In the previous six posts in this series, I have described humanity's relationship to truth through the house construction metaphor. (The series starts here.)
Now, we can begin to explore the various contests of truth. These arise partly from our poor understanding of the human construction and relationship to truth, and our prevailing but misleading journey metaphor for truth.
In this post, I am exploring the motivations of those involved in the social agreement for truth, including those who would like to influence that agreement for their own benefit.
Truth is incredibly robust
Our many social constructions - money, football, gender roles, language, status and truth - are incredibly robust for two main reasons.
Firstly, they have been 'built' by everyone, including ourselves, and continue to be maintained by everyone (although their construction slips from our awareness). Secondly, they serve fundamental human needs, our sense of identity, and our interaction with others. We defend ourselves when we defend our sense of truth. (I think resistance to the idea of truth as socially constructed comes largely from not understanding what 'social construction' really means - now that is another post!)
In the same way, our social agreement on how we know truth, our shared building code, is also incredibly robust and we defend it against any threats.
Our sense of truth is so pervasive, so important, and so real that we find it hard to step back and look at our relationship to it. It's not surprising the we often think truth is an objective thing.
Motivated to welcome - make yourself at home
Our family, educators and community are our first source of truth. These people are not motivated by a passion for accuracy or any esteem for objectivity.
They are spurred to welcome and immerse you in their sense of reality. They are motivated to share their own human need for belonging and a coherent understanding of the world.
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| Click for larger image |
Metaphorically, we construct a wall of explanatory stories with them that holds up the roof and allows us to feel safe, in control and connected to others.
They need it, and you need it. I need it.
Thus, truth has a broad social function and an individual psychological function.
The human relationship to truth is part of our relationship with the people who share this interpretation of the world. The human relationship to truth is not with a collection of 'facts' (objective, out there, absolute).
As I explored in Part 5, it’s more important for our sense of truth to be shared than it is to be accurate (as in aligned with 'facts').
For thousands of years, each generation has collaboratively constructed truth through a process of explanatory story telling. This truth met their needs, it allowed them to survive. It worked as the basis of social cohesion despite not according with 'reality' as a contemporary physical scientist might describe it.
Describing this with the house metaphor: in the past, people shared various different agreements on the building code for truth, different sets of foundations upon which to build, different floors of 'facts', and very different walls of explanatory stories about how the world is. And it all quite effectively kept the roof of feeling safe in truth above their heads.
Truth or dogma?
Throughout history, every now and then, someone calls out an aspect of the extant social construction of truth as misleading, inaccurate.
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| Whose dogma? |
They might even encourage people to break free.
But… we can't be entirely free of others' involvement and others' perspectives in truth.
We require an explanation and understanding of the world, one shared with other people. We can’t function without a sense of truth, either individually or socially. Our sense of truth necessarily incorporates other people's world views, their religion and ideology, and yes, their 'dogma'.
The lack of evidence behind any particular explanatory story does not make something dogma; it's pretty commonly how truth works.
Nevertheless, we can still interrogate the motivation of those who benefit from that version of truth.
Truth is also incredibly vulnerable
The collaborative social aspect of constructing truth also makes it vulnerable.
Just as a house construction process involves many tradespeople, building the metaphoric walls of explanatory stories involves many contributors. This includes those who want to influence our sense of truth for their own benefit, those who seek to have power over others.
Our tendency to think of truth as made up of objective 'facts' independent of humans increases this vulnerability - we don't identify other people's efforts to shape the social construction of truth as attempts to achieve personal benefit.Motivated to have control in personal relationships
Before I talk more broadly, I acknowledge there's a lot that could be said about individuals' use of truth in their personal relationships. As I wrote above, a key aspect of our personal relationships is bolstering a shared sense of truth.
Each of these is a topic of some depth and complexity, beyond the scope of this blog.
For now, I can write only in general terms, although I realise there will inevitably be exceptions and contradiction at the individual level. ²
Now back to what 'they' do!
