Most of the people I meet and interact with on a regular basis these days are deeply troubled by what they are experiencing in their daily lives, both personally and vicariously through news and social media. .
It’s a feeling that’s hard to articulate. But it’s very real.
We live in a post-truth world. . . a world where technology can create an artificial reality out of whole cloth and disseminate it to millions in milliseconds with the click of a key.
This is a world where the value of any idea can be based on vague assertions of potential profitability and an expedient lie is more admired than any factual knowledge.
The misinformation is acted on; both truth and consequences buried under a mudslide of outrageous acts; compounded by a barrage of repeated assertions of more egregious lies. Again, lies which state-of-the-art information technology can deliver at a rate impossible to keep track of, much less counter.
For an authoritarian personality post-truth thinking opens the door to a conviction that what a person believes is reality. They are at liberty–if ordered to by an authoritarian leader they recognize–obligated to act on it.
Within any authoritarian group their actions are praiseworthy and any consequential damage and the resulting suffering and cost to individuals and society at large justified.
Reality is supremely indifferent to what anyone may wish, hope, or believe to be true. The propensity to believe what is hoped is true enough to act on–even in the face of overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary–seems ingrained in human nature.
Faith–an act of the will to believe manifested by a willingness to act–at times in defiance of doubt and reason. {To be continued}