My facts and your facts?

As the 2020 U.S. election looms ever closer, it’s hard, even for an optimist, not to feel some sense of despair at the apparent absence of any real political discourse in the respective campaigns. Without getting directly involved in the mud-slinging, I wonder whether the abandonment of agreed notions of truth, underpinning a traditional interest in winning the policy arguments is largely to blame? If electoral success is now more about manipulating the majority by subtle and targeted social media techniques, rather than rational persuasion, then the very legitimacy of the modern democracy may reasonably be called into question. In one of our recent ‘Curiouser’ discussions on Aristotle, I was reminded of John F. Kennedy’s pithy summary of happiness: ‘The full use of your powers, along lines of excellence, in a life affording scope.’ Apart from highlighting how far political standards have fallen in recent times, I think this rich quote is a challenge to all thinking people to reform democracy by prioritising the development of the full use of our human powers, with a particular emphasis on critical thinking. For if we and our children are not able to construct a rational argument and examine its strengths and weaknesses, we are surely doomed to be at the mercy of whatever political wind happens to be blowing at any given moment. In his excellent essay, ‘Philosophy-Why?’, G.K. Chesterton defined Philosophy as ‘thought that has been thought out. We have no alternative, except being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out.’ It’s interesting to speculate as to why the study of Critical Thinking is such a peripheral part of many educational systems, but whatever the reason for this, democracy is always the loser if an electorate cannot see the absurdity of statements such as ‘my facts and your facts’. In reason, we should trust.