Motivated to make a profit: have I got a deal for you!
One group with work to influence the social agreement on truth is those who want us to buy things from them. To do so, they turn to advertising and marketing.
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| Edward Bernays |
The 'father' of public relations, Edward Bernays, set the scene almost 100 years ago in an approach designed to convince people to buy things and accept ideas.
Bernays' approach continues to this day and has been incredibly successful. ³ It succeeds through carefully presenting and restricting other information.
Consumerism works best if those in the process of buying only consider their own personal desires, needs and wants. Choices we make are shaped in large part by how information is presented to us, so advertising fabricates an association with desirable things. Marketing is also careful to avoid revealing full information about the products we buy, for example the miserable working conditions of the people who produce and ship the goods, to avoid any 'friction' being introduced in the buying process.
Recent research used AI to identify vulnerabilities in human habits and behaviours and to use them to influence their decision-making. The authors (and reviewers) focus on the positive applications of using this information, and its value in guarding against undue negative influence.
But of course, the words marketing and public relations are just camouflage for what is really going on.
Marketing manipulates our human needs - to belong, to be successful, to get more sex etc., and our human vulnerabilities - our emotions, our fears, our poor reasoning, etc. Bernays' approach aims to convince people to buy things they do not need. It turns citizens into consumers.
And so we buy, and buy, and buy, and we feel good.
Even if the aims of marketing are considered 'good' or benign or meet a broad social need, it still entails manipulating people and how they understand the world.
We commonly talk of marketing in terms of influencing choices, decision making, risk taking, etc. However, our choices and decisions are based on our sense of truth, our explanatory stories of how the world works.
Marketing and public relations are the professions of truth manipulation, in the name of profit.
Why do we accept overt manipulation?
Those who do research into marketing and public relations are all playing in the area of the social construction of truth.
Each advance in knowledge about human biases, vulnerability and weakness opens yet another avenue for manipulation. This knowledge becomes another tool with which to exploit people.
Are you thinking, 'Oh, we know that! We know advertising is not really the truth!'
The saying 'Let the buyer beware' implies that it is the responsibility of the buyer to fend off rogues and liars, and 'find' the truth. But we're not up against the odd rogue; we are up against a sophisticated machine dedicated to the manipulation of the social agreement on truth.
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| Love this cartoon; find Steve Ogden on FB |
Profit is a ubiquitous motivator for manipulating truth.
To maintain profits through consumerism, to make people buy and do what you want (without force), they need to be tricked into accepting something that is not true. There are no more 'citizens', only 'consumers', being sold the lie that consumption will give them 'happiness'.
Yes, yes, we know marketing and public relations aim to manipulate us. However, we seem dulled to the vulnerability of our fundamental sense of truth that 'they' are playing with.
It puzzles me that we aren't more distressed about the manipulation, not because of its purpose, but for its overt and deliberate violation of human agency, trust and respect.
For some reason, we accept this.
Motivated to avoid culpability: nothing to see here!
So, we ignore that marketing involves a deliberate manipulation of the social agreement on truth.
Sometimes, we do get upset and outraged by (and die from) the manipulation of truth by those companies selling dangerous products like tobacco, asbestos, insecticides, fossil fuels, etc. To keep making a profit for their dubious products, such companies turn to public relations and marketing. They turn to Bernays' strategies.
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| One of Bernays' most successful campaigns was convincing women to smoke. |
When the negative outcome of buying such products is revealed (e.g. lung cancer and other diseases), anger is targeted at the one company or product. For some reason, we don't link their methods to those companies who sell us cars, cheese, shoes, holidays, etc., but they are exactly the same.
For example, marketing tries to create a social, health or other positive 'halo' around a product, so that people feel they are being smart and healthy when they use it, regardless of the science. It may also exploit an existing health halo, such as the notion that a product (like fossil fuels) is natural. Conspiracy theories - quick: blame those dirty greenies - can always be invoked to fend off science-based criticism or refute claims of wrongdoing.
