The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic exposed the severity of the epistemological crisis we face in the digital age. As the new virus spread globally, public health experts and government leaders naturally struggled to understand the nature of the contagion and how best to contain it. But the speed with which information—good, bad, and ugly—spreads in today’s world meant that imperfect data, errant projections, hastily written analysis, and contradictory recommendations were spread confidently and quickly, resulting in a disaster of information every bit as dangerous as the disease itself. Whatever you wanted to believe about the pandemic and the “stay at home” restrictions issued by governments, there were articles, studies, and experts you could find online to defend your view. The result was a deepening cynicism and uncertainty about pretty much everything.
COVID-19 didn’t create these frightening information dynamics, but it was a crisis made worse because of them. It was really 2016 when the extent of our epistemological crisis became apparent. That was the year Donald Trump’s election to president in the US and “Brexit” in the UK stunned experts and accelerated feelings that the world was entering a new, unpredictable phase driven more by rage than reality, more by fear than facts.
As a result, Oxford Dictionaries declared “post-truth” the international word of the year in 2016, defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”1 The new “post-truth” normal was underscored in early 2017 when Time posed the question, “Is Truth Dead?” on its cover, designed in such a way to mirror a Time cover from 50 years earlier which posed a more foundational question: “Is God Dead?”2 These two covers, a half century apart, tell an important story. Without God as an ultimate standard of truth, all we have are “truths” as interpreted by individuals. To each their own. You do you. It’s no wonder we are now as confused as we are. Do away with God, and you do away with truth.
COVID-19 didn’t create these frightening information dynamics, but it was a crisis made worse because of them. It was really 2016 when the extent of our epistemological crisis became apparent. That was the year Donald Trump’s election to president in the US and “Brexit” in the UK stunned experts and accelerated feelings that the world was entering a new, unpredictable phase driven more by rage than reality, more by fear than facts.
As a result, Oxford Dictionaries declared “post-truth” the international word of the year in 2016, defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”1 The new “post-truth” normal was underscored in early 2017 when Time posed the question, “Is Truth Dead?” on its cover, designed in such a way to mirror a Time cover from 50 years earlier which posed a more foundational question: “Is God Dead?”2 These two covers, a half century apart, tell an important story. Without God as an ultimate standard of truth, all we have are “truths” as interpreted by individuals. To each their own. You do you. It’s no wonder we are now as confused as we are. Do away with God, and you do away with truth.
- Brett McCracken, The Wisdom Pyramid:
Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World, 2021
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