How to Thrive in a Post-Truth, Alternative Facts, Fake News World

The long-gestating epistemological crisis in the west is escalating rapidly. Who or what can be trusted? Is objectivity possible? Are there authorities uncorrupted by power? Sources of truth untainted by the stains of bias and ideology?

Though they are not new, these are increasingly vexing questions in today's world, which is nearing a tipping point moment in "what is real?" confusion. Back in the early Internet days of The Matrix it was a quaintly postmodern, Cartesian thought experiment to question the realness of reality. Now it is our daily experience as we watch the news or scroll our social media feeds.

"Post-truth" is our paradigm. "Alternative facts" is our parlance. "Fake news" has become a partisan weapon that has quickly lost any meaning.

My generation loves authenticity and hates anything "fake" (was it Coldplay's Chris Martin who once crooned, "Give me real, don't give me fake"?). But what does that even mean where there are no agreed upon definitions of "fake," where one man's trusted news is another man's fake news, and each of us selects for ourselves the facts we believe and the ones we dismiss?

If to be "authentic" is simply to be "real" or "true" to oneself, what happens when one person's authenticity directly confronts or contradicts another's, as in a gay couple who is authentically seeking to be married, and the elderly florist whose authentic self cannot in good conscience make floral arrangements for their wedding?

"Authenticity" is word that is inherently opposed to objective meaning, and thus surely ill-equipped to be a sufficient answer to the crisis we now face.

Meanwhile, words like "gender," "male," and "female" are also losing any reliable or agreed-upon meaning.

Words like "news," "opinion," "entertainment" and "information" have blurred together into one amorphous idea ("media") that feeds us an assembly line of disconnected fragments, headlines, rants and cat videos that only reinforce the apparent absurdity of metanarratives or truth ties that bind.

Notions of human knowledge and learning are also changing, in the era when Google does much of our thinking for us and artificial intelligence grows increasingly sophisticated.

The pace of everything is such that even if we needed to think we wouldn't want to spend the time doing it. There are far too many things to be amused by and aware of. Who has time to truly get to know something? There are too many Important Issues about which we are beckoned to be #woke. The urgent thing is that we speak out and share our opinions about as much as possible. Less important is the slog of learning about complicated things in a patient and curious manner.

So, what are we to do about all this? How can we resist the entropy of truth and discover the real in this wasteland of unreality? I have three general suggestions:

1) Focus on time-tested authorities.

A fundamental cause of our current epistemological crisis is the speed and glut of information. The news cycle is relentless and the amount of information each day is far more than we could ever sufficiently sift through. Combat this by giving preference to time-tested wisdom and authorities. For example:

• Read the Bible. It's the best selling, most-read book in history, by far. Read it more than you read anything else.
• If you believe Jesus Christ is God, and the perfect human, focus on him as the authority of reference. Learn as much about him as you can (again: Bible!), model your life on him, commune with him, rest in his grace, proclaim him as Lord of all. This will be your sanity.
• Read other old books, especially the "Great Books" that are consistently considered great, generation after generation. Read a great book twice rather than 10 mediocre books once.
• Trust people whose wisdom is time-tested and whose expertise is proven by practice: pastors who have pastored in the same church for 30 years; couples who have been faithfully married for 50 years; professors who have spent their careers trying to learn everything they can about a subject.
• Don't let the allure of novelty and trendiness dictate whose ideas you pay attention to. Minimize your exposure to hot takes on the Internet and maximize your exposure to wise people, living or dead.

2) Value community.

