Fake News – Misinformation in the Human Predicament

Well, Jonathan Swift once said – ‘Falsehood flies and the Truth comes limping after it’.

Call it a global phenomenon, false information has always outperformed the truth – penetrating deeper and faster in the social space. One of the greatest examples is the era of ‘Cold war’ and if we got anything more was Fake News – The Soviet had their own version of Fake news and the west had theirs (probably a better curated one).

However, what bothers us more is the dispersal of numerous facades of facts and its uncontrollable plurality – for example, one might claim there are people living on Mars, NASA is hiding facts, while the other might claim, Mars is a dead planet. This freedom of fake news hampers the ruling ideology in the public space. While fake news about business, terrorism, war, entertainment and technology works well – fake news about politics unfailingly does best.

The problem now is to understand the actual lies to what we don’t agree with. While the critics of Fake news claim the idea of ‘no absolute truth’, and truth being relative to circumstances. But the history tells us that we never detail the facts, rather present a construct story; we deal with data selected from a certain perspective and this makes fake news more dangerous, as they rely on true facts.

All our interpretations so far, about history or any subject for that matter is based on facts and honestly, we organize facts in a certain way and that way could either be truthful or lie in a way.

What terrifies me at this moment is the blurred line between the truth and the lie presented to us as a truth which exemplifies our predicament. What lies beneath the fear of fake news is not the search for truth, but to propagate a single obligatory lie, which we know is a lie and adhere to create a streamline hierarchical space.

However, one good thing about Fake news is that it allows us to understand how arbitrary the truth is and makes it clear that the social space is not affable to the government and fake news are too provocative not to succeed.

Man Is Dead in The Bourgeoisie Because We Killed God

As Notre Dame burned, my eyes were glued to Paris. It was devastating to watch an 850-year-old gothic structure succumb to fire. Though it was clear that the complication was due to a spark – the building’s age and the timber used in the making, aided the severity. Nonetheless, it was heart-wrenching to see the iconic structure burn as a matchstick – a clear reminder of the forces that leave us helpless to save something we dear.

With memories dusted to ashes, and people getting nostalgic over Paris – there were cynics and contrarians taunting the grievers – reminding everyone that the church has been just a structure of bricks and mortar, still none could levee the mournful tide.


Much to our delight, within hours of the spire coming down, two of the richest men in the world François-Henri Pinault and Bernard Arnault, pledged to donate € 300 million, in addition to other millions and billions of funds pumped through crowdfunding campaigns by the commoners.

However, the most overlooked part of the discussion is the money that is pumped in a place where the church can pay for themselves. The Economist tells us that the yearly budget of Vatican in the US alone is more than $140 billion. Well, I don’t despise the fact that the bourgeoisie is generous, but the magnitude of their response reflects something very important about the society we live in.


If two men, collectively, can offer funds more than most country’s GDP, within 6 hours, how easily can we food and shelter every human on earth. Take for example, the residents of Grenfell Tower in France are still living in temporary accommodation for the last 2 years. Imagine, if Glenfell had beautifully tainted glass windows with Gothic structure, instead of human beings.

A nation is made by the people living in it. Every work of art, architecture, commerce and beauty rely on the ingenuity of people. And the failure of a nation stem from the failure to recognize that life matters and should be protected above all else.


So, when someone asks you to make a choice, between a hospital and a highway, tax cut or pay – one must remember this moment that money is at a click, and we are far away from it.