By: Jonathan Seidel
Post-truth and hyper reality: lies and relativism
The biggest issue of the contemporary age is not the absence of truth but subjectively objective truth. It’s not the decay of truth but the reinforcement. The power of perceived truth. Relativism is reactive rather than proactive. Each trying to derail the other’s truth. It’s just the continuation of modernity. From dual truth to multiplicity truth. From collective banners to smaller guerrillas. It is an illusion for ideological masochism.
Everyone lives in a hyperbolic chamber prideful in their own hygienic purity. Stopped in an endless echo chamber with zero tolerance for otherness. Changing the radio at the song they don’t like. It sounds off putting. It sounds sharp and eerie. There is little signal. Little connection to reciprocate. They cover their ears and shout back. People are exposed to other ideas through screaming battles. Yelling matches of the supreme degree. Everyone raises their point while overwhelming the other. There is no listening only speaking. Yip yapping with an endless vocabulary. Recycling the same jargonist hyperbole. It isn’t receptive nor instrumental. The slogans bounce off the other and back on the speaker. Listening to their own words into a dogmatic salute. Each sector screams charming their own base but with no recipients.
Post-truth doesn’t mean no truth but my truth. Truth was objective now it is subjective. It was ideological and still is ideological. There are no rules except one’s expression. The meta-narratives have been retyped and lines redrawn. Thematically it’s the same world with a few new rules. Each truth is vying for candidacy as the biggest bully. Who can annoy the most people. Who can convince those to join their cause. So many lackeys placed at the hip. So many sympathetically duped into nonsense. Don’t think for yourself join our tribe. If you don’t you are this bad word or this mean word. Who can you scare the easiest. Who can you manipulate the easiest. It is all a game for supporters. Who can whip up the most empathy for their cause and vile for the opponent.
Truth as it was half a century ago has splintered into more groups. Yet these groups are not isolated. They find commonality. Different groups that would seem worst enemies are bffs. Though many of these are one-sided. It is more an endorsement of another. Truth is important but only partial truth or a specific truth is accepted to be an affiliate or a friend. The Islamic world detests the LGBT community and yet the latter consistently promote their cause. For the latter it is the anti-colonial rhetoric. Libertarians promote pro-LGBT liberties and yet the latter criticise those anti-social care. Overlooking the deafening discriminatory ideology. It is an interesting pairing because one side advocates while the other side surely fails to reciprocate. The principle remains no matter the inadequacy.
What guides truth is general precepts in their absolute. Truth is splintered into personal expression but such is a false presentation. Truth isn’t subjective but projected. Subjectivity only matters in the accepted jargon of sexual or racial orientation. Limits are imposed. Yet not everyone is equal. The personal expression does not identify with external world. It’s called subjective but no one is saying Russia is entitled to their truth. The Israelis and Palestinians are entitled to their truth. Everyone wants to engage on one side or the other. Israelis are Nazis. and Palestinians are terrorists. Occupiers or jihadists. Each person is inserting their will onto the conflict. That is not subjective truth or relativism. A century ago, communism was hated upon but supported by others. The same is today. Splintered ideology is a different frame rather than conditional truths.
If anything is relative, it is the multiplicity of narratives. The various frame games. The debate today is mostly ad hominem attacks and screaming. Strawmanning and slurring. When there is debate one side takes the progress narrative and one takes the inequality narrative. One is the rebel and the other the revolutionary. The ideology isn’t necessarily minted into an ontological view of reality. Rather it is merely situational reflection. A conservative sees the world as human initiative and the liberal sees the world as institutional initiative. Can man solve issues on his own or does he need help. Even many conservatives concede to communal-state assistance. Especially in light of religious ideas for the latter, it is through guidance they can succeed. Yet this is different than federal assistance. The impact on the federal level is not only farther reaching but more compromised. Intending to salvage all under a single rubric.
People themselves are incapable of fostering the greatest good therefore institutions need to intervene whether domestically or internationally (it is no shock that numerically democrats exceeded their republican counterparts in warfare). This view of citizen v institutional programming is a hot issue in many debates concerning medicine and schooling. The claim is that the right of such liberties is the state’s responsibility for the citizen. While whitewashing market criticisms may at times be fair it also demands human excellence as well as human duty. Yet this is parcel of the issue. Take immigration, those who wish to increase it do so on rights. High octane responsibility while limiters do so on duty to country folk. The liberal mind is concerned with all man while the conservative mind is concerned with fellow man. If all man is to be considered then it is the responsibility for each person to partake in the governing issues of the world while if it only some responsibility then only fellow men and even just the environmental surroundings are to be concerned.
