Truth/official

official truth

About

An official truth is a narrative that is used as a premise of statements by an authority. Such statements may or may not be in accordance with reality, i.e. what the best available evidence shows.

Dissent

In cases where most informed observers would disagree with these statements, a free society allows or even actively supports public disagreement; ideally, the authorities deal with such objections in a rational manner – offering evidence sufficient to allay the dissenting concerns, and updating its own stance when necessary to properly take that evidence into account. In these cases, official truth is generally updated to match evidenced truth, although the process is often slow and laggy because government is complicated and communication is hard.

Conversely: when those in power resist the idea of defending their positions (much less updating them when evidence compels), the official truth tends to become less and less accurate. When laws are made based on these inaccurate truths, people are harmed and society becomes less free. When authorities seek to maintain their power in the face of growing dissent over the harm being caused, they may either back down (moving back towards a free society) or they may escalate by attempting to impose these beliefs through coercive means, heading towards a less free and more totalitarian state.

Links

News

• 2017/02/10 [L..T] The Madness of King Donald «But all the traditional political fibbers nonetheless paid some deference to the truth – even as they were dodging it. They acknowledged a shared reality and bowed to it. They acknowledged the need for a common set of facts in order for a liberal democracy to function at all. Trump's lies are different. They are direct refutations of reality – and their propagation and repetition is about enforcing his power rather than wriggling out of a political conundrum. They are attacks on the very possibility of a reasoned discourse, the kind of bald-faced lies that authoritarians issue as a way to test loyalty and force their subjects into submission.»