What is the cost of lies?

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“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What are we to do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? “

The philosopher Immanuel Kant in outlining his moral theory about categorical imperatives said that“I could indeed will the lie, but by no means a universal law to lie” and concluded that one must “be truthful from duty”.

Essentially Kant tried to derive moral laws from universal logical statements, creating an overarching philosophical construct in which morals themselves must be applicable universally in order to be morals. Kant’s logic is compelling (and ought to be taught at every primary school on the planet) and as regards lying the calculus is simple, if everybody lies then nobody can.

Successful lying is parasitical on the existence of truth, some people speaking the truth and at least some believing that truth is being spoken. If we don’t believe in truth itself then nobody can lie to us, but even if we believe in truth, a universal mistrust means no-one can lie. Of course if we mistrust all sources of information then no-one can tell us the truth either, in such circumstances we must indeed abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead…with stories.

I fear that our global civilisation has passed a fateful tipping point in which truth has become a tradeable expediency, something one can select from an internet shop full of bewildering options. Many (most?) just choose the stories and emotions they like and then head for the checkout, reassured by the prevailing contemporary sentiment that truth is but a function of the marketplace,

That people can be manipulated into swapping the arduous search for truth for a consumerism of stories has long suited the needs of a globalised capitalism and the elites that own it. Systems of control and exploitation require obedient workers, brutal enforcers, complicit gatekeepers, passive consumers and docile electorates. The comfortably numb require far less maintenance and are easier to sell to if they are jaundiced and apathetic about truth.

A global system that eschews truth for the benefit of its owners runs into terminal decline as ever more people give up on even the hope of it. Many can no longer be controlled by the specific lies of the owning class and the ‘responsible’ media outlets they own.

A perverse euphoria lies behind the embrace of Qanon and Trumpian populism. Well aware that they are being lied to from multiple directions, many are choosing to follow the implied logic of a culture defined by lies and consumerism to its logical conclusion, affording themselves the same licence as the super-rich to believe whatever they want to believe. The parasite of lies has eaten its host.

Naturally there is huge money to be made in satisfying the rapacious desire for gratifying narratives in the post truth era and so we have everything from new-age quackery to infowars.

Social media, built as it is around algorithms that pursue profit above all else, are structurally allergic to the truth, keeping a fragmented commentariat carefully and increasingly isolated from opposing views, the demands of feel good entertainment crowding out dialectic.

We are experiencing a wholesale collapse in the ethic of truth telling. As the market effect of words displaces the truth of what they convey, the political and media class are in a death spiral, each chasing the tails of the other in an effort to remain relevant in a world now so awash with lies, that their trade is increasingly obsolete.

The problem with constructing an all powerful economic system that requires and thrives on falsehoods, is what happens when you need to tell people the truth and act on it.

Who is to tell the truth about climate change, biodiversity loss and the looming threat of nuclear war and who would now listen anyway? If telling the truth has become an optional extra too inconvenient to be bothered with for most, what hope is there for action on these things, since action will necessitate efforts and painful changes many orders of magnitude greater than the words.

“We’re on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They are practically what define us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. “

Right now my culture is lying about the enormity of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and protecting its preparators and enablers from accountability. It is lying about the unfolding climate disaster, shrugging its shoulders about the collapse of the natural ecosystems upon which all life on earth depends, it is sticking its head in the sand about the risk of nuclear war and doubling down on the dynamics that have led to the fragmentation and collapse of truth telling.

Perhaps I am being overly bleak, perhaps I am being realistic. I have faith that there is a truth here to be found and that it remains the duty of all to participate in the work of finding it.

“To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for the truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants, it doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time…where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies? “

What is the cost of lies and who pays for our debts to the truth? The children of Gaza are paying, the global south will pay when climate change accelerates out of control, biodiversity loss will make us all pay as might a nuclear war.

In the end this generation and future generations will all pay for our collective addiction to comforting lies and plausible liars. The only way to ameliorate the costs is to rehabilitate the ethic of truth telling and to improve our collective capacity for dialectic via education.

I am sorry if that this lowers your mood, but what else can I do? I am not in the boredom killing business. I am not here to please you, just join with you in the search for the truth. What the character of Howard Beale said about television in 1976 now chimes definingly about the mass media of 2024.

“Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park… we are all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we are spinning here, you are beginning to think the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, eat like the tube, raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube… This is mass madness you maniacs. In god’s name you people are the real thing- we are the illusion! 

This article isn’t a charter for people to choose whatever reality they find entertaining, it is a plea for a collective renaissance in the ethic of truth telling and our capacity to seek the truth, I can’t do it without you, the only way to get there is together.