Believers need to fight for truth and use their brains, argues Graham Handscomb

Truth-telling is a commodity that is in very short supply nowadays. Everywhere, it seems, people make claims that have little basis in reality. It has become OK to twist facts to suit one’s own perspective. Indeed, facts are negotiable and can be just what you wish them to be. Apparently, we are living in a ‘post-truth’ society where anything is up for grabs, where things are so just because we say that they are. If a version of events is purported enough times on social media then it becomes real. It’s what’s happened. It must be true. In Geroge Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four we read of the Ministry of Truth whose function was exactly the opposite of its name, a regime which cynically laundered facts to create a version of reality determined by the state. Sound familiar?

It is easy for us to despair about all this. Things feel as if they have never been so bad. It seems that the lack of commitment to truth-telling is endemic in our modern world. Political life appears to be corrupted by a lack of integrity. Populist leaders fuel dissent and division through incendiary, unsupported claims. All asylum seekers are casually labelled ‘illegal immigrants’, as commonly reported in some parts of the media and reflected in last year’s Illegal Immigration Act. The rule of law can be ignored if it gets in the way, as illustrated by some MPs who propose to renege on the UK’s obligations under human rights law. The expert is vilified and the contributions of science cast into doubt, as experienced in some vitriolic internet responses to science advice during lockdown. And in all of this, the needs of the vulnerable, of the marginalised in society, appear to be overlooked…

Graham Handscomb is Professor of Education at University College London. The Ideas-Informed Society is published by Emerald Publishing

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This is an extract from an article published in the February 2024 edition of Reform

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