Trinity Development & Alumni
Register for our next Inspiring Ideas @ Trinity webinar: The Complexity of Truth-telling in a Post-truth Age
Wednesday 19th May, 1pm GMT
In The Origins of Totalitarianism, (1951) Hannah Arendt observed that ‘[t]he ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.’ Extraordinarily prescient remarks.
In 2016 ‘Post-truth’, defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief,’ was declared the Oxford Dictionaries’ international word of the year.
Widely associated with the then US president Donald Trump, today terms such as ‘post-truth’, ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ have become established in our vocabulary and our social practices. One rarely hears someone has told a lie - we hear instead of ‘alternative facts’.
Is there a distinction between a post-truth world, a world of alternative facts, and the telling of lies? Both are detrimental to the well-being of society, in different ways.
If the event is fully booked, you can join the live stream at our YouTube channel:
Inspiring Ideas @ Trinity is a webinar series produced by Trinity Development and Alumni. You can watch all of our previous webinars here.