Hobgoblins

When travelling in the United States some years ago I was struck by what I thought at the time was a curious gullibility in accepting the most outlandish of explanations for the origin of words and phrases. There seemed to be a sort of epidemic of such inquiry and a willingness to accept the most peculiar distortions of history, physics, grammar and reality itself to placate this thirst for knowledge, however unreliable.

I wish I could remember some specific examples but I do recall being amused at some long-established phrases of well-known nautical origin being explained away by the use of colourful and imaginative invocation of what were relatively recent phenomena. Thus a salty insult derived from the days of sail would be shoehorned into a tale about the early years of computing and accepted without question. I actually bought a book of such explanations and chuckled at both the ingenuity and naivety of some of the expositions.

Long ago I noticed the propensity of humans to swiftly accept the most unlikely of reasoning for observed phenomena, to ascribe the most complex of motives to the simple failings of competence; to search for greater depth than is actually there. Now, in the post-truth era we are said to live in, such ability to set aside the simple for the complex appears to have become ubiquitous. Who cares for the truth when a ripping yarn gets the blood flowing?

I write all this because over the last few days I have been mildly assailed by interlocutors demanding I accept their facts, when opinion or distortion is all they have offered up. One such issue was the case for immigration: “Immigration is a net benefit!” insist the soundbite swallowers, without even the most cursory reflection on why such a generalisation has become so widely promulgated. “There is no evidence that low-skilled immigration lowers wages!” is another frequently expounded notion.

Try telling any of that to the working communities who have been displaced by industrial scale invasions of people who are, frankly, ‘not like us’. Because it is one thing to amalgamate all the doctors and scientists and engineers and artistes along with those who work in the low wage economy to come up with a minimally positive financial calculation, but the truth to those who are face-to-face with it is a different thing entirely. Or maybe, in order to make that national omelette it matters not how many eggs you have to break?

Another was trying to argue that full employment meant there was no demand for labour and thus would keep wages low. It didn’t matter that this inverted the basic supply and demand formulation, this was his truth and he was sticking to it. This was on the back of a diatribe about how the state should intervene to distort the labour market, even though the state intends to do exactly that by announcing future restrictions on low-skilled immigration. The truth didn’t matter because the truth is now what you want it to be. Facts are fluid and for every verifiable statistic, multiple interpretations can be constructed. 

It was thought that the internet would bring us access to all the world’s knowledge. It was even proposed that schoolchildren need not even be taught facts because the facts were at their fingertips. It turns out that none of that makes a blind bit of difference and that H L Mencken’s observations still hold true. Here’s one to be going on with: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” And here’s another: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

It's a fact

Facts; tricky buggers, aren’t they? Because what are facts when we are talking not about what they describe, but what they imply? And all facts are not equal: while the number of feet in a mile, or how many buns in a baker’s dozen are undebatable certainties, other fact-like nuggets, especially statistics, are often used to illustrate contrary positions in an argument. And while I naturally scoff at supposed evidence for your aberrant beliefs, I gleefully embrace equally shaky verification that my god is bigger than your god. I am no better than you.

Also to be taken into account is the plethora of fake facts, mistaken facts, incomplete facts, wishful thinking and downright fraud perpetrated in the name of fact and its unhappy bedfellow, truth. Your truth isn’t the same as mine and while mine may – I believe – be grounded in experiential events, your truth may be derived from beliefs which have little or no facts to substantiate them. I cite, as I often do, the absolute fact that not one piece of ‘evidence’ has ever proved the existence of god. You, naturally, counter that no evidence has been offered for his/her/its non-existence. I quote the scientific method, you rely on faith. I have faith in the scientific method… and so it goes.

When arguments are exhausted and the brick wall you have been banging your head against refuses to yield you, we – all of us – resort to other explanations. The other side has been influenced by dark forces, fallen for propaganda, been taken in by the elites who are feeding them well-rehearsed soundbites, attack rhetoric, posing as objective truths. Then, when the enemy captures those positions and turns the same words against us, we fall back, regroup and find some different words. The events have not changed and the full facts are never known – even when a think tank calls itself ‘full fact’ – but our perceptions shift. All the time.

