The so called "refugee crisis" in 2015 and the related incidents at New Years Eve in Cologne opened the curtain of propaganda for me. Once you looked behind it there is no way back.
True, and unlike the Matrix, there's no way to plug back in and remain blissfully ignorant. I suppose you could just ignore it, but politics eventually takes an interest in you.
How are you finding and evaluating information a decade on?
If I would describe my information gathering journey in the last decade, it first included chainging mainstream media sources based on the credibility of their articles, going from more progressive to more conservative sources until all of them became unbearably stupid propaganda. I also started reading German dissident blogs. Unfortunately, most of them just complain endlessly, which seems to be a good business model but doesn´t provide a path forward, so they also were left behind. During the Covid "pandemic", I started reading Substack which is currently my mostly used source of gathering information. I compare them with what I encounter daily and decide whether they are credible or not.
Completely agree that you run the risk of just swapping out the liars. I wanted to add that earlier but did run out of time to write my reply. It is really hard to keep a balance here. Maybe, international mainstream media could help a bit. Once in a while I read news from Switzerland concerning Germany, they do offer a more neutral perspective as they are not directly involved.
Currently, I am at a point where I just want to read news which have an more or less direct impact on me and my daily business. Other news just make you feel helpless and angry.
It is very easy to conflate truth and fact. It is essential in sense making to understand the difference between the two.
In a simple binary fact is the objective reality and truth is the subjective reality. Facts exist regardless of our existence, truth is our experience of those facts.
This comes into sharp relief with optical illusions. Their factual existence doesn’t seem true because of the mechanics of our perception.
In terms of the television coverage of the tea party events, both channels showed footage which was a representation of fact. Both channels coverage registered as true for both audiences. One channel more accurately captured the facts.
I think that we can see from this perspective that Trump was the most truthful candidate, he has no filter and always talks from his experience. He is less truthful with a teleprompter. I think we also know that his connection to the world of facts is a little looser than most. You don’t get a sense that he is a reader or that he spends time wrestling with exactly these sort of things. Incurious in the way that someone with his sense of drive and purpose usually is.
If we agree here, we can move on to why selecting a single source for truth can be dangerous. In this case, the bible. Is it ok to say that there aren’t a lot of facts in bible? Sure, there are a lot broadly factual events and references that place it in a historical context, but in terms of how we understand the world to be now, light on details.
The bible is a work of sense-making, of placing ourselves in the context of a wider world that outlines a single person’s place in it. It does a pretty good job, it’s fairly coherent in parts (weird that there’s two parts, that god wouldn’t have got it right the first time and needed a patch, but perhaps I’m revealing to much of my own bias here) and at the same time very broad. It’s this broadness that provides a challenge to our sensing of truth.
We know that the early church was loose with property and possessions, humble with displays of holiness, generous of spirit to other faiths - just as Jesus was. While this way of life held a lot of truth for the people that practiced it, it did not for the people who used it for people who wanted to wield power. There are warnings against this that are largely ignored now.
The interpretation of biblical text is now more of an expression of ethos than it is divine will.
Using a single source of sense-making is vulnerable to having it co-opted by power.
We can see this throughout history as the powerful have ridden on a public wave of ‘truth’ to either take or consolidate their power.
It happened during the crusades so the church could fill its coffers. It happened in the age of exploration so that that kings and queens could do the same. It’s happening now.
Yes, a wider, wiser consumption of media is needed, I completely agree, but also wider, wiser sources of sense-making. There are so many books of wisdom out there, it seems foolish to not test the usefulness of them all.
Thanks for the thorough comments. Sorry it's taken me so long to reply.
I think we disagree from the start in that you seem to be separating truth and fact too much by making it a binary. In my view, there is a necessary and inseparable overlap between facts and truth.
Facts can, of course, be used in a colloquial way to express our certainty about something, in the sense of "that's a fact." But if there is an objective fact at issue (i.e. 132 people attended church this Sunday), then that is also the only objective truth. If I arrived and left early, seeing only 50 people, then my subjective experience is also easily held alongside the objective truth that 132 attended that day. If it's true and factual that 132 people walked through the doors, then it's also true, but incomplete that 50 people did. (The best way to express that as an objective truth is to say that I witnessed 50 people at church on Sunday, which leaves out what I did not witness and cannot confirm.)
