(Excerpt from Mindf*ck Monday #47: The endless pursuit of truth by Mark Manson)
I attended a talk (on Zoom) a few months ago given by a former official from the US State Department and he said something that kind of blew my mind and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since:
“The strategic challenge for every nation in the 21st century is the ability of its people to determine fact from fiction.”
He went on to explain that much of the “cold war” style tactics used by the US, Russia, China, and others, is not about overt displays of military power. It’s more about introducing information that disrupts the cultural status quo in each others’ societies. This is done to generate internal instability and political parties within each country have begun to do this as a means for power as well.
As a result, I think the 21st-century version of the horseshoe theory could become slightly different from previous eras. Whereas in generations past, the difference between extremists and moderates was the willingness to compromise, today there is a new polarization between those who doggedly pursue facts over fiction regardless of the political implications of those facts and those who only adhere to narratives that fit their political interests, regardless of whether they are true or not.
To put it another way, in the 20th century, Radical Bob and Moderate Jane were exposed to the same information—they watched the same news channels, read the same articles, and believed the same facts. Radical Bob was simply unwilling to compromise on his interpretation of the facts whereas Moderate Jane was.
Today, Radical Bob and Moderate Jane don’t even consume the same information. Radical Bob has limited himself to a steady diet of narratives that reinforce his prior convictions and bolster his political aims. Moderate Jane spends most of her time wading through piles of bullshit to hopefully find something that seems reliable and true.
Each exists in their own world, oblivious to the narratives that define the others’ world. Compromise becomes impossible not just because of Radical Bob’s entrenchment, but because there is no common ground on which to disagree on in the first place.