Many would probably just brush aside the Genesis’s account of the dialogue between God and Cain as something unrelated to socio-political developments in the world today. They are mistaken. That dialogue gives us valuable insights both on the worldview underpinning contemporary post-truth society as well as on the strategy that should be used to combat it.
After Cain murdered his brother Abel, God asked Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” God was after the truth. Cain lied saying that he did not know.
Cain justified his lie by saying he was not his brother’s keeper – by denying solidarity between him and his brother. No solidarity, for Cain, translated in the elimination of his duty to disseminate truth and the right of others to be told the truth. Cain’s statement is the typical assertion of those who exalt individualism at the expense of solidarity.
Since those early days of humanity the breakdown of solidarity and the total relativisation of the concept of truth kept on going hand in hand. They also became the parents of the tsunami of cynicism that surrounds us and which threatens to drown us. This debilitating cynicism in fact feeds on the post-modern dismantling of the very intricate relationship between, on one hand, reality as defined by nature and truth by facts, while on the other hand there is the concept of reality as socially constructed. Post-modernism first positioned itself as democratic and emancipatory, a way to free people from the oppressive narratives they had been subjected to. But experience shows that this “death of the belief in fact” (as Chris Cillizza of The Independent puts it) was not at all emancipatory.
In his book Individuals (1959), now considered a classic of analytic philosophy, the English philosopher P. F. Strawson, includes truth among the “categories and concepts which, in their most fundamental character, do not change at all”. This does not mean that what people know, regard as true, and so on, cannot vary in different times and places. We all know it does. What it does mean is that that the concept of truth, among others, has always existed, and that without this concept it would be impossible to make any sense of human life as we know it. Post-truth undermines human life as we know it. In a culture where all truths are considered to be equally valid why should one bother to search for the truth? Without the belief in objective truth then one’s feelings, or just whims, or naked self-interest or one’s group’s egoistic ambitions present a convenient justification to declare ‘A’ instead of ‘B’ as the truth.
If you deny that there are beggars in your major cities, then you can claim that there is no need to redistribute wealth in a fairer way
The criterion of truth in such a culture is convenience or self-interest which are the archenemies of solidarity. The weakening of solidarity brings with it excessive individualism which the philosophers Charles Taylor and Alasdair Macintyre describe as the malaise of modern society.
Examples of how post-truth undermines solidarity abound. Post-truth, for example, broods an exploitative kind of economy. The secular religion of the unbridled free market as the ultimate truth of economic development is a falsity that subjugates whole peoples. The ideology that money is more important than the human person is an untruth that kills. Lies and more lies were at the basis of the egoistic and rampant exploitation that crashed the financial markets a decade or so ago.
If you deny that there are beggars in your major cities, then you can claim that there is no need to redistribute wealth in a fairer way among people. If you claim that the health service in your country is working as it should, then you will do nothing to try to improve it. If you insist that there’s no danger to people’s lives from atmospheric pollution, then you will do nothing to control it. If you by means of corrupt commissions populate secretive accounts with the help of dishonest accountants, you can say that you are taking care of your assets and those of your dear family. The national family should be ready to sacrifice its needs for the benefits of the corrupt elite, shouldn’t it?
No solidarity, no need to tell the truth. Lack of truth reduces society to a Medusa of abuses, which destroy people’s trust, undermining important institutions. Lack of truth, trust and solidarity disempower people who rightly feel that they are having a raw deal. People can be alienated for a while by the barrage of glossy spin, alternate facts and a good doze of ċejċa (treat). But eventually they become conscious that their share of the country’s economy is unfair; that they rightfully deserve more. When this conscientisation happens, more and more sectors of the population will chant: We are as mad as hell and we won’t take it anymore.
Such a situation is the fertile ground for populism which can lead to the death of politics; though it could also lead to a genuine revival of the way the State is managed. Those who do not want the negative type of populism to triumph should recognise that its basic causes are the post truth mentality in tandem with the lack of solidarity.
A pincer attack is necessary. On one front post-truth is attacked by truth and more truth. But since men and women do not live by truth alone, lack of solidarity should be attacked by the fair distribution of wealth, the denouncement of the throw-away culture, the care of the vulnerable, etc.
In my commentaries I have often referred to George Lakoff’s theories about the important role of metaphors in politics. For the pincer attack to succeed there is need of an overarching metaphor that respects truth in solidarity. I suggest that this metaphor should be: Society as our common home.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt