Hardly does a day go by in which I am not reminded of the blurring of the distinction between facts (often wistfully known as “the truth”) and opinions. On the rare days I am not reminded, it is only because I haven’t been as attentive to online content as I “should” be. As it often seems that my life consists of online content, avoiding such content becomes another life-avoidance scheme.
Or should I say reality-avoidance? I hate it when the opinions of other people are the only reality, because I am as sick of their opinions as I am of my own. That probably reflects too many years being online, and endlessly reading the opinions and then spouting off with some of my own. Factor in that most of the opinions involve politics (something I dislike intensely but keep up out of a twisted sense of obligation), and it is not surprising that a sense of burnout would develop. I complain about the sense of burnout all the time, but that’s even more tedious, because I hate to do my daily blog burnout routine in the same way I hate doing my strenuous daily exercises but do them anyway. Which means that writing a blog post is often like doing 120 pushups. Both are “good for me.” The difference is that even though I hate doing the pushups, and the damned chinups, and the even more damnable three-mile-runs, they are easier to do in the sense that I don’t have to be creative or original. A self-imposed requirement of daily original creativity is a lot more onerous.
Reflecting on the unresolvable Chernobyl data recently, I worried that the blurring between truth and opinion tended to prove post modernists were at least partially right.
If basic data is not there, that means that most of what we used to consider hard, factual truth will have been rendered simply matters of opinion. (The extreme skepticism over “scientific” data said to be global warming “evidence” as well as extreme skepticism over basic vital statistics are but two stark examples. Personal experience has made me become skeptical over Google road maps, which have directed me to roads that turned out never to have existed.)
Truth is opinion?
Just what I used to hate the Post-modernists for saying.
What could suck more than that?
I don’t know, but I liked Dave’s response to a glum pronouncement that
Dave reminded me that if there is a silver lining in this cloud, it might be that at least the MSM is no longer the arbiter of truth.
“There are no more arbiters of truth,” said former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. “So whatever you can prove factually, somebody else can find something else and point to it with enough ferocity to get people to believe it. We’ve crossed some Rubicon into the unknown.”
“Some” Rubicon? How many do we need?
I don’t think he really means “the unknown,” for what could possibly be unknown about people’s opinions? You either believe what people say or you do not. Whether they are true in the scientific sense may be ultimately unknowable. But the existence and content of the opinions is known. What cannot be determined with any degree of confidence is truth in the sense of factual certainty.
The stupid birth certificate that all these people are squabbling about is a perfect example. Unless you don’t believe that Hawaiian officials have in fact produced the official document, it is a certified assertion by the State of Hawaii that Barack Obama was born there. Legally, it is prima facie evidence that he was. But that does not mean that he really, absolutely was.
Of course, there is still something called the truth, and unless you think he’s an alien hatched from an egg or something, it is undeniable that Obama had to have been born someplace. Normally, we rely on the governments of states to inform us who was born, who was married, and who died in them. But it is always possible that governments might lie about such things, and apparently, millions of Americans are convinced that Hawaii is lying.
I’m not an especially gullible person, but I think that state records need to be considered, if not true, then at least binding unless and until someone can actually show real, tangible proof that they are false. For example, if a woman falsely claimed her husband was dead and persuaded a state to issue a death certificate to collect on an insurance policy or something, that death certificate could be invalidated upon proof that her husband had been found alive. Despite all the noise, I have seen no evidence that would convince me (much less officially rebut the Hawaiian government) that Obama was not born there.
But that’s just my opinion. Millions disagree. This reflects that there is increasingly a complete lack of confidence in official assertions about anything.
Perhaps I’m an old-fashioned rube for believing that we should have confidence in state records. I grew up before
postmodernism had taken root. But with more and more PoMos now in charge of everything, including the record keeping functions of the government, I find it hard to come up with a good argument in support of my position that state records should be believed. By the postmodernists’ own standards, official records — like all “truths” — ought to be seen merely as reflecting the times and biases of those who issued them.
The only reason I can see for anyone to believe them aside from wanting to believe them is that legally we have to. So, while I might want to believe that silly piece of paper that says I was born in Pennsylvania, the government says I have to.
Whether that is a form of authoritarianism will have to wait.
So many Rubicons to cross!
The PoMos sure have made life challenging for us government-believing rubes.
Um, the
Rubicon is still a real river, right?
MORE: FWIW, I think the “Rubicon” which Gibbs complains is being “crossed into the unknown” (I take it he means the Rubicon of Truth) was actually crossed long ago– by the left.
How ironic that people on the right side of the spectrum are now being accused of crossing it, when all they did was notice.
Moral lesson? If you notice that the Emperor has no clothes, you may find yourself accused of stealing them!
Comments
5 responses to “Another day, another Rubicon!”
More of a sewer, actually.
I thought we’d already discussed this.
Facts and reality are so bourgeois.
Never let them get in the way of doing what’s right.
Sewer. State.
Precisely.
Rube-a-con. Where conning the rubes doesn’t work the way it used to.
Caesar crossed the Rubicon the other way, towards Rome, which was what was forbidden.