Suzanne Harrington: We're living in an alternative universe — choking on lies and fake news
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Like you, I am all for the concept of shared reality. The sky is blue. You and I might disagree about whether we like the colour blue or not, but the basis of the argument is built upon a shared acceptance that the sky (a) exists and (b) is blue.
But what happens when one of us fundamentally doesn’t believe that the sky exists at all?
Rational discussion becomes impossible. We are in parallel universes.
A huge example of this is the upcoming US elections, bearing down on us like those action movie scenes where the goodie and the not-as-baddie are trying to wrestle control of a speeding juggernaut as it hurtles towards a playground.
According to Reuters, the Republican Party are working to legally nullify forthcoming election results if their orange fascist doesn’t win; in terms of brazen political skullduggery — especially given the January 6 insurrection — this is banana-republic behaviour, but that’s not the point.
The point is, people will believe them. Political spin has been subsumed by lies of such magnitude they qualify as invitations into an alternative universe.
Within this universe, Trump won the last time and will win again this time by millions of votes, or the election will have been stolen; it’s a universe where Haitians eat pets, where Mexicans are rapists, where there are facts and alternative facts.
Rational truth is presented as fake news, and fake news as rational truth. Lewis Carroll would have a brain haemorrhage.
This new unreality is absorbed by a vast demographic who now accept it as their lived reality, the lies and disinformation speeded up by the digital wildfire of social media.
It’s too easy to dismiss those who deny the existence of objective reality as morons; plus it’s mutual, except they call us ‘sheeple’.
Again, name-calling is not the point. Communities have been fractured, choked on lies spread by free-flowing, unchecked content.
For Generation Trump, the concept of objective reality is probably too late; their sky does not exist.
But does this have to be the case for following generations? It’s not like we can rely on power-drunk politicians or social media companies — vast, unaccountable fortresses of infinite wealth — to share an objective reality when the alternative one they project is so much more lucrative for the handful at the top.
How can our kids grow up in a shared reality, rather than a hallucinated one?
We can teach critical thinking and digital media literacy at school, bake it into the curriculum from day one; teach kids how to spot fake news, mad lies, AI memes of six-fingered humans presented as real.
This isn’t fantasy — critical thinking has been taught in Finnish schools for years. Because we need to accept that the sky exists, before we can discuss its colour.
