Global Epidemic of Alternative Truth

Context: Public opinion in democracies is now fashioned within cocoons of privilege and power, untroubled by factuality or diversities in perception.

Defining Truth: It is often regarded as a metaphysical construct, though it has a more pragmatic dimension as a process of accurately recording perceptions, and ensuring they become part of an agreed social record.

Threats to the truth: (sourced by public opinion and also an influencer of public opinion)

• Social fractures: Fractures in race and class have led to the denial of truth by the political leadership in many democracies including the United States (U.S.) - leading to “culture wars”.
  • Neglect of diversity: Daily lives in the U.S. today are increasingly about sameness, less about exposure to diversities of culture and social perception.
• Incompatibility of Truth and Politics: Hannah Arendt argues that “truthfulness” was never counted “among the political virtues”. She made a vital distinction between truths:
  • Factual truths – bore reference to observations by living subjects of constantly changing reality.
  • Formal truths – on the contrary, were part of the received wisdom.
• Majoritarianism: Numbers could be a guarantee of strength, though not of authenticity; the feeling of belonging to a majority may even encourage false testimony”.
• “Radical destruction” of truth: A fact could be removed from the world if a sufficient number of people “believe in its non­exis­tence”.
  • Lie is often defeated by reality: E.g. In 1971, the Pentagon Papers were published, exposing a long trail of offcial deception on the U.S. war in Vietnam.
• Role of social media: Social media has come in for intense scrutiny for its ability to create bubbles of political misinformation.
  • Earlier modes of harvesting attention and securing assent for a particular perception of reality, have been transformed in this intensely networked milieu.
• Lack of effective deliberation: Parliament sessions conclude without the Question Hour, and consultative meetings across party lines over significant legislations have been scrapped.

Conclusion: The challenge remains for India to tap the sources of countervailing power to neutralise this drift towards a world of alternative truths.