Another fundamental cause of our current epistemological crisis is the hyper-individuation of our technological age, in which each of us has significant power to build isolated iWorlds and subsequently define reality on our own terms. Combat this by cultivating and committing to community: physical, local, long-lasting community. For example:

• Stay in one place long enough to know and grow alongside others in profound ways, letting others speak truth into your life on a sustained basis, even when it's hard.
• Be open to the idea that the consensus of your community is a more trustworthy source than you are on a) who you are and b) what you should choose in important life decisions.
• Value the consensus of communities of experts (e.g. scientists, critics, theologians). There are exceptions to this, of course (groupthink, echo chamber communities, etc.), but often consensus is a good guide to filter through the glut of information. Use critics' lists of "best movies of all time" to help you decide which films to spend time watching. Choose a book based on the reviews and the caliber of its endorsements.

3) Establish rhythms.

One way to thrive in the chaos of a post-truth world is to root yourself in habits and rhythms that transcend the ups, downs and unpredictability of the mediated world. Ordering our lives with rhythms helps us simplify the chaos and survive the barrage of possibility by submitting ourselves to limitation. For example:

• Prioritize sleep, silence, listening, quietness. Have set-aside spaces every day, or entire days of the week (e.g. Sabbath), where you have no commitments, where media is turned off and where you can simply rest, be still and listen. Purge your life of FOMO paralysis. It's liberating to miss out on things!
• Commit to rhythms of community (book clubs, Bible studies, discussion groups, etc.) where you can process complexity in more manageable ways, among trusted others on a regular basis.
• Go outside. Contemplating the rhythms of God's created world (weather, seasons, plants, animals) has a way of cutting through the clutter and illuminating goodness, truth and beauty in ways that the buzziest Medium article never could.
• Let embodied rhythms reveal truth. Some of the most profound truths are not cerebral; they're embodied. This is especially true of Christian liturgical rhythms: prayer, fasting, singing, taking communion, baptism, Scripture reading, the rhythms of the church calendar. The most important truths are sometimes practiced before they are understood. Showing up at boring old church, Sunday after Sunday, and "going through the motions" (a dreaded notion for us Millennials) is a pilgrim's sanity in an insane world.

From Tet to Trump: A Media History

I believe in journalism. I'm thankful for its truth-telling, spot-lighting potential (see last year's Oscar-winning film Spotlight, for example). But I sometimes fear for its future. As the media landscape continues to morph, what role can real journalism play? Donald Trump becoming president is certainly huge "news," but it's a headline that signals something foreboding rather than electrifying about the state of the news industry. Here's my attempt to make sense of how we got here. 1960s: In 1964, 58% of Americans said that they “got most of their news” from television. The novelty of live televised news, combined with tumultuous global events (especially in 1968) launched the "breaking news" phenomenon, which set the stage for blurred lines between information and entertainment. The agenda-setting power of TV became apparent when the news coverage of the Tet Offensive in 1968 helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.

1970s-80s: The commercial reality of broadcast news, in which ratings were crucial and 30 minutes (multiple times a day) had to be filled with "news" (even when nothing of import was happening) inspired all manner of gimmicky segments and the disorienting assemblage of murder + weather + traffic + celebrity news + sports + cute animals with Jack Hannah. See Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985). 

1990s: 24-hour news channels gain momentum, and the need to manufacture "news" further inspires infotainment as well as the rise of commentary-as-news and partisan talking head punditry. See also: O.J. Simpson Trial, Court TV, Greta Van Susteren, Fox News, etc.

2000s: The Internet infinitely expands the "channels" and platforms on which "content" is published. This leads to decline in paid newspaper/magazine subscriptions and rise in assumption that news/information should be free. Everyone (from the New York Times to your neighborhood mommy blogger) now competes in the same space for a limited number of eyeballs and clicks in order to survive.

2010s: Most people now receive their news primarily through curated social media newsfeeds and mostly just scan headlines quickly as they scroll the feed. Headlines are thus more important than ever, and yet... To attract clicks and compete in the flattened "feed" space, news outlets must bait readers by purging headlines of nuance, prioritizing only the most extreme, FIRST and hottest take on any timely topic. If all we know of the news is from the headlines we scan, we'll naturally perceive the world to be a deranged place on the path to catastrophe. Furthermore, in the "feed" world, news outlets know they are competing not for everyone but for only those who have opted in and are predisposed to a certain perspective. Thus the headlines that work are the ones that preach loudest to the choir and confirm biases most amusingly.

