'Post-truth'
declared word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries-uncredited story –
dated Nov. 16, 2016
Oxford Dictionaries says post-truth is thought to have been first used in 1992.
However, it says the frequency of its usage increased by 2,000% in 2016 compared with last year.
To my friends and all the rest of you very intelligent free humans:
We are all full of crap and everybody's crap stinks. I have written about truth and perhaps how we find the truth. I feel this to be an important topic. Bogus news is a plague.
There are reasons for this, as documented and discussed in the following links. (A quick scan of the links and/or the stories provides some of the details.) The basic concept is that all of us exist inside of our own 'filter bubble', our own 'echo chamber', made worse by the algorithms of google and facebook. In political terms, both left-wingers ( like me ) and right wingers, tend to gravitate to 'news' and 'content' that supports our own beliefs. This is all pretty obvious, especially to most of the savvy and sophisticated users of diaspora. Whether we want to admit it or not, is another matter.
No one is prefect and we are all subjective. At least we can start there. No one has the absolute truth, only what we perceive to make the most sense to us. Most post links and some kind of documentation to amplify their ideas. But there are a plethora of fake news sites, pseudo opinion sites, and outright 'pure' propaganda sites.
One problem with the recent US election was the 'narratives' of each political group took precedence over what could be defined as relatively objective truth, if such a thing exists. I would maintain it does; if you look deep enough and hard enough and if you are willing to grapple with the ambiguities of life's great and small mysteries.
You can add another fact to the equation. Language is constantly morphing as we find new expressions to describe our feelings and discard other words and expressions that do not seem relevant to our lives. Thus the relevance of the Oxford Dictionary in reporting on word usage and the emergence of new phrases.
All of this adds up to quite a quandary.
As an aside, I find that the word choices of my 'spellcheck' seem to have become less accurate for some reason. So if you are a bad speller like me, and the spellcheck is not providing an appropriate spelling, you are in real trouble. But that is a small problem.
The bigger problem is how do we talk to one another. If you accept the purpose of social networking and the whole internet is to facilitate communication between free humans, we obviously need a way to talk to each other, in language which we can agree on, and with honesty and respect. That Is the purpose of our endeavor here, isn't it ?
1. - rise of fake news -
Uncredited story – Nov. 6, 2016http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37846860
2. - Zuckerberg plans to combat problem of Facebook fake news - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38039506
Uncredited story – dated Nov. 16, 20163. - How we got to POST-TRUTH -
https://www.fastcompany.com/3065580/how-we-got-to-post-truth
BY RUTH READER , a writer from Brooklyn, NY – dated Nov. 18, 2016
Well Brother we made it!! Let's see where it takes us!?
ReplyDeletethat is the best way, "we'll see".
ReplyDeleteOn the topic of "fake news" albeit on an oblique.....it seems that the DAPL situation is getting more coverage. However Robert Kennedy Jr is exposing Trump personal investment in the project. I'm now very concerned. Not sure if we need to "see" this....or perhaps we "do".
ReplyDeleteLike I pointed out weeks ago on that youtube comment section, Energy Transfer Partners and the Corps may in fact have recent rulings otherwise yet the fact that new damage has been done exacerbates the situation. Old and new rulings shouldn't affect new concerns. There is new damage and it must be acknowledged. This is becoming a real problem for the government to ignore.
JV-glad to hear from you. One of the biggest things I have gotten from going to some of the Indian facebook groups and pages is their sense of reverence and their acceptance that we are all in it together. They show respect. And they feel all of us are the Creator's children. I like that and it seems to be very Christian, but of course it is not Christian at it's core. It is more universal because they do not insist that Jesus is the only Way. Don't get me wrong; I love Jesus, but I always had a problem 'self-defining' as a Christian.
ReplyDeleteIf you found a way to God that worked for you and made you a kind and decent person and a reverent person, why would I have a right to tell you that you were wrong and had to believe only 'on Jesus' ? What I might believe to be true does not give me the right to tell another man how he finds his way to God. That is up to him, isn't it?
Well anyhow, I know there is a lot of false intel out there right now, and a lot of Putin's bs, not to mention the people who do not give a crap as long as the 'click=bait' makes them money, so I am trying to define how we get to truth. I want to set a definition of what we are willing to accept and how we verify that. Honest men and always faithful men may be in short supply.
See if what this Navy Vet rings any bells for you:
https://youtu.be/qBUYAqHUzLQ