I have a right to....know the Truth!

It seems to me that opinions are nowadays extremely sought after. The opinions that the wise men love, but the actual truth is losing its importance. People say so repeatedly that they have the right to their own opinions and freedom of speech, but rarely hear anyone to say to have the right to know the truth.

Hannah Arendt writes in The Human Condition (1958) that people can create the meaning of their life and the world only, if they talk to each other.

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• If we are not interested in the truth of the world in which live
• if we are interested only in random opinions about it, or the clichés and comments of no significance
• if we are interested in propaganda
• if we seriously take the infinite flood of advertisements and other empty media content
• if we believe that life is a single, boundless youthful party,

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....we are in serious trouble. And there is no difference, if we are cynical about all of this either. Why?

Let me make the answer by means of a short presentation of this year's award, which is awarded every year by the world-famous publishing house Verso to the best students at London University Birkbeck.

This year, this award went to student Elle Aspell-Sheppard for her post-truth project.

In it, she demonstrated how is communicative capitalism (into which everyone is immersed today), making major changes in people's behavior patterns.

Due to the special operation of late capitalism, they are increasingly isolated from each other, as if society does not really exist, and are burdened with a permanent cynical attitude towards everything, even to one another. The symbolic efficiency of such people, says Elle Aspell-Sheppard, is getting smaller, or is subordinate to the new mode of communication, which is characterized by following...

The media are pushing ever-increasing amounts of fake news into the markets. For which you can never determine whether they are true or not. The bizarrely fast way of life forces people into fact-checking, ....stresses this year's award winner,.... so the analysis of events is simplified to a great extent, and people are constantly using smart devices and checking something. Comprehension is not so important, because it is really important to change the conversation into communication spectacles involving solitary individuals who want the most intense stimuli, but they do not trust any authority anymore, as they are also not recognized because cynicism is playing much bigger role for them.

The great humanistic ideals of egalitarianism, solidarity and coexistence is changing into dust and is disappearing. Instead, people are driven to their act, behaviour and action that does not make any sense.

Or, as Franco Berardi, whose book The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility says it all, and I read it again with great pleasure: the only coherence of the world is possible because of the shared action of people who share meaning. When friendships are decapitated when solidarity is confined and people remain for themselves, reality turns into chaos, and the coherence of the social and social environment replaces the increasingly shrill and obsessive tendency to identify