What about their future?
[This post supplements Chapter 12] I am greatly apprehensive (alarmed is really the better word) about the future that lies ahead for these, my great grandchildren and all young people. I am acutely aware of the long and deep shadow that lies across the path that they will walk in the years ahead.
It is the shadow cast by the undeniable likelihood that they will have to navigate the most threatening and challenging decades that our species has ever confronted.
Speaking of archaic as well as modern humans, Julian Cribb, author of How to Fix a Broken Planet: Advice for Surviving the 21st Century), goes so far as to say:
We humans are facing the greatest emergency of our entire million-year existence.
Sounding the same alarm, the team of Nobel Laureates and other eminent scientists responsible for maintaining the Doomsday Clock, recently moved its hands to 89 seconds to midnight, the narrowest the interval has ever been. It may be significant that they did this soon after the inauguration of Donald Trump.
The Clock is a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to global catastrophe caused by man-made technologies. The scientists had this to say about the move:
Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.
When the Clock was created in 1945, the looming catastrophe was nuclear war. This remains one of the top threats to the survival of humanity. But the move by the scientists is prompted by other threats, the foremost being global warming and its consequences, such as the rising incidence of extreme weather events, rapid loss of arable land, shrinking freshwater reserves, sea-level rise and the increasing risk of vector borne diseases.
The scientists have also included the escalating spread of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories in their list of existential threats. They point out that the increasing blurring of the line between truth and falsehood is increasing the potency of the other threats to humanity. Clearly, if we are to address these other threats adequately, we must push back hard against the truth killers in our societies.
In the minds of many, in fact, the compromised information landscape currently poses the greatest threat to humanity. For the second year running, the Global Risks Survey 2024-25 conducted by the World Economic Forum of 900 experts worldwide has identified disinformation as the primary risk facing humanity. According to the survey disinformation and misinformation are now deemed more dangerous, in the short run (next two years), than violent climate events, wars and societal disintegration.
It is easy to be despairing about what lies ahead for the younger generation and to feel powerless to do anything about it. But doing nothing is not an option, even for people, like me, who ‘won’t be here’ to experience humanity’s day of reckoning or the looming disasters heralding it. The consequences of what I do or don’t do now will endure beyond my departure. This is true for every one of us.
I am finding it impossible to look at my three great grandkids and not ask what more can I do to help change the prospects of their world from bleak to bright?
It’s not that I have been doing nothing to date. As an environmental activist, I wrote my book, Connect with Nature: One of the Best Things You Can Do for Yourself, Others and Planet Earth, with climate change and the disastrous loss of biodiversity very much in mind. Along with practical suggestions for environmental action, the book argues that by coming to ‘know’ nature more personally and intimately, people will develop the values and emotional drivers needed to sustain environmental activism. It advances the idea that having valid beliefs about nature is an essential basis of effective and sustained pro-environment behaviour.
As I explained in a previous post (The good and the bad of our storytelling brains), all conscious human behaviour is shaped by beliefs, most of which are based on information, both true and false, factual and otherwise. That is why controlling information or ‘controlling the narrative’ is a primary and immensely powerful weapon in the arsenal of autocrats, power seekers, political idealogues, fanatics and influencers – all of whom understand that the quickest way to control a population is to control their information sources.
A war on truth is underway as Lee McIntyre says in his seminal book, On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy. He shows that disinformation is not accidental, but deliberate. It is a calculated and strategic attack on truth. It is a war that scientists and all defenders of truth must win because post-truth is pre-fascism, as Holocaust historian, Timothy Snyder, says.
It is rare for me to read a book in a single day, but I managed this easily with On Disinformation. I found it an extraordinarily enlightening, empowering and encouraging read. If there is a must-read book for anyone seeking to come to grips with the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, this is the one.
In a war, it is imperative to know the enemy and their plans. On Disinformation provides this essential intelligence. It spells out in revealing and chilling detail the objectives and strategies of the truth killers. While the examples given in the book are drawn mainly from the United States, I see the same denial of reality and truth corruption in societies across the globe – in the Middle East, South-east Asia, China, Europe, Russia and my own. I take some comfort from the fact that in Australia, a movement to ‘do politics differently’ (read more truthfully, inclusively and democratically) is fast gaining momentum.
Lee McIntyre is refreshingly willing to tell it like it is:
That’s the point of disinformation. If you can’t hide or destroy the truth, surround it with bullshit. You can always kill it later.
The post-truth playbook goes like this: attack the truth tellers, lie about anything and everything, manufacture disinformation, encourage distrust and polarization, create confusion and cynicism, then claim that the truth is available only from the leader himself.
Ring a bell? Do you recognise in this account the tactics of the tobacco, fossil fuel and chemical industries as well as autocrats, power-obsessed politicians and unethical journalists?
A great strength of On Disinformation is the practical guidance it provides for anyone wanting to help win the war on truth. The following is merely a snapshot of what is on offer. To be really empowered, read the book.
- Accept that there is a war.
- Confront the liars by telling the truth loudly and repeatedly regardless of how feelings might be hurt.
- Heed the message from history that truth tellers and the truth are threats to deceivers and deniers.
- Resist being polarized and the temptation to totally distrust and demonise the other side.
- Recognize that believers are in a sense victims – the ‘zombie foot soldiers of the creators of disinformation and that the latter are trying to deceive you into giving up on the believers.
- Tune out the bullshit – including the stories of conflict, failure and chaos being fed to us by ‘reputable’ media and the line that media have to present both sides of the story (stop feeding the ‘both sides beast’ that gives airtime to bullshit).
- Stop looking for facile solutions to what is a very difficult problem. The solution is not just good information but stopping the amplification of bullshit
- Don’t do business with organizations that are aiding and abetting disinformation; get off X and Facebook.
- Engage in political activism to get governments to regulate social media.
- Take solace that there are many out there engaged in the battle; you are not alone. Reach out to them. There are more allies of science, truth and reality than on the other side.
- Continue to learn more about reality denial and its threat to democracy– what it is, how it works in you and others (For more on this see my previous post, “I could be wrong” and “I don’t know”).
I really like Lee McIntyre’s call to action:
The truth does not die when liars take power but when truth tellers stop defending it.
So, let’s expose and name the truth killers. Reveal their tactics and their financial ties and wake up as many of their believers as we can. Boycott the social media companies and anyone else who is enabling them to carry out their dirty mission. Complain to your local cable operator.
We have been born into an age in which science and reason—indeed truth and reality itself—once again need defending. Embrace that. Don’t give in to despair. There is something you can do today to fight back against the truth killers.
I am reading On Disinformation in conjunction with another exceptional book, Julian Cribb’s How to Fix a Broken Planet: Advice for Surviving the 21st Century. Cribb’s book addresses the other existential ‘mega-crises’ facing humanity, including nuclear conflagration, global warming and out of control technologies. I plan to have more to say about How to Fix a Broken Planet in my next post.
WRITTEN BY