However, if I claim that my subjective experience was the objective reality, then I am claiming that 82 people did NOT walk through the doors, and I am no longer truthful or factual. If I lead others to believe that only 50 people attended, then I am either mistaken or lying. I have either fallen for the illusion of my subjective experience, or I am a manipulator. Whether my audience believes me doesn't matter.
I think we also have a lot of disagreement about the nature, scope, purpose, and use of Scripture and its history, and that's fine. While I am encouraging bringing the Bible in as a primary method of "sense-making" as you say, I never stated that it should be your only source.
I think there is value in searching other sources and comparing what you find, just as with your media. However, we end up with a very similar problem. Each of those larger sources of philosophical or moral truth come with their own perspective and often bring incompatible claims.
We may find them meaningful, or helpful as a way to discover truth. But where they contradict, they cannot both be true. They might both be wrong.
Just as with the news, if I continually compare sources and my best judgment tells me that one is repeatedly inadequate or manipulative, I would be a fool to spend my limited time going back to that source for long. When new sources arise, it makes sense to evaluate them in the same way.
I have done much testing for my personal search, and I have a strong curiosity to continue looking at new information. I recommend the Bible because, for me, and for generations of others, it is the source that seems to best represent the world as it is, offers a coherent way to live, and doesn't shirk from our challenges to do so. That also goes along with many subjective experiences with God that fit with what I read there. Without those, I would see things differently, very likely.
But along with that, I have billions of others who report similar experiences to my own with God and Scripture, so it gives me a little more confidence that I'm getting a large enough picture. There are many almost as many who would disagree, and they are free to. They are evaluating truth as best they can, too. For me, I've found something good, and it seems wise to hold onto it.
I hope you find something as meaningful as that is to me in your own search.
The so called "refugee crisis" in 2015 and the related incidents at New Years Eve in Cologne opened the curtain of propaganda for me. Once you looked behind it there is no way back.
True, and unlike the Matrix, there's no way to plug back in and remain blissfully ignorant. I suppose you could just ignore it, but politics eventually takes an interest in you.
How are you finding and evaluating information a decade on?
If I would describe my information gathering journey in the last decade, it first included chainging mainstream media sources based on the credibility of their articles, going from more progressive to more conservative sources until all of them became unbearably stupid propaganda. I also started reading German dissident blogs. Unfortunately, most of them just complain endlessly, which seems to be a good business model but doesn´t provide a path forward, so they also were left behind. During the Covid "pandemic", I started reading Substack which is currently my mostly used source of gathering information. I compare them with what I encounter daily and decide whether they are credible or not.
Thanks for sharing. It's tough work, and once you see the deception, you don't want to just swap out one group of liars for another.
I find that this has also been an exercise in patience. The initial headlines are almost never worth getting too worked up about.
Completely agree that you run the risk of just swapping out the liars. I wanted to add that earlier but did run out of time to write my reply. It is really hard to keep a balance here. Maybe, international mainstream media could help a bit. Once in a while I read news from Switzerland concerning Germany, they do offer a more neutral perspective as they are not directly involved.
Currently, I am at a point where I just want to read news which have an more or less direct impact on me and my daily business. Other news just make you feel helpless and angry.
Also true. I've found that reducing the news you can't do anything about is a big personal win.
It is very easy to conflate truth and fact. It is essential in sense making to understand the difference between the two.
In a simple binary fact is the objective reality and truth is the subjective reality. Facts exist regardless of our existence, truth is our experience of those facts.
This comes into sharp relief with optical illusions. Their factual existence doesn’t seem true because of the mechanics of our perception.
In terms of the television coverage of the tea party events, both channels showed footage which was a representation of fact. Both channels coverage registered as true for both audiences. One channel more accurately captured the facts.
I think that we can see from this perspective that Trump was the most truthful candidate, he has no filter and always talks from his experience. He is less truthful with a teleprompter. I think we also know that his connection to the world of facts is a little looser than most. You don’t get a sense that he is a reader or that he spends time wrestling with exactly these sort of things. Incurious in the way that someone with his sense of drive and purpose usually is.
