‘We killed God and we now have to face the consequences’. That’s what Nietzsche told us. And then died. Like everybody else. Is this consistent with the notion of an all-powerfull and omni-scient God? As suggested by the second image?
The only God we know is the one we talk about. Among ourselves. During the ‘Middle Ages’ some of our ancestors killed each-other over their particular interpretations of the Bible. But they all agreed about one thing. For them, there was only one God. And they killed a lot of unbelievers attempting to convince them. At some point, and Nietzsche witnessed that, people had stopped believing there was only one God. God was no longer seen as an unifying principle and had become a mere representation.
I don’t know whether there is a god. A ‘real’ one. But is has become obvious that the one we talk about has stopped playing its role. It no longer unites us. We’re no longer children of the same father.
We have splintered ourselves into clans. Each wielding their own representation of God. Each wielding their own ‘hand made’ idol.
‘Truth’, ‘freedom-fighter’ and ‘terrorist’ are words. On the side where we get in touch with them. We see/hear them first before they penetrate our minds. If at all… We think of them and only afterwards they get pronounced by our mouths or typed by our fingers.
On the other hand, ‘propaganda’ – another ‘word’ – is a ‘technology’. A particular manner in which some of us choose to spread out their ideas. Same thing goes for ‘conspiracy’. A particular manner of doing things. ‘Cloaked’. Hidden from sight and involving a number of vetted participants. Nota Bene! Those involved in ‘conspiracy theory’ are also vetted. The ‘theorists’ vet their targeted audience by choosing the subjects of their discourse and by wording it in a certain manner. The members of the ‘public’ ‘vet’ the ‘influencers’ by following them. And themselves – they set themselves apart from the rest – by allowing themselves to be ‘entertained’ by the message they keep returning to. ‘Terror’ itself is also a ‘technology’. A sort of ‘propaganda’ 2.0.
While ‘propaganda’ is a manner of spreading ‘the word’ around – presenting the ‘message’ in an easier to ‘accept’/’digest’ form for the targeted audience – ‘terror’ is a ‘technology’ used to convince an entire population that there’s no alternative. No alternative other than that ‘proposed’ by the terrorist. A technology used to break the will of those whom the terrorist wants to submit.
And what ‘happened to THE truth’?!?
The truth of the matter is that there is no ‘truth’. No ‘one size fits all’ kind of truth!
A truth is something we agree upon. In this moment! Something we agree to consider as being true for as long as nothing meaningful contradicts the generally accepted ‘true thing’.
But what if there’s no longer a ‘we’? What if those who – for whatever reasons – want to separate us manage to do exactly that? What if ‘we’ no longer see each other eye to eye regarding not so long ago widely accepted ‘subjects’? What if ‘we’ – a sizeable portion of us – accept ‘alternative facts’ as being at least as valid as the ones previously accepted as being true? What if we, too many of us for our own good, start to doubt as a matter of creed?
“Too many of us for our own good”?!? What happened to ‘doubting as a matter of creed’ being the ‘stepping stone’ for science?!?
Words… so many words, no matter how beautiful…
‘Science’ is, first and foremost, a state of mind. The ‘open’ state of mind which conserves the willingness to change ‘the truth’ according to the newly acquired information, if this new information is convincing enough. If it comes from more than one sources AND if ‘the conclusion’ can be reached again and again. Independently! Being in a scientific state of mind means keeping the door open for new information. Questioning everything with the transparent intent to impose a single version of ‘the truth’ is more than propaganda. It’s a form of terrorism!
Destination first. If you know where you’re going, getting there will be a lot simpler.
According to Daniel Moynihan – “you are not entitled to your own facts”, facts are obvious. So obvious that doubting their existence, their factuality, would push us beyond the realm of the reasonable. Appropriating facts – transforming them into ‘private property’, banishes the perpetrator from the community….
Hm…
Let me put it differently. Moynihan had said something. What was it? A fact? Or an opinion?
Currently, we – well, most of us – believe that freedom of opinion is the cornerstone of our Weltanschauung. When it comes to facts… We’re OK with the definition – we do use the word/concept, quite extensively – but we seem to have some problems when dealing with the actual reality. Remember the still famous ‘alternative facts’?
