Post - Truth

 

Defination of the post - truth

Donating circumstances in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts.

Some Examples of Post-Truth In India:

The world has entered an era of post truth politics

Ways of knowing’ or ‘epistemology’

Quest for truth and knowledge forms the foundation of civilizations. Not merely knowing the truth, but knowing, recording and passing it on to next generation is at the core of human civilizations.

Before civilization

Millions of years ago when we were not humans we didn’t care about ways of knowing. We knew things but we didn’t care much about how to know or how to record knowledge and pass it on. We were busy with surviving and procreating. But even then, we made cave paintings and tried to create knowledge and also communicate. But it wasn’t until we learned to speak, read and write that is not until language was formed that theories of knowledge came into existence. The history of human civilization, ways of knowing is too vast for this space. To keep it short let’s start at the time when many civilizations had already emerged on the face of earth each making its own progress in field of culture, language, art, architecture etc., few things people understood but still many things they did not. Whatever they did not understand they attributed it to God or nature. Why did the earth shake? Gods must be angry. Religion had been invented and belief or faith in a certain higher order was the basis of knowledge during this time. Then came the scientific revolution and enlightenment.

Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment

This changed everything. It was the seed of the modern world we live in today. Man decided to reject the superiority of God and religious orders, and took to knowledge and reason to be the master of his own destiny. Positivism emerged in 18th century Europe with philosophers like Auguste Comte, JS Mill, Herbert Spencer who started looking at the world in very different ways owing to the scientific revolution Europe had witnessed through 16th and 17th century. Science, rationality, atheism, critical thinking, rejection of idealism, abstracts were some of the ethos that formed the basis of positivism. Only that knowledge was considered true by positivists which could be seen, heard, touched, observed, quantified and replicated in a scientific way. Everything else like human emotions, experiences, romanticism were rejected from the realm of knowledge creation.

Post-modernism

Positivism remained the basis of knowledge creation and knowing and understanding the universe for a long time, unless critical realism, post modernism and subaltern studies like post-colonial theories, feminist epistemology emerged. These branches rejected the supremacy of objectivity, quantification, verification and foregrounded subjectivity and lived realities of every human. They rejected the idea that there is such a thing as ‘whole truth’ or that there is anything to be known or capable of knowing by humans or that there is only one proper way to know.

Post-modernism to post-truth and post-truth politics

Now comes post-truth a time when subjective realities is stretched too far to prove and disprove whatever knowledge and narrative suit the populist sentiments. Anything and everything is accepted as truth so long as a formidable leader with mass appeal is able to touch a chord with the masses, sway them with great oratory skills and convince them to accept their narrative without questioning.

While Donald Trump is considered the trend setter, Boris Jhonson is the latest star of post-truth politics and our Prime Minister is not far behind. 

Post-truth Politics in India

BJP’s 2014 elections was largely based on the post-truth narrative that Congress party has no contribution to independent India that during the entire period from independence to 2014 they only looted India as did the Mughals and British. They started a hate campaign against Congress leaders particularly of the Nehru Gandhi family, which continues till date, maligning their characters, integrity, personal life and even death.

 In the photo, he was seen sitting on a sofa, and on the handle of the sofa was his daughter sitting holding her father’s hand. When I saw that photo, my first response was that he should delete it as it was susceptible to misuse and misinterpretation if used without the context and if people don’t know the woman in the picture was his daughter. An art perfected by BJP’s Amit Malviya. He doesn’t feel any moral guilt in using photos of women and men who are long dead to peddle a fake narrative about Nehru. Such is the loss of ethics and morals in this post-truth politics. ...

Thank you 😊