Why I'm Sick And Tired Of "Facts" And Fact Checking-- Some Not So Random Thoughts From My Catbird Seat In Southern Mexico--

(Note: Have a cup of strong Coffee and turn off your TV before reading this).

Many of us who are concerned with the state of the US and the ongoing crisis, struggle everyday to understand not only what is true or not, but how to arrive there and make sense of it. Our socially conscious mental energies as consumers of information are not directed as they once were toward the question, "what happened", rather "how do we know what really happened, and who do we believe"? There are no Walter Cronkites living who when they tell us "that's the way it is" that Americans as a whole fully believe. 

I'll take up the issue by first making a general assertion that irony and paradox are both the subject and the substance of truth seeking, as opposed to just "facts", in my not so humble opinion. This is counterintuitive for "fact checkers", who in the age of Trump's 40,000 lies and Fox Entertainment have accommodated to the idea that everything ever said should be looked up on Snopes or somewhere, so we don't become victims of misinformation. 

This is understandable, but I believe it is also an abreaction born of a general skepticism, cynicism, or paranoia which has become a fact of life in the era of the Internet, and Social Media. In our modern wired and infinitely connected society,  trust is the rarest of commodities. In general, this is a net negative in modern culture because it is a marker for our own collective superficiality and lack of trust in our own powers of judgment, rather than our measure of trust in pundits, leaders, or opinion makers. It is also why we are neurotically fixated on opinion polls, as if consensus is always a good thing in figuring out what is true. 

We are suddenly unsure of what is real or true because lying is a way of life in today's America. We are vulnerable. And every lie we repeat or choose to believe starts with a lie we tell ourselves first. We are wary and defensive with respect to the opinions of others because we are vulnerable, and don't fully trust our own opinions, except on individual matters about which we are confident of knowing through personal experience. Most things outside of that realm of experience need to be proven before they are accepted. Unfortunately, most folks today lead busy lives, have shorter attention spans, and are more emotionally dependent on entertainment to manage stress, so we avoid investigating these matters.  For the most part, wanting proof or verification is prudent and thoughtful, but like many things in today's world is frequently taken to extremes.

Likewise, we tend to categorize others based on ideology and nomenclature, and judge the validity of their ideas by questioning their personal credibility, based on the subset or group they affiliate with, or their past history. You'll often run into this when someone interrupts you after a single sentence with a "full stop"! Because you are "X", and here is the history of "X's", therefore nothing you say can possibly be valid or relevant. 

In today's modern society which places much emphasis being non-judgmental, we ironically spend most of our intellectual and political energies making snap judgments, shooting from the hip about events and other people based on a mostly superficial view. How many people take the time or trouble to do thorough research before adopting a political or scientific opinion? Very few. A paradox to be sure.

Facts are not intrinsically bad or good. The important thing is not who or what is purporting them to be true. What is primary is the method by which they are arrived at. Are these facts discovered through benevolent intention? Is the thought process scientifically or politically rigorous in how they were verified? Have these facts been subject to peer review, measured against opposing arguments, and presented free of politics or attempts at leveraging of influence? 

I believe it is fair game to call accepted facts into question so long as it is done in good faith and as a social process. Anti-vaxxers operating in their basements or in small closed groups for example, should not twist my arguments and assert that they have discovered on their own that all of the accepted facts on Covid are bogus and they have learned this by "doing their own research". As we know, people with a deep or obsessive prejudice will consult sources which validate their unscientific, arrogant, paranoid and anti-social state of mind, and use their "facts" so derived to project their states onto everything and everyone around them. Questioning of popularly accepted facts should not translate to being "fact free". 

I had a conversation a while back with a Generation X person who was arguing that no white person should be allowed to publicly comment on institutional racism, Slavery or the politics of race, because white people are both the privileged who have never suffered it, and are to this day in fact the beneficiaries of historical racism. Therefore we should say nothing, and simply fund those who can and should speak, then get out of the way. This was stated as an incontrovertible fact, which all enlightened people accept.  My response to this was not to argue with point after point, but to confront her with the reality that she was the Jewish grandchild of a Holocaust survivor. And I asked "what has happened to make you believe that you are unqualified to speak about racism"? Are those who are afraid of racist Police alone or direct descendants of African slaves the only people who have insights to share on these matters? 

Of course, this person was offended and accused me of first being a "Boomer", and of repeating the right-wing talking points of anti-woke Trump supporters, sticking me in a category, branding me ideologically, and shutting down the conversation rather than exploring it further. In other words, gaslighting, for no apparent reason other than pique about having a strong opinion questioned. So, a paradox-- a descendant of a Holocaust survivor, who grew up repeating the adage "Never Again" feels unqualified or disqualified from speaking of racism, because of social pressure to appear "woke". That contradiction should have been sufficient to trigger a productive rethinking, rather than a rage state. 

