Post-Truth Culture

 

A recent article suggests the term, “post truth”, as a description of today’s culture. Its point is not that truth no longer exists, but that it has grown irrelevant. There is a general apathy about truth. It has succumbed to a constant wash of opinion.

By the 19^th century the Enlightenment had authenticated scientific inquiry. Some authorities in the church saw science as a threat to their power, which they sustained in large measure by keeping the common people illiterate and pliable. Free thinking might lead to questions of their authority, so a vigorous science-versus-the-Bible dogma emerged.

Part of the backlash against enlightenment thinking was manifest in the Second Great Awakening, a neo-Calvin/neo-Puritan movement. Unlike the First Great Awakening's focus on predestination, the Second Great Awakening was a quasi-enlightenment movement that emphasized free will and individual responsibility for salvation; nevertheless, the dichotomy was reinforced and science and the Bible were held mutually exclusive.

The general mistrust of science and education is caricatured in the infamous Scopes “Monkey Trial” in 1925, and American culture has become increasingly divided—and increasingly belligerent and intolerant—ever since. Americans are divided at virtually every level: political, religious, moral/ethical, economic, etc.

The post-WWII cold war reaction to and fear of Communism saw the emergence of McCarthyism with its fear and mistrust of government and a consequent rise of conspiracy politics that continues to be a thorn in the side of American rational thinking.

This legacy of division and suspicion settled into the national psyche, shaping the way generations approached not only politics and religion but even knowledge itself. The American narrative, ever restless, began to tilt further toward personalization of truth—opinion as the ultimate currency. Facts became valid only to the degree that they confirmed already held convictions. The lines between objective reality and subjective conviction grew ever more porous.

In this climate, education, once prized for its role in fostering critical inquiry and expanding horizons, began to fracture along ideological lines. Charter schools and vouchers were introduced as ways of legislatively reinforcing partisan and sectarian ideologies and eliminating all opposition.

The result has been a steadily deepening divide between groups who once might have found common ground in shared civic or intellectual pursuits. Mass media—especially the rise of cable news and social media platforms—has amplified these fractures, allowing echo chambers to flourish and ideological isolation to become normalized.

Nuance is lost when algorithms reward outrage and reward conformity to tribe over dialogue with the “other.” What was once a conversation about the best means to achieve the common good has shifted to a contest of competing narratives, often indifferent to verifiable evidence.

As the boundaries between education, belief, and politics blurred, a new kind of skepticism emerged—not the healthy, Socratic skepticism that prompts genuine inquiry, but a blanket suspicion toward any source outside one's accepted circle. The mistrust of expertise and the exaltation of gut feeling over reason has fed a growing tendency to treat knowledge as a matter of allegiance rather than investigation. This is nowhere more evident than in national debates on issues ranging from science curriculum to public health, where consensus has been replaced by perpetual argument.

In such a landscape, the search for truth becomes fraught—less an objective pursuit, more an exercise in self-confirmation. The fragmentation of authority and the proliferation of misinformation have rendered “truth” a contested territory, with facts themselves often subject to negotiation.

That’s the way I see it through the “Flawed Glass” that is my world view

Together in the Walk,

Jim