After Oxford Dictionaries had announced the word “post-truth” as the Word of the Year in 2016, the concept of post-truth became highly popular in contemporary literacy. Use of the word became more widespread. Post-truth can be simply explained as disappearance of norms for truth. In a society divided by bias, feelings and personal believes are more important than objective facts. In the post truth era, realities don't make a difference. It is a challenging environment for public in this COVID-19 times and within traditional governance structures established around multiple layers of competence where lines of accountability and responsibility are not clear. For the future to come any time soon, we need risk intelligent communities that consist of lifelong learners.
TopHow To Survive Intellectually In Post Truth Era
One might have happened to notice that in social media platforms, it has become highly fashionable that people tell “white lies” about their accomplishments, places they travelled, their financial situation and of course their physical appearance. People prefer to exaggerate every positive aspect of their lives. Everyone wants to turn their dreams into realities but that is just not possible. Instead of facing the truth, we run into a dream world that can easily be accessed via technology. The technology has enabled human beings to go beyond their intellectual capacity. And humanity is under siege with information. There is so much information that attacks us that it feels like we are losing control of our lives.
John Ray (born, 1627 — died, 1705), leading 17th-century English naturalist and botanist who contributed fundamentally to advance in scientific categorization (Britannica, 2020) proposes that “Learning makes the wise wiser and the fool more foolish”. Thinking about the chaotic times we live in, Ray’s quote shed light on the paradox prevailing common sense. Let us explain that: Technological advancements, we own, haven’t made us wiser. It is obvious that because of easy use of information technology, everyone seems to know everything but this hasn’t wiped out the ignorance in society at all. Fake news and false information govern people with their fear. That explains why we need wisdom and wise people because without wisdom one can’t find his way to enlightenment. A first step to fight ignorance might be to start learning from the wise. Learning from the wise can’t be just put into practice with easy steps. It can only be done with a system that supports cultural products to make society interiorize lives of the wise. A government cultural policy with help of popular culture will be able to yield cultural products that favour the wisdom which might pave the way goes to enlightenment.
Intellectual poverty is like a son of laziness. If we don’t use logic and develop critical thinking abilities in our daily life, we might end up in intellectual poverty. Act of survival itself includes lots of effort in it. That being said; if one longs to survive intellectually in post-truth, he or she must have the will to seek the truth. Every day, we encounter lots of news floating in social media environments. They are shared and spread like virus. If we can’t make time for seeking the truth, how can we avoid the misleading information? What if we are manipulated? This would appear to indicate that a great deal of attention must be paid when we confront sceptical information.
Democracies have always trusted in common sense. In 1776, Thomas Paine stated that governments depend for its legitimacy entirely on the consent of the society. This idea was the ideological pillar that democracies stood on. Legitimate governments have always sought approval of the people that they intend to govern until now. In 2018 newspaper Times reported that Cambridge Analytica - British political consulting firm was eager to offer psychological profiles of American voters to political missions. This firm obtained the private Facebook data of tens of millions of users. After this scandal was revealed, it turned out to be that not just social media users’ profiles but the whole system of democracy is at stake. This could be the official end of modern times. The power to be able use of big data to manipulate elections shed light on frightening scenarios that might happen sooner than no one has expected. That is why, we must get used to asking 5 Ws and 1 H questions. It won’t be an easy task but at least we must try not to be puppets manipulated by the big data. To conclude we shouldn’t be afraid of asking big questions no news sources.