This is why I'll not walk into the trap arguments about woke, vs anti-woke. It is in my view a media created setup, designed to lump people into ideological categories, which in the grand scheme benefits only the Oligarchs who manage public opinion through manufacturing fake media debates and false narratives. This is how we are often played into energy wasting conflicts which accomplish nothing productive. Rather than consider the whole person we are talking with or listening to, we put them in a box, stick a label on them, and look for a mental storage space to shove them into. We depersonalize the people we are talking with, regardless of the subject.  We now do this out of habit, and it is called Culture War. (It takes two sides to fight a war, think about it)

So, like the ancient Romans or Greeks who would make the visit to their local Pantheon of gods, or the Delphic Oracle to discern secret knowledge, we visit designated "official" (complete with "Blue Checks") websites which are the supposed authorities on what is true, based on commonly accepted facts, and that have "credentials". Included with Snopes are Google and other search engines, Wikipedia, and so-called credible News services that claim to be above politics, like CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post. In that sense, we have greatly abdicated critical thinking and instead become consumers of information, dependent on supposed trustworthy sources, which we hope are not wrong or lying. 

An irony or paradox, in contrast to facts alone, forces conceptions and discoveries. It is the difference between assessing "what is or isn't" vs the "why", the causality which underlies why things are what they are. It is the difference between 'existing or adapting" to reality and changing reality, through the unique capability for problem solving which we as humans have. 

In short, when confronted with two or more sets of facts which are true and accepted that happen to be in complete contradiction, nullifying the relative truth inherent in these facts, that is the beginning step towards discovering something. Why? Because when two or more bedrocks of people's personal belief structure are brought into apparent conflict, it creates in that person a moral crisis. It literally forces a person to reconsider what they think they know. And that is where real thinking (and revolutions) begins.

A perfect example is the belief which most people have that money is wealth, and that making the most money is one goal for a successful life. This is considered a "fact".  One might then ask, "what happened to those stockbrokers and bankers in 1929 who saw the value of their investments disappear overnight"? They still held the same amounts on paper, but the paper was worthless, and many of them took the fast route downstairs out the office window. Is real wealth here today and gone tomorrow? That is a question worth considering.

Or another case was the Germans in post WW I Weimar during the great hyperinflation. Everyone became millionaires, or Billionaires overnight because the Treasury was printing money at the speed of light. But there was little to buy with it and thus paper money was rendered worthless, with simultaneous shortages of everything. Were they wealthier because they had more money? No, but a global crisis soon erupted because of the vain attempt by the US to save the paper values first before the people, causing a Great Depression here, and enabling the rise of fascism in Germany. 

Clearly, we should have learned then that actual wealth is something other than paper or digital money. Franklin Roosevelt understood this, but the rest of the world today seems to have learned nothing from the experience. Thus the mere consideration of these two examples,  taking two accepted facts, that money is wealth, and that money could be rendered worthless in an instant, means that you have just called into question the existing definition for what is wealth, and are confronted with having to discover a new concept for it. That is science, the overturning of old paradigms to discover the new.

In the Socratic sense, that is the pathway to knowledge and truth, where a dialogue that explores ironies and paradoxes resolves them with a new concept or Gestalt. This is true in every area of knowledge, from physics to music, to the arts, poetry, biology and mathematics. Every great discovery, whether in a lab, a classroom, a studio or at an archeological dig has arisen through the exploration of anomalies in each field, to ask the questions of "why and how", in addition to "what".

That is where the answers to the big questions of the day reside, again in my opinion. The crisis we have in our Nation and the world, and whether our Democracy survives literally depends on the number of people who reorient toward critical thinking, instead of fact checking alone. Be aware that there are bad actors who are expert in weaving a fabric of lies, using facts which are in themselves truthful in order to manipulate, divide, deceive and exercise control. They are playing Chess with your mind, and using you as a piece. 

If you want to overturn the culture of lying, kick the chessboard off the table. Take away their control of information, and delphic pronunciations of what are true facts and what are not. Discover for yourselves. Throw away the labels and categories, and judge ideas on their own merit, not what some other authority says about them. It is hard to do, it involves sometimes painful self-reflection, and might cause antagonism with others, but the benefit is worth the trouble. Who really wants to deal with finding out that they have bought into a bunch of bullshit, for years if not longer? 

I would also make the case in this light that because of the spread of Fundamentalism in the nominally Christian West, we have abandoned philosophy in favor of dogma, doctrine, and tradition.  (This is a whole other piece waiting to be written which deserves more than short shrift) And ironically those who oppose this Fundamentalism are often played to oppose it through a dogmatism of their own, a mirror opposite of what they are fighting, based on their own sets of facts and dogma. This is reflected in but not limited to the largely contrived conflict between Left and Right. 

Consider the irony of the conservative Christian fundamentalist who believes that faith in Jesus will protect them from covid, therefore there's no need for vaccines or masks. This with little or no regard for the health and safety of others. Then, consider the anger and cynicism expressed by Liberals who are happy when reading of the higher death rate among Trump supporters, hoping they die faster before the elections, and thanking Darwin instead of Jesus for bringing us the virus. That is out there, and more common than you might think. 

This is an example of how the decline of philosophy, combined with a shift towards ideology and dogmatism have been used as cultural warfare on all sides, playing us like pieces in a Hobbesian social and religious conflict with seemingly no end. And it is why I would argue again that there is more to being a citizen in these times than just trying to get our facts straight, and voting for the right people, whoever they might be. Our survival requires that we take a simultaneous deep dive in asking the questions of "why", not just "what" at every opportunity, instead of hoping we are trusting the right experts. And it also requires that we are willing to drop our own ideological baggage when it becomes an impediment to truth seeking. As Socrates said, the first steps toward knowledge are in the admission that we know nothing or very little. 

Not exactly a Christmas message, but written in that spirit. Happy Holidays to all.