Part of the problem we face today is that the truth can’t be fully divulged lest one be removed from the conversation, so to speak. I don’t know whether or not it is better to be a martyr, to bear witness, but I tend to err on the side of self-preservation.

The mainstream belief is that this era of fake news has come about simply by virtue of the internet giving a platform to the unintelligent. The fallacy in this thought is that the era of fake news began only recently.

It is argued, by Steven Pinker, among others, that we are converging on morally good behavior, on the whole. The better angels of our nature are meant to be flourishing. Yet, at the same time, democracies everywhere are leaning far to the right, or be undermined by foreign interference. India and Pakistan are on the verge of war. Jordan is getting fed up with Israel. If we are allowing our better selves to manifest on an individual level, why isn’t that happening on a societal level? Maybe we aren’t being honest with ourselves. We certainly aren’t being honest with our interviewers, with our pollsters, the ones who collect the data on which Pinker et al. rely. Self-report is never to be trusted. If you want to know the truth, you have to look inside the head. The reason we don’t see flourishing on a societal level is that we aren’t flourishing on an individual level–we are just getting good at convincing people, even ourselves, that we are indeed flourishing. If I had to bet, I’d go with Hobbes over Rousseau on the state of nature. Nasty, brutish, and short. Our natural disposition is not a kind one. It is wild. And it must be tempered.

In no other time in human history has there been such a crisis in terms of acquisition of knowledge, that is, acquisition of, among other things, true beliefs. We live in an era of fake news. The media isn’t to blame. At least, they aren’t more guilty than many of us. Lies abound in this world, told by small children and old men alike. None of us is blameless.

We must take a stand against the radical increase in the propagation of falsity by telling only the truth. It is by refusing to obscure the nature of reality that we can finally make some progress understanding her. Make a vow now to unplug from the purveyors of misinformation. Refuse to listen to the President. Refuse to watch Fox news. Listen to your heart, your conscience, instead. It will lead you to the truth. Question everything. Nothing is ever simple, so if it seems like you understand something fully, that’s your first hint that you are missing something important. Gain skills in media literacy. Learn how to tell when what you are reading is an ad. Figure out the motives of the person you are listening to. Do they have a commitment to the truth? Do they have a conflict of interest here? And read the old books. There is more truth in Herodotus than Howard Zinn, although I do believe Zinn was committed to exposing reality. His account is not wrong so much as it is woefully incomplete.

These, then, are the things you can begin to do in order to combat the army of the untrue. Descartes was right when he said what we perceive clearly and distinctly must be true. The problem is that we have trouble knowing when that is happening. When you walk into a room and feel that something is wrong, that’s when you clearly and distinctly perceive. When you are buying a soda at one A.M. and the clerk has a funny look in his eyes, that is when you clearly and distinctly perceive. When you are alone in your room and you can’t fall asleep, that is when. Trust yourself–you can’t trust anyone else.