[FUPQ-10] Believe in Truth
Day 3,713, 16:35
•
Published in USA 
•
by
•
by Pfenix Quinn
The Free University of Phoenix Quinn is a service of the Socialist Freedom Party, based in e-USA and serving the intergalactic-e-proletariat. The SFP promotes art that barks, science that scintillates, politics that pop, and parties that sizzle.
This is Lecture Number 10 of a 20-part series on Combating Tyranny. It's derived from Timothy Snyder's fun little book ON TYRANNY, adapted to our New World context by yours truly, as a public service to commemorate the astounding natural-philosophick legacy of Phoenix Quinn.
Encuentre traducciones al español de estas conferencias en VANGUARDIA SOCIALISTA.
Believe in truth.
To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis on which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.
When we renounce the difference between what we want to hear and what is actually the case, that is submitting to tyranny.
Renouncing reality can feel pleasant, natural and fun, but the result is the demise of individual agency -- and thus the collapse of a political system that depends on the freedom of individuals.
Truth dies in four modes.
1) Open hostility to verifiable reality. The presenting of inventions and lies as if they were facts.
2) Shamanistic incantation. A fascist style depends upon endless repetition, designed to make fictions plausible and the criminal desirable.
3) Magical thinking. The open embrace of obvious contradiction. Making mutually contradictory promises. Accepting obvious untruths requires a blatant abandonment of reason.
4) Misplaced faith. This takes the form of self-deifying claims like "I alone can..." or "Only the Leader hears you..." No room remains for the small truths of individual discernment and experience. When truth become oracular, then evidence become irrelevant.
As in Ionesco's absurdist metaphor, if we let ourselves get caught up in the mechanism of lies, we can let ourselves be turned into a rhinoceros without even realizing that the transformation is taking place.
The rhinoceri are already roaming through our neurological savannahs when we begin to find terms like "post-truth" acceptable. Fascists despise the small truths of daily existence and love slogans that resonate of a new religion.
Post-truth discourse is pre-fascism.
At the end of this lecture series, various utterly bogus but nevertheless quite wonderful certificates, degrees and honorariums will be issued by A Very Important Authority based on responses provided in the comment sections. Participation counts. Indicate attendance by leaving a comment or endorsing the article. Higher honors will be awarded according to the degree of critical thinking, mindfulness and humor exhibited by responders.
Examples of questions you might want to pontificate on in response to this lecture:
* Are there especial variations in which the 4 modes of dying-truth get expressed in eRepublik?
* This is a play-game world. (Duh.) Perhaps in some "real" sense, then, nothing is really "true" here. So where do the rhinoceri come from?
Facebook
Twitter
Discord
Comments
Examples of questions you might want to pontificate on in response to this lecture:
* Are there especial variations in which the 4 modes of dying-truth get expressed in eRepublik?
* This is a play-game world. (Duh.) Perhaps in some "real" sense, then, nothing is really "true" here. So where do the rhinoceri come from?
Earthling RF Williams, or shall I say PQ, I send you greetings.
The concept of truth or the way it surrenders is just this: a concept.
Humans have many concepts they have embraced, without any proof they are in fact true, like the concept of evolution of the species or the concept of gravity. The human species is always in pursuit of workable models that make it easier for them to avoid uncomfortable questions.
What I can see throughout this whole series of your writings is that you are putting much effort to establish yourself as an authority for your many followers. This is nothing I would dare to criticize.
What I also see is that you use this authority to influence the decisions your followers make. This raises concerns.
Because the trust other put in you can be easily misused to lead them towards goals you present as truths by themselves.
Don't you show hostility yourself to alternative viewpoints and concepts of another kind of game-play?
Aren't you using repetitions in your literal workings to establish your ideas & foundations of your philosophy?
Is your system of schooling free from contradictions?
Have you abandoned the "I alone can..." principle in the doctrine you present?
Humans have neglected critical thinking. Sometimes they are afraid to question "undeniable" truths, because of fear of the unknown.
This narrows their horizon of cognition, lessens their power of understanding, stops their awareness from growing.
These positive aspects should be nurtured and I'm sure you are aware of this.
Please try to keep your mind free and your heart clean. This way you can truly become an authority of progress, helping other to develop better in the right direction, to expand their personalities and skills, in this pixel-game as well as in their lives. I wish you much success.
Gosh. You sound so much like somebody else. Who could it be?
An example might be; I don't understand your proof that the world is round. Therefore, it's witchcraft.
V!!
I have always thought that rhinoceri came from mommy and daddy rhinoceri. In truth, there is perhaps too much of art imitating RL in the eWorld. We have become so inured to the normalization of lies/"alternative facts" that it has become hard to discern truth from falsehood. Cultural hegemony undoubtedly plays into this, both in RL and eLife. Perhaps one advantage we have in the game context is that players are less likely to be misled by the self-deifying authoritarians...or are we?
Couldn't have said it better.
o7
Truth / Facts / Reason
v+
We live in a world where individualism become dominant. I highly appreciate the freedom it gives to live the life like you want it and to think like you want to think. Diversity is something that can give the society stronger answers on problems. Truth became more personal, this together with the belief that working for your self interest only is the best for society too gives the ones with enormous amounts of money so much power that democracy became only a word and lost its true meaning.
To come to a fairer world, a world where all humans can have a good life, more understanding is needed. Facts and truth must become more important than slogans.
In eRepublik we have seen a lot that resembles what happened in the real world. Working together was the most important in the beginning (beta). All the packs that improves players, the fighting for medals and CO's it made working for the common good seeming less important, however a strong community that include (almost) all is far more important but that strong community became weak. Can it be restored? We can only try by telling the truth and informing players. We cannot strengthen our community by alternate truths.
I see much of all four points in the current RL president of US. Lie, repeat until the gullible masses treat it as fact.
I am reminded of the idea of truthiness, as used by Stephen Colbert, among others. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness. So much of what many of us believe to be true is an appeal to feeling rather than fact. Once having taken a position, it is hard to let go. Cognitive dissonance is very uncomfortable!
V