In the triangle of post-truth, reality, politics: How would you get your truth?

How would you get your truth? Sometimes the truth is like a gift. We want to hear, taste and travel together with him. Sometimes the truth is poison. They become a stream that we escape by manipulating ourselves, adorn with masks, and reject with our whole being. There is never a middle ground in the view of reality. We react in some way with either accept or reject verbs. The same person gives both reactions in different situations, as it suits him.

This attitude of humanity in confronting itself and the world has served to create one of the most powerful weapons of social engineering as a result of centuries of experience. The trivialization of the truth is the acceptance of a concept as unimportant or unnecessary. Post-truth is now the title of a mechanism that provides all the distortions that have become a manipulation technique and all the necessary directions to occupy the minds of the masses.

The concept is new, but its application has been going on for ages. It is the processing of lies as if knitting with various motifs and presenting them as a completely different reality. As we can all guess, it is an invaluable Indian fabric for universal political culture.

Especially in times of social anger, every political group makes sure that the facts collide with feelings and beliefs and that the emotion/belief pair wins in the blink of an eye. Once you see, the overwhelming majority has started to say, "The world is not actually round".

The trivialization of truth is the molding of intellectual integrity. It is the most rooted ivy that has spread over the idea of ​​a democratic world. It is a tool that feeds off the feelings created by all the resentments developed by the poles, which are far from each other economically. For example, people may migrate to other countries for reasons such as war. These immigrants are reflected to us in such a way that we do not see the reality of war or the struggles of those people, and we suddenly have a fascist attitude with the itching of the social resentments we experience (they commit crimes, they take our jobs, etc.). And we talked about freedom.

An inquiring brain is one that searches for the correctness of the answers to its questions. What is happening in the world? Who started the war? Who benefits from its results? With what interests did the country that accepts the immigrants take this step? What reasons did the non-accepting countries put forward? What is crime? Why do people commit crimes? When we ask political and sociological questions like these, our anger is replaced by logic. It allows us to see the fine line between what we really need to react to and the person to whom we react angrily and form our opinions accordingly.

So, how does the trivialization of truth happen? What sane person could fall for the designed facts? What have we said, we are a species that can be interpreted as it suits us. Of course, this couldn't just be about personal issues. In today's world, while the ideas of "the individual's separation from society and self-worship" are being pumped, it is now very easy to be deceived by the content presented to us. Emotional interpretation, which is the most slippery ground of human psychology, comes from the habit of believing at will. These manipulations, which they were able to do with the seeds of ideas that were previously put forward by visiting the neighborhood by neighborhood and developed with television programs, can now be handled with a few buttons, much more comfortably and without getting tired.

And here comes the most important of the post-truth tools: Social media. The internet, which presents the information we used to search page by page with one click, is an invaluable resource when used correctly. But what if what we read is distorted information. What if those pens that we trust so much are invading our brains by telling 99 truths and adding 1 lie? After all, it's not the capital of Argentina, it's the information we're always looking for. Most of the time, we are investigating a fact, a news. There are many topics that are open to interpretation, can be filled in and can be made believable with photographs from afar. What about when we tidy ourselves up and share wonderful happiness poses in our saddest moments? Our escape from our pain with the likes and comments we receive? Look, even as individuals, we can deceive our environment. We can start from our belief in someone whose word we think is reliable because of his mere appearance, and from our reactions to the discourses of someone who is described as a maniac. With our willingness to trust deified, empowered people, we can easily believe post-truth illusions. Maybe it's the crazy one who shows us the truth.

Now internet trolls can suddenly change the agenda. Sections of a celebrity or politician's long speech can be combined and his career can be ended. Who have we not been able to throw off the cliffs by being caressed by our moral values?

As with any of today's world leaders, Russian President Putin is very experienced in these matters. He has developed such a political technology that everyone who speaks except himself has been made a liar in Russia. He has damaged the ability of many people to think impartially with his photographs showing himself above wild animals. There is a phenomenon called 'sharp power' in international relations. Bringing this concept forward, Christopher Walker defines sharp power as actions taken to “pierce and penetrate the political and informatics environments of target countries”. *Companies carrying out PR work currently have a great deal of interest, and thus market share, both in the political and commercial fields. Many power holders, including Putin, now work with these companies. All of them play a big game of perception to become "sharp power". And this game is so useful for them that even when they start a war, it may be considered a normal process for the people of the world.

For example, in the news about the current war, it can be said that Ukraine always belonged to Russia. Thanks to this distorted information that seems to be both historical and innocent, the masses, trapped in their homes on the screens, can become pro-Putin. Hegemonic powers such as Russia, China, USA, EU and UK administrations that started and fueled this war at the moment can never be sides that can be favored because all of them are directing humanity in line with their interests; whereas peace is the only reality on which one can agree and be a party.

So what can we do? Raising our intellectual courage is the first step. We must have the courage to question, to be skeptical, not to become a fanatic, and not to produce ideas for profit. It is spoken in the world right now that we should be at an equal distance from all kinds of perspectives. Although this is not possible, sometimes it can have very harmful consequences.

Being at equal distance facilitates the creation of games of perception. However, we should be more involved with information science. We must test the answers we receive to our questions as historically correct as we can. Every thought siege for which we cannot find solid and valid reasons is an area to be avoided. It needs to be explored. More often than not, we should listen to the silence of what is not being said, rather than to the voice of what is being said to us. If the information we come across is aimed at dividing, separating or excluding, if it presents violence as acceptable, if it shows one group of people as superior to another group of people, that information is definitely distorted information. And distorted information is hidden in the silence of the unspoken.

Facts change according to the spirit of the time, and without forgetting this, let's hope for the days when we can always research with a healthy mind, learn the truth and live in peace...