Many of us no longer know what to think or who to believe. This is compounded by the assault on ‘expert opinion’ and doubts over ‘mainstream’ media coverage. Meanwhile, the social disconnection wrought by neoliberalism enables nationalistic ideologies that foster a sense of victimhood.
Back in the 1980s, Noam Chomsky took a few deep breaths and headed for Davos, an annual conference organised by the World Economic Forum. Diligent as always, Chomsky read the relevant documents, listened to various discussions, and probably eavesdropped on conversations. Ultimately, he found that the proceedings were, yes, focused on promoting the interests of global capital but, overall, the event was simply ‘boring’. There were no sinister plots being concocted in dark corners by ageing white men. There was no need: the agenda was clear and present.
There’s no doubt, as we well know, that corporations are in cahoots with government, the media, bankers, academics and other key members of ‘the establishment’. Together they have presided over the neoliberal takeover of Western economies through financialised regimes, trade treaties, the dismantling of organised labour, and the rest. The result is a massive transfer of wealth from the lower echelons to the already rich. Consequently, as noted by French economist Thomas Piketty, economic inequality is rampant, similar to levels a century ago.
If there has been a conspiracy around such grotesque wealth differentials, it occurred at the Mont Pelerin conference in 1947, when Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, along with other 38 other liberal luminaries, charted a course for the neoliberal takeover of Western societies via a raft of ‘economic reforms’ and social enculturation. Fast forward to the mid-1970s and we see the beginnings of a new hegemonic order.
The story of ‘free market’ ascendancy has been brilliantly told by New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer in her book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Mayer’s account relies on meticulously documented, verifiable and credible sources that offer a compelling, entirely persuasive account of the rise of neoliberal capitalism. Mayer does not rely on intuition, guesswork, speculation or made-up stuff. She doesn’t join spurious dots, or consult self-credentialed oracles.
This is not the case with many of the views being expressed on today’s supposedly independent new sites. Often they are based on unsubstantiated and ill-founded claims, which end up raising more questions than answers. Definitive answers are strangely elusive, while assumptions run riot.
These days, I’m happy to report, we have credible fact checkers who go through conspiracy claims with great precision, checking for pseudoscience, factual errors, distortions, unverified claims and unfounded assumptions. None of this, however, is likely to prevent the further spread of wild and whacky theories, not as long as we have the murky world of social media.
So why has all this occurred and what are the consequences? Conspiracy theories have been around forever but their current manifestation can be traced to the understandable distrust of power sown by umpteen exposures of corporate crimes, government secrecy, and media silence and cover-ups.
The Vietnam war, Watergate, the invasion of Iraq and, nearer to home, the bugging of East Timor cabinet meetings, the exposure of government secrets and information blockages (recently evidenced in the refusal of the federal government to approve the vast majority of FoI requests) have all contributed to public mistrust. Political corruption and malfeasance too, and the failure to act on promises, however vague, have also added to public disenchantment. These, and many other revelations, have rightly highlighted the secretive and often corrupt nature of power, and how certain vested interests operate. We’re right to dig around, to ask questions. We should remain sceptical of official claims.
The problem, however, with many of today’s conspiracy watchers (whose motives are often commendable), is that they have, perhaps inadvertently, contributed to what is now an epistemological crisis – a crisis in and of knowledge itself. Increasingly, many of us simply don’t know what to think, or who to believe.
The assault on ‘expert opinion’ and doubts over ‘mainstream’ media coverage have compounded this problem. We don’t seem to have the rules in place to make a fully informed and considered judgment. We’re rudderless. Reason and truth have been obliterated. Critical thinking has been replaced by guesswork, innuendo, baseless assertions and wild conjecture. Some commentators trace this back to postmodern relativism: the proposition that there is no such thing as truth, only multiple and competing realities, or alternative facts.
But there’s a deeper problem here. Neoliberalism has ushered in an ‘epidemic’ of social disconnection. We are, say George Monbiot, Johann Hari and Hugh Mackay, more isolated, lonely and anxious than ever before. This opens the door for totalitarianism and unhinged demagogues. They prey on the disaffected. As Hannah Arendt pointed out in The Origins of Totalitarianism, social disconnection is the enabler of nationalistic ideologies that foster a sense of victimhood and hatred of the Other. The singling out of an ‘enemy’ unites the isolated in common cause.
This happens among the political right and left. Social media is a ceaseless, generous provider. Sure, this portal invites us to explore and debate, but it has also given rise to many florid theories and dangerous alliances. According to Lydia Khalil at the Lowy Institute and Deakin academic Joshua Roose, ‘extremism exploits the trust deficit’. A few fringe voices are easily amplified by social media. Hey presto: Christchurch, hate crimes, the attack on the US Capitol, climate denialism, misinformation on the pandemic, and the general bickering and rancour that passes for debate, etc.
