Those readers who are old enough should remember the flagship news publication of the USSR, “Pravda”. One can imagine that most Soviet citizens viewed this title with a certain degree of irony. Pravda translates as Truth, and the Communist Party viewed truth as “whatever was required of the moment for people to believe”. Eventually, the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of it’s own self-induced fantasy. Too many lies told for too long resulted in a house of cards that imploded almost overnight. I think the trigger was Chernobyl, because a disaster of that magnitude couldn’t be lied about or swept under the rug. The greater openness of “glastnost” could only speed the process of collapse by laying bare the gulf between the fantasy and reality of Soviet life.
Now, we in the United States have reached our own Pravda moment. There was a time when media outlets and newspapers strove, however imperfectly, to reach an objective truth that informed the national debate. When Walter Cronkite announced the death of John Kennedy or the moon landing, he was believed. Now, our media landscape has fragmented into a series of self-contained bubbles that barely acknowledge each others’ existence, much less purvey an objective view of reality. This is true of all ends of the political spectrum: Listening to Fox News and CNBC, it is difficult to believe that both are describing the same events (and often they aren’t).
As a scientist by training and profession, I know that Truth (“Pravda”) can be hard to come by. “Another beautiful theory destroyed by ugly fact”, “The experiment too far”, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at first”. All scientists learn the hard way that Truth is elusive. In fact, “falsification”, the disproving of incorrect ideas or theories, is the only real guide for improving our knowledge of the universe and how it works. Theories are never “proven”, they only stand the test of time.
But if civilization is to survive and solve the massive problems that face the planet in the 21st century, we will somehow have to finally decide how to discern Truth, “Pravda” from self-indulgent fantasies and wishful thinking. Can we do it? Only time will tell, and we are running short of time.
I will be posting to this blog some things that I have written over the past year, mostly regarding politics, but with a nod towards truth and beauty. Beauty is not always true, but Truth must be held to be beautiful.