With the odd exception – the likelihood that we will
continue to orbit the sun, that gravity won’t suddenly switch off... and that
nobody will be able to explain Labour’s actual position on Brexit any time soon
– we live in a world of uncertain ‘facts’. To a greater or lesser degree we
rely on forecasts; the weather, the exchange rate and the possibility of trains
arriving on at least the same day as stated on the timetable. But nobody,
literally nobody, knows the future, that mysterious realm that lies beyond tonight’s
dreams.
And part of that difficulty has to lie in the actual fact
that many of the things we know are not necessarily, actually facts. We have
unreliable memories, we view events through lenses tinted with bias and time
has a habit of rendering even the once crystal clear vague and blurry. We
accept without question things told us by an apparently higher authority. As
children it is our parents’ fictions we trust, as adults it appears to be that
of self-appointed experts... with whom we happen to already agree.
Listening to Any
Questions on Radio 4 yesterday and particularly its follow-up show Any Answers I was struck by how many
directly contradictory opinions were posed as absolute facts. Callers to the
show were adamant in their forthright views and each believed their own version
of that truth. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that observers will give
wholly different versions of simple events; wine experts cannot tell white from
red in blind tastings; and priming can elicit predictable, but wrong, responses
time and time again.
We are not creatures of logic, but of faith; one reason,
perhaps, that religion can still sway so many people to act against their own
interests. Bizarrely, it is the most highly educated who appear to exhibit the
greatest propensity to adopt unverified pseudo-facts as long as it feeds
whatever narrative they have signed themselves up to: Climate change,
immigration, Brexit. It’s as if their time in education, coupled with the
company they keep absolves them from any responsibility to question what they
believe. If they were joining a new Moonies we would be launching interventions
to free them from the cult.
If you think I am being too glib, ask yourselves what ‘facts’
you truly know. Pick a subject, any subject, preferably one you believe you
know a lot about and try to dispassionately pick apart your understanding. Can
you explain friction, light, sight, sound, digestion, ambulation, or any of the
many things you experience every day without a conscious thought? Take a ‘fact’
and ask yourself; how do I know this to be true? How was this established? What
credentials support this nugget of apparently inviolable truth?
Be honest. Did you find the truth or did you just
accept a truth? As a generally useful rule, the more leaps of faith it
takes to support an assertion the less likely it is to be true; the more layers
of secrecy needed to maintain a supposed plot, the more likely it is to be a
lie. The truth is usually mundane and simple, but we are wired to reject
simple. The fabricated, convoluted, conspiratorial machinations of mystery
fiction are just, well, more engaging than the dry pages of a textbook. (And
not all textbooks are necessarily free of untruths.)
Well, what do you believe?
Assume that everything you know is questionable, that
everything you believe is because somebody influenced you to believe it and
that those people were influenced before them. Do not mistake eminence for
authority, nor qualifications for competence. Consider how people ascended the
greasy pole to power before automatically accepting what they say as gospel;
ask yourself what they have to gain by influencing you and most of all, in the
words of David Byrne “... ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
