{"id":1626,"date":"2016-12-22T23:04:08","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T22:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/?p=1626"},"modified":"2018-11-24T08:44:54","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T07:44:54","slug":"post-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/post-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/24745355@N06\/16284884282\" title=\"Day 15 #Truth\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c3.staticflickr.com\/8\/7464\/16284884282_9cbf4295d9_b.jpg\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" alt=\"Day 15 #Truth\"><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/24745355@N06\/16284884282\" title=\"Day 15 #Truth\">Day 15 #Truth<\/a> by mishey_mouse (<a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc\/2.0\/\" target=\"_blank\">CC-BY-NC<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Word Of The Year is without a doubt &#8220;Post-Truth&#8221; <span id='easy-footnote-1-1626' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/post-truth\/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1626' title='Actually, it seems that Oxford Dictionaries named post-truth &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/en.oxforddictionaries.com\/word-of-the-year\/word-of-the-year-2016&quot;&gt;word of the year 2016&lt;\/a&gt; back in November. I honestly did not know that before I started writing this blog post. Here is how post-truth is defined in the dictionary: &lt;\/p&gt;\n&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief &lt;cite&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/en.oxforddictionaries.com\/definition\/post-truth&quot;&gt;Oxford English Dictionary online&lt;\/a&gt;&lt;\/cite&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;\/blockquote&gt;\n&lt;p&gt;'><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>. In my interpretation, it perfectly captures two observations about the current world:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Truth largely does not matter anymore. We have moved beyond truth, we are post truth.<\/li>\n<li>Truth can be created after (<em>post<\/em>) a statement is made &#8212; it does not have to be true originally.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Post-truth has come up a lot lately. It is often mentioned in association with Brexit and Donald Trump&#8217;s election as president, but I do not have anything significant to add to these specific debates on this blog.<\/p>\n<p>But I will say this: Post-truth is dangerous&#8230; It is dangerous, because it deceives. It is dangerous, because it is used to incite hatred and create injustice. It is dangerous, because it challenges the fundamentals of civil discourse: Honesty, respect and integrity.<\/p>\n<p>This year, we have mostly seen post-truth in public politics. However, I fear that it is not a temporary phenomenon, but a symptom of a larger disease, slowly infecting our society. On a large scale, the alt-right movement is gaining traction, fueled by fake news and hatred. On a smaller scale, it has become trendy to not be politically correct.<\/p>\n<p>The result of post-truth is quite dark: Thumbs up for telling lies, they will become true eventually. Thumbs up for ignoring real facts, they can be created.<\/p>\n<p>I am not sure that we can reverse the rising trend of post-truth. That ship has sailed, and we have to get used to the era of post-truth. However, I do think that being aware of the problem enables us to do something as individuals, even on a small scale.<\/p>\n<p>On my part, I will try to be more critical towards my news sources and politicians, I will try to be respectful and honest in my discourse, and I will be politically correct to counter-balance those that are not. This is the best I can do, and I <em>know<\/em> that I am not alone. That is a comforting thought.<\/p>\n<hr>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Word Of The Year is without a doubt &#8220;Post-Truth&#8221; . In my interpretation, it perfectly captures two observations about the current world: Truth largely does not matter anymore. We have moved beyond truth, we are post truth. Truth can be created after (post) a statement is made &#8212; it does not have to be true [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[181,182,180,179],"class_list":["post-1626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-discourse","tag-honesty","tag-politics","tag-post-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidlebech.com\/thoughtflow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}