Yuval Noah Harari extract: ‘Humans are a post-truth species’
NB: This is the first bit of YNH's writing that I've read, and it is good. I must add that if humans were indeed essentially given to deception at all times, then Yuval would not have been able to make this observation. As Stanley Rosen wisely observes: 'If there is no human nature that remains constant within historical change, and so defines the perspectives of individual readers as perspectives upon a common humanity, then reading is impossible.... If the contingent is intelligible, that is, if it is amenable to judgement, then the basis of intelligibility or judgement cannot itself be contingent. It is true that the wise decision under present circumstances may be foolish under other circumstances, but the wisdom of the decision under present circumstances is not arbitrary. To judge is to understand, not to create ex-nihilo..' - Hermeneutics as Politics (1987), p 146, 149. DS
A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new, and even the habit of denying entire nations and creating fake countries has a long pedigree. In 1931 the Japanese army staged mock attacks on itself to justify its invasion of China, and then created the fake country of Manchukuo to legitimise its conquests. China itself has long denied that Tibet ever existed as an independent country. British settlement in Australia was justified by the legal doctrine of terra nullius (“nobody’s land”), which effectively erased 50,000 years of Aboriginal history. In the early 20th century, a favourite Zionist slogan spoke of the return of “a people without a land [the Jews] to a land without a people [Palestine]”. The existence of the local Arab population was conveniently ignored.
A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new, and even the habit of denying entire nations and creating fake countries has a long pedigree. In 1931 the Japanese army staged mock attacks on itself to justify its invasion of China, and then created the fake country of Manchukuo to legitimise its conquests. China itself has long denied that Tibet ever existed as an independent country. British settlement in Australia was justified by the legal doctrine of terra nullius (“nobody’s land”), which effectively erased 50,000 years of Aboriginal history. In the early 20th century, a favourite Zionist slogan spoke of the return of “a people without a land [the Jews] to a land without a people [Palestine]”. The existence of the local Arab population was conveniently ignored.
In 1969 Israeli prime
minister Golda Meir famously said that there is no Palestinian people and never
was. Such views are very common in Israel even today, despite decades of armed
conflicts against something that doesn’t exist. For example, in February 2016
MP Anat Berko gave a speech in the Israeli parliament in which she doubted the
reality and history of the Palestinian people. Her proof? The letter “p” does
not even exist in Arabic, so how can there be a Palestinian people? (In Arabic,
“F” stands for “P”, and the Arabic name for Palestine is Falastin.)
In fact, humans have
always lived in the age of post-truth. Homo sapiens is a
post-truth species, whose power depends on creating and believing fictions.
Ever since the stone age, self-reinforcing myths have served to unite human
collectives. Indeed, Homo sapiens conquered this planet thanks above
all to the unique human ability to create and spread fictions. We are the only
mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent
fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of others to
believe in them. As long as everybody believes in the same fictions, we all
obey the same laws, and can thereby cooperate effectively.
So if you blame
Facebook, Trump or Putin for ushering in a new and frightening era of
post-truth, remind yourself that centuries ago millions of Christians locked
themselves inside a self-reinforcing mythological bubble, never daring to
question the factual veracity of the Bible, while millions of Muslims put their
unquestioning faith in the Qur’an. For millennia, much of what passed for
“news” and “facts” in human social networks were stories about miracles,
angels, demons and witches, with bold reporters giving live coverage straight
from the deepest pits of the underworld. We have zero scientific evidence that
Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell
after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when
a Brahmin marries
an Untouchable –
yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years.
Some fake news lasts for ever.
I am aware that many
people might be upset by my equating religion with fake news, but that’s
exactly the point. When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one
month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years,
that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it fake news in order not
to hurt the feelings of the faithful (or incur their wrath). Note, however,
that I am not denying the effectiveness or potential benevolence of religion.. read more:
Alexandre Koyre: The Political Function of the Modern Lie (1945)
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, The Industrialization of the Mind (1982)
Simon Leys: Aspects of Culture. Lectures on Learning, Reading, Writing
and Going Abroad and Staying Home (1996)
Ignorance is Strength-Freedom is Slavery-War is Peace (George
Orwell, 1984)