If we agree here, we can move on to why selecting a single source for truth can be dangerous. In this case, the bible. Is it ok to say that there aren’t a lot of facts in bible? Sure, there are a lot broadly factual events and references that place it in a historical context, but in terms of how we understand the world to be now, light on details.
The bible is a work of sense-making, of placing ourselves in the context of a wider world that outlines a single person’s place in it. It does a pretty good job, it’s fairly coherent in parts (weird that there’s two parts, that god wouldn’t have got it right the first time and needed a patch, but perhaps I’m revealing to much of my own bias here) and at the same time very broad. It’s this broadness that provides a challenge to our sensing of truth.
We know that the early church was loose with property and possessions, humble with displays of holiness, generous of spirit to other faiths - just as Jesus was. While this way of life held a lot of truth for the people that practiced it, it did not for the people who used it for people who wanted to wield power. There are warnings against this that are largely ignored now.
The interpretation of biblical text is now more of an expression of ethos than it is divine will.
Using a single source of sense-making is vulnerable to having it co-opted by power.
We can see this throughout history as the powerful have ridden on a public wave of ‘truth’ to either take or consolidate their power.
It happened during the crusades so the church could fill its coffers. It happened in the age of exploration so that that kings and queens could do the same. It’s happening now.
Yes, a wider, wiser consumption of media is needed, I completely agree, but also wider, wiser sources of sense-making. There are so many books of wisdom out there, it seems foolish to not test the usefulness of them all.
Thanks for the thorough comments. Sorry it's taken me so long to reply.
I think we disagree from the start in that you seem to be separating truth and fact too much by making it a binary. In my view, there is a necessary and inseparable overlap between facts and truth.
Facts can, of course, be used in a colloquial way to express our certainty about something, in the sense of "that's a fact." But if there is an objective fact at issue (i.e. 132 people attended church this Sunday), then that is also the only objective truth. If I arrived and left early, seeing only 50 people, then my subjective experience is also easily held alongside the objective truth that 132 attended that day. If it's true and factual that 132 people walked through the doors, then it's also true, but incomplete that 50 people did. (The best way to express that as an objective truth is to say that I witnessed 50 people at church on Sunday, which leaves out what I did not witness and cannot confirm.)
However, if I claim that my subjective experience was the objective reality, then I am claiming that 82 people did NOT walk through the doors, and I am no longer truthful or factual. If I lead others to believe that only 50 people attended, then I am either mistaken or lying. I have either fallen for the illusion of my subjective experience, or I am a manipulator. Whether my audience believes me doesn't matter.
I think we also have a lot of disagreement about the nature, scope, purpose, and use of Scripture and its history, and that's fine. While I am encouraging bringing the Bible in as a primary method of "sense-making" as you say, I never stated that it should be your only source.
I think there is value in searching other sources and comparing what you find, just as with your media. However, we end up with a very similar problem. Each of those larger sources of philosophical or moral truth come with their own perspective and often bring incompatible claims.
We may find them meaningful, or helpful as a way to discover truth. But where they contradict, they cannot both be true. They might both be wrong.
Just as with the news, if I continually compare sources and my best judgment tells me that one is repeatedly inadequate or manipulative, I would be a fool to spend my limited time going back to that source for long. When new sources arise, it makes sense to evaluate them in the same way.
I have done much testing for my personal search, and I have a strong curiosity to continue looking at new information. I recommend the Bible because, for me, and for generations of others, it is the source that seems to best represent the world as it is, offers a coherent way to live, and doesn't shirk from our challenges to do so. That also goes along with many subjective experiences with God that fit with what I read there. Without those, I would see things differently, very likely.
But along with that, I have billions of others who report similar experiences to my own with God and Scripture, so it gives me a little more confidence that I'm getting a large enough picture. There are many almost as many who would disagree, and they are free to. They are evaluating truth as best they can, too. For me, I've found something good, and it seems wise to hold onto it.
I hope you find something as meaningful as that is to me in your own search.