The birth of the English essay, they say, occurred rather inconspicuously in the coffee houses of eighteenth-century London. Frequented by a large number of writers, doctors, politicians and merchants, issues of the day and novel ideas were discussed, creating a cauldron for intellectual debate.
Fast forward two centuries, and we have T.S. Eliot publishing his essay On Tradition and Individual Talent in 1921 which caused a stir with its call for literary depersonalisation, essentially resulting in the symbolic Death of the Author.
In these times, we have witnessed the Death of the Fact, and there hadn't been any Eliot to introduce the concept to us; it was simply shoved down our throats by our constantly evolving species and patient but overbearing Grandmother Time.We're still reeling from this realisation- that hitherto 'infallible' digital media has developed a certain kind of dubiety; that our news may not really be factual; we aren't sure if our policy decisions are just based on appeals to emotion, or concrete data and fact-based logic.Our history textbooks are suddenly sketchy, the image of the party that we support just turned strangely ambiguous.
But I digress. The burning issue at hand is not the debate over whether or not we live in a post-truth world; whether we gradually trickled into this predicament or plunged headfirst into it, or which political wing is right.
The question we should be asking is: Where do we go from here? We've always had our doomsayers and fatalists with their refrain of catastrophe and we've always had our hotheaded brave-hearts unthinkingly hailing movements, but we also have the ones who stay rational and detached and explore these changes to see where they may lead. One cannot halt the march of history, after all.
On a personal note, I see one hell of an opportunity in this dissonance that we're going through.
But first, why did I mention the Coffee Houses?
Because those coffee houses serve as a concept for our age. As open spaces for debate, expression and an exchange of ideas- as well as an incubation chamber for new ones- they pushed into society new ways of thinking, a civil, respectful approach toward debate and probable disagreement, a healthy attitude to change and an openness to consider a different perspective.
This is crucial for us now more than ever. And this post-fact environment, I believe, will provide the right momentum for all of it.
Firstly, since we are exposed to a host of opinions, it would push one to reconsider long-held, sacrosanct personal ideals and adopt a new, different perspective. The demolishing, or challenging, of a paradigm is the first step to learning, or cementing, an opinion respectively.
Secondly, on an important philosophical front, the zeitgeist will push us to delve into what exactly the concept of a 'fact' really is, and whether such a concept truly exists. Is truth objective in every context? Can there really exist- with all human infallibility- a sole, accurate account of an incident or event in the past? Can fact exist without emotional appeal? We would have to consider all these dilemmas before we can realign ourselves with our current existence.
A third aspect- and the one that seems most pressing- is the awareness of the ambiguity of historical fact. Historiography, the study of the history of History itself- of how events were recorded and by whom- will need to be emphasised upon just to reveal to everyone how the historical fact died a natural death centuries ago: history was always written by the victor and exaggerated or euphemised where found convenient. Our post-fact world didn't have much of a 'fact' to it in the fist place.
An acceptance and a willingness to work toward the best possible future is the way we should be headed.
It also doesn't hurt to have a coffee every now and again along the way, either, while brewing ideas.
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