“The first of all forces that govern the world is a lie,” wrote Jean-François Revel in Useless Knowledge, back in 1988. Since then, if anything has progressed as an instrument of political action and a style of social behavior, it is precisely systematic disinformation, an appetite for false news, with the associated morbidity and uncontrolled growth of chains circulating on the net, rumors replacing the truth, old gossip turned into a method and a mask for hiding, and a weapon to strike at people, institutions and ideas. Even to discredit science.
Misinformation flourishes in many subjects; it is a universal thing and every moment. If something never rests, and causes unbearable fatigue, then it is the abundance of messages, records, videos, comments and interviews with people of all colors. And by the way, anonymity. The truth does not come out well from such a storm, so much so that even dictionaries have incorporated into their language the concept of “post-truth”, a euphemism for lying.
The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy of Languages says: “Posverdad. Deliberate distortion of reality, which manipulates beliefs and emotions to influence public opinion and social attitudes”.
The phenomenon flourishes among the inorganic mass of information recipients, who now constitute the new “public opinion”. Recipients nervously press the cell phone to resend messages, without reservation, prudence, limitations and criticism, obsessed with the desire for novelty and the “notify first” syndrome. In addition to the destruction of the language and the victim of spelling that was created, the informational tension generated by these practices divided the core ideas and values on which democracy, the rule of law, responsible political action, ideologies, and even culture, which, by the way, was not even a minimum of peace, were based. in this kind of windstorm. In these times, a different version of the facts is constantly written, a new story is told, insecure references and caricatures of reality are invented and constructed, which evaporate between the characters who bet on the image and the show.
The “liquid society” that has been built does not allow us to build anything permanent, neither a society nor a state.
Society needs a minimum of beliefs that connect people, in which each person agrees in some way. With the tireless arrows of disinformation that shoot from the anonymity of that diffuse “public opinion”, not a single institution or agreement has support, and the result is anarchy, democratic falsification, populism and demagoguery.
The republic, apart from tolerance and rights, needs transparency, truth and obligations. You need some certainty about what is said and how it is said. Otherwise, uncertainty flourishes, democracy limps, which is based on information and a minimum of security.
The built “liquid society” does not allow the construction of anything permanent, neither society nor state. And much less calm. (OR)
Source: Eluniverso
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
