Away from home, I am referring to
Revolt In 2100 without access to a copy. Once a year, at the Miracle of the Incarnation, the First Prophet, Nehemiah Scudder, returns from heaven in the body of the reigning Prophet and addresses the Angels of the Lord on national television, including TV sets before congregations in churches. The Voice of God broadcasting station at New Jerusalem fakes the transformation of the face and voice of the current Prophet into those of Scudder. As a first step in the Second American Revolution, the revolutionary Cabal captures the broadcasting station and fakes Scudder calling on congregations to rise and overthrow the current corrupt regime.
In Poul Anderson's
Harvest Of Stars,
35, download Guthrie records a broadcast but Rinndalir has it edited and revised so Guthrie is seen and heard to call on his company, Fireball, to aid the Chaotics if they now rise against the Avantist government of North America. Perfidious Selenarchs! An Avantist-reprogrammed Guthrie has been running Fireball and now a fake Guthrie incites rebellion.
Fake news everywhere: where is truth to be found?
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to disagree with Heinlein somewhat in his treatment of evangelical Protestantism in REVOLT IN 2100. I don't believe tyranny in the US will take the form of some kind of Protestant theocracy. Christianity is also poor ground for theocracy. Alexis de Tocqueville, in DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, was shrewder and more far-sighted. His view was that despotism in was far more likely to take form as a clumsily well meaning, but increasingly heavy handed, oppressive, and centralized bureaucratic state. And that is exactly the pattern we have been seeing in the US since at least the election of Franlin Roosevelt in 1932. A centralization of power in the state which has been the goal of the Democrat Party since then. And another reason, among many, why I reject that party.
Sean
As Foucault put it, paraphrasing Nietzche, "a claim to truth is a claim to power" -- a demand for submission.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
But what complicates matters these days is that many people deny there is any such thing as objective truth. Which is circular reasoning and self contradictory. Because if the only thing that is true is nothing being true, then how can the denial of truth being real also be true?
A variant has been the proposition held by many that there is no such thing as a true or false opinion. That is, my opinion that two plus two is five as equally true as true as 2 plus 2 equaling 4. People who think like this also deny that my opinion that Adolf Hitler was a wise, noble, good, and saintly man is false. Madness, absurd of course!
Sean
Nietzche's point was that humans don't have facts, they have -interpretations- of facts... and that once you realize this, it becomes very difficult to reacquire the "naive" belief in Truth.
There's an obvious Biblical reference for this: Pontius Pilate's remark -- "What is truth?"
To Pilate, a man schooled in Greek philosophy, this is a wryly ironic comment on the difficulties of his position, and the ultimate futility of the question.
To his non-Hellenized Jewish listeners, it's either incomprehensible or a diabolic assault on their faith.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I actually did have Pilate's wry or sardonic question in the back of my mind as I wrote the comment immediately above. But I don't agree with Pilate or with those wh deny truth can be objective. Their attitude was not merely incomprehensible but also sheerly illogical. Pilate had met Truth literally Incarnate and truths are independent of us or our wishes.
Sean
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