But at a time of intersecting mega-crises, when we need global justice movements to confront the threats before us – the climate emergency, destruction of biodiversity, social and economic inequality, the erosion of democracy – we instead sink into the mire of boutique theorising that turns people in on themselves, in effect granting even more power to the already powerful. A blistering irony, indeed. Divided we fall. What we need now is a return to some sense of reason in the pursuit of common ground and the common good. It’s time, I think, to stand back, take stock and consider how we can contribute meaningfully to a collective change agenda.
First though, we need to talk about the origins and effects of the knowledge crisis.
Adjunct Professor, School of Health Sciences and Social Work,
Griffith University (Gold Coast Campus).
Adjunct Professor, Southern Cross University, Faculty of Business, Law and Arts.
Comments
12 responses to “A crisis in and of knowledge: an issue of trust”
I agree with Professor Hil. Further, I think many of the criticisms are shallow and small-minded (if not indeed vituperative).
Professor Hil is simply – and obviously – making a case for his primary thesis: that a disturbingly large number of people are unable to ‘know that they know’. That they cannot consciously and choicefully examine any given proposition in terms of its initial credibility, internal coherence, consistency with its context and, thereby, its reflective credibility.
Further, that factors such as the growth in social media and the arraignment of political power – for some 74 years now – by, particularly, neo-liberals, aggravate such epistemological dysfunction. (Not to mention Universities’ decline in tenured positions, government-enforced dependence on student tuition fees and upon foreign students.) Oh – and our reliance on “Dr Google”! No wonder we have come to know (and hopefully abhor) the expression ‘alternative facts’.
Every reader of this blog should firstly be defending Dr Hil’s thesis – and then advancing it. I hope I can look forward to more thoughtful, clear and caring contributions from this underplayed author, a person for whom I’ve developed a deep admiration over the last few years despite far too few personal encounters.
On the whole, I agree with you, Charles Lowe. However, this bit bothered me:
It comes across as support for mainstream media, and for their ‘fact checkers’. That would be a naive stance.
Dr Hill’s final sentence raises the need to “talk about the origins and effects of the knowledge crisis”, which he roots back to “an ‘epidemic’ of social disconnection”. Fair enough – neoliberalism does force social disconnection by means of economic policies. But then he goes on to argue that social disconnection is amplified by social media, which is therefore to blame for “Christchurch, hate crimes, the attack on the US Capitol, climate denialism, misinformation on the pandemic, and the general bickering and rancour that passes for debate, etc.”
So what is Dr Hill’s recommendation to fix the ‘knowledge crisis’? I see no hint that it should be teaching people to (in your words) “consciously and choicefully examine any given proposition in terms of its initial credibility, internal coherence, consistency with its context and, thereby, its reflective credibility” – something which is needed at least as much when dealing with mainstream media. Rather, the content of the essay is consistent with a recommendation for censorship of social media, something which has been recommended by other essayists on this platform recently and which has in fact been happening rather a lot.
For these reasons, I think a critical examination of Dr. Hill’s thesis is in order.
Hi Charles. Your comment motivated me to re-read Richard’s post. He makes a neat summary of the Mont Pelerin story which has been my obsession since reading Hayek 30 years ago and he is right about the need to find common ground. Jeremy Lee Quinn’s first-hand experience found that the crowds in Antifa, Black Lives Matter and Trump rallies wanted the same things — health care and prison reform, for example. Steve Bannon is acutely aware that Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters have more in common with each other than with the major political parties. I still dislike the “conspiracy theory” term. I think it is dangerous at a time when expert spin doctors and marketers manipulate opinion. We should not discourage dissenting voices, criticism and scepticism.
Do we? Whacky conspiracy theories get a lot of attention as whacky conspiracy theories, but is the proportion of people who actually believe them very high?
As to
– would the author care to quantify that more precisely? I read many independent news sites, and there is a great deal of careful research and insightful analysis available. Some of the people writing for these outlets – such as Matt Taibi and Glenn Greenwald – previously worked for large media outlets and resigned over objective reporting being suppressed. On the other hand, major media outlets are hardly guiltless of reports ‘based on unsubstantiated and ill-founded claims’. Most of the content today ranges from shallow (at best) through ill-informed and misleading, to outright mendacity.
