Hello Everyone. I hope your personal New Year is off to a good start, despite the interesting times surrounding us.
‘Fake truth’ is one of the things that seems to be adding interest. It’s not something new of course. Whoever said it (it’s been attributed to Churchill, Benjamin, Orwell and Goring among others), the adage that “history is written by the victors” has been around a very long time. For centuries the truth has been shaped by those in charge of sharing it.
Whilst there will always be the opportunity to focus on different facts, and to interpret differently the facts we do agree on, what’s interesting right now is that the ‘truth’ that is being shared is so clearly and provably untrue.
We can see it is not a matter of opinion or interpretation because the evidence to contradict it is real and observable: the photos are out there (inauguration crowds: picture from Reuters), the statistics can be checked (Brexit’s ‘£350 million a week to the NHS’ claim): what actually happened just doesn’t match what is said to have happened.
So yes this kind of mis-direction has been going on for centuries, but the shock perhaps for many of us is not that it is happening but that it is now so blatant we can see it happening.
Will Schutz, in his book “The Truth Option” published in 1984, states that:
..not telling the truth is the source of most problems…it seems that about 80% of all my problems are not real problems at all. They are simply the result of not telling the truth, of lying or withholding
33 years on, in the era of fake truth, I fear that percentage may have gone up. I also fear my own sense of resignation that there is nothing I can do about it. Schutz challenges me here by offering this thought:
If a country’s negotiations are marked by deception and diplomacy it may be because that is the way its people deal with each other. Public policy is related directly to private affairs. If a nation spends half of its energies on national defence, it is probably because that is the amount of energy its people spend on personal defensiveness. Public ills reflect private ills. Therefore exploring the truth option for individuals also has profound implications for issues on a larger scale.
As Theresa May walks in to the Whitehouse we all perhaps need to consider the truths we choose to live by and the implications they are having on us, our life and on a larger scale.
Thank you for reading this blog. I enjoy sharing Choose You thoughts with you and love to get your comments.
Jenny