Too many truths?

No belief, no fact, no principle, no knowledge, no reputation withstands the levelling forces of the information deluge that washes over us daily with its countless contrary and conflicting truths.

Every position that is taken is whittled away by contrary opinion and argument, even fraudulent or invalid argument.  The contrary view is always presented with conviction as truthful, and with that alone it erodes what had seemed self-evident.  Experts and statistics can be found to support any position.  The most heinous assertion can be palatably packaged to be swallowed by the unsuspecting or the prejudiced.  A lie repeated constantly with conviction by a person with a following becomes a truth.  Credibility before truth. 

Fake news?  One person's fact is another person's fiction apparently.  Are there any facts at all?  Fact checking dilutes the profits of social media behemonths, so they don't.  Their algorithms make your digital world an echo chamber of your predispositions, and a soft touch for products and services you did not know you needed. 

Brazen lying by public figures.  You can almost hear them purring as they lie.

Did or did Auschwitz not happen?  Did Neil Armstrong ever set foot on the Moon?  Did Lance Armstrong’s chemist win the Tour de France?  Did China invade or liberate Tibet?  Did the USA conquer or liberate Iraq and Venezuela?  Are smokers the innocent and duped victims of tobacco companies and therefore deserving of billion dollar punitive damages?  Is global warming an anti-enterprise stratagem promoted by closet communists?  Is salt bad for you?  Did the CIA orchestrate 9/11?  Did European Union imperialism corner Russia into war?  Are Palestinian suicide bombers dangerous fanatics and psychopaths or are they ordinary human beings marginalised from hope and provoked to extremism by a cynical oppressor?  Why are some of these questions even being seriously asked by people all over the world?  How many genuine conspiracies are there?

We can laugh off many conspiracy theories because it is unlikely that there are human beings anywhere on this planet, not even in the supposed leather armchairs of Zurich or Boston, who are able enough or composed enough^[1] to make any significant conspiracy last for any significant length of time in the face of the endless variables and temptations that life continually casts their way.  Conspirators, lacking both moderation and integrity, will invariably overreach or turn on each other. 

Yet the human mind is capable of rationalising, justifying and believing anything.  Hitler, Pol Pot, and their current equivalents who will not be mentioned.  Do we learn anything at all?

Mud sticks.  Doubt seeps in not just on the extremes, but everywhere.   What seems right or true today is blown away by another apparently reasonable argument tomorrow.  Our sense of purpose, our personal values, our knowledge are continually eroded.  So we retreat into the comfort of our digital echo chambers.

The pace of change is frenetic.  Forget all you read last month.  You are out-of-date; obsolete.  Old is useless, and old is getting younger every day.

"I am neither for nor against, quite the contrary in fact." [Cantinflas, Mexican comedian]

Too much information.  Too much conflicting information.  Too much dis-and-misinformation.  Too many hidden agendas.  Too many salesmen, charlatans, politicians, demagogues, and preachers^[2].  News creation and sensationalisation by profit hungry media^[3].  Fake news.  Half-truths, out-of-context facts and arguments deliberately or unwittingly passed on and amplified.

The information technology and mass media age has only just begun.  But where on Earth is it going to take us?  It is whipping up our consumerist global village into a competitive feeding frenzy in which no individual is immune from corruption, no principle escapes compromise, and no ecosystem is too fragile to take just a little more commercial exploitation.  Will it end in a moral and environmental wasteland^[4]?

You don't like this ride - you want to get off!  But you can't - you are not in control.  Who is?  Is anyone?

Shall you just close your eyes?  Switch off?  Don't get involved?  Accumulate and consume?  Look after Number One?  Ignore the questions of life and death; of truth; of equity and justice; of ecology; of human survival?  Stick to what is tangible, immediate, and yours?  Specialise?  Focus only on the people and knowledge that you need to survive?  Put the blinkers on?  Leave the big picture to others or to itself?

 No^[5].