Dare to Know: Is It Life or Death?
By Mohamed Abdulaziz
He swears three times that the leader of the Rapid Support Forces is dead and that the video in which Hemeti appeared after months of fighting is fabricated. He supports his account with a call from a colleague who claims that his relative is shown in the video and was declared dead weeks before the video was released. He then continues with a story about doctors who were urgently summoned in April, just days after the fighting, to confirm the impossibility of his survival, after which he was buried in East Nile. He extends his phone to play an audio clip of people speaking in Libyan dialect about Hemeti suffering a fatal injury, followed by another video of someone claiming to be Hemetis uncle announcing his death.
In such discussions, professional expertise and logical arguments are futile, as we live in a post-truth era, witnessing a digital deluge that creates intense confusion in both individual and collective minds, making it difficult to discern the truth. Alternative facts replace actual facts, and emotions carry more weight than evidence.
This is primarily due to the significant changes in the production and consumption of news, with social media taking center stage in news production over newspapers, radio, and television.
The human brain is adaptable and can be shaped through a range of procedures associated with digital media. When recipients relied on oral communication as a medium, their mental qualities were entirely different from today. The environment and adaptability were also different. Traditional media had a sensory homogeneity, unlike the post-modern technological era, where virtual homogeneity occurs, leaving the recipient in a state of isolation and confusion, unsure if what they experience is authentic or illusory and if what they read is true or misleading.
Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield describes how our minds adapt sensorially, and its cells are rearranged in new ways, expanding some and evolving others, according to what the media needs in terms of senses and capabilities for humans.
Thus emerged the concept of post-truth, wherein facts have less impact on public opinion than imprecise claims that focus on personal beliefs and biases. In other words, emotions and individuals feelings become decisive in assessing information, rather than actual events.
The spread of the term post-truth started after Oxford Dictionaries chose it as the word of the year in 2016, an annual tradition in which the dictionary selects the most influential and popular word in public discourse.
Oxford also published the definition of the term as: Circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.
The terms origin can be traced back to the book Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World by Ralph Keyes, published in 2004, intending to blur the boundaries between truth, lies, and imagination and the dominance of relativity and ambiguity in political interactions.
This state is measurable and can be observed experimentally (within a specific historical period). It can be verified by the general concern about the truth and the legitimacy of its narrative publicly. A prime example of this is the current situation in Sudan.
In any case, it can be said that the truth is meant to be sought, not received from unknown sources. Here, we can draw inspiration from the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which promoted the motto Dare to Know, inspired by Greek philosophy. It requires mental and emotional readiness to seek the truth, regardless of its harshness and its contradiction with our desires.
Therefore, embracing the principles of doubt and possessing the ability to analyze and think critically while receiving information and facts presented in the digital environment, not believing what is shown until it is sifted and compared with other sources, along with some technical knowledge, has become a necessity in the post-truth era.
