This is a bonus column adapted from one I wrote in March 2022 shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, when both social media and the news cycle became suddenly much more intense, confused and confusing. Neither had been straightforward and easy before. We are now in the midst of a similar collective reactivity online again, though in a different context. With that in mind, I thought it might be worth sharing this column for those of us who respond to a world of calcified online certainty with ever-growing doubt.
“Human thought then by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.”
- Vladimir Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy
“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.”
- Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey
I wanted to write about doubt this week – how it seems to have characterised my experience of the world for the past few years and seems only to build. I wanted to write about how devoting years of my life to philosophy, to reading some of the greatest thinkers who have ever lived on topics exactly like truth and knowledge and power hasn’t necessarily made the truth easier to pin down. It has given me a sense of the vast landscape of ideas available to us, the elements of those ideas that are often left unconsidered or unchallenged in everyday discourse, and the merits of different and opposing ways of considering the perspectives we often conflate with reality itself. In this sense, philosophy is informative but far from comforting. I wanted to write about where doubt has gone. So many of us seem to be as permeated by it as I am, and yet the stories that we hear about the world through politics and media reflect none of that. It can feel as though doubt is only for people without real power – those who experience the impact of decisions from higher up. Those who don’t decide.
I wanted to write about truth and how we live in a pragmatist’s world, where it bends and oscillates according to the advantage of those with the loudest voices, the vastest platforms, the deadliest arsenal or the deepest devotion to consequentialism. As though we can decide upon what’s true by decimating everything beyond the perimeter of our own chosen story. I wanted to talk about Russian and Western media coverage of what seem to be the same events and how disconcerting, even frightening, it is to live in a world where the fact of the matter can be dependent on the stories told by the loudest voices in earshot. How frightening it is to live in a world where, through stories, power condescends to dictate the very shape of reality itself. Of course, we’ve always lived in that world. It’s just clearer at some times than others. This is one of those times.
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