The Death of Truth?
The US and to a lesser extend Canadian society are characterized more and more by polarization. People take a point of view, stick to it, and demonize those that don't agree.
While partisanship has always been around - it's a part of the game - it's traditionally been the job of professional politicos - those talking head members of the chattering classes whose role it is to toot the bugle for whatever flavour they're promoting as the panacea to everyone's perceived ills. That's to be expected, in the same way that Walmart says they're the best, and isn't gonna go tell you to shop at Zeller's, and vice versa.
But more and more this mindset has leaked into the conciousness of everyday people. People are no longer swayed by arguments, or by facts, or by a concept of the common good. Instead, people simply go on the mental defensive, and cling ever-tighter to the ideas that best correspond to their current world view and pre-existing bigotry, regardless of whether it be left, center, or right.
It makes poiltical and social discourse nigh impossible, has a negative efect on community, and contributes to making people on both sides of any debate close-minded and bigoted against other views.
Why?
Cynical manipulation of, and by, the media. No one beleives in objective facts anymore, because they've seen too much spin. Facts have been distorted by both sides for their own reasons. And the only truth about the truth is that once someone becomes presumtious enough to beleive they own the truth, the truth turns into a big lie.
But even more subtley, people have bought the argument that events are too complex and too big, and that the truth IS actually owned by others, who can deny them access to the facts required to recognize it.
This is not an entirely irrational reaction, given that there is no FORUM for dicsussion anymore, now that public life is owned by ratings-mad parasites who stir up acrimony and drama in the hope of turning society into one big fucking Rikki Lake episode. Oh yes. When confronted with the lowness of it, most decent people retreat, and leave the field to the scumbags and pimps.
That doesen't mean that everyone has to go back to a concept of RIGHT and WRONG, in some idiotic small-minded self-righteous moralistic sense. That's simply ,ore of the same.
What it means is that we have to come back to some basic sane principles of etting along. I would therfore like to be presumtious enough to suggest:
1) Facts are there, and can be known
2) There are many sides and many truths to these facts, and many competing interests, and each has at it's core something legitimate
3) Most people are relatively decent, and can come to a workable agreement on common goals, depsite competing interests and truths
4) Anything which is not a common goal, but does not at the same time greatly interfere with common goals, can be left to each person's own concience.
Or some such schweisse.
I'd simply like to suggest that as you live your life, don't buy the fucking hype that things are stupid and hopeless and helplessly twisted. Turning down the rhetoric and re-focussing on the common good is both possible and nreally not all that hard, once we ditch the bullshit and get over ourselves.
I think I need to have a dump.
While partisanship has always been around - it's a part of the game - it's traditionally been the job of professional politicos - those talking head members of the chattering classes whose role it is to toot the bugle for whatever flavour they're promoting as the panacea to everyone's perceived ills. That's to be expected, in the same way that Walmart says they're the best, and isn't gonna go tell you to shop at Zeller's, and vice versa.
But more and more this mindset has leaked into the conciousness of everyday people. People are no longer swayed by arguments, or by facts, or by a concept of the common good. Instead, people simply go on the mental defensive, and cling ever-tighter to the ideas that best correspond to their current world view and pre-existing bigotry, regardless of whether it be left, center, or right.
It makes poiltical and social discourse nigh impossible, has a negative efect on community, and contributes to making people on both sides of any debate close-minded and bigoted against other views.
Why?
Cynical manipulation of, and by, the media. No one beleives in objective facts anymore, because they've seen too much spin. Facts have been distorted by both sides for their own reasons. And the only truth about the truth is that once someone becomes presumtious enough to beleive they own the truth, the truth turns into a big lie.
But even more subtley, people have bought the argument that events are too complex and too big, and that the truth IS actually owned by others, who can deny them access to the facts required to recognize it.
This is not an entirely irrational reaction, given that there is no FORUM for dicsussion anymore, now that public life is owned by ratings-mad parasites who stir up acrimony and drama in the hope of turning society into one big fucking Rikki Lake episode. Oh yes. When confronted with the lowness of it, most decent people retreat, and leave the field to the scumbags and pimps.
That doesen't mean that everyone has to go back to a concept of RIGHT and WRONG, in some idiotic small-minded self-righteous moralistic sense. That's simply ,ore of the same.
What it means is that we have to come back to some basic sane principles of etting along. I would therfore like to be presumtious enough to suggest:
1) Facts are there, and can be known
2) There are many sides and many truths to these facts, and many competing interests, and each has at it's core something legitimate
3) Most people are relatively decent, and can come to a workable agreement on common goals, depsite competing interests and truths
4) Anything which is not a common goal, but does not at the same time greatly interfere with common goals, can be left to each person's own concience.
Or some such schweisse.
I'd simply like to suggest that as you live your life, don't buy the fucking hype that things are stupid and hopeless and helplessly twisted. Turning down the rhetoric and re-focussing on the common good is both possible and nreally not all that hard, once we ditch the bullshit and get over ourselves.
I think I need to have a dump.