John Le Carre's 2001 novel, The Constant Gardener, is a story about political corruption and corporate greed. It is also one of my favourite novels, and I would argue that now is the time for more books that expose the rotten state of current politics. I urge this because it seems to me that a dark era of democracy is upon us, an era in which the misinformed citizen reigns supreme. The principal reason for this shambolic state of affairs is, in my opinion, the collapse of our collective search for truth. It would appear that it is no longer a positive attribute to seek out truth, expose biases, evaluate facts, or share knowledge. In fact, scientific thinking itself is under attack. In a post-fact and post-truth era, we could very well develop into a post-science era. No wonder that little or nothing has been done to get a collective grip on climate change!
Why has this happened? In my view, it is because the notion of the absolute truth has been discredited. In such a world, the only alternative is a position called perspectivism – the notion that there is no one objective way the world is, only perspectives on what the world is like. With regard to basic matters, sharing a perspective on the truth may be easy. When it comes to more complex issues like morality, religion and politics, agreement is much harder to achieve. People take up differing perspectives, and this means that they see the world and themselves in very different ways. Further, these perspectives are shaped by the biases, the desires and the interests of those who hold them and can vary wildly. This means that each perspective on the world will have certain norms regarding what it deems to be non-negotiable, for example: “facts” or “truths.” Pointing to them out as wrong won’t have much of an effect in changing the opinion of someone who occupies a different perspective.
President Trump is, therefore, a child of his time. One of the characteristics of Trump’s current political campaign is its disdain for facts and the truth. Trump will make any claim that seems to fit his purpose of being re-elected. For example, he claims that crime levels are at an all-time high, that climate change is a Chinese lie and, later, that he never said it was a Chinese lie in the first place. Exposure of his constant contradictions and untruths is not stopping him and he may win the mid-terms. I would add, though, that Trump is not the problem, and attacking him or removing him will not change anything. Trump is, in my opinion, simply a symptom of the poor state of health into which politics has fallen.
This takes us back to Le Carre and exposing the truth. We writers have a duty to address the problems of democracy. If we, among others, don't tackle this, we may be failing in our duty, nothing will change and there will be no commonly agreed-on facts, there will be no rational debate over policies, no means of evaluating candidates for political office, and no way to hold elected officials accountable to the people.
Without helping to expose these issues, we might see democracy in big trouble.
Complete relativism is impossible to hold, either psychologically or logicallu, since "Truth is relative" must also be a relative position and therefore may not always hold.
Posted by: Ranald Barnicot | 10/17/2020 at 01:50 PM
I suppose I could say, "In my opinion, truth is relative."
Posted by: Robert Goddard | 10/17/2020 at 04:11 PM