Let me add something personal to all this. My opinion about ‘facts’.
The current definition is somewhat incomplete. We take something for granted. To the tune of no longer mentioning it. We assume all of us see the elephant in the room and no longer talk about it.
For something to become a ‘fact’ we have to notice it. First. And then we have to agree among ourselves about its meaning!
Things used to fall down since …. We’ve been discussing the matter since… we’ve learned how to speak! But gravity had become a fact only after Newton had noticed the famous apple, wrote about it and we agreed. Gravity had become a fact, and continues to be one, only because his contemporaries had agreed with Newton on this matter. And we continue to believe Newton was right!
In this sense, alternative facts have been with us since day one. Well, something like that… God had told something to Adam and Eve, the serpent had said something else… and the rest is history! For some…
Newton had said something to us. And most of us had chosen to believe him. Or ignore his words… Darwin had said something to us. Many of us have chosen to believe him. To accept his arguments about the matter. While some others have chosen to dispute Darwin’s findings. To actively negate Darwin’s explanations about how we’ve got here.
Gravity is a fact while Evolution is still a theory. Statistically speaking, of course.
In this sense, Moynihan was wrong. For his words to ‘hold water’, we must to agree on how to separate facts from opinions. Until we agree among ourselves about how to determine ‘factualness’, we’ll keep having to deal with ‘alternative facts’.
I actually cannot wrap this up before ‘unveiling’ my litmus test for factualness. Consequences.
Does it have consequences?
Yes? It’s a fact! No? Then it’s not – not yet, at least – a ‘fact’. It did happen – otherwise we wouldn’t be speaking about it. It even does have consequences – we do speak about it, but that occurrence doesn’t yet have meaningful consequences. It is not a ‘factual’ fact.
I still have to find, only I’ve lost patience, an explanation for what had ‘fed’ Trump. Trump as social phenomenon…
For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered but the jobs left and the factories closed.
Trump has made himself famous. Among others, for imparting new meaning to the concept of ‘fake-news’. And for using “alternative facts” to introduce us to an ‘alternative reality’. His…
Only his reality did have something in common with that faced by many of his fellow Americans.
Oops! Suddenly, Trump’s ‘alternative’ reality – part of it, at least, has become one with that experienced by “we, the People”. By a majority of them, anyway.
What made so many people – dispirited, undoubtedly, believe that a self professed pussy grabber and proud member of the Washington establishment would solve their real-life problems… by ‘draining’ the very ‘swamp’ in which he had grown to his present stature … that’s something for other people to explain.
My point being that Trump’s behavior had very closely followed that of Goethe’s Apprentice Sorcerer. He had used his uncanny knack of playing hide-and-seek with reality to climb into the Oval Office only to be fired after one mandate. To be the first American President who had survived two impeachments. And the second one who had witnessed – more or less unmoved, the untimely demise of half a million Americans due to disease
But the first who had done that during a mostly peaceful mandate. Pandemic, true enough, but otherwise peaceful.
NB. The ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic, which had happened during Woodrow Wilson’s mandate, had caused the death of 675 000 Americans. Only that had occurred just after a world war, when viruses hadn’t yet been discovered and man hadn’t yet walked on the Moon.
What will happen next?
Who knows… Goethe’s poem had a relatively happy ending because a master sorcerer was at hand. Who had solved the problem with a swift gesture of his powerful wand.
No such easy solution is available now. But one thing has become clear. Again…
Two things, actually. Too many dispirited people eventually become a powerful – and highly unstable, ‘Petri dish’. Where all kinds of ‘social experiments’ might ‘spontaneously’ explode. And playing with people’s passions might take you places. But will, almost always, end up badly.
Rationality is a beautiful method of relating to the outside world.
It is one of the tools we used to get where we are now.
And, like all other tools, it has its limits.
The most ‘stricturing’ one being the fact that rationality is used by us, individual people.
We are deluding ourselves with the notion that we are rational, reasonable even, human beings. That given the same set of facts each of us is potentially able to find the same ‘truth of the matter’ and only those who are ill indented will reach a different conclusion.
Ptolemy’s epicycles are just a set of the innumerable proofs that we are nothing but skillful rationalizers, far away from the reasonable individuals we believe ourselves to be.
