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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 // Chapter 8: Authority // Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation
[Image: A world without Word Inflation.]
CHAPTER 12: Democratisation
This is the Age of Word Inflation
This chapter is long. Perhaps I talk too much? Perhaps we all do? For the internet is the proliferation of talking personified. Today every fool with wi-fi has the unprecedented ability to opine, insult and insinuate. But it wasn’t always thus.
There was an age when only the educated could speak. Those who could read and write. Those, monastery ensconced, that could pick up a pen. Religious leaders were at once medics, lawyers, preachers and brewers1. It was they that were masters of their arts for it was they alone that had access to the Word. The priests and the Rabbis; the brains of the Islamic Golden Age; all could claim Divine knowledge and with right. For it is the Word that creates worlds and they had privileged access.
The printing press then came to spread its blessings. Knowledge disseminated to all corners of the continent. Opinions unheard spoken. Subversive opinions. Opinions that could topple an all-powerful Church2. From the pulpit, they heard the Word in their own language, spread forth in their own tongue. The mysteries of Davidic beauty understood in their full glory.
Yet though the Word was released from captivity it was a pyrrhic release. A confinement beyond the confinement, gated in the chains of illiteracy. For although knowledge was now spoken from beyond the pulpit; and although books could be written in voices once silenced; the impenetrable code of symbols stood in the way of understanding3. Education was the final frontier.
But though it hid in shadows, it came. The school. Education. The glorious prospect of mass literacy. The Word, imprisoned in medieval purgatory, could now be released to reach the masses. Books unread, articles unappreciated: all these jewels were suddenly open to the swell of humanity. Advancement, progress, individual flourishing: all these were now within our reach. The spark of true personhood no longer mere imaginings.
But alas this is romance wrapped in the ribbon of nostalgia…
For prepared (only) for industry they emerged in their millions. Workers equipped with the necessities of labour, but workers unfamiliar with the joy of learning. Travails of life on the conveyor belt required no knowledge of Shakespeare nor acquaintance with poetry. Only with the lightest of touches did the student court letters, the captains of industry mixing profit with practicality in their design of the minimalist curriculum. So the Word flew free, but unloved; unperceived by the hungry, unnoticed by the toiling. Potential energy yet to be transformed into kinetic metamorphosis.
Elite capture of knowledge, hoarded like gold beyond the imaginings of men, was once a fact of history; an immutable law of nature like might and oppression. Yet the 21th Century saw its demise. The doors of the academy were blown wide open. Books could be self-published, the Word democratised for all. The age of letters had arrived.
But though its coming was long prophesied, the Grand Unveiling disappointed. We had queued for hours; slept upon the streets in anticipation. But when the cathedrals doors were opened; when they trooped in exuberance beyond the threshold, safety in numbers, quality abandoned; our long suffering seemed in vain.
We sighed; for we had hoped for the true Messiah. Education may now have been for all, but its wisdom saw placid distribution. The partisan articles, the celebrity fluff, the 140 character irrelevances4: all these cruelly mocked the Word, as if to destroy with unfaint horror the interminability of His long absence. The Word still flew free, so much is true; but its discovery proved impossible amongst the swarm of locusts. The books - the gems - were daily distributed, no gatekeeper to halt their path; but to what end? Diamonds are worthless when flailing anonymously amongst “genocide” dirt.
