THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: Twenty Roots of a Modern Blood Libel
by Daniel Clarke-Serret
Introduction: The Genocide of Truth
Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction
CHAPTER 7: (True) Expertise
On the Standard of Opinion Formation
Preface to the chapter:
Let us begin with a short story.
Many moons ago, I formed part of a local badminton group. We played week after week, honing our skills at the parish leisure centre. Then, regular as clockwork, we would go to a cosy pub for a beer and a chinwag.
One evening, while sipping the Berkshire ale and crunching on our Walkers crisps, the issue of the Middle East came up. I don’t remember how. And it certainly wasn’t me that ushered in the poisoned chalice.
We were a reasonably diverse bunch in terms of age, nationality and origins. The lady on one side of me was descended from the Kindertransport refugees. The lady to the right came from Germany. And it was from the latter that the controversy unforgettably sprung.
She began to spoke of her sadness for the “poor Palestinians”. Members reacted diversely to this socially-shattering nuclear incursion; and from quite different perspectives. I was taking the calm, moderate, rational and decidedly equanimous approach firing one piece of information after another at her in an unfailingly polite manner.
Then, suddenly, she stopped making her case and said - and I will never forget this - that it was unfair debating with me. And why? Because “(I knew) too many facts!”
It is indeed a problem when one party knows their facts and the other is relying on hearsay, emotion and unfactual declarations of “genocide”; for by relying on emotion alone, your case is automatically without merit. Instant disqualification. A red card in the World Cup Final.
And it raised the most salient of questions: What really qualifies someone to comment on geopolitics? It’s a nagging question that’s stayed maturating in my mind ever since. Until one magical day; the moment that I read a marvelous essay from David Hume: that literary and philosophical masterpiece “On the Standard of Taste”. And though it may ostensibly concern artistic appreciation over geopolitical analysis, the analogies it pricked in my mind were overwhelming. So now, over a decade later, I feel (I use this word advisedly) qualified to answer that pressing enquiry. And in the chapter below I reveal my conclusion. It will be for you to decide whether I fulfill the exacting criteria…
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[ Image: Cenk Uygur vs Mosab Hassan Yousef on Piers Morgan Uncensored, two of many guests to have opined on the Middle Eastern conflict. Who is really qualified to comment on this issue?]
The Genocide of Truth is all about thought-provoking essays. And there can be no essay more thought-provoking than that penned by the Scottish wizard David Hume. “Of the Standard of Taste” was ground-breaking in the way it broached the topic of artistic appreciation.
Noting that opinions on art are many and varied - both here and abroad, in our time and throughout history - we are left with the obvious question: is everyone’s opinion equally valid? If matters of taste may not submit to one right answer, then is my view on a restaurant dish equal to that of a Michelin starred chef?
It is a matter of dispute as to whether an object in itself can manifest beauty or whether instead “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. But even if one were to fall back on a position of radical subjectivity, one would still be forced to defend the proposition that all opinion formers were equally qualified to proffer a judgment. In the view of David Hume, there was no equality in the matter. A true judge of the aesthetic would need to fulfil a fivefold set of criteria which he summarised thus:
Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty.
