?
So I rely on a crowd — not a diverse crowd with multiple views and vantage points, but on a homogenous crowd that amplifies my voice and lets me hear what I want to hear. Folks, Like-sourcing is here to stay.
In the “ The Audacity of Hope ”, former President Barack Obama provided this insight — the way a canard “hurled through cyberspace at the speed of light, eventually becomes a hard particle of reality”.
Fuelled by the ever-growing social media becoming the primary news source for millions, the problem gets compounded. Facebook and almost all other social media companies run algorithms that feed you news and articles based on what you “like” even when it has no connection to reality. In essence, you begin to live in a truth bubble of pretty much your own creation, crafting and influencing the news feeds that come to you and believing what you have created to be true. It is a beautiful and vicious echo chamber that reverberates with the sound of your own voice.
Truthiness trumps
The comedian Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness”, and in an interview he described the phenomeon: “Truthiness is ‘What I say is right .…’ It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true.”
In short, my ‘opinion’ is the truth. And hence, I summarily dismiss anything that goes against my stated position. “AnecData” — where anecdotal evidence is taken as data seems to be the norm and has the highest truthiness index! “Trusting my gut” seems to be the order of the day but the other part of the proposition which is about “educating your gut” seems to be getting the short shrift.
Changing truth
Winton in The Outsiders wrote: “I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.” Circa 2016: I lie to myself all the time. And believe only me. With the constant coverage of prominent folks across the world, it is not much of a surprise that people are found contradicting themselves or changing positions on issues. But what is truly baffling is the total disowning of their own statements or positions. What I said yesterday was true then. What I say today is true now. And hence, I never said that yesterday. A curious logic, which surprisingly does not seem to cause the slightest cognitive dissonance.
From all that I see, it does appear that the world is blissfully motoring along, perhaps irreversibly, in the direction of a post-truth soaked world.
Of course, one could argue that the article itself is self-referential, being a post truth article in itself, given scant data, anecdotal evidence and sketchy hypothesis. But let me just quote Shakespeare on this: “By my heel, I care not.”
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