Untruth

Belief has always been quite easily uncoupled from reality, from facts. The role of belief appears often to be that of emotional security blanket and psychological sedative against the harsher facts of reality. Hiding from one (plausible) set of facts and observations by superimposing a filter of contingent falsities on top of it is nothing new but is currently supported and nurtured by the ways in which the intrinsic ambiguities and uncertainties of consensus reality can be augmented and distorted by political and ideological tactics and technologies which generate ideologically-biased value and economic wealth. In the current information environment uncertainty is wilfully cast upon facts and verifiable truths in a manner which calls not just the unwanted, uncomfortable truths into question, but which casts doubt more broadly upon the possibility of any verifiable truth at all. Ignorance is manipulated in callous and Machiavellian ways but the longer-term consequences and cultural fall-out remain yet to be seen.