2016: Now everyone gets different news and different facts and different truth, to the point that all is suspicious and nothing is trustworthy, including the  meta/satire/fake news "journalists" who for a time were heralded as Peabody-quality truth-to-power prophets. All of which now gives us Trump. America has just finished a reality TV election and elected a reality TV star as president, a man who has already described picking his cabinet staff in Apprentice gameshow terms ("finalists"). NBC may have lost Billy Bush on account of the Access Hollywood tapes scandal but their alum Trump is taking his "You're Fired!" one-liners all the way to the White House! Surely that bodes well for Saturday Night Live ratings.

The "serious" media were horribly wrong on Trump's odds of winning and painfully unable to understand the who, why, whither and whence of how this happened. Humbled and embarrassed by how out of touch they were, the New York Times publisher repented to readers and said the paper would "rededicate" itself "to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences."

The agenda-setting power of media may still exist, but it is weakened by the hyper-fragmented reality of today's narrowcast media landscape. Scores of articles declaring the clear and present danger of a Trump presidency didn't matter in the end because they only set the "agenda" of a small group, already predisposed to dislike Trump. There are thousands of media channels that each set agendas for different audiences, so it's no wonder national public opinion is harder and harder to accurately gauge.

Perhaps sheer exposure and celebrity are the real agenda-setters today. In the end, Trump didn't have to do much more than be famous, talk tough and tweet (He has 4 million more Twitter followers than Hillary Clinton) in order to win. He knows the unfortunate truth that the only bad press today is boring press, as in stories about policy (snooze!) and other low-energy topics (sorry Jeb Bush). While journalists are scandalized that he won't tell them where he is going to eat a steak dinner (UGH, presidents are supposed to keep the press corps in the loop!), Trump has moved on into the ominous new media world, with or without the old guard.

Why Partisanship is the New Normal

The ferociously partisan atmosphere in America these days isn't limited to Washington D.C., though it certainly is epitomized there. No, the divisive, bitter ambience in this country exists everywhere, from sea to shining sea. A few minutes on cable news or a cursory scroll through one's social media feed at any given moment confirms it. And it's getting worse.

"Moderate" is increasingly a relic in American culture. The ouster of Indiana senator (and moderate, bipartisan-minded Republican) Dick Luger is just the latest evidence of this. Republicans are getting more conservative and Democrats are getting more liberal. The country's middle ground is quickly becoming no man's land.

Issues like gay marriage are further entrenching both sides. The day after North Carolina became the 30th state to adopt a ban on gay marriage, President Obama  ended his "evolving views" stalling and admitted to supporting the opposite view, thrilling liberals and stealing some of the spotlight from what happened in North Carolina. For Obama and his ever bluer base, opposition to gay marriage is seen as gradually eroding. The expectation is that soon enough gay marriage will be completely acceptable in society. But there are signs that, for red state America, the opposite trend is occurring. Voters in North Carolina--a swing state that went blue for Obama in 2008--actually voted for the ban on gay marriage by a larger margin (61-39%) than expected, and seven percentage points larger than the 2006 margin (57-42%) of another gay marriage ban in fellow Southern swing state Virginia (also went blue for Obama in 2008). This appears to be another sign that the red base is getting redder on wedge issues like gay marriage, even while the blue base is becoming bolder and louder on such divisive issue.

Why are we experiencing such unprecedented ideological divergence in our culture? Why is it looking--tragically--as if the recovery of a middle ground and a bipartisan, cordial public discourse is increasingly unlikely?

It may sound obvious, and it may be old hat by now, but I believe a huge factor contributing to all of this is the Internet. Namely: the way that it has fragmented and niche-ified our media consumption. For former generations, "news" was the thing everyone watched at the same time at night on TV. It was the local newspaper. There were far fewer options, so everyone tended to learn about the news from the same sources. Some big cities had multiple newspapers with slightly divergent political bents, but for the most part normal folks didn't have easy access to "news" with a decidedly partisan bent.

