We've Always Lived in "Post-Truth" Eras
Everyone
complains that we live in a world of lies and fiction, where truth is hard to
differentiate from everything else. There’s even a term for it: the
“post-truth” age. But, asks Yuval Noah Harari in 21
Lessons for the 21st Century:
“If this is the
age of post-truth, when, exactly, was the halcyon age of truth? In the 1980s? The
1950s? The 1930s?”
Habits
like denying the very existence of certain countries is an age-old tactic. In
1931, Japan created the fake country of Manchukuo to justify their conquest of
China. China itself claims Tibet was never independent. And the British
occupied Australia saying it was “nobody’s land”, thereby wiping out 50,000
years of Aboriginal history.
All of
which is why Harari says:
“Humans have
always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a post-truth species,
whose power depends on creating and believing fictions.”
It’s
been that way long before Facebook and WhatsApp, Trump and Putin:
“For millennia,
much of what passed for ‘news’ and ‘facts’ in human social networks were
stories about miracles, angels, demons and witches, with bold reporters giving
live coverage straight from the deepest pits of the underworld.”
After
all:
“When a thousand
people believe some made-up story for one month – that’s fake news. When a
billion people believe it for a thousand years – that’s a religion.”
And
whichever religion you believe in, it leads to a certain logical conclusion:
“Even if we agree
that the Bible is the true word of God, that still leaves us with billions of
devout Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Egyptians, Romans and Japanese who for thousands
of years put their trust in fictions.”
Regardless
of which religion is “true”, the rest are believers in fiction!
In any
case, belief in any common myth isn’t always bad. Religion has its positives.
The same holds for money:
“It is obvious
that the dollar is just a human invention, yet people all over the world
respect it.”
Say
what you want of today, but when Stalin was killing millions in Russia, nobody
even knew about the scale of his atrocities, until much, much later:
“Whereas in the
age of Facebook and Twitter… it is no longer possible for a regime to kill
millions without the world knowing of it.”
So why
all the breast-beating as if now is worse? Isn’t it pretty much the same as any
other time in history?
This blog brings the sharp and good points of the book, leaving its readers the burden of reading the book in order to get there.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the conclusion, "So why all the breast-beating as if now is worse? Isn’t it pretty much the same as any other time in history?", one can admit that "badness" or "goodness" in some proportion always existed. Nevertheless, that would not mean "changes of actual scenarios, while using the same ingredient-(good bad)-mix, has no relevance".
One can see that certain sometimes-horrible, sometimes-vexing happenings of today are enabled by today's circumstances. Those enabling conditions were absent in most yester-years, because the enablers were absent.
One example is this: It is my observation that when I was 20, commercialism did not vex me, but I lived a life of much lower gadget comfort. Then I would complain of paucity of such comforts. Today, I have those comforts and I find commercialism absolutely rotten! :-)
Well, well - the feeling of "things getting bad" is a subjective belief, for sure. But then, subjectively I still want to believe that yester-decades were better! I am absolutely sure that elderly people 3 millenniums back uttered the same belief! I am equally sure that elderly people 3 millenniums hence will utter the same belief! At least, doesn't it almost look like some kind of "Newton's law of constant belief"! :-)
[Yes, yes. I too am saying what the blog says! Just feel like writing it all in my words!]