Sallustius to the rescue:
The ‘things that never happened, but always are’ are the founding myths that keeps it all together for us. From the axioms on which we have built our mathematics to the religious beliefs we have forged while grooming ourselves into humans.
What happens is that not all of us have been groomed along the same myths, and even when that happened not all of us interpret a given myth in exactly the same way.
That’s why Ptolemy had invented the epicycles in his attempt to corral the planets around the Earth while Copernicus was able to propose a much simpler explanation.
Hence the notion of ‘rationalization’.
The most we can do is to honestly put together whatever facts we have at our disposal in our attempt to justify the conclusion we have already reached.
And then to respectfully accept respectfully offered reactions from those around us.
If you think of it, this is how ‘science’ works. Somebody has a hunch, gathers a lot of data, tries to fit them into the hypothesis he had started from and then submits a paper for his peers to review.
If the paper passes that scrutiny it is published – and submitted to even more criticism.
Eventually somebody else has another hunch, which includes, or even completely contradicts, the previous one…
They key words in all this being ‘honestly’ and ‘respectfully’.
Whenever we knowingly alter the facts (fake news, alternative facts, autism causing vaccines, etc., etc…) to fit our narrative we end up in a huge mess.
Whenever we fail to respectfully examine the work of those around us and reject it before-hand we simply take a different route to the same huge mess.
WWI was the consequence of a stupid game of brinkmanship while the second one had started with a series of blatant lies. During both we had copiously murdered ourselves.
Apparently, any likeness between these two stops here.
But, if you pull back in earnest, the ugly thing becomes unraveled.
Not only that it is masturbatory, aka self-inflicted, (political) manipulation should also be classified as sado-masochistic.
Manipulation, as a process, can be examined from two perspectives.
A social one and an individual one.
Now, that everybody knows that ‘manipulation is bad for you‘, any individual who allows themselves to be manipulated into anything must suffer from a masochistic disorder while those who actively manipulate others must be cold blooded sadists.
On the social side, since time and time again manipulation has been proven to have had dangerous consequences, any community that sees any form of manipulation as an acceptable practice must have certain suicidal tendencies. Aka suffer from a ‘social form’ of masochistic disorder. While those who manipulate must be, themselves, cold blooded sadists.
As for being masturbatory, something which is brought upon one self by their own hand, that is almost as evident as Polichinelle’s secret:
Bona-fide politics, that made in earnest, involves open discussion between those who are going to be affected by the decisions and those who propose and support them. Discussions which take place before each major decision is made, during its implementation and after its consequences have started to be felt. The interaction between the politicians and the general public is direct, unmediated.
In Nassim Taleb’s terms, in this situation the politicians have their own ‘skin in the game‘.
Which results ‘risk management’ policy which is the complete opposite of the one adopted by those who believe themselves to be insulated from the consequences of their own actions.
The manipulators, on the other hand, window-dress themselves and the propositions they make. Their goal being not as much to contribute to the well being of their community as to ‘sell to the public’ whatever their minds have been focused on, at that moment. They consider manipulation to be a legitimate tool either because they are not fully aware of the great dangers involved or because they have convinced themselves that they will be forever exempt from contributing to the the eventual price.
Meanwhile, those who allow themselves to be manipulated either do not realize they are being manipulated or have adopted ‘cynicism as a refuge’ in order to mitigate the cognitive dissonance that is eating away their self esteem.
Please note that in this situation the interaction is no longer direct. The manipulator and the manipulated do not ‘touch’ each-other. Therefore neither knows exactly what the other has in mind.
The interaction is mediated by symbols. Which are ‘photo-shopped’ by the manipulators and, sometimes ‘admiringly’, accepted by the manipulated.
It’s exactly this lack of direct contact between the manipulators and the manipulated which determines the whole thing.
The manipulators are, simultaneously, unaware of the true situation and growingly convinced of their ‘impunity’.
The manipulated have initial difficulties in determining that they are subjected to manipulation and, in a second stage, the impression that there is nothing left to be done about the whole thing.
When, eventually, the consequences catch up with both of them, it is usually too late for anything else but ‘damage control’.
People regret that they didn’t wise up earlier, promise themselves they’ll never let something like that happen to them… and forget. Until the next time.
nicichiarasa 