Truth & Lies
Hannah Arendt says lying aids the powerful and leads to public cynicism. She warned that lying by leaders undermines democracy. Truth is an uncontestable fact. Lies are not. Calling things you don’t like a hoax makes it difficult for citizens to cut through the lies, particularly when there is no evidence to support them. To deceive people, lies are wrapped in flags and slogans. In Orwell’s 1984, the main character Winston Smith writes, “Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 + 2 = 4. If that is granted, all else follows.” But Big Brother and the Party have other ideas. They force citizens, through torture and propaganda, to accept that 2 + 2 = 5. Truth is whatever the Party says it is. No, it’s not. The truth matters.
Speaker
Marci Shore
Marci Shore is an award-winning scholar. She is a Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Her articles and essays appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Yale Review, and other newspapers and magazines. She is the author of Caviar and Ashes, The Ukrainian Night, and The Taste of Ashes.
Steven Monrad –
Excellent! Required reading.
Suzanne Phillips –
Very intetesting and informative.
Thought-provoking. I intend to follow up by procuring a CD of this lecture, as well as reading some of the authors she discusses.
Lisanicole Sarkisian –
Yes! thank you!
I am a retired American military officer. I have a degree in Russian and Eastern European history. And I served in the Peace Corps in Macedonia, and am an Armenian. The Power of the Powerless has been so important for me for so long. And America is so ignorant. As soon as I watched Trump do his bs, I knew he was a putinite. who’s is a stalinite, it’s SO Russian! And the slave labor camps trump is creating! right out of Solzhenitzyn. I’m so glad to hear someone who really understands and speaks to it!
Thanks and Blessings!