In terms of the social agreement for truth, the public relations companies working for tobacco (and more recently the climate change denial lobbyists) know that doubt - the impression there is a lack of a social agreement - is much more powerful than counter-argument and fact. Their job is to sap the energy of those who are trying to defend the metaphoric house of truth, to kick holes in the walls and floors, to attempt to rewrite or discredit the building code for truth.
We get upset with the outcome for specific products and companies, and we criticise the 'evil tobacco industry', 'the greedy denialists', etc., but we don't recognise that all marketing and public relations use these same methods.
Why don't we object to the approach itself? Whoever uses it.
Motivated to win: don't you worry about that!
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| Snipped from Crikey's website |
We expect politicians to use rhetoric and spin to embellish the truth, take credit for positive directions, hide damaging information, or spread helpful disinformation. We cynically relabel political lies as 'being economical with the truth'. They are so common Crikey publishes a dossier called How Scott Morrison manipulates the truth.
Until fairly recently in politics, admitting outright lying had been deemed too risky as well as dangerously undermining of public trust.
But never underestimate the public relations profession with its sophisticated knowledge on how important priming, framing, repetition, frequency, emotional connection, etc., are in the social construction of truth.
The emergence of 'strategic lying', where a politician deliberately lies with the purpose of shifting the news agenda onto their preferred territory, represents the culmination of this knowledge. (Culmination or new low point?) If the only goal is winning a contest of ideas or ideology, it seems that any sense that you owe people the respect of representing reality accurately can be disregarded. And the PR company's only goal is getting paid for a successful campaign.
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| Rather than repeat it, 'legitimising' the lie, I've made my own Brexit bus. |
Fact checking doesn't help. Evoking rebuttals are part of the strategy because they unintentionally amplify the subject of the lie, and over time may legitimise the lies simply by repeating them. Knowing that repetition is a key factor in constructing truth, 'strategic lying' achieves this through keeping the issue in the news.
Metaphorically speaking, once the 'strategic lie' has been integrated into someone's walls of explanatory stories and become part of holding up the roof, no amount of contrary evidence or fact checking will change that person's mind. The lie remains potent because it 'fits in' to a world view - their overall sense of how the world is. The memory and detail of corrections fade rapidly; they don't fit.
In terms of the social agreement on truth, the public relations profession has realised you don't need facts, you don't need a link with reality, you can win by openly lying. But you do need enough people who will support that lie.
Like making a profit, if winning (politically) is the only important outcome, then the ends justify the means. To the lobbyists behind the campaigns, winning is all that matters, and then they get their bonuses.
It's no surprise that a marketing man won an unwinnable Australian election.
Bernays' approach works.
No moral compass
It seems to me that we have legitimised the professions of marketing and lobbying despite their success being based entirely on the overt manipulation of the social agreement on truth.
Some of the more odious examples show there is no line below which public relations and lobbying won't go. The professions are bereft of any moral compass, the only success metric being profit or winning. Issues of life, death and social responsibility don't seem to provide the moral limit we would assume and require of other people. Why would they then care about truth?
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| Source: AZ Quotes |
Our relationship to truth revealed but still we don't see it?
Yet, we seem completely inured to the constant manipulation of truth of advertising. We seem hamstrung when political strategic lying is laid bare.
Unbelievably, when the nature and vulnerability of the social agreement for truth is thrown in our faces and used against us, too many of us continue to think objective truth exists - out there, somewhere.
We blame some bad actors; we fret about the threats to democracy by certain people. We think they are just not telling us the real truth.
We don't think our idea about truth itself might be the problem.
What else has to happen before we actually see our relationship with truth?
Motivated to control and dominate: I alone have the truth
I didn't mention above that Bernays' ideas about manipulating truth were first published in 1928 in a book called Propaganda.
