Post-truth

Post-truth

I've finished wishing all my friends a happy Christmas by post and email and also wishing them the best for the new year. In the latter lies the rub. Most of the messages I have received in return indicate trepidation for the year ahead and I feel a compulsion to play Nostradamus or Old Moore and attempt an Almanack.

What intrigues me most is where a current post-truth society might lead. Leaving aside 1984 and Brave New World (we don't yet have a Ministry of Post-truth) and Alice's Wonderland, what we are left with is a kind of modern Middle Ages, although truth was sought after even then. Ways of seeking it were sometimes bizarre and extreme, via soothsayers and torture, but it was sought after and generally suppressed only when it conflicted with religion. Religion, as then, is once again a powerful force and rising as a force for destruction. The west hasn't experienced religious wars since the Middle Ages but militant Islam has that at it's core and seems bent on engaging in Europe. Fundamentalism and intolerance are rife. We aren't yet burning witches at the stake but treason is back in fashion as an accusation, in the UK at least. The west's crusades in the Middle East have played no small part in creating this situation. Are we really in for another period of the Dark Ages? Because, if so, war is more than just a possibility and conceivably in a manner and on a scale never seen before.

Dark as all this seems I remain an optimist at heart. If we can't yet have a sane 21st century maybe we can have a repeat of the 18^th. Going back three centuries would certainly be preferable to going back seven or more, could even be regarded as progress now. Trump may have appointed previously discredited alchemists as his scientific advisers but reason and enlightenment may yet prevail. That, at any rate, is my fervent wish for my friends in 2017. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said a long time ago that stupidity is more dangerous than evil because evil raises doubts in people's minds and you can reason with that but not with stupidity (or blind prejudice, my addition). Someone also said that the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits; stupidity does not. Let us hope that the spirit of the 18^th century prevails in 2017. I think, and fervently hope, that will be the case. The alternative does not bear contemplation.