Post-truth and demotherapeia

One last quick thing on the implications of demotherapeia is the relationship between truth and power, and what that means for truth in politics. In modern politics many people play games with the truth, either outright lying, or reframing what truth is, in order to obtain power. But when that power is all personalised through the personal commitments of demotherapeia, the motivation to be untruthful is likely to wane. Nonetheless, even without legitimated institutional power - that is, without some office that we say is justified in using certain powers - controlling the truth can be a path to power. This is part of the idea of knowledge-power that I spoke about when discussing post-structuralism.

But one impact of justice as caring is that perhaps the truth is not quite so important. Instead, caring becomes the focus, and quite often two people who fundamentally disagree on the truth can live harmoniously and achieve their goals regardless of whether the truth is settled between them when they are both cared for. In fact, because "truth" is a type of discursive construct, to some extent it may not be possible or relevant to consider what might be the "truth" at all.

For example, consider a group of people who do not believe that human activity causes climate change, and a group of people who do. They have fundamentally different beliefs, and one strategy is to attempt to discern the "truth". But because they appeal to different discourses, they understand the concept of truth, or how to find it, very differently, and are unable to convince each other. One group wants to stop various polluting activities in order to curb global warming, and the other group does not. They say that doing so will put people out of jobs, reduce quality of life, and so on.

The idea is that in the process of demotherapeia, each will understand what issues the other has and what care they ask for, and it is likely that they can give them that care - for example, maintain their quality of life while reducing emissions. This type of deliberation, negotiation and compromise is possible in other democratic systems as well, except that the context is usually one where the motivation for institutional power can have a negative effect.

Truth and competition for power

The discourse of modern representative democracy is that there is legitimate institutional power that certain people are justified in using (those people, for example, who have won elections). So, for example, the Prime Minister of Australia has certain powers that they can use and the people of Australia generally find that use justified - even when they don't agree with it.

Once there is an established legitimate type of power, people will compete to use it. This competition is formalised in a democracy, but it is also clearly present in the competitive discourse of the economy and in other contexts. Furthermore, if there are only a limited set of conditions for justifiably using that power (e.g. being elected), then there is a lot of flexibility in how one can obtain that position and still be considered legitimate.

For example, two political parties might come up with different policies and present them to the public. The public can then choose between the two different suites of policies, decide which policies best suit their interests, and elect that party to power. But what if there is only one genuinely good policy that responds to a certain issue? How can the two parties compete for power if they are selling the same policy?

The answer is to sell different policies, but this places one party - the one that is going to use the suboptimal policy - at a disadvantage. So the next step of the strategy is to reformulate the "truth" of that policy. That is, if they can't come up with a genuinely good alternative policy, they have to make their alternative policy _appear_to be a genuinely good alternative policy. There are at least two strategies for this: the first is to lie, and the second is to redefine "truth".

For example, the "non-genuine" party could tell a lie about why the genuine policy is bad, or a lie about why the non-genuine policy is good. If people believe these, then they will vote for the non-genuine party and they will achieve power. The second strategy is to reframe what "truth" is - perhaps a scepticism of science, an appeal to "common sense", a connection to a particular set of values, or a fuzziness over the premises that would lead to the conclusion. Or perhaps there is the construction of a new concept - for example, "clean coal", where there is no way to ascertain what the "truth" means in such a context. Can coal be "clean"? There is no real falsifiable claim here, because "clean" has its own special meaning in relation to "clean coal". Perhaps there is a fight over what constitutes legitimate information, or whether someone is acting in a legitimate manner - and there is no objective truth to look for that lies underneath these claims, because they are essentially claims about the truth itself.

The point is that competition for power isn't a process that motivates people to tell the truth more often, but less often, because "truth" is a tool in obtaining legitimate power and not an end in-and-of itself.

Truth as a construct

The post-structuralist view is largely that "truth" is a construct - that is, that we define what counts as true, rather than it being some sort of independent thing that is "out there". The function of truth, under this view, is to justify the use of power by backing it with legitimacy. That is, if someone is fighting for the truth, or has the truth on their side, they are seen as more justified in using power than someone who is misinformed. This is why people compete to frame what the truth is. Some politicians might justify their actions based on empirical evidence ("immigrants aren't correlated with housing prices"), while others might appeal to an intersection of values and fundamental claims ("Australia is for the Australians").

But under this view, neither set of claims can be considered more "true" than the others - the central thing to consider is how and why people are trying to justify their use of power. This isn't advocacy of the idea that we should throw the truth out the window, but that we should be viewing the truth as interrelated with power (as knowledge-power) rather than something that can constrain it.

A fundamental issue is then how to navigate a world with a scepticism of objective truth, and the answer is perhaps the particularisation of truth - understanding the different truth-claims of different people and how they've come to have them. The truth is more local and autonomous - something that emerges from people rather than something to be imposed upon them. This isn't just a post-structuralist description of power, but also a therapeutic approach to how people form beliefs, which is best done through self-reflection rather than imposition.

For example, someone is more likely to be sceptical of a truth that is visibly forced upon them, in part because they are likely to see it as an imposition of power. People put up defenses and double down under these conditions. They are also likely to be exploited by a concept of truth that is invisibly imposed upon them, because they will accept the legitimacy of some source of power without critical reflection. It is in part for these reasons that informed consent is such a critical part of the medical process, because it makes treatment more effective and ensures the patient is more protected.

Justice as caring in a post-truth society

I'm making this line of reasoning to propose that justice as caring is a useful response to a post-truth society. The particularisation of justice - and with it, the particularisation of truth - dissolves some of the issues that cause post-truth concerns. For one, without a competition for institutional power, the motivation for dishonesty is reduced, and the competing paradigms about truth are likely to collapse inwards towards a more authentical approach to truth. Second, by addressing care rather than truth, the competition for truth is side-stepped, and the motivation to hold fast to beliefs rather than approach something in a more open-minded fashion is also reduced.

If, for example, there were an idealised society where there was no institutional power (and therefore no competition for it), and material goods and services were generally freely accessible in response to needs, the truth would likely not become such a battle-ground. Sometimes the battle over truth is constructed to justify the allocation of material goods, sometimes it is used to justify obtaining institutional power. If the underlying material and psychological needs are attended to, the disagreements about the truth of the matter are less likely to be divisive, combative issues.