Thread by @RonColeman

It's been a tough age for truth.

Lying had always been a big feature of civilized life. It has many obvious utilitarian advantages in a #noaccountability regime.

That's why traditional societies staked (and stake) so much on relationships rooted in blood, place or both. >

In the modern world, especially in the West, neither of these binds people the way they one did.

Now we place our trust in collective institutions, which are presumed to be accountable to a constituency;

in various forms of purported transparency;

and in technology. >

These worked fairly well in tandem with the vestigial bonds of kin and place, especially because these were what made shame work.

Whether or not you bought into the local or family dominant ethic or theology, your reputation and standing kept you tolerably honest. >

This explains why, although true religious belief had been in a tailspin since the Enlightenment, religious precepts worked to maintain a consensus of behavioral standards.

Modernity, however, put more stress on this entente - which keep civilization intact - as it progressed. >

Now we're just left with the non-kin, socially and geographically rootless
operation of massive institutions; with the illusion of transparency; and with technology.

And though shame is utterly gone - indeed it's deemed contemptible - we still place trust in these.

Wrongly. >

Without the effect of shame, they not only don't work any more - they are counterproductive.

These would-be guarantors of trust not only fail to guarantee, they themselves deceive - because we place residual trust in them, their betrayal is greater. >

(That's why, in law, a breach of fiduciary duty is so serious. It's a violation of a heightened level of trust.)

Our emotional connections to the institutions we have historically relied on for a semblance of truth, therefore, enable shameless lies to flourish. >

So... journalists lie. Prosecutors lie. Judges lie. The IRS lies. Congress lies. And they don't even bother to cover it up, because there's no shame, no embarrassment - the true #noaccountability.

We are inured to ubiquitous lying on a grand scalr by once-trusted institutions.>

And the ground is softened for new institutions - ones that were never even collective, or ever entitled to trust - to make lying routine.

Twitter lies. YouTube lies. Google lies. Facebook lies. We shrug and say hey, they're entirely private - as if that's better. >

It's not better. It's worse. They never earned our trust; they were never accountable to be truthful through either collective accountability or even market forces.

And they were never and are not transparent. And those who seek make them so are punished or silenced. >

And technology and its effects mainly amplify lies - except in the hands of the most sophisticated, who are either the least interested in truth or, paradoxically, the least powerful.

Those without a link to eternal truths don't have any idea of where to find truth at all. >

The rabbis teach that "God's seal is Truth." Why a seal?

I was thinking that maybe it's because a seal is tangible. You can feel it, not just see it.

In fact they said of a great ethical Jewish teacher in the last century that his belief was something you felt in his hands.>

Our eyes lie to us all the time, in all contexts.

But our culture is beholden to the visual, the two-dimensional, as no other has ever been.

Blood flows thicker than water, but the only way you really know that - trust it - is to feel each in turn run between your fingers. >

As I said, it's been a bad run for truth.

flic.kr/p/8QkCwr