Paranoia in the Information Age

When I was studying logic we learned a number of different ways to formulate so called truth conditions in the different systems of logic, or 'languages' we were fooling around with. Some of my friends were studying Derrida and the other post modernists at the same time, and we would have interesting, sometimes confusing, and usually polemic discussions. We logicians learned that truth is a fundamental point of reference for the semantics of any formal system (including presumably post-modern philosophy). The students of Derrida would hold that 'truth' is a social construct, contextual, ambiguous, and therefore entirely relative. Of course rendering it relative does not make it meaningless. I consider myself greatly influenced by Nietzsche's writings, and I always loved his sharp criticism of the complacency and hypocrisy in many traditionally accepted 'truths', so I’ve never been very hostile to the ideas of the postmodernists, although I’ve never felt completely satisfied with them either.
Logic does not tell you anything about truth, it tells you something about the legitimacy of an argument. Truth is something we know from the facts, and no matter how much I appreciate the value of the insight that meaning is socially constructed -- eloquently treated in Wittgenstein's “Philosophical Investigations” --, facts are facts. We need facts. Even in a world where the observer and the observed exist in a relationship of mutual influence -- an idea that permeates oriental thinking but was forcefully inserted into western thinking by the theory of quantum mechanics -- facts are still meaningful reference points. 'Truth' may be more of a social construct than our scientific worldview would be comfortable with, facts may even be influenced by consciousness itself, this still does not mean that anything goes. At least I would like to think so.

Now we live in an ‘information age’, which is one way of referring to the developmental stage that follows the industrial age. We see that the amount of information increases explosively. More and more pieces of information, some of which contains truth, are available to an ever-increasing part of humanity. The universe of digital information, “cyberspace”, has expanded globally and inspired a great hope for knowledge sharing, empowerment, democratization and the dissemination of truth.

We have more information, more media, more communication, more interaction, yet are exposed to less and less truth. We increasingly live in a world of lies. Political spin, disinformation, semi-facts, the madness of corporate ads everywhere, truly a society of the spectacle. The acceptance of ‘truths’ is a function of media access, repetition, and the ability to avoid a dialogue on facts. Facts may still exist, but they have little bearing on the information that is made available. The recent WMD controversy is only one poignant example. This problem is fairly well documented. Activist and scholar Noam Chomsky has been crusading against political lies for decades (on political lies read his "Manufacturing Consent"), but there is enough other material. On corporate lies you read Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber’s "Toxic Sludge is good for you", on mass media fabrications there is the recently produced documentary “Outfoxed”, there is Al Franken's "Lies, and the Lying Liars who tell them", and a whole range of books on the inaccuracies surrounding the September 11th tragedy, of which Michael Rupperts seminal “Crossing the Rubicon” is arguably the best researched.

If information has become disassociated from facts, is the ‘information age’ and its concomitant ‘knowledge society’ still such a good idea? Is it a step forward? Is the internet, with its decentralized subversive qualities, a force to balance the spin and interest-driven anti-facts influencing our personal and collective awareness, or does it generate more opportunities for creating lies and distorting truths? The ultra-democratic internet itself is not going to protect us from lies.
Should we just give up on truth?

It is a fact that the ability for us as individuals to check the facts behind the information is disappearing, but this is not only an effect of the internet. This ability disappeared a long time ago. We hear a lot of news from areas in the world to which we have no access. Most television news shows may just as well be completely fabricated. Paranoid as it may sound, how are we to know?