Not so today. Now, we have 24/7 access to it. Whatever one's political leaning may be, an entire personalized media landscape can be constructed to reinforce it. There are TV channels, YouTube channels, websites, tumblrs, blogs, e-newsletters,  newspapers and radio stations for whatever political opinion you may have. Everyone processes media narratives that are as infinitely different from one another as snowflakes. Each of us has a totally unique combination of blogs we follow, news sites we read, and social media connections who shape our media intake. No wonder "consensus" is a thing of the past. We don't live in a Walter Cronkite world anymore. We live in our own iNews bubbles of self-perpetuating, fragmentary and volatile media flows.

And it creates a snowball effect. Given the choice, liberal-leaning folks naturally will spend more time watching MSNBC and filling their Twitter feeds with people of a similar bent. Conservatives will naturally choose to watch Fox News and populate their feeds with advocates of GOP-friendly ideals. In a world where it's as easy as clicking "unfollow" whenever someone says something that challenges our beliefs, our "feeds" of self-selected narratives of reality will make us neither educated nor enriched; they'll simply make us more ardent in the beliefs we already hold.

In this "million little narratives" world of individually curated and (often) hyper-politicized media experiences, it's easy to see how fringe groups and all manner of Anders Breivek-style zealotry may develop. It's easy to see how ideology-oriented communities can become dangerously insulated and prone to "no compromise!" hostility to the Other. It's easy to see why we've become so bad at talking cordially with those who are different than us. There are just so few forums for us to learn how to productively converse with a plurality of differing voices. And even if there were, would we willingly enter those forums when there are unlimited options of lesser resistance at our disposal?

I think we must. The landscape of new media, I believe, is such that society is only going to become more divided. There will be more turnover in Congress. Less ability to "reach across the aisle" without dire political consequences. It will not be easy to recover cordiality, and the values of respect and moderation in the public square will be lost, to disastrous effect. That is, unless we each make a point of combatting this in our own lives. Some suggestions for how to do this:

• If you watch news on TV, watch a different channel every night, even if it pains you.
• Don't just pack your social media feeds with people who agree with you. Curate a diverse plurality of voices.
• Avoid commenting on articles, Facebook posts or other online forums when you are angered or upset. Take time to think it over, and if you still want to say something, say it with care and nuance.
• Just say no to the social media "instant commentary!" impulse.
• Do you have at least some friends who have different political views than you? You should. Engage them in friendly, loving debate.
• Avoid watching the "crazies" too much (whether on Fox News, MSNBC, or any other channel... you know of whom I speak).
• Read books on complicated subjects, not just news articles or tweets.
• Learn to value humility and (gasp!) be willing to change your views on something, if reason (not peer pressure) leads you there.
• Read Marilynne Robinson.

And on that note, a wise quote by Marilynne Robinson's stellar, prescient essay for our times, "Austerity as Ideology":

Western society at its best expresses the serene sort of courage that allows us to grant one another real safety, real autonomy, the means to think and act as judgment and conscience dictate. It assumes that this great mutual courtesy will bear its best fruit if we respect, educate, inform and trust one another. This is the ethos that is at risk as the civil institutions in which it is realized increasingly come under attack by the real and imagined urgencies of the moment. We were centuries in building these courtesies. Without them “Western civilization” would be an empty phrase...

In the strange alembic of this moment, the populace at large is thought of by a significant part of this same population as a burden, a threat to their well-being, to their “values.” There is at present a dearth of humane imagination for the integrity and mystery of other lives. In consequence, the nimbus of art and learning and reflection that has dignified our troubled presence on this planet seems like a thinning atmosphere. Who would have thought that a thing so central to human life could prove so vulnerable to human choices?