A January the first rant: Please can we stop using the term “post-truth” era which was voted 2016’s term of the year by Oxford Dictionaries.
In true Orwellian fashion it masks what we really mean: lies and liars. Lying and the mass marketing of half-truths have become a global pandemic. Nothing new in the phenomenon, of course, but the sheer scale and scope, ever easier conduits to market, and the level of shoulder shrugging acceptance, are staggering.
Our daily intake nowadays includes elections or votes built on a bedrock of lies, many corporations and other organisations “positioning” themselves, newspapers and social media (with some exceptions) channelling wishful thinking, prejudice and emotion masquerading as fact, opinions increasingly being hardened by instincts etc etc. React now, think later (if at all).
Yes, I know, truth always has a large dose of subjectivity. But the greater the lies, the more we need to re-discover individual self-responsibility. Has the notion of shame been consigned to the dustbin of history, have we forgotten the goal of striving for human dignity?
So my new year’s wish (perhaps a little naive, but following some self-assessment of my own truth thresholds): challenge the non-sense and invidious lies and half-truths with which we are bombarded daily.
Only then will we move beyond the post-truth era…perhaps into a CtC (cut the crap) era or a PLE (post-lies era). Oh, and happy new year!
Olja First 