*thanks to Jahsonic for the heads up; it’s news to me. see his site: “Truth“*
Jean Baudrillard, 1929-2007 (obituary at Guardian); Remember Baudrillard (profile at InsideHigherEd.com)
“Yes, hyper-scepticism. Intellectuals must stop legitimizing the notion that there is some “ultimate truth” behind appearances. Then, maybe, the masses will turn their backs on the media and public opinion management will collapse.” –Baudrillard
We tell one another false storie, in order to get away with stuff, in order to manipulate others, in order to get something we don’t rightly believe … lots of reasons.
“Truth”, quite aside from what the great powers will tell you, is based on the stories we tell one another. Truth is what we say it is.
Yes of course rocks are hard, not soft … and cielings are up, not down … those are matters of fact. But the truths we care about … those are the product of us as people, living our lives, truth is what we make of our experiences.
There’s lots of falseness around and that will always be, until we cleanse ourselves entirely of pathology, which ain’t likely. But I suspect that what poxes us more gravely is a shortage a mere simple truth. And that’s up to us.