Our Lying Eyes

Human nature is full of vulnerabilities. One of the worst is the ease with which we can be deceived. This has been one of the most critical questions of philosophy since its inception: how can we be sure of anything that we know? Especially how is this true in a world which we know is full of change? On the subjective front, how can we be sure of anything, when we know that our senses and memory are often faulty? It is always important to recognize that just because obtaining true knowledge is difficult, it does not mean it is impossible.

Something which seems to be unique to our times, however, is the consistency with which we are encouraged not to trust what is so plainly in front of our eyes. Sometimes, in a moment of blinding truth, a person can point out “the Emperor has no clothes”, and an edifice of lies can come crashing down. There are so many examples of this. One, previously mentioned, is the obvious decline of President Joe Biden. For years, what was patently obvious to any observer was called ‘disinformation’ or right-wing extremism, but when it became too big of a lie to hide, the panic in the Democratic Establishment that ensued was palpable. Regular people have endured this gaslighting for years. Since the Pandemic especially, we have been told by the legacy media and other pundits that the economy is fine, that we must not believe the fact that our wallets are empty as the cost of living has skyrocketed. We are simply misinformed, you see.

Another clear problem with modernity is the belief that everything that is, can be measured, and that everything that is measured, is the thing itself. GDP, according to these types, is the economy as most people experience it. The unemployment rate is the health of the labor market. Good statistics and measurements can be very helpful, especially if we possess the wisdom to understand hidden trends the reasons behind the data we accumulate. Yet they can be dangerous when they are either wrong, or interpreted badly.

This is one of the reasons which I believe, in spite of Donald Trump’s braggadocio and tendency to play hard and loose with facts (like most politicians), a lot of his popularity is due to the fact that, at face value, he speaks a lot of hard truths which are obvious to ‘regular people.’ It is obvious to people that the southern border of the United States is insecure, and our immigration system is broken. It is obvious that the economy is week and wage growth is not keeping pace with costs. He tackled the problem of the decline of American manufacturing, and the decline of the so-called ‘Rustbelt’. These people, in the minds of many coastal elites, simply don’t exist. After the debate, several commentators called his assessment of American decline “apocalyptic”. Yet, for the average American, do we not feel like an empire on the wane? The truth may hurt, but it is the prerequisite for liberty. People are getting tired of being told not to believe what is right in front of them.

Much ink has been spilled over the fear of AI, and while I share some of those fears, especially regarding ‘deepfakes’ and other generated content which is designed to deceive or mislead the populace. Yet AI is merely a tool like anything else. AI, due to its power of cogitation (notice, I do not say ‘thought’, which it does not possess) can notice patterns on levels of magnitude faster than a human being, and it does this because usually it is spoonfed information by testers, or, more importantly, it takes in information from all over the internet, and then represents it. On the other hand, the AI is absolutely blind to that which is not presented to it via the internet: with great efficiency, a psychological profile can be built on us based on every click of our mouse, and every ‘like’ on a social media account. But is absolutely blind to the human inner experience. It can only ‘experience’ it by a multitude of measurements. But it cannot do so by empathy or by experience.

A very interesting, but also perilous future is ahead of us as a society, where we have become so used to being lied to by our elites, that the accumulated weight of these lies threaten to undermine the institutions which were founded long ago. Try this on for size: when Ivy-League Economists say “the economy is good”, I find this usually means it is “performing as intended”, that the interests of capital are being adequately attended to. The same thing is true in the Church, when we are told everything is great, that we are in a new springtime, when everywhere around us are hoary heads, empty Churches, and empty Seminaries. Ideology is no substitute for brute reality, but the psychological power of ideology can warp our perceptions of the real world into something which is fundamentally unreal. We desperately need to step back into the real world, to our sensed, incarnate world, or we will continue to manifest what I would call a psychotic society: one driven mad with delusion, crucial blindnessness, and an unwillingness to see beyond monomaniac, fixed ideas. Better to believing our lying eyes, than a deceitful tongue.