If
you’re one of the millions of human beings who, despite a preponderance
of evidence to the contrary, still believe there is such a thing as “the
truth,” you might not want to read this essay. Seriously, it can be
extremely upsetting when you discover that there is no “truth” … or
rather, that what we’re all conditioned to regard as “truth” from the
time we are children is just the product of a technology of power, and
not an empirical state of being. Humans, upon first encountering this
fact, have been known to freak completely out and start jabbering about
the “Word of God,” or “the immutable laws of quantum physics,” and run
around burning other people at the stake or locking them up and
injecting them with Thorazine. I don’t want to be responsible for
anything like that, so consider this your trigger warning.
OK,
now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at how “truth” is
manufactured. It’s actually not that complicated. See, the “truth” is …
well, it’s a story, essentially. It’s whatever story we are telling
ourselves at any given point in history (“we” being the majority of
people, those conforming to the rules of whatever system wields enough
power to dictate the story it wants everyone to be telling themselves).
Everyone understands this intuitively, but the majority of people
pretend they don’t in order to be able to get by in the system, which
punishes anyone who does not conform to its rules, or who contradicts
its story. So, basically, to manufacture the truth, all you really need
is (a) a story, and (b) enough power to coerce a majority of people in
your society to pretend to believe it............http://www.unz.com/chopkins/manufacturing-truth/
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