Post-Truth
The word of the year, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is ‘Post-truth’. Forgive me if I appear to be pedantic, but that seems to be two words, nailed together by a hyphen. But them’s the dictionary folks, so I guess they should know. This word of the year refers to many things that have happened in 2016, but mostly it relates to Trump and Brexit, the terrible twins of warped and manipulated democratic systems. To me, post-truth is right up there with mental reservation and furniture store sales prices. Having just Googled Catholic Mortal sins, I can also see post-truth featuring several times in that list, along with some of the more unusual transgressions, such as Freemasonry, practicing magic, schism and simony. God help the apron-wearing splitter, conjuring with knocked-off statues of the Virgin Mary… look it up, I kid you not.
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So what is post-truth, you might ask in a post-modern ironic way? Well, dear reader, the OED crowd reckon it is defined as “an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals”. You can see where the odious Farage, the buffoon Johnson and the orange-tinted POTUS-elect fit in there, but we’ve had plenty of our own post-truth here on our own little damp rock… think ‘Let’s keep the recovery going’, ‘The Right to Water campaign’ and that old nugget, ‘The Peace Process’. I’m sure Labour and the Soldiers of Destiny have dabbled in post-truth shenanigans too, but to be honest, I can’t think of a political, social, economic or trade union grouping which hasn’t. Public opinion used to be the gift of the media, in print, on the radio and TV, however those trusted gate keepers have been replaced by hashtags and shares. But here’s the thing, I’m beginning to see that post-truth might also have a deeper meaning. The true and solid things in life are being eroded by those same hashtags and like buttons. Let me give you just one example I witnessed this morning.
So there’s me, sitting on a train, obviously not in Donegal, unless it was Fintown and I’m sure Virgin trains don’t operate on that line. Anyway, there’s me, sitting on a train, trundling along the permanent way. The train stops at ‘Murglefloopering’, leastways, that’s what I think the fellah on the tannoy said. The doors open and a couple with a push-chair get on. Their baby son is half-asleep with a soother fixed between his gums. The mother parks the push-chair in the designated bay and sits down. The father, leans against a pole and as the train moves off, mum and dad reach for their mobile phones simultaneously and stare at the screens, passing the occasional comment to each other. Now I know I can’t criticise too much, being a screen addict myself, but as the autumn gold of the countryside flies past, the baby wakes up and stares over at me with smiling eyes. Being an old softie, I pull a funny face and stick my tongue out at him. He spits the soother out and gives me a huge smile. I make another face and he giggles. This game goes on until my stop, ‘Creeplemingledale’ is announced. I get up, press the open-door button and give the wee fellah a wink, to say goodbye. At no point, in those ten minutes of our secret game of pulling faces, did either of his parents pay a blind bit of notice to the fun we were having, nor to the smiles of their son. It really was post-truth moment… post-caring, post-nurturing, post-conversation, post-smiling, post-laughing, post-human. Post-truth is in the dictionary alright, but just like the Freemason-prestidigitator, God help us all, if this is the world we are leaving for our kids.
