THE POST-TRUTH ERA

The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth.

Every year Oxford Dictionaries selects a word or expression that has "attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date", post-truth has been the word selected for 2016. What is "post-truth"? "Rather than simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event – as in post-war or post-match – the prefix in post-truth has a meaning more like ‘belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant ", explains Oxford Dictionaries. So, post-truth refers to an epoch, our own, in which truth would have become irrelevant. This idea immediately raises two further questions.

The first one is an old question, which has been reverberating since that famous day in Jerusalem, during the Jews Easter, when the fifth Roman prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, replied to Jesus, "What is truth?" ("Quid est veritas?"). For centuries, scholars have debated about the nature of truth and even mentioning  this debate would sound arrogant. "If there is such a thing as truth – wrote I.B. Singer  concluding his adorable short novel "A Crown of Feather" – it is as intricate and hidden as a crown of feather". Truth is never elsewhere – completely out from our reach – yet it is always a bit beyond ourselves. It is a horizon, which gives meaning and limit; as the horizon, it can never be grasped: when you move ahead, it moves ahead too, always with you, always away from you. Yet, the idea of a post-truth epoch does not imply any judgment about the question "what is truth?"  – even whether there is a truth –rather it implies that this very question has become totally irrelevant. Who really cares today "what is truth"?  "In the post-truth era we don’t just have truth and lies, but a third category of ambiguous statements that are not exactly the truth but fall short of a lie. Enhanced truth it might be called".

The second question stems from the previous one, and it is its obvious corollary. If truth is irrelevant, what is then relevant? In other words, what is "enhanced truth"? Enhanced truth –  call it truth 3.0 – is narrative. People are not interested in truth but in stories. This is efficaciously demonstrated by a recent BuzzFeed News analysis that found that "top fake election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories from 19 major news outlets combined".  False election stories diffused by hoax sites generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook, while news distributed by authoritative and verified sources generated a total of 7,367,000 shares, reactions, and comments. Researchers found that hyperpolarized and hyper partisan information is more effective in delivering messages than neutral, fact based, information. 

Yet, assuming that the "populace" confuses narrative with truth would be a tragic misunderstanding.  Such a misconception would reveal a snobbish, pre "post-truth", way of reasoning. People simply don't care – or care much lesser than in the past -  of truth. They enjoy stories, which are much more amusing, exciting, and meaningful. Do you remember Descartes' Meditation, "I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, figures, sound, and all other external things are nought but… illusions and dreams… I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, nor any senses, yet falsely believing myself to possess all these things’?  Nice statement, isn't it? Male adolescents of the past, when they "discovered"  philosophy, often used this statement to impress their girl-friends, pretending looking "very profound". Then, when they had to date the girls, they became immediately oblivious of hyperbolic doubts, looking eagerly at their watch. Methodological skepticism cant' afford abandoning lecture halls,  in real life it unavoidably becomes  a parody.

"Fake news, and the proliferation of raw opinion that passes for news, is creating confusion, punching holes in what is true, causing a kind of fun-house effect that leaves the reader doubting everything, including real news". This is the point. We live in post-truth epoch, because we live in an epoch that has made skepticism and cynicism commonplace. Mass skepticism is the almost unavoidable consequence of information overload, which is due to the digital revolution. It looks like as though there were today no alternative but between skepticism and gullibility. Who would ever prefer to pass himself off as a gullible person? Much better looking skeptical.  Yet, notwithstanding global 3.0 skepticism, truth always takes its revenge. Fake news draw their strength from the seeds of truth that they unavoidably conceal to be trusted. No narrative is pleasant and convincing without a kernel of truth. 

This is the main lesson for those who work on public communication, trying to debunk false messages. Always search for the kernel of truth concealed in falsehood, and when you find it, first address it effectively, if you want to be trusted.