When Delusion Is Shared We Call It Reality

“Sometimes what we call truths are habitual lies we're comfortable with.” - Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel

Perception is reality. This has always been one of my favourite sayings and recently it has seemed more prescient than ever. Lies from politicians and prominent public figures have always been an unwelcome and staple part of my diet but ever since Boris Johnson lied that the NHS would be boosted by £350 million a week and Nigel Farage stood in front of his infamously racist billboard about refugees, it just felt to me that the truth was something that had become increasingly optional.

And so it proved. As ‘miscommunications’ became ‘misunderstandings’ and then morphed in to outright denials, we became increasingly inured against the stream of untruth that assaulted us over the airwaves. And then we got swamped with a bullshit tsunami called Donald J Trump. Granted, he’d been lurking in the background as far as the general population of the UK was concerned, an orange vaudeville entertainer with a straw wig spouting increasingly bombastic, outrageous statements that were at best toxically bigoted and at worst, maniacal. If he hadn’t seemed like a tangerine version of our own human foetus, Nigel Farage, the British public would probably have paid him more attention. Anyway, as his rants became increasingly unhinged and he eventually became Emperor of the World we were all introduced to levels of such consistent lying that we invented a new phrases for it; Post-truth. It seemed the world had just decided that truth was a cultural casualty of war.

But has the Trump effect become the zeitgeist of public consciousness and personal discourse? I ask because there are so many examples rooted in fact and anecdote that demonstrate we have a seemingly endless appetite for self-deceit. The alternatives - transparency, the truth, honour – have ostensibly been sacrificed at the altar of collective indolence and ambivalence since they create too much work for us. It’s much easier to listen to an orange bowl of pudding with the intemperance of a hungry pig promise that he can return the ‘good ‘ol days’ (for some) than it is to accept that the world has changed irreversibly and those days are never coming back. It’s simpler to convince myself that I want £350 million a week to be reinvested in health care than it is to acknowledge my latent prejudices have been exploited to make me susceptible to anti-refugee rhetoric; I don’t have to feel guilty voting for the former but still get to address the latter by default.

I know this just refers to political obfuscation and the cult of personality but it does feel as if the past year in politics has accelerated this delusionary malaise that pervades society. After all, don’t we take our cues from our leaders? History repeatedly shows us that societies with limited hope, honesty and love are ripe for exploitation by demagogues and their dogma. The Nazis, Franco’s Spain, the antebellum southern states of America, Rwandan Hutus, Serbian militias – the list of perpetrators of atrocities perpetuated due to twisted messages of hate is as old as humankind. And so is the tacit acceptance of the majority who allow themselves to be poisoned by the bombast and thus accept what they would normally see as reprehensible. Somehow we think that fooling ourselves is difficult when in fact it’s the easiest thing of all. And so what we accept from our ‘leaders’ becomes the example we embed in our personal lives.

I include our media in this phalanx of leaders. They are responsible for the diet of hyperbole and the political narrative that accepts ‘alternative facts’ as a legitimate talking point. Britain and the United States have stood idly by whilst millions of Syrians died in the most horrific of circumstances – including gas attacks worse than the one which featured dead children on cable news and consequently touched the heart (he has one?) of Donald Trump. Despite the fact that at the start of the week he had resisted the idea of ANY American intervention in Syria; in fact, he had resisted any intervention for at least 4 years prior to this, happily telling Obama to avoid intervention and calling him inept for considering otherwise. Yet the media has largely fawned over his spending of $90 million to blow up a few aircraft hangars. Oh, and a few Syrians but who cares as long as Hair Hitler gets to look presidential and deflect attention from his Russian scandal. And his defence of the serial sexual harasser, Bill O’Reilly. And the nepotism favoured by 3rd World dictators. And Jeff Sessions lying under oath. And….anyway it’s a long list. And it’s the same in the UK. Theresa May has suddenly found her conscience, suggesting that Putin has to consider whether he wants to consider being aligned with Assad. Yet she’s happy to send Liam Fox to cosy up to the murderous Filipino thug, Duterte and all the despotic leaders of the Middle East. Yet we cast an uncritical eye over all of this, refusing to forensically analyse the facts.

How can we change this paradigm? It starts with us. It starts with the acknowledgement that the majority of us sustain lifestyles that are fuelled by debt and as such are more susceptible to the negative aspects of economic downturns. It starts by living within our means. It starts with telling each other to and the next generation the truth – in fact we need to apologise to the next generation for the leaders and policies that we’ve adopted today! It starts with taking responsibility for how we think, feel and act because our thoughts become our actions, and our actions become our future. We’re all a little bit mad but anyone who can analyse his or her delusions is usually considered a bit of a philosopher. It’s time to stop being comfortable in the herd and think for ourselves. Remember this – when one person suffers from delusion it’s called a mental illness, but when society suffers from the same delusion we call it normal.

Or we call it religion.