Governments like to see a focus on ‘conspiracy theories’ and ‘domestic right-wing terrorism’, and the big media outlets are happy to oblige. Of course, there are unevidenced conspiracy theories around, and some right-wing terrorists – but the emphasis on these a) serves to legitimise censorship and the militarisation of policing; and b) distracts from legitimate critique and healthy protest by conflating these with weird conspiracy theories and domestic terrorism. It seems the author has fallen for this sleight of hand, or wants us to.
Agree with you Andrew. The CIA invented the term “conspiracy theory” to discourage people from investigating the Kennedy assassination. Governments and their mates are now so toxic that we should not believe a word they say. Remember the official explanation for Covid 19? Chinese epicureans eating pangolins. This was the Lee Harvey Oswald lone-gunman equivalent. Thank goodness for Greenwald and Taibbi, whom you mention.
Sir, I cannot agree with your statement that:
“Some commentators trace this back to postmodern relativism: the proposition that there is no such thing as truth, only multiple and competing realities, or alternative facts.”
Postmodernism has never said “that there is no such thing as truth”. It says that there is no such thing as “the” truth. It says that truth is contextual and contingent on history and the social situation. If anyone doubts this just take Australia Day for example. Fair-minded Australians concede that indigenous Australians have the right to call it “Invasion Day”. This is a perfect example of truth being contingent on history and the social context.
Moreover, I believe, as I have said elsewhere in this journal, that it is impossible for an imperfect human mind to come out with the perfect or “absolute” truth. I agree that there are facts such as mathematical data, statistics, factual occurrences. But when these facts are subject to human interpretation in their search for the “truth”, it can engender any number of interpretations of different validity. Just to give a simple example, my nephew who, at the age of six, got a sum wrong. The question asked by the teacher was, “Mother has ten eggs. She broke one. How many eggs are there left?” He said “Ten”. My sister scolded, “How could you get so simple a sum wrong?” His answer was, “Mom, every time you break an egg, you cook it up!” What flawless logic – one cooked egg and nine others make ten.
Saying that postmodernism promotes the idea of “alternate facts” is sadly putting Michel Foucault, Soren Kierkegaard, Jaques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas etc. on the same intellectual level as Donald Trump.
My other disagreement is with this statement:
“The assault on ‘expert opinion’ and doubts over ‘mainstream’ media coverage have compounded this problem. We don’t seem to have the rules in place to make a fully informed and considered judgment.”
It depends on how an expert is defined. An “expert” in physics whose thesis is subject to intense peer review is different from an “expert” in journalism such as a political editor. Needless to say, it would be very naive for a reader to take the wild claims of a Murdoch editor as the unvarnished truth. I cannot agree with the idea that a person’s thinking should be subject to rules in order to make a “fully informed and considered judgement.” The fact that skepticism about the MSM reports exist should be taken as a light at the end of the tunnel. The average person can still think for himself.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
Clear and thoughtful as usual, Teow. Richard’s sentence linking the Christchurch massacre with the Washington DC 6 January rally is such lazy writing and sloppy thinking that it undoes the good work of his first few paragraphs which are as good a snapshot of the neoliberal revolution as I have seen.
Hi Jerry,
Thank you. Commentators on this journal have become a community. Although we do not always agree, I have enjoyed the discussions.
Sincerely,
TLT
Me too.
Richard Hil accurately describes the problem, and then ‘bravely’ in a Humphreyesque fashion tries to respond to it. He fails, because to do so he needs to use ‘facts’ that he believes are correct, but which will be questioned by many who read what he writes. It’s a quagmire, where wherever one looks, one is confronted by bogs, mires and unreliable earth that looks solid to stand on, but which shifts under one’s feet even as one puts a foot down.
So, I am reluctant to criticise Richard Hil for trying to bring clarity to a very murky subject, but I cannot help but conclude that his assertive statements are too assertive, and that adopting a more tentative approach might in the end be more constructive.
Re the takeover of the world by the corporations and their enablers who infest the various right-wing propaganda factories please check out the new book by Brett Christopher titled Rentier Capitalism Who Owns the Economy and Who Pays For It. It was recently reviewed in the Irish Times.
I agree with most of what Teow wrote, but taking into account that Chomsky also wrote a book titled Manufacturing Consent (which is still very applicable) can the average person who faithfully watches the “news” on TV, or reads the Corporate media really think for themselves?
Check out the excellent medialens website, the convenors of which wrote the book Propaganda Blitz How the Corporate Media Distorts Reality which is endorsed by Chomsky
Much to digest here – but I’ve just read Teow Loon Ti’s response below which gives me pause for further thought. It sounds like the start of a dialogue between you – Richard Hil and him…