Bernays was quite open in Propaganda (and other books), that he had written an instruction manual on how to manufacture agreement from people through manipulating what and how they thought. He thought it was the benevolent duty of statesmen to achieve productive ends for society by manipulating people. The alternative, he thought, would be chaos and mob rule.
(Well, the alternative is democracy with an informed public, but then, not everyone wants that.)
Bernays provided a technique and a legitimacy for a profession dedicated to manipulating truth. Advertisers, conmen, lobbyists, politicians and others all used the 'instruction manual' to refine their manipulation of truth for self-serving purposes. (Personally, I find the deliberate manipulation of truth itself to be immoral, it doesn't matter what purpose.)
Bernays' did acknowledge the apparent incompatibility of liberalism and his manipulation manual, but claimed that humans would inevitably succumb to some type of manipulation, so it was important the 'good' should compete to overcome the 'evil'.
Bernays knew a lot about humans, but perhaps, really not that much. He was shocked by the most infamous example of the use of his techniques: Hitler's Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. ⁴
This is fascinating, because it shows that marketing, advertising, public relations, lobbying, political lying, and propaganda for horrific purposes all rely on the same strategies, varying only perhaps according to motivation. They all derive from an understanding of the nature of the social agreement on truth as the basis of how to manipulate people.
There is a straight line from our willingness to accept the manipulation of truth in advertising and politics to our vulnerability to propaganda.
But propaganda has one qualitative difference. Propagandists don't just want to influence the social construction of truth; they want to control it.
Metaphorically, propaganda attacks the substance of the floor and its foundations, and the building code itself, so that society loses any sense of a shared reality. It works to kick in the walls and raise fear the roof will fall in. In the resulting chaos and confusion people are willing to accept the 'truth' provided by the propagandist.
The propagandist says, 'My people! You don't need a shared social agreement, I alone have the truth'.
Footnotes
- Dogma in the broad sense is any belief held unquestioningly and with undefended certainty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma
- However, I think even these troubling personal relationships with truth can be understood better through the house construction metaphor for truth. But that's a book in itself.
- From Wikipedia. Bernays best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954. He worked for dozens of major American corporations including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and non-profit organizations.
- Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Propaganda, praised Bernays’ book. The Nazi use of Bernays work was the reason later versions featured the new name of Public Relations.
- Upside down house by Axel Hindemith https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21530202 [CC BY]
- House construction metaphor updated to reflect all the recent content, by the author.
- Disrupt the narrative: snipped from social media, credit Raising Yourself, but no source found.
- Argument or otherwise? https://www.romancemeetslife.com/2016/07/should-you-get-prenuptial-agreement.html [CC BY-NC-ND]
- Bernays Bain News Service, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_Bernays_cropped.png [Public domain]
- Happiness for sale Copyright rests with Steve Ogden Art, but this work is so spot on I hope this use fits under fair dealing.
- Lucky strike Vintage billboard Bruce Henschel https://www.flickr.com/photos/13802839@N05/3201341679 [CC BY-NC-ND]
- Doubt is our product quote by the author based on text from the book Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (2008) by David Michaels.
- Crikey website banner snip for A dossier of lies and falsehoods. All rights rest with Crikey www.crikey.com.au/dossier-of-lies-and-falsehoods/ [Fair dealing]
- Make your own Brexit lie by the author using https://dragon.best/api/brexit_bus/ [CC BY-SA]
- If you repeat a lie snipped from social media credited to Mogul, but no source found
- Bernays quote AZ Quotes https://www.azquotes.com/quote/722794 [Used under terms of use]
- Cover of Propaganda Rule the World! By chrisch_ at Flickr www.flickr.com/photos/99092762@N00/3214272040/in/photolist-bpxtZM-4EogUU-5U2Z6s-9UP9kn-5Dvt2J-anprx6 [CC BY-NC]
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