“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
George Orwell.
It happens to most of us. The occasional disillusionment with politics and its constant domination of so many parts of our lives. And rightly so, the banal “ politics is full of lies and deception of people” is a constant reply when the question why so many of us are cynical about politics is often asked. “It’s full of whoppers. It’s fundamental basis is misinformation “ we all hear this often.
Here then comes an important question. What actually are these lies ? What do we classify as lies?
Most often Lies can be grouped as statements purposely for the underlying intention to deceive people. Can we determine the opposite of truth as lies?
Lies are not really the opposite of truth. Just as telling the truth is not the same as being truthful. If your favourite politician comes out being very truthful about certain findings that are very vital to you, let’s say they discuss the performance of the economy, their intention to introduce a new policy or their positions on certain tenets being argued in a referendum does telling the truth about these position equate to being truthful about them ?
Dismantling such positions requires an often deeper understanding of the fundamental differences between being truthful or telling lies. In a world like ours today with its ease of spreading misinformation around in seconds, the cliche a lie travels a 1000 times around the world before the truth gets a chance couldn’t be more true.
Social media has exacerbated the tendency for a lie to be spread instantly. Coupled with our diverse positions politically on almost any topic, our inherent biases due to established political beliefs means you’re faster to agree with your embedded political beliefs than question the facts. Hence the share and like buttons are our personal weapons of mass destruction.
Finding out the truth is an extremely tedious task for the brain. Harrowing study and investigation on facts? That’s not for us. Serve us an easy nicely baked lie. And we are hooked.
Thus the insights made by your treasured politician can be categorized as truth or lies when the specific comments they made are said to correspond to what actually exists. Psychologists have posited often how the brain initially sees events around it. It’s like there is a tendency to perceive things at first through a scope of a True or False microscope where True seems to be a default answer. First we believe, and only then do we question.
The scary part of that initial True view being a default answer is that it rarely takes us any effort to establish it and even remain in the same position throughout. But when we decide we need to switch that view to a false mode we are in need of a lot of time, abundance of effort and energy and extreme attention.
You will be telling the truth when what you believe to be true and what you say are on a par. What you say, you believe to be true. If we have a drop of an inherent purpose to delude we will be lying.
Politicians have a tendency to say stuff or discuss viewpoints they believe and know to be absolutely false with an absolute purpose and intention for the public to believe, process and understand them as true.
They portray this positional attitude that the circumstances are other than they are or seem. While lies have grown to become part of our societies today the need to recognize facts and truth has never been bigger. Don’t be duped.
Facts are never subjective. Facts are facts. The colour blue is blue. The fact that I can choose to see whatever colour I want doesn’t change the fact that the colour in question is blue. Lies from politicians might be one thing but lies within our society are so normal today that we have decided to give them cute little names. Like propaganda.
Here is where it could get even scarier. Lies are bad. Just not as bad as Post-truth. While lies try to subvert some very specific facts or time, post truth subverts the truth itself. One thing with every lie is the possibility of the lier acknowledging the truth or its existence at least. The lier knows the truth but tries to persuade us towards a different dynamic of lies.
The post-truth is worse in that it doesn’t even try to acknowledge the truth. Here the truth has been made obsolete. It allows no refuge for the truth in society where even the established facts become less important in shaping our decisions and opinions. Post-truth is the place where even scientific facts are de-legitimized. There can be a place for lies in society. Everyone lies occasionally. For good or bad reasons. But there should never be a place in society for Post-truth.
Lying has become the new normal in our politics. The bigger the lie the more convincing you can do. Its not nuanced anymore and it doesnt come with any shades. We will be served plainly. Take it or leave it. Breaking out of our cognitive biases and political ideology will be a task we must do in order to see facts. Even the easy option of changing the channel might not work at the end if we do not develop this ability to want to investigate for the facts. For Even if we hear the truth, the possibility of rejecting it would still be high.
The responsibility to recognize it and not to be deceived in such a world where lying and the perilous Post-truth will always come back to the individual. It’s not an easy task in such circumstances where our surroundings portrays such level of culpability but through a keen investigative eye one is able to gather the facts. Supporting investigative reporting and critical thinking is vital more than ever. Calling out liars and Post-truth propagators is important more than ever. Hitting politicians with the facts immediately must be of paramount importance before their Post-truth barrage spread out to everyone dismantling valued society tenets.