The task given by Dilip sir the sunday reading activity to the post truth word of the year 2016. Learn the blog of dilip sir barad and then I reflected my own thoughts about it.
🔷What is Post - truth?
The term 'post truth' capture a world in which personal sentimental and beliefs start dominating objective reality in molding public opinion. It can be interpreted as how, at times feelings take over from what is really true. In this scenario facts give way to some form of narrative that becomes emotionally appealing and thus , become reality.
🔷 Why was the chosen?
The concept was post truth has been in existence for the past decade, but oxford dictionaries has seen a sprike in frequency this year in a context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States ll has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase post truth politics.
Post truth " relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influeting are shaping public opinion then appeal to the emotion and personal belief.
In 2016, Oxford dictionary chose the word ‘Post truth’ as a word of the year. The concept of post-truth has been in existence since a decade but Oxford dictionary saw a sudden rise in frequency of its use in 2016- 2017. There are many nouns that go with post-truth, the most classic example is post-truth politics. Other nouns are politicians, age, era, brigade, journalism etc.
It is easier to fool the masses than to convince them that they have been fooled. Today we have got a cultural trend to place emotional truth (ethos) over logical truth (logos). To understand in a simplest form, Post- Truth is where logical facts become less important than emotional feelings. Post- Truth is not a lie, it’s a public relation with false or things which are not true also we can say it is about people not valuing the truth. Post-Truth is not news/views, it is a contradiction between what you want to hear, knowing it's false and then deciding ‘This is true’.
We saw this situation when the corona vaccine was introduced. Many scientists and doctors were influencing people to take vaccines but they were not ready to get a vaccine, they were afraid. So doctors had to take help of ‘Dharma Gurus’, once the guru said it to be reliable all were ready to take the vaccines. This is an ethos over logos.
The simplest example. We students waste a lot of time on mobile phones. We are already aware about our pending works but still we convince ourselves that we also need to rest, get fresh etc. excuses. We know the truth of time is being wasted. We need to study but we somehow convince ourselves that ‘This is true’. Over here, factual truth is we need to study and emotional truth becomes our wish to use and spend time on mobile.
🔷 Emotional truth and actual (factual) truth:
Actual truth is what is existing in reality or matter of fact i.e. real or genuine. We don't find any specific definition of emotional truth but we can understand it through an example. It is, as Steve Yates writes, that "heartfelt connection that arises between reader and character or characters through the unfolding of an invented, narrated conflict”. This connection brings emotional truth. Fiction is a lie that tells the truth. The lie is that the characters were or are living people and that the events in the story happened. The truth is an emotional one.
We can understand ‘Fiction is a lie that tells the truth' with an example of a movie ‘Raazi' by Meghna Gulzar. In Harinder Sikka's book ‘Calling Sehmat' She came back to India in an Airforce plane to Delhi And she was given a grand warm welcome.(This is the actual truth). While in a movie Sehmat reached India through a side by side road where she fainted showing her to be weak and exhausting. Sehmat in the movie was shown depressed at the end of movie by killing her husband.(This is an emotional/ fictional truth). This scene makes a heartfelt connection with the character and we find it to be the truth while the fact is something different. The connection which we realize is through emotional truth. Your emotional truth is what you feel about a situation, and sometimes it has nothing to do with actual facts.
🔷Social media and truth:
There have been a number of studies which have shown that an overwhelming majority of people polled believe there is a lot of misinformation on social media, and a majority feel themselves as not being able to differentiate between what is true and what isn't.
The problem is especially prevalent on Instagram, for example, where bot accounts create large amounts of fake likes and followers in order to make money off them. On Facebook, false news stories are being presented as fact more often than not, often encouraging unwarranted fear or outrage.
At this point in time, it seems that everyone has an opinion on anything and everything, but no one is taking responsibility for their opinions or information. If you had asked me 5 or 10 years ago if I thought that people would rely more on propaganda than real information, I would never have guessed that they would trust absolute strangers over real journalists with extremely verified credentials. But here we are.
In today’s time we see many people spreading lots of fake news in WhatsApp and in the corona pandemic period India has become the top in spreading the fake news. In the era we are seeing that people are depending more on the WhatsApp messages, WhatsApp university. They gain more information whether it is right or not.
🔷Post- truth and politics:
Since the 2016 president election, it's been hard to ignore the facts that political rhetorical has become increasingly difficult to trust congtive ease or fluency is the measure of how easy it is our brains to process information. The brexit in which the campaigns emotional appeals and feelings,and facts ( truth ) ,were the factors for Britain leaving the European union.
No comments:
Post a Comment