As facts become more difficult to find and know, and this arguably undercuts the legitimacy of some of our beliefs, something else becomes more important. In Jurgen Habermas’ theory of communicative actions he distinguishes between truth and truthfulness. These two concepts have their relevance in different domains of reality. Truth is something determined by objective reality, it is an aspect of statements, and it can be observed or proven by a repeatable experiment. In the absence of such guaranteed foundations of knowledge, i.e. facts, truthfulness becomes relevant, and it is a crucial notion in the domain of social relations. Truthfulness is about integrity; it is an aspect of humans. It is about being trustworthy in your communication; telling the truth about your inner state. Is someone expressing what they believe to be true, or are they deliberately (or inadvertently) distorting it? Truth and truthfulness do not coincide; someone may be truthful in expressing a statement without the statement being true. There is therefore no external test for truthfulness, it is derived from trust. If I believe you are being truthful I will trust you. The interest-driven communication specialists, “spin-doctors”, marketers, PR firms, understand this. People listen to and believe you because they perceive you as being truthful; it has nothing to do with facts. This idea explains the success of the most important PR innovation of the 20th century, conceived of by Edward Bernays: “third party techniques” where you create a seemingly independent and trustworthy third party to communicate messages that would be hard swallow from your own mouth (e.g. “smoking does not cause health problems).

All this puts great emphasis on the notion of trust. We need to develop very keen instruments in gauging the truthfulness of what we hear. Truthfulness is not a property of messages (truth is) but of people. That is a kind of leverage that can be used. The con artist is friendly and charming, but does NOT have your best interest in mind, even though he says he does. To gain trust it is crucial to exhibit those qualities commonly associated with trustworthiness. We live therefore in a world in which we more and more will find the qualities we associate with truthfulness (charm, charisma, power) used to package blatant and dangerous lies that jeopardize the interests of all but the manipulators themselves. The corporate message saying that profit is not the most important object, the politically biased journalist claiming to be completely objective, the pharmaceutical company claiming that its new anti-depressant has no side effects. This is how the world has been turned upside down. This is the modern paranoia.

Soul

I grew up with Errol Garner and Oscar Peterson, and Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Paul Desmond was my favorite musician before I discovered the brilliance of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, and Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins and all those guys. I remember myself as a 10 years old kid in his room on a Sunday afternoon, playing his tapes on a Phillips portable tape recorder… playing Brubecks Time Out.

Jazz.

I remember someone, I think it was Wynton Marsalis, explaining that the word Jazz originated in the brothels of New Orleans -- one of the few places where black folk could develop their unique art in freedom -- as a eufemism for what men do with women in brothels. You could have worse asscociations, allthough in a puritan culture such connotations have a tendency to work against you. Many great musicians in fact resented the term.
But I grew up with Jazz, and it is still where my soul is. Only now am I starting to understand more about what music means, the depth to which it touches us, and what music means as a culture force: much more than a mere art-form. African-American improvised music is where my soul is, its where I’m at, its what makes my heart sing, and what cures my despair.

Jazz, of course, is also an artistic movement, or rather a stream of creativity that exemplifies some of the great tragedies of unrecognized genius and the creativity-destruction (self-destruction) dynamic that seems to befall so many truely creative spirits in our world -- myself included. Tragedy and beauty; such an ancient dialectic.

Dialectics

I have a critical mind. That is not always a blessing. Coupled with impatience and a strong sense of justice, my critical mind can be a source of great unrest. I have been possessed with an interest in contoversy for as long as I can remember. I have always enjoyed asking the questions that lead to the opposite of what is being claimed. If someone is saying this, what happens if the opposite is true? If this is what we ought to do, what happens if we do the opposite? If I am supposed to believe this, what happens if I believe the opposite?

If matter is ultimately reducible to very heavy, extremely dense pingpong balls called protons and neutrons, what happens if that is not true? If the force of gravity and the electromagnetic force have no direct relation to each other, what if that is wrong? If you tell me you want the best for me and you actually believe your own words, what if that still is not true? If you say happiness is produced by a practicing a certain conduct, what if you are wrong? If you tell me this behavior is inadmissible, what if you are wrong?

I will never stop asking such questions. Of course it is necessary to reach conclusions at some point, otherwise I will forever yoyo between the truth and falsehood of all propositions. I imagine then that my decision to accept a certain answer, thus bringing the critical dialectic to an end, will be a product and a revelation of the center of my beliefs. My true self, my original face.