The Fake News (translation “false news”) are at the center of the debates, not only because our president denounces the political weapon, but because now, no sector escapes it. Among the powerful and everywhere. Where the Internet is in high penetration, thanks to social networks. Nothing suprising. Since we wrote history, man has always been a liar.
Our president is thinking of teaching distrust of Fake News and above all, how to spot them, in the final year, in the context of teaching philosophy. But he’s not the only one in his microcosm of super leaders.
Donald Trump denies having wanted to dismiss the prosecutor from the Russian investigation. In Davos, the American president qualifies the information published in the New York Times of “Fake News”!
Pope Francis invited journalists and users of social networks in January to denounce these “Fake News” (translation, Mendacia in Latin) which sows division to serve political and economic interests.
The world of January 24 informs us on the “scientific” way to do it.
We await the comments of the Queen of England, very exposed with her sons and grandsons.
Very heavy; a global problem ; for what is nothing other than the lie improved by a “transporter” of which one begins to measure the real scope. But you shouldn’t have a short memory. All new media have accelerated the force and the spread of lies and man has always been able to provide the parade. From the “street crier” to reality TV, through the emergence of the written press, then the radio, rumor has always found its media.
Pathology or normality of intelligence? Medicine identifies 4 types of liars.
The mythomaniac
The first pathology, the one which unmistakably concerns medicine, is mythomania. As always in psychiatry, the use in popular language of medical terms has twisted the reality of the “mytho” a little, to make it a “spiel”, a “dreamer”. Far from the reality of a real illness and especially suffering, for those who feel an urgent need to lie. To respond to the contempt he feels for himself; an “abjection of conscience”, as Boris Cyrulnik so aptly puts it. This renowned neurologist, who is also a specialist in animal behavior, hesitates to treat the mythomaniac as a liar, unlike the one for whom lying is cynical and utilitarian.
The liar by utility
No pathology identified for this liar, who abuses and manipulates, while the mythomaniac lies for the pleasure of attracting attention. Patient does not mean moreover a candidate for treatment since he never consults spontaneously. It is also examined, in the vast majority of cases, only within the framework of a forensic expertise … We cannot speak either of treatment in the cynical liar since his act disappears as soon as the danger disappears. However, to say in front of a liar that one is in front of a mythomaniac or not, which legally could change the responsibility, is extremely complex, requires a long and careful psychiatric examination. This means that the examples which currently drink the news do not allow to decide.
Denial
The two categories of lying, mythomania and utilitarian lying, do not sum up the problem. There is a third, very specific category, “denial”, which could be defined as the refusal to take charge of certain realities. It is the domain of predilection of drug addicts or certain psychiatric illnesses.
The acceptable false truth
Finally, medicine cannot approach the chapter of lying without mentioning a fourth and final category, which doctors modestly call “the acceptable false truth”. A very particular way to explain that some lie to their patients so as not to hurt them … A debate which, contrary to what many doctors claim, is far from settled.
The basis of community life presupposes that the other is telling the truth
What attitude to have vis-a-vis the Fake News, with the lie? For Boris Cyrulnik, it is necessary to bring nuances even if the cynical and manipulative lie remains contemptible. As soon as we remove the passion that surrounds this subject, we can also think that the lie is a proof of intellectual virtuosity and that we are all forced to lie; the animal, moreover, is also a liar as soon as it is able to act on the minds of others. Another particular example, the child, great liar without anyone teaching him; it is, for him, a defense mechanism of negation of a reality that bothers him …
However, the debate that agitates our society today on these Fake News presents a danger: the basis of community life presupposes that the other is telling the truth. One should be wary of concise generalizations, because the reality is not that simple and lying is a behavior difficult to classify. Generalizing it makes it a very practical trivialization …
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