[American Thinker] Has our society transitioned to a period of "post-truth"...and if so, what does it mean, where is it taking us, is it permanent, and can we fight it?The online Cambridge Dictionary definition of "post-truth" is "relating to a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts."
Given this definition, I personally believe that much of the United States has transitioned to a "post-truth" society, and many of us will become casualties of this new paradigm before harsh reality steers our nation back to an "objective truth"—based decision-making.
How many times have you heard someone use the phrase "my truth is..."? This phrase is at the core of a "post-truth" society as it replaces a singular "objective truth" with many truths based on individual emotions. The danger of this type of thinking can be illustrated by imagining yourself wrongly accused of murder, and your jury is filled with people who believe in "my truth" instead of "objective truth." In this world, the prosecutor need only appeal to the feelings of the jury as opposed to proving your guilt to a rational jury with the evidence.
We are our emotions, so if they do not inform us of the truth, what use are they? I believe that, as humans, we learn to make better and faster decisions over our lifetime by processing events and their outcomes such that our intuition is informed by truth. The more traumatic an event, the longer the processing takes. Our brains churn through our recollections and inform our intuition of the truth of the event. Later, our "gut feel" enables us to react to similar events with quick decisions that minimize our trauma. Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome is caused by events so traumatic that the brain cannot process them, such that our intuition cannot be informed how to direct us to avoid a similar trauma in the future.
What caused our society to reach this tipping point? I believe that truth is dying from a thousand little cuts and these cuts are a purposeful strategy to destroy our society and groom a population so it can be manipulated through feelings. I will mention a few below (I am sure the reader can come up with dozens more):