This inevitably leads to the Marxian view of good and evil on one side and the realistic proposal of good v evil on the other. To take a domestic example, CEOs are oppressors for profiting from their workers’ profit. Yet the capitalist will say the CEO hired the worker and provided him the opportunity, his interest and risk labels him the profiteer. Unlike a king, the worker is only a temporary worker who can climb up the ladder to be the CEO who profits. There is a progress vs. stagnation argument. To be fair Marx’s reality was a little more bleak but avenues have opened up since then. Opportunity has been provided, yet contemporary marxists will assail the opportunity as unequal. Lacking all different kinds of variables that ensure certain people do not get a leg up. Institutional intervention levels the playing field. If everyone gets the same medication and the same schooling everyone is equal (though this rarely ever happens due to the communal conditions). If the privileged are taken down a leg then the underprivileged can reach the same level.
The capitalist sees this as sheer dubious intervention. People need to pull themselves up from the bootstraps. Try their best and then they will succeed. The capitalist has blind faith in achievement via hard work. It is a metaphysical truth while for the Marxist societal oppression is a metaphysical truth. Fate and destiny are the typological binary of the human condition. Either fate is the determining factor or destiny can be carved with engagement. Can he exceed the limitations imposed on his youth. Can he supersede the detrimental implications undermining his rise to stardom. Fate is a deal nobody asks for. It is spawned onto man. Yet once man is formed he can make choices. He can decide his future. Yet to what extent that is possible is under scrutiny. The debate is continued from a century ago. Only in a progressively democratic world can both points diverge.
In a world of diversity both can staunchly adequately present their image. Progress versus stagnation is representative of human cultivation. The Marxist is the enemy or the capitalist is the enemy and no one is losing their head. To a degree this is the relativistic assault. The ability to finally have open deliberation. Communism is no longer dreaded nor decried yet neither is willing to give in an inch. Theoretically the opinions of the adversary can be held but practically they cannot be applied. To be a communist without blackballing and exiling. Though while communism in version areas is more acceptable, capitalism isn’t or privileged folk have no say. The previous argumentation may be muddled but the debate surrounding beliefs continues. In place of capitalism and communism you have a traditionalism and intersectionality. The same binary persists. Institutionally it is permissible but manifesting said belief is forbidden. The permissibility of adversarial opinion is not witch hunted but it is frowned upon.
Heresy hunting is admissible but it is less institutionalized and more civil. There are examples in Assange and Snowden but this was the government against one man. While there is suppression, it is far more on the citizen level. Repressing voices is the style of the politically acclaimed townsperson. Deciding the truth by his own ideals. Orienting himself with a newfound tribe of protected hegemony. The civil doctrine of suppression is a far more daring sin. For the government to supersede the national ethic is to betray the people’s trust but for the people to do so undermines the fabric of the social order. It negates the principles belying the democratic ethos. The democracy part is tainted by beliefs in institutional structures but not ethical values. To insist on a monolithic doctrine no matter how noble is to usurp the label of democracy. It is to crush liberalism with a shade of tyrannical fright.
Relativism can only exist in a horizontal society but such a framework is subdued by false prophets and perennial advocates. The illusion of democracy in its strictest sense is the complacency of theoretical possibilities with the realistic insufferable rejectionist fragmentation. To mold a system of checks and balances that is readily colluding against its promised objective. An idealistic aspiration for divergent positions that is cross examined with criticism without scrutiny. To acknowledge otherness and revere it. To respect rather than tolerate opposition. Such a reverence is foreign. Each side at the other’s throat. There may exist two sides or more but its lack of approval is staggering. On the face of it there is multiplicity but its acceptance is a matter of reality rather than desire. People believe different things and are permitted to do so despite opposition and rejection.
Medievalism rarely permitted difference. Politically, difference was a matter of death. Socially, difference was tolerated. The king’s law was the law. The project of ideological monism pervaded. The norm was a byproduct of state legislation. Different communities were regarded as second class citizens or even worse. A Jew couldn’t seek to override his exclusion no matter his wealth nor his charisma. Protesting was futile. Modernism has permitted diversity by virtue of its code of ethics. Not only could Jefferson and Hamilton disagree but they could debate it. Previously disagreement was either a conversation or non-starter. There was rarely any openness for otherness unless in its comical destitute form. Jews can reside in the country if they are stripped of their dignity. If they are excluded and hounded for their deviance. To be reminded as a living example of treachery.
Modernism finally opens the floodgates for speaking one’s mind. Rebel in protest. Revel in the privilege of disagreement. Your protest will be condemned. Challenging norms is always a flaunting charge of inexplicable insolence. Yet one of courage and moral vision. Pushing the boundaries. Fear has continued to deny the disagreement. Freedom of speech and expression as notarized in the constitution, is but a selective phenomenon. It is selective to the side that believes they are correct. Silence a disagreement. Either the founders were idiots or prestigious. Intervention is by each side’s cultivation. Abolitionists compelled slave owners, McCarthyism denied communism and the mainstream purged anti-war callings. Today there is the hormonal therapy and abortion battles. How far is freedom of speech? Screaming Nazis? Burning the flag? Mocking the president?
