Post-truth is what is called the deliberate distortion of reality to shape people’s perceptions and opinions. Noam Chomsky talked a lot about it. It is a type of vision that is mainly disseminated through media and social networks, its purpose is to manipulate opinion and one of its basic tools are fake news.
Post-truth describes new ways of expressing a millennial phenomenon: has advertising always been an instrument by which?Truths ?, that do not correspond to the facts, but that end up being validated by the majorities by their relentless repetition or similar mechanisms.
- Noam Chomsky is one of the intellectuals who spoke more forcefully about this phenomenon.
- As a specialist in communicative phenomena and a political activist against the excesses of neoliberalism.
- Chomsky sees postverity as a disturbing phenomenon that society must be aware of.
“Disappointment with institutional structures has led to a point where people no longer believe in facts. If you don’t trust anyone, why do you have to trust the facts?If no one does anything for me, why do I have to?”believe in others ??? Noam Chomsky
Noam Chosmky says that most people have lost their quality of life in recent decades, attributed it to the neoliberal policies of the United States and England, the truth is that most people experience a mixture of anger and fear that turns into mistrust and avoidance.
One of the characteristics of post-truth is that emotions play an important role, people end up believing that what best satisfies their basic emotions, even if you come up with proven facts, in this way, the more you associate an idea with the basics. emotions of the human being, the more he will also have the power to take root.
Frustration with living conditions easily exacerbates feelings of hatred, xenophobia and revenge. At the same time, all the truths that fuel these emotions have more impact. In this way, people are more willing to believe what satisfies these intensified feelings, rather than relying on evidence to support their beliefs.
Prejudice has always been much stronger than scientific or factual truth, so Galileo was forced to retract shortly after Copernicus was burned at the stake.
Today, however, this has taken on a new dimension, due to the enormous penetration power first had by the media and then by social media.
The dissemination of false information can be done in seconds and massively these days. Similarly, to create the truthfulness effect, there are new and sophisticated tools accessible to almost everyone.
Trussing an image or sound is something that can be done with tools within reach of many people. There are also ways to make the same false information appear from parallel and simultaneous sources. In this way, the effect is created that “there are many forms the same, so it must be true”.
For Noam Chomsky, post-truth is not a phenomenon that is limited to politics, because there is also a set of distorted realities in economics, in everyday psychology and in lifestyle.
As far as the economy is concerned, everything suggests that, in today’s world, consumers are systematically deceived. Use cars as an example. When purchasing, consumers seek access to the information needed to make a rational decision What product characteristics can they know?Are there independent sources that certify that the proposed product actually has the features it claims to have?
Chomsky says that in today’s world people feel lonely and desperate, perhaps it has become exacerbated by certain psychologically promoted ideologies, according to which you, and only you, must find solutions to your own problems, which are no longer collective and cannot. In other words, they are considered private matters, which everyone should deal with alone.
At this point in history, mainly, the word it illuminates is not that of the great philosophers, but that of the channels that publish and delete content on the Internet. Each of us also has a responsibility to distrust ideas that lead to visceral behavior.