BLURRED LINES - WHAT'S FACT AND WHAT'S FICTION ???

My book club just read a fascinating book called The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton -- a plot driven read full of family drama, lust, divorces, and politics during the Puritan colonization of Massachusetts in the mid 1600’s. Bess Winthrop was a young English woman who married into the family of John Winthrop, the leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony company and the first Governor of Massachusetts. This intriguing historical woman, who was never mentioned in any U.S. history books I studied, lived an unbelievably colorful and tragic life during the original settlement of the U.S. And, one key reason why her life was so unbelievable was because the plot was pure, romantic fiction. The Winthrop Woman is listed under the literary genre referred to as ‘historical novels.” Such books are full of juicy dialogue and intimate details and ‘feel true,’ yet unlike true historical biographies, there are no research references and no basis in fact. An “historical novel” is somewhat of an oxymoron. Most of my fellow bookaroos found themselves discussing the story as if it were recorded history, while forgetting that the only thing ‘historical’ about it was the period setting and many of the named politicians of the day. It has been found that people instinctively accept information to which they are exposed, instead of critically seeking evidence in order to resist believing falsehoods.

The obvious problem emerging from such books is that fact and fiction co-mingle and the lines get blurred. The same can be said about Wikipedia online. Students are using Wikipedia as a primary source and truly believe the content represents scholarly research. It does not. Wikipedia entries are merely compilations of disparate people’s subjective submissions of information as ‘facts’ about any given subject. And, there is no ‘Gatekeeper in the Cloud’ monitoring Wikipedia for factualness and automatically deleting erroneous information. Although the World Book still exists as an encyclopedia of scholarly documented facts, the user must pay online to reference their content; in other words, World Book type information doesn’t pop up on a Google Search. Your brain must work harder, in order to reach the truth. This new interactive ability for the public to tweak facts online could potentially impact recorded history. Will the Library of Congress institute a division devoted to keeping the online record straight for posterity? How can we make responsible decisions in the future without an accurate chronicle of the past?

Who will be the arbiter for drawing the line between what is true and what is false online or in the media? Our society receives daily doses of exaggeration to keep the public stimulated. The truth seems to be of secondary importance, when it pays to be outrageous. Recently, the Washington Post introduced a new section called “Fact Checker” which reviews political candidates’ rhetoric weekly in order to clarify facts from falsehoods. Over 100 such sites exist online today, documenting what is now called ‘post-truths.’ Unfortunately, like retractions on back pages of newspapers, few people bother to read such sections or seem to care about the truth. Falsehoods are spread with alarming speed over the internet and immediately appear as reality. What ‘feels true’ has become more important than the actual evidence. Internet users seek online communities which reinforce their existing beliefs and prejudices, and social media follows up by sending more like-minded, cherry picked content and shutting out any contradictory information. Many people today ditch the truth, due to a lack of trust in expert opinions. The internet loop of myths, misinformation, lies, falsehoods, and creative reality gets replayed and reinforced until it simply ‘feels like the truth.” Evidence, documentation and scholarship appear to have become irrelevant.

So, what is the big deal? The world is being bombarded with information, much of which is erroneous. Fact is not based on feelings; it is based on documented evidence. But the world wants to be quickly stimulated, not bored by academic data. Having one’s beliefs reinforced, even when being totally misinformed, ‘feels’ better than having them refuted. Recent studies have demonstrated that even when shown the truth, the majority of people will hold on to believing the falsehood if it aligns with their philosophy. Many countries today rely on this character defect by hiring thousands of internet trolls to deliberately send out misinformation in order to influence public perceptions. In the old days, this was called ‘propaganda,’ which has the ability to sway huge sectors of society who are too distracted by their own agendas to recognize that they are being manipulated.