Post-Truth is, Not True - Truly-ruly!

‘Post-truth’ (along with 'alt-facts') is an oxymoron. There, I've said it. And we are at risk of being gaslighted into believing these terms mean something.

Time for one of my explicit, grizzly home truth exposés. Sorry in advance to the faint of heart and stomach, however I believe it is worth the telling due to its clear depiction of the post-truth phenomenon that is enveloping us in its distasteful embrace... When I was a late adolescent transitioning to being a young man I had an unfortunate and enlightening, if mortifying, sexual encounter (I warned you). At that time a voluptuous young woman had taken a shine to me, and being flattered to be desired by an attractive, buxom, young woman, I was happy to go along for the ride. I had long moved out of home into a share house with another couple and a single woman. The couple and single woman were in the lounge area chatting or whatever and my young woman friend and I were in my bedroom not far away. I was happily being romanced by a rather confident and clear minded femme-fatale and to quote Paul Kelly, "she knew what she wanted." (Well, up to a point. I think what she wanted was to have a sexual encounter with a young man able to satisfy and take her to realms of ecstasy and bliss. I think what she thought she wanted, was me, or more simply, a root.) And what she got was a fairly inexperienced and highly excitable me. Poor her. Anyway, as I tentatively, over tensely, lowered my body to her own luscious, mysterious and oh so desired hinterland, my highly sensitive, over excited, under-disciplined adolescent-hood, touched something - a hair, the sheet; perhaps, again to quote Paul Kelly, she was attempting "to guide with her hand" - and just short of the desired destination, the load was offloaded, the toys were ejected from the pram with gusto, to put it simply, I ejaculated short of the mark. This point was not lost on her. In fact it lay there, quite obvious on her lower abdomen. "Ohhh!-yoo've-shot-yer-bolt!! she hissed, as she reciprocally ejaculated her disdain, not a little disappointment, and abundant derision in my general direction - who could blame her?. In that eternal moment, I was intellectually stunned like a calf at the slaughterhouse prior to the killing blow. The only last words I could muster, as all dignity and all self worth abandoned ship were, "No I Didn’t!!!!" (a reflex known all too well to all boys (child or adolescent), the automatic defence of the indefensible. Often combined with, ‘I wasn’t even there!’) Now, was this a lie? Not at all, despite all the evidence, now being angrily rubbed away with the pre-prepared tissues. A lie is the result of a decision to tell an untruth. However, what I said, obviously wasn’t true. My mind, overwhelmed by what was actually true in that moment, could not believe what was true, lest it wither and dissipate into humiliating nothingness within the next nanosecond. Rather, it deftly disappeared that which was true and came up with its own truth. And, as truth, the now-held distorted reality that my mind wanted to believe, and so, did - honestly - was that there was a strange feeling in my belly. "Hmm", it quietly wondered to itself, "I wonder, what that could be?" By now she had dressed and stormed out, still ejaculating exhortations for me to grow up, and expounding on what a hopeless case I was, as I hopelessly stayed in my little room until I died of shame and then, having nothing left to lose, wondered out looking for some dignity. Fortunately my friends were all good friends and said no more and I have almost regained my dignity. So, what's all this got to do with post-truth. Let me explain as best I can. The 'post' hints at something that comes after truth (e.g. post operative) or development beyond truth (e.g. post modern). Truth can be seen as a person's or community's, genuinely held belief at any given time and can be absolutely untrue. Pre 1492 when someone told you that the world was flat they were telling the truth, their truth. It was not however, true. If they could have stood far enough above the land they would have seen very clearly that, "Oh, my goodness Penelope, it's round." And then their newly informed truth would have aligned with what was true all along. For a long time, the truth for most people about cancer and dreaded skin diseases, (even death, its inevitable self) were that they were the results of some form of evil skulduggery or divine retribution. From a new perspective we now see that was not true, even if, for thousands of generations it was the truth. To put it simply; true is externally testable and can be validated - true is objective. Truth on the other hand exists in a person's mind and is informed and indeed, formed from individual, internal experience, beliefs and feelings - truth is subjective. A little jump here, just hang in. For children, life is as they experience it. They are unable to competently collect the facts (those things that exist and are verifiable), then competently weigh them up and come up with a testable outcome. The child's truth is simply supposition that takes on the emotional designation of truth. Post-truth, built on alt-facts, is the intellectual currency of the child or adolescent. Their feeling is a real feeling and feels like what is true, however it may not be aligned with what is true. E.g. as a child, when mum doesn't let me have more sugary drink, I feel/believe she hates me - as an adolescent when I'm not allowed to go out 'till three in the morning, I feel/believe my parents just want to stop me having fun. As the child or the adolescent, these ideas are the truth. However they are not true. What is true is that their parents, in both cases, love them deeply and only desire what is best for them. Their childlike (all feeling) post-truth 'they hate me' is based on the (incompetently created) alt-fact 'they don't want me to have fun'. These are actually pre-true. They do not yet have the ability to maturely understand the other's perspective and so have no access in awareness, to the love they are being offered. Now to jump back. In the political system we now find ourselves immersed in, we are being flooded with childish responses to adult problems, offered as post-truth based on alt-facts which are other words for magical thinking. Magical thinking is the level of thinking of a very young human. It is known as such, not because it speaks of unicorns and rainbows, rather because it believes that whatever it thinks actually is how reality is. When the US president argues that the images of the '09 and '17 inaugurations are 'shopped', he is telling us his truth. He has not yet developed a mature awareness of the facts nor the mature strength to admit them when those facts say something difficult about himself. (There is no difference between my personal "No, I didn't." above and the POTUS’, ‘My inauguration was bigger than his inauguration! So there, and I'm the POTUS, so you can't argue with me! Hurumph!!’) It is easier for us to believe (because we desperately need to) that he must be mature, that his coterie also, must be mature and that they have some idea of some actual plan. (This is our alt-fact based post truth.) THEY DON'T. While they inhabit adult bodies, they are children who have been given the keys to the candy-store. To put it another way: these are foxes in the hen-house. Have you ever seen the result of a fox getting into a hen-house? It flies in the face of the idea that animals know what they are doing, that they only kill for food. When a fox has been in there, you find half eaten hens, you find mauled-rather-than-eaten hens; it is all feathers, blood and mayhem and lots and lots of needless death. The confusion of the noise and feathers sends the fox into a frenzy and it lashes out in terror at anything near it. It's all stress hormones, teeth and beaks. Welcome to the hen/white house 2017. We trust, at our peril, that the alt-facts/post truth pedlars are adults who actually know what they are doing, even if we don't like it. Don't be tricked into thinking they are simply ‘evil’ or greedy and nasty. It's much worse - they are profoundly incompetent.