I want to believe. And in interpersonal interactions, with regular people, in meatspace, it's probably good advice. But in a larger context, we live in a post-

I want to believe. And in interpersonal interactions, with regular people, in meatspace, it's probably good advice. But in a larger context, we live in a post-truth world, a hyperreality. Sartre noted the use of bad faith to create a false reality as early as 1944: > “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” Since the late 1970s or so, it's gotten worse, as hyper-reality has become a mainstream tool of governance worldwide [1] [2]. People don't just disagree about the interpretation of facts and ideas about what should be done about them, but about the facts themselves. And this disagreement about facts is fostered by powerful interests, some cooperating, some competing, for profit and political reasons, the latter of which is mainly about making coordinated and effective opposition movements impossible in multiple ways. Lana Wachowski, via the character Morpheus: “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. I'd like to think that starmanning would be a tool for making people ready to be unplugged. But the truth is, people will fight to protect the system, especially when they've been convinced that they benefit from it. [1]: https://www.academia.edu/33103253/Hyper_Normalisation_contextualizing_Post_truth_and_Hyper_reality https://www.academia.edu/33103253/Hyper_Normalisation_contex... [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thLgkQBFTPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thLgkQBFTPw