In this age of Fake News and the Trump presidency, we clearly see the unimportance of truth, not only because of the pandemic of lie-infesting trolls and other cults of ignorance that plague our social media, but also from the capitalist-minded organisms of power that govern our lives and the individuals that direct them.
Our System, with a capital S, is capitalist and neo-liberal, and neo-liberal capitalism is indifferent to truth. An indifference which is essentially destructive, because what is buried in the indifference is a denial regarding the overall, tremendously negative consequences of its aim of perpetual growth through a constant increase in production and consumption.
Because of the uncomfortable nature of truth, capitalism has to withdraw from any relationship to it, so much so, that it altogether destroys the possibility of there being anything like truth in it – and this explains the existence of a president like Donald Trump.
Of course, because of this allergy to veracity, our neo-liberal, world civilisation suffers an agonising loss of authenticity, and this means that authenticity is the very force that must be developed in order to vanquish this desperate dictatorship of truth-indifferent capitalism. It is, therefore, to the authentic artists, the scientists and the authentic thinkers that the task of re-instating truth in our societies now lies.
This authentication process, however, is not new; it has taken place in other periods of history – in the classical period when authentic thinking first began, arising as a necessary evolution away from the ubiquitous dominance of the tyranny of myth, and this was repeated in the Renaissance, as a revolution away from the mythical dogma of biblical scripture.
Seen in this way, capitalism’s indifference to truth is a return to the Dark Ages and the unenlightenment of societies organised and driven along lines governed by mythical assumptions, now in the form of a plague of conspiracy theories designed to distract from the real dangers of the System, which lies in the unintelligent, truth-indifferent nature of the plutocratic system itself.
The fundamental question the authentic thinker must ask today is: What kind of art and what kind of thinking is it that can rescue truth from the erroneously dangerous confusion created by the myth-making conspiracy theories and other lies emanating from the System itself?
The fundamental lie of the neo-mythmakers is that truth is a relative concept that has countless subjective interpretations. A common tactic of these neo-mythmakers is to publicly debunk facts with so-called common-sense assumptions. But common-sense, while it seems logically sensible at first, is never a healthy tool for policy making as it almost always ignores the science and overgeneralises the truth. Attitudes expressed by climate-emergency sceptics are good examples of this, e.g., a spell of cold weather in your region does not mean that the global average temperature is not steadily rising, as scientific studies show.
For art and thinking to be authentic, they must be anchored in facts, and only then can they be contrasted with the inauthenticity of the neo-mythologies. However, it would be wrong to assume that these facts themselves can serve as a weapon to vanquish the enemy. Remember, capitalist neo-mythologies are indifferent to truth and that makes them indifferent to facts, which means they are immune to any attack from the factual realm.
Here we see that science alone, or a politics rooted in science, will not be enough to overcome the myth-perverted system, it needs to transcend its own seriousness and coldness in order to attack through aesthetic means any perverted judgements that have an indifference to truth. Through the didactic power and ethical seduction that can be energised via art, the neo-mythologies can be fought from within.
Art, because art can embrace the myth itself and use the truth-indifferent universe to take a stance and draw arguments within the mythical world itself, via a creation of new, legendary characters that actually seduce audiences back towards a passion for the comfort of a more ethical, truthful, authentic society. In this way, art can undermine the power of neo-myths.
As Walter Benjamin pointed out when writing about tragedy:
“Through every minor and yet unpredictably profound interpretation of the material of legend, tragedy brings about the destruction of the mythic world-order, and prophetically shakes it with inconspicuous words.”[1]
Benjamin observed that it was through the art of writing and performing tragic theatre, that authentic thinking was able to undermine the powerful hold that myth had over Greek society. Tragic art is grounded in myth, but only in order to destroy it, opening a door for authenticity itself.
[1] Walter Benjamin, GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN, II, 1:249
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