Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #instituteforstatecraft
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Edmund Burke (1729–97) referred to an 'economy of truth'. That was transmuted by Robert Armstrong (head of the British Civil Service) who spoke of being 'economical with the [valuable] truth'. The genius of our times has been to abandon that cumbersome & limiting truth standard.
We have made a surprisingly smooth transition to lies, the lie standard, & an economy of lies. The scarcity value of truth was fool's gold when compared with the wealth & abundance of lies. What a dark & starkly bleak world that now seems, brightened only by flashes of paradox.
How sad, constricting & wrong Epicurus' follower Lucretius had been: "The energy of intellect won out. The fiery battlements no longer stood as limit to his mind: it now ranged free in time & space, returning soon with trophies of his victory: what things could be or never be."
Down the rabbit hole & into the kitchen. Something & someone is cooking. Duck soup with too much paranoia? I present my thoughts while transcribing the #InstituteForStatecraft ’s Chris Donelly’s talk about the #IntegrityInitiative:
[Talking bloke with kitchen behind him] How to cook...what? Statecraft? Integrity? Whole-food fruitcake? Anyway not vegetarian, heavy stuff, meat: governance, change, disinformation, malign influence, democracy. Malign? A hint of crushed paranoia? Democracy now under threat? 
[At desk, a laptop] An educational program? Sounds respectable. Must have some solid, peer reviewed, well-defined basis of reason & fact, I suppose. Educating policy makers, decision makers? He sets himself high, this fellow. To track, expose & counter…? Decision makers do that?
