Post-truth: a lie

 

Post-truth: a lie 

By Marcelo Colussi: Reality and truth 

According to the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, reality is one and always given, unquestionably put in wait for the human being to contact it. In this way, reality exists independently of the subject. There is an essentialism at stake: things are what they are, always, regardless of the context, of the story. In this framework, according to this traditional gnoseology, the truth is the “adequacy of the knowing subject with the known thing” (Adaequatio intellectus et rei, the medieval scholastics said) “Seeing is believing”, according to the famous formula of Saint Thomas of Not here. The thing, reality, is waiting for the subject to address it to apprehend and know it, through their senses and reason. For more than two millennia, this was the dominant idea in the Western tradition, a conception that continues to prevail in common sense. The weight is on objective reality.

 Since the European Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries), from the paradigm shift that occurred at that time, notions of reality and truth have varied. In the modern world, within the new ideal of Copernican science, reality becomes "construction"; that is, the product of the way in which the subject relates to the thing. Reality ceases to be one, unique, unobjectionable. Arrived at the present, with the development of a thought that increasingly decenters from objective reality as the very guarantee of its existence given by a supreme creator, with a much more subject-centered thinking, the process of "construction" is of fundamental interest. of that reality. Immanuel Kant will be in charge of systematizing that vision (the world is "categorized" by the subject; God is no longer a guarantee. His "Critique of Pure Reason", of 1781, is the definitive birth certificate of this new conception).

 The data of the different sciences (not only the social ones; also the so-called “exact” ones, with the appearance of quantum physics or fractal geometry), based on a new epistemology that breaks ties with the Aristotelian tradition, emphasizes the relativity of reality: it is understood as a construction, always with something random, historical construction and, therefore, changing, varied, in short: relative. The weight passes to the subject and the relationships that he establishes with the thing. Just as a bottle is half empty or half full, depending on the point of view from which it is considered, so this new vision of reality begins to be understood. Reality and truth cease to be an absolute. There is no longer a supreme being as a guarantee of anything. 

 Both elements, reality and truth, are then constructed. There are no absolute truths. Although they have forced Galileo to recant so as not to be burned on the pyre for denying an absolute truth, his famous phrase when he left the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition says it all: “eppur si muove” (“nevertheless, it moves” ). Even the so-called "exact" sciences, which are supposed to be indubitable, speak of a relativity at stake. There are no absolute truths. The rigorous Newtonian physics, bastion of the technical "advance" of the modern world, today does not serve to conceptualize - and operate - in contemporary reality: for trips to very distant stars, a new physics must be generated; you can no longer travel in three-dimensional space. Therefore: the truth is always historical, relative. But today, with the monumental rise of new digital technologies, the very notion of truth changes. Not only is the truth relative: there is no truth anymore! What can we trust? What can we believe? Reality seems to be fading. What is the truth? There isn't… Or, in any case, as we are now informed, we “get over” the truth. Now there is post truth. 

 Towards the post truth 

Communications, one of the areas that grew the most and continues to grow rapidly among all human endeavors in recent centuries, is building a new world. Capitalism, since its dawn, has been synonymous with communications, from sailing to space travel, from Gutenberg's printing press to current social networks, from the telegraph to smartphones. The capitalism that emerged victorious from the Cold War raises precisely this element as one of its flags: the world has become a common ground for all, absolutely known, where there are no more inaccessible corners. The mass media complete the picture in a monumental way. The rise of the internet as a network of communication networks - a computer super highway - is the palpable demonstration that the 21st century constitutes a truly globalized village. The panopticon is an obvious reality (5G digital technologies, and 6G already on the way), while privacy gives way to a hyper-control of the great powers that know everything, always and anywhere. 

With the end of the Cold War and the triumph of big transnationalized capital, the hegemonic discourse - in its neoliberal version - feels in a position to say what it pleases. Thus arise the post-fall myths of the Berlin Wall, which no one dares to contradict. Myths (fabulous narration, fictional history) are symbolic constructions, they respond to historical moments, to specific social conjunctures, to power fabrics. “End of ideologies”, “consensual resolution of conflicts”, “pragmatism”, “triumph of possibilityism and resignation”, “enthronement of hedonism”, growing fetishization of technology, “collaborators” and not “workers”, “responsibility social enterprise ”replacing the State, are different elements-bastions that make up the new paradigms. In that logic we arrive at the pathetic absurdity of “post truth”: there is no truth or, more precisely, the truth does not matter. 

