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The Burden of Anti-Truth
Marc Gauvin (c) 13/10/2013
Reproduction expressly granted provided attribution and original link are given.
Anti-truth is the set of rules and beliefs that are imposed irrespective of whether they are capable of being objectively proven, supported or reasoned. They not only include lies and popular beliefs that are are assumed via propaganda and marketing rather than by objective evidence but also that which is true but argued using false premises such as proven truths outside their correct domain of application thus concealing the underlying coherence. Anti-truth is the infrastructure that propagates insecurity, mistrust, burdens sincerity, ridicules and mocks innocence and turns misery into an opportunity.
Obviously, if we are to respect free choice, then we must allow people to choose truth freely. Yet it is also evident that to choose anti-truth can be a crime, while choosing truth can never be a crime. Science imposes objective truth yet people feel uncomfortable and constrained by its conclusions because in ignorance, they feel that truth is a limit rather than the foundation of further truth and anti-truth offers the fantasy of limitless yet false expectations. These expectations where "everything is possible" but without constraints, is the greatest obstacle to the dissemination of truth. What is worse is that the inability to discern truthfulness if not truth itself, is attributed to the inherent limits of the people rather than to the dishonesty and laziness of those who propagate anti-truth as a legitimate property and indeed "price" of free will.
The question then is, how do we deal with those that wittingly or unwittingly undermine trust through the systematic mass habituation not to say addiction, to falsehood and anti-truth? When do those crimes become crimes against humanity? How many amongst us feel the burden of anti-truth every time we misrepresent facts, weave anti-truth into our claims to meet the demands of a "realism" that is the very product of anti-truth? How many feel the burden of anti-truth when they deny truthfulness to safeguard past "investments"?
The enemy is not only out there but among the so called truth seekers and their success is any distortion of the truth that serves them above and beyond the benefit of others. They can be spotted not only by their words but by their strategic silence, their gratuitous support of erred statements by others. They are the one's that seek stearing the group but offer no metric for evaluating their value. They are the captains with first access to lifeboats, they are the politicians we can never condemn even when under their watch, all was lost. They are the charismatic who upstage the more knowledgeable and justify themselves because their delivery is more palatable. They are the one's that market opportunity on a highway to hell, death and destruction.
All of the above is only possible in a world where anti-truth is not considered a crime but a right and a logical consequence of the greater good of "freedom", yet subtly undermines the ability to freely choose truth over anti-truth on the bias of short term expediency.