No one knows any longer – for any value of “It.”
“What do we really know of the time of our greatness? A few names of worlds and heroes, a ragtag of facts we’ve tried to patch into a history. The Shing law forbids killing, but they killed knowledge, they burned books, and what may be worse, they falsified what was left. They slipped in the Lie, as always…. There is no trust in them, because there is no truth in them…. It was the Lie that defeated all the races of the League and left us subject to the Shing. Remember that, Falk. Never believe the truth of anything the Enemy has said.”
[Ursula Le Guin, City of Illusions]
That was fiction, but it’s a damned good precis of what’s happening today. The Lie is ubiquitous. No one can be sure of anything he hasn’t personally witnessed – and even then, the arts of misdirection and deception have advanced so greatly these past few years that to doubt one’s own senses, if not confirmed by other sources, is becoming wise policy.
And to think we used to joke about Baghdad Bob.
I’ve ranted frequently about the loss of our formerly high-trust society, to little effect. People generally refuse to believe what they fear or disapprove. Make it go away! But it happens to be the case. Who among us reflexively trusts anything beyond the range of his senses, or anyone beyond his immediate acquaintance?
Even among those who agree that the loss is real, there’s a lack of comprehension about the reason for it. As it happens, a high-trust society is metastable. A seemingly minor disturbance that’s not swiftly corrected can cause it to crumble.
That’s somewhat obscure, so allow me an example. Imagine a society in which trust in others is ubiquitous or nearly so. Yes, there are liars and fabulists, but they’re known and treated as what they are: i.e., not to be believed. In effect, they occupy the society’s “skid row” of trust. They can’t get by on their fictions.
But let’s add a few skillful liars who do manage to “get by” on their fictions. The historical archetype is the “snake-oil salesman.” He and his shills promote a quack panacea – available exclusively from him, of course – sell as much of it as they can, and blow town before the “cure’s” effects become widely known. Presently people are sick or dying from that “cure,” and the cause is obvious… but punishing the malefactor has become impossible. He’s succeeded in profiting from his lies and getting away unscathed.
Success breeds emulation. His example will inspire others to follow his practices. More of his sort arise. The general willingness to trust a hitherto unknown individual who approaches with something to sell or trade has taken a blow.
That much, most people will accept without objecting. What they find harder to grasp is the magnitude of the thing. For as long as any snake-oil salesmen profit by their practices, heightened wariness about the good will of strangers will persist. Moreover, for any selected individual – call him Smith – except for individuals Smith knows personally and closely, a particle of doubt will have intruded into Smith’s dealings with them. “Is he trying to put one over on me? After all…”
The corrosion spreads with appalling rapidity, for those who are not trusted will themselves become disinclined to trust. It’s happened to us of the United States of America. As liars-for-profit have multiplied in accordance with the dynamic of emulation, we’ve become cynics who doubt anything and everything anyone tells us. Our old high-trust ethic is a fading memory.
Metastable conditions are like that.
If you’re wondering what’s got me chugging down this particular track, it’s the business about Haitian immigrants eating the cats and ducks in Springfield, Ohio. At one point, it was supposedly widely attested. Then “public officials” – dear God, is there any breed of vermin with more incentive to lie? – “debunked” the claims. Then pictures started to appear, supposedly verifying the claims. But now it seems those pictures aren’t what we were told they were… and one woman has come forward to claim that her Facebook post set off the whole miserable scandal.
Can you believe it? Can you believe anything you haven’t personally witnessed while sober as a judge, not looking into the Sun, and not in proximity to David Copperfield?
Please see also:
…and try not to think about the upcoming elections.
2 comments
That sounds too unbelievable because I fear and disapprove. Yet I believed Solzhenitsyn’s report of the faithful party apparatchik’s last breath: “if Stalin only knew.”
It’s a wonder that I write anything ever again.
Gee, NBC finds a story about a woman who posted something on Facebook and they say she started the whole “they’re eating pets and animals in the parks” story?
NBC and Facebook? It’s hard to think of two organizations I trust less. If either NBC or Facebook told me the sun was rising in the east tomorrow morning, I’d probably look west.
One of those meme ideas I see a few times a year is that this is all Obama’s fault because he used an executive order to allow the Fed.gov to pass propaganda to the American public. IIRC they say he used an executive order to cancel an older order. I don’t know if it’s true but it sure seems easy to fix if enough people demand that congress pass a permanent law to prohibit that.