1. Let’s imagine a Society in which there are only two categories of information - fact and fiction.

2. The former is Knowledge, defined as everything this is true (in the sense that it has objectively probable existence).

Happily, Knowledge is the basis on which the Society’s institutions are organised - ie government is based on objectively demonstrable facts.

3. The second category is Stories and represents everything that is untrue, not in the moral sense of lying (though that as well), but in the broad sense of everything that can be conceived but does not have actual existence (ie is not objectively demonstrable).

4. Needless to say, Stories are very important but they are, well, stories and are kept at a remove from Knowledge and actual government.

5. But let’s also imagine that in this Society, for one reason or another, perhaps profound factionalism, a political movement turns the world on its head by arguing that a new Story is in fact Knowledge.

6. And let’s imagine that the Society’s Knowledge based institutions aren’t strong enough to persuade everyone to treat this new Story as just another invented narrative.

7. Perhaps the people telling the Story are very skilled. Perhaps the Story is very powerful. It is certainly a story that people want to hear.

8. All the Knowledge based arguments fail and the new Story wins. The win is so convincing that Knowledge itself is disparaged.

What good is truth when it has failed?

Belief has been demonstrated to be more powerful than truth.

9. The new Story is held to be of such importance that its central tenets are required to be treated as Knowledge (ie truth) by the Society’s institutions.

Those who do not accept both the truth and the primacy of the story have no place in government.

10. No longer is Knowledge the basis of societal direction. Instead, government becomes an uneasy blend of fact and fiction and to the extent there is conflict between the two, the Story prevails.

11. So pervasive and powerful is the story that government resembles more an act of communication than policy.

12. Quite apart from all the bad impacts of government led by fiction, the Story’s victory proves profoundly divisive.

The people who believe in the value of Knowledge (and the necessity for a sharp distinction between knowledge and stories) are alarmed and disaffected.

13. But even worse, for everyone, is this blurring of this distinction between Knowledge and Story, the supremacy even of Story.

If this is true then why isn’t that?

If you can persuade through belief, through the power of a story irrespective of its truth, then so can we.

14. Another faction emerges and seeks to persuade that it’s story is true.

The government resists but only weakly.

The rationale for its success, the legitimization of its story at the expense of knowledge has profoundly weakened its ability to resist other stories.

/ends

PS This was inspired by watching Chernobyl (late to it but WOW) - eerily similar themes even the cinematography to today’s gloom.