Veracity

by Douglas E. Richards

“Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate paths. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. You have to admit things—for example, about the sources of your own power—that will anger allies, dishearten followers, or undermine social harmony. “The most powerful scholarly establishments—whether Christian priests, Confucian mandarins, or Communist ideologues—placed unity above truth. That’s why they were so powerful. As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it—and even when we try to understand it, we usually do so in the hope that understanding the world will make it easier to control. “Therefore, if you dream of a society in which truth reigns supreme and myths are ignored, you have little to expect from Homo sapiens.” —Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century