Unfortunately, most deny others that which they do not like. It’s not even about theoretical but practical. The plurality allows different people to do different things. The law doesn’t establish various laws but instead legislates permission for others to abstain. Abortion is permitted but those who disagree abstain, gender reassignment surgery is permitted with dissenters abstaining. It is not entirely permitted as a prostitution and drugs are still illegal. The law isn’t even about not affecting others but the person in their own vicinity is prohibited. The law itself is not about impact on others but rather what is deemed permissible to do to the self. The law intrudes where it believes it can curb the social practices. When it believes politically the dangers are strong. The state was complicit in deriding change in the sociopolitical exchange.
The greatest emphasis of the power of the relativism is the acceptance of otherness to some degree. The government has more or less stayed out of sociopolitical elements. On the surface that it is. Mainstream sources turn groups into far right fanatics. There is a stronger liberal push that highlights the comfort with duality yet the threat of radical proportion is complicit in a cabal revolution. The state has limited some of its immense taboo orchestration. Yet the sociopolitical discomfort is wayward. It isn’t as horizontally implicit. The people argue of these issues and the state responds like a parent deciding the punishment for her kids. Who is right and who is wrong. At times arbitrarily deciding depending on if mom or dad is punishing. Each parent favors a different child. Each side teases the other hoping the parent will find favor in their side and punish the sibling. Siblings who despise one another. The parent doesn’t try to resolve tension only heightening it by consistently choosing each side to make their favorite child happy while angering the other.
The state is not absent from sociopolitical controversy. The brunt of the debate is civil but the state does engender a more poignant force in fanning the flames. Cursing the child for disagreeing with her. How dare you. Your brother will be praised while you shall wallow in a timeout. For your insolence he will get an extra candy and you nothing. Yet this is but parcel of the insidious state monstrosity. The state was always perceived as the threat to the people. The premise of revolution is to overthrow the problematic monarch. Democracy has promised through elections to be a horizontal society but it isn’t. Ideally, the system enumerates a chain of coherent equality. Elections create self-interested elites who deny the normative principle of democratic peoplehood. They create their own neo-aristocracy. They feed off the horizontal cultural war only deepening the conflict. Each side appeals to the electorate to help them against the even adversary. Never realizing that there is more unity in the chambers of the elite. Colluding for self interest rather than the people. They are necessarily friends but their self interest overrides solving the people’s grievance.
The irony is the explicit distaste for hierarchies and yet appealing to them. It’s akin to Bill Burr’s joke about feminists curling their pigtails in a fire or hostage situation. Only against the system when it doesn’t impact you but when your back is against the wall, deriding all principles for the easy way out. Liberals promote more government to quash others’ freedoms while conservatives promote more local government to enforce their ideals. One advocates equality as long as it for their side and one advocates liberty as long as it is for their side. Hypocrisy is evident. The government eats it up. Happy to intervene. The enemy is the state. This isn’t an anarchic proposal but one of scrutiny and suspicion. Unchecked power is dangerous. Each side is building their own nuclear weapons to topple the other side. Each side of the horizontal society is ignoring the problematics of the electorate. When
Such inquires are raised they are shot down in favor of the culture war. The are perceived commoners playing dress up are not pretend. They are given the nuclear codes and they can use them. They may be imbeciles but even a toddler can push a big red button.
The horizontal society is a the semantic reality but truly it is a vertical society. There so much jargon but none of it is genuine. The truth is the governmental intervention most of the time well intentioned. Great ideas with terrible execution. Theoretical results with impractical impacts. A dubious society unaware of the detrimental consequences. Deriding the dangers posed for their own victory. What happened to democratic diversity. So we reached a point of political acceptance of communism but whiteness, masculinity and other apparent normative features are evil. On the other end only traditionalism is acceptable. Only government can instill this truth. Screaming are the minority of libertarians waving their hands. Let people be. Stop with the authoritarianism. Stop with heresy hunting. Accepting one feature and moving on to accost another. None of this is democratic. It is institutionally employing an ultimatum. That is tyrannical. That is devilish.
Modern day democracies are a binary of opposites with the same resolution. Deploy institutional pressure. Deploy the nuclear codes. Scare them or even coerce them into submission. A truly scary time that fails to live by its democratic model. The preoccupation on Trump fails to assess the congressional evil. Their lack of democracy. Worse, is the people’s tyranny. Democratic backsliding is the institutional aspect but the people have been doing so for some time now. Outlawing otherness is the tyrannical spirit. The monistic undemocratic side. If only the people united under a common enemy—the state. An “enemy” that is to be pressured and assessed. Criticized and judged.
