In the
previous two posts we reviewed Lovecraft’s use of conventional techniques to
create verisimilitude in his stories. In
particular, “The Whisperer in Darkness” and “The Call of Cthulhu were
examined. Lovecraft’s intent—his communicative
intent—was to instill in his reader an ever increasing level of anxiety,
paranoia and horror. This is likely a very
common purpose among creators of horror entertainment. But perhaps Lovecraft was also attempting to
persuade his readers to adopt or at least seriously consider his cosmicist
world view. But do we in fact “live on a
placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity”? Is Lovecraft’s view of reality true?
The
techniques used in fiction to establish believability are essentially the same
as those used by journalists, politicians, corporate leaders, institutions,
scientists, bureaucrats and pretty much anyone else vested with the power to
disseminate official information.
Insofar as literature conveys the truth about the human condition—while media
outlets are permeated with “fake news”—is it still necessary to distinguish
between the two? For example, can the
reports of the mainstream media be considered a form of electronic pulp
fiction, infotainment intended for quick and unreflective consumption, but also
having an intent?
With
all that, is it possible to feel comfortable with the growing realization that
we are now in a “post-fact” world, that our new found realities can contain “alternative
facts”*? It is a sensibility that is
congenial to your humble blogger’s religiosity and enthusiasm for horror—which is
all of a piece, cognitively speaking. In
my view, which may be less and less in the minority, “the facts” and
objectivity in general, are vastly over-rated.
Even if we could agree on what the facts are, we would only select from
among them the ones that support our world view or ideology, and discard the
ones that do not. This is because reason serves belief, as Thomas Aquinas
noted centuries ago, and not the other way around. Some facts are better and more useful than
others; some are no good at all.
A fact
requires consensus—we all have to agree that it’s true—and a consent—we have to be willing to submit
to some authority that ratifies the accuracy or truth of the fact. Thus using a
fact is an appeal to authority or serves to establish an authority on some
matter. Whoever has all the facts, has
the last word in some dispute. This seems
true of objectivity in general: that it is called upon by some presumed
authority or expert to shore up what is essentially a political decision.
Of
course, no one has all the facts, not even the fact-checkers—and who checks them?
So it is relatively easy among humankind in more tumultuous times to withdraw consent, ruin the consensus,
and so unravel objectivity and along with it, authority. We have all the facts we need. All that remains is to select from among them
the ones that serve our beliefs about the world and the people in it. Thus facts and objectivity, frail invalids at
best, even during periods of “Enlightenment”, can fall sloppy dead when
deprived of consensus and consent, and with them authority and reality itself. Indeed,
our reality is formed through the consent of the governed. But the anxious insistence on facts and
objectivity appears to be mostly preposterous monkey-business, to me at least.
It
seems that the challenge in our society right now is how to interact with
others whose frame of reference, version of reality, and preferred set of facts
is completely different from one’s own.
Culturally speaking we may be moving away from an era of relative
rationality and so-called Enlightenment thinking and back into the Romantic
sensibility of the 18th and 19th centuries—a kind of
cycling back to more emotional and subjective ways of experiencing the world. Readers may suspect that this writer leans
toward the latter mode. It seems more genuine
to me. And it may be that approximately half
of this nation also leans in this direction, or will soon.
There are
admittedly some hazards in this: The
Romantic period was a time of intensive cultural development, but also of
horrendous violence. It is hard not to
see the potential for these upheavals, driven by passion and ideology, in
contemporary events. Calexit?
Even for
the more objective among us there are problems with idolizing data while ignoring
the need to re-evaluate the assumptions, emotions and beliefs that drive their
collection. Bret Stephens, in his now
infamous editorial, (“Climate of Complete Certainty”, New York Times, 4/29/17) rightly pointed out how the presumed
authority of facts can lead to certitude, and then a dangerous hubris. This presumed authority of facts also
contributes to the arrogance, inflexibility and lack of imagination displayed
in the ideologies of both the right and left.
Stephens
was discussing attitudes about climate change research, but a similar dynamic
can be seen at Berkeley—now the “graveyard of the first amendment”—and in the
worldwide reaction to the evil encroachments of globalism. It can also be seen in the earnest but totalitarian-creepy
removal of Confederate flags and statuary from southern state capitols: as if the
removal of words, emblems, idols —and hence memory—will
magically prevent the re-emergence of the ideas that produced them. There is certainly an element of magic and
conjuration in how we handle the facts, how we hide or display evidence.
At this
juncture it is impossible not to recall the opening words of H.P. Lovecraft’s apocalyptic
prose poem, “Nyarlathotep” (1920):
I
do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. [Possibly November 2016—edit.] The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval
was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a
danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in
the most terrible phantasms of the night.
Readers
familiar with this short work know that the author goes on to depict the violent
end of society and the world, at least as we have come to understand it. A new set of facts, a new reality is imposed
by the arrival of a conquering authority:
“Nyarlathotep…the crawling chaos…I am the last…I will tell the audient
void…”
Words
to live by!
The
violence we see on American campuses, and in political discourse around the
world right now reflects this attempt by one side or another to control the
debate, cull the facts, and so control a
reality, or protect one, or create a new one.
What the debates about free speech on campus, and objectivity in the
media are really about is who has authority to select preferred facts and
create a preferred reality. It is reality, or some group’s version of it,
that is ultimately at stake. Hence the
violent reaction.
In my
view, it would be more productive to dispense with concern for accuracy or
factuality or objectivity and focus on intent. Not whether some item is truthful, but rather
what purpose is served by its mention.
Why is certain information, whether true, false, complete, incomplete—it
does not matter—provided in a particular context? What purpose does it serve? Whose
interest does it serve? My inner Machiavelli
does not want to know the truth—how quaint:
as when Pontius Pilate cynically asks “What is Truth?”—but rather how
effectively the intent was served. Thus
truth, whatever that is, is what is
most useful to believe.
We have
seen how H.P. Lovecraft and others have used verisimilitude, suspension of disbelief,
and cognitive estrangement to substantiate and give form to the nightmares they
create for their readers. Despite the
frenzied re-construction of national boundaries around the world, (among them “the
Wall” on our southern border), the lines that divide objectivity from subjectivity,
fact from fiction, and true from false are dissolving rapidly, inextricably mixing
elements of each.
Why shouldn’t
all sources of “official” information use the same tools horror writers do when
they persuade us to believe in outlandish terrors? Aren’t we already using them to create
social, economic and political horrors for each other? H.P. Lovecraft offers this choice at the
beginning of “The Call of Cthulhu”: “…either
go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and
safety of a new dark age.” Why not the
second option?
********************
*“Alterative
Facts”—Kelly Ann Conway’s Orwellian but reasonable classification of data that
do not support a preferred narrative. It
is fascinating that the term “narrative” is used so often in the news now to
describe competing partisan versions of reality, as if rival fictions are being
written for the public to consume along with books, feature stories and TV
shows.
Thinking
about H.P. Lovecraft’s attempts at verisimilitude brought to mind a number of
philosophic questions—all generally epistemological—that have been dealt with
in earlier posts. For further bloviation
about objectivity vs. subjectivity and the nature of “expertise” see also:
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