How often have you been ‘Indecisive Dave’ watching a debate as if it were a tennis match, your head swivelling from left-to-right and back again as you nod and agree with each participant in turn. And then, when no convincing thesis wins the day, reverting to the comfort of your original position. It is little wonder, then, that mankind has embraced the frankly ridiculous notion of a magic man – or woman - in the sky who somehow orders everything so that the most deserving, the most devout, will see their reward in the afterlife.

Well, bollocks to that; I want my loot now. And so do you. Which is why the ‘facts’ about ‘the elite’ are so deliciously, egregiously deceitful. The elite, or ‘the elites’ are manipulating your every thought in order to make you slaves to the market economy? Oh, come on, people. If anything the manipulation is being done – deliberately or in ignorance – by those who use envy and a sense of injustice in the guise – deliberately or in ignorance of equality – to mobilise sentiment against those who have succeeded. Or maybe you are just manipulating yourself?

Which facts do you prefer?

I’m not yet a citizen of a post-fact world and I have a great deal of time for evidential investigation, but I am also hyper cynical and assume that ‘your’ facts are tainted. In my more self-aware moments I admit that the same applies to mine, but I just don’t see how blaming society’s ills and especially individual difficulties on those who have managed to buck the trend and make something of themselves is helping. Instead of trying to bring down the successful maybe, just maybe, we should be copying them. At the very least we could start trying to think for ourselves and not be so easily led by pipers playing our favourite tunes.

What’s the alternative?

The latest variant in the fake news phenomenon is the ‘alternative fact’ farrago. Both of course, are intended to deceive but as Groucho said “Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others” Over the years many news organisations have been accused of distortion and even gross deception in order to serve a narrative, but in recent years the whole business of lying to the world has been legitimised by spin doctors who are now so bold they can repeat a barefaced lie to camera a hundred times without batting an eyelid.

We used to need an outlandish figure like Robert Maxwell to carry off such astonishing effrontery but now it seems as if it is the carefree, everyday normality of organs which should stand for truth and justice. Ah but, whose truth and what do you mean by justice? Is it just to let people starve while others grow fat, or is it kind to let people grow fat and ill while others stay fit and thrive? Is welfare really a human right? And what is the real truth behind climatological carbon? A good rule of thumb used to be ‘follow the money’, but the democratisation of lying muddies the audit trail.

We seem, many seem, to need a backing track to our lives, a tune to sing along to, a theme to tie it all together, but why do we think, or why do some of us think, there has to be such meaning? It used to be religion but what if – and here’s a shock to the system – there is no order to our universe and things just happen? Some things are true and others are not, but every now and then, quite often if we’re honest, what we expect to be the truth turns out not to be. A nutter kills Saint Joe Cox, which somehow proves that all who voted to leave the EU are vexatious simpletons with Nazi sympathies. Yet looters who plunder businesses and try to harm the police are excused because they’re upset about the outcome of a vote.

These things aren’t really part of an organised whole, but the extent to which some parts of the whole are organised can be telling. It’s hard enough to distinguish truth from tittle-tattle from the vantage point of a distant observer, but how do you do it when you are a throbbing part of the enraged mob? Is it an ideology, or just a fun day out in town? The flimsy rationale for some allegiances often hangs by a single thread; the left is good, therefore the right is bad and there’s an end to it. Once you have decided which side you’re on that side can do no wrong, but how do you break free from groupthink?

To be able to tell fact from fiction you need to do more than accept face-value, bias-confirming soundbites. You need to be educated but not indoctrinated, widely read but not too fickle, informed but also incisive. Oh and you need to be impartial, the hardest thing of all. It is said that critical thinking skills are thin on the ground but even possessing all of the above humans are notorious for making poor choices: ‘I can’t afford the thing, I can’t afford the thing... Honey, I bought the even more expensive version of the thing!’

The expensive thing many seem to want to buy right now is that life can be made wonderful by the application of government. Dream on. You want a good life, you have to work for it. It really is as simple as that... you just have to break free of the chains you have meticulously wrapped around your thinking. It is nobody else’s job to make you wealthy, healthy or happy... or wise. This, undeniably, is true, but it’s also hard. What’s the alternative? There isn’t one, but sometimes it is just easier to accept the truth you want to hear.