The truth, no longer as an adequacy of thought and the thing, but as a construction (as "unhiding" Heidegger would say), but always as the engine of human activity, would now be expendable, disposable. But what is the "post truth"? “The industry and manufacture of messages that produce emotional reactions that are independent of their relationship with reality. (…) A systemic and manufactured form of the circulation of information in the media ”(Fernando Broncano). In other words: "Indifference to reality", misinformation taken to its extreme degree, the realm of numbness. If you like: the infinite construction of myths, of fabulous stories without any correlation with reality, but that serve someone (of course, not the great majorities, who are forced to "consume" them, but power groups, who are the ones who generate them for their full benefit). 

 The mass media, the internet social networks with the net centers or troll centers operating organized lies, the promotion without any fault of what is currently called -with total tranquility and shamelessness- fake news (false news), keep the world of the so-called "post truth". Indifference to real and concrete events is openly promoted, disinformation taken to its extreme degree, the reign of numbness and superficiality, absolute lightness, trivialization at its maximum degree. Reality does not matter (it can be a hologram, virtual reality), only emotional effects manipulated by apparently cognitive content count. 

 Mediatic hitmen, vassals of the government and the oligarchy.

 

The effect achieved is interesting: everything is hologrammatic, virtual, evanescent. In fact, the dominant economy is a fictitious virtual, financial economy, without effective support in material goods (that is why China, with a real-based economy, is surpassing the financial world of the United States). In this way, the dimension of where we are is being lost, it is not known if there are firm or unsupported truths. The image (infinitely manipulated with current computer programs and various avant-garde techniques, as shown in the videos that open this booklet) blurs the boundary between reality and unreality. Thus arises that vague notion of post-truth.

 Everything is possible, life is something like a well-assembled dream. Or, to put it more clearly, those dominant powers try to build a social world based on that deleterious evanescence. The lie has been enthroned; the lie became a fundamental part of the reality in which we live. Or that we are made to live! The social networks, widely dominating the current culture, allow lying without limits, with impunity. Anyone can have 5,000 friends (5,000 friends?…, It seems like the Roberto Carlos song), change their identity, their gender, their image without distinction. The implicit feeling is yes: anything is possible! Sure ... in virtuality. But life is not just virtual. The bread that is missing from the table, or the blackjack that the policeman gives the protester, are not virtual.   

 Today the information society, through subtle tools, overloads us with references. The amount of knowledge, or more specifically: data, that is available is fabulous. But so much information accumulated, for the ordinary citizen and without greater criteria with which to process it, ends up being counterproductive. All this saturation and overabundance of ¿information ?, and its possible trivialization, is flooding everything. There are no longer criteria for knowing what is what; net centers fully comply with their content (this is reminiscent of what Goebbels said almost a century ago, pathetically current today: “A lie repeated a thousand times ends up becoming a truth”). From a culture of knowledge and its possible appropriation it is possible to pass without any major solution of continuity to a culture of superficiality. If the truth does not count and only the "post" truth matters, how to orient yourself? ICTs (information and communication technologies) allow both ways: critical thinking and the most vulgar banality. In this sense, there has been talk, then, of intelicide (Mario Roberto Morales). It seems that social networks contribute a lot to that: the oblivion (or death?) Of critical thinking. Filters and the different existing computing devices allow to falsify / process / manipulate reality to the point of making the truth disappear: there is no truth, there is only post-truth. That is to say: a pure illusion. In virtuality you can be and do anything. What is the truth? It does not matter: only the effect achieved with these technically well manipulated virtual realities matters: I am fat but I appear thin, I have wrinkles but I appear with a fresh face, I am bald but I appear with long hair, I do not know what to say but I think anything without the slightest Shame, a prestigious magician makes the statue of Liberty "disappear" in New York, and well-staged lies build a virtual / real world in which we move with no apparent possibility of exit. Political opinion, detailed analysis, deep reflection are replaced by a 280-character tweet.

 All this is perfectly functional for the dominant neoliberal capitalist ideology. The less you think about, the less you criticize: the better. The new generations have been molded in that matrix: it seems that the powers are in charge of making believe that the truth is superfluous. There is no truth, everything disappears, is diluted. The question that persists is: will this be the future? Better if we build a future where the truth counts. .

 https://mcolussi.blogspot.com/