Achmad Charris Zubair
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Prologue
It is a human nature that we are socialising and communicating with each other. A human cannot live separately from other humans. Communication is the medium of human connection. Through communications, people are connecting each other, sharing thoughts and information, and even building the sense of solidarity.
Communication is essential part in human interaction. By communication, people are gaining trust with each other. But trust is also needed to build effective and prolonged communication. The loss of trust, because of problems such as conflict, hate speech, or hoax is the beginning of the broken relationship and communication. The needs of information and communication is basic and universal needs in every human history and generations. I want to cite the story of Bharatayuda war.
In Mahabaratha epic story, Durma—a commader in Baratha Yudha war from Kurawa side—was able to break the Pandawa’s defensive forces. This led to Krishna’s fear that if Durna continued to be in the side of Kurawas, Pandawa will soon lose the battle.
Yet, Krishna got the the key of Durna’s weakness—that he is too in love with his son Aswathama. Krishna used the Durna’s weakness to build the strategy to break his power. First, Arjuna was asked to create fake news about the death of Aswathama, so Durna will be in deep misery and he will lose all his power. For sure, Arjuna refused to do that. Even though he opposed Durna, he did not want to create fake news as he also considered Durna as his teacher so he paid respect to him.
In other battle, Bima was commanded to killed the elephant troop in war, named Istithama. Istithama had similar rhyme with Aswathama. When finally the elephant was killed, Pandawa had announced that Istithama the elephant has died in the hand of Bima. The death of Istithama was heard among Kurawa troop. However, as ‘Istithama’ has the same rhyme with ‘Aswathama’, some Kurawans heard that ‘Aswathama’ who was killed in the battle with Bima.
Soon the information that heard was ‘Aswathama’ (not ‘Istithama’) who killed in the battle. At the end, the news had finally been heard by Durna. Durna decided to ask to one of his student, that known for his honest reputation, named Yudhistira. He answered the question—with his mumbled voice, “Yes, Isti was killed in the battle”.
Yudhistira, of course, told the truth. However, he talked with low voice so it was heard unclearly. Unfortunately, Durna heard ‘Istithama’ as ‘Asthatama’. As Durna was confused and worried, he was too shocked and broken hearted to accept the death of Aswathama. He gave up to be a warrior and lived as an ascetic. Living in his grieve, he had no resistance when Drestajumena killed himself.
From the excerpt of the scene of epic story “Mahabharata” above, even the ones that considered as the most honest groups, which is Pandawa, used ‘hoax’ as part of strategies to win the battle.
Information Technology and Communication in the Digital Age
We are now living in the digital age where technology is getting more sophisticated, mainly in communication technology, information and transportation. These kind of technologies are significantly creating pace of time and space in our society.
Satellite technology, optical cable network, computerization are combinations that create information technology and digital world. Humans now can get the access to information just from their homes, through gadgets and internet connections.
Marshal McLuhan called this situation as global condition where humans are getting more individualistic, will prefer to protect their private and individual life, rather to social
life. Humans are more liberalized, with the respect to the freedom and humanism with the anthropocentrism nature—where human are central of everything. Capitalism, not just as economic system, but also political system, way of life and lifestyle that really believe in market mechanism. It creates cosmopolitan lifestyle and feeling as global citizenship rather to the sense of belonging as part of a nation community.
These significant changes in technology, capitalism system, and lifestyle has also changed the way people look at their own norms and values. Positivism, liberalism, and capitalism lead to secularism that all has brought into both positive and negative consequences, has changed moral values, way of life and overall human behaviours
Digital Human in the Post-Truth Era
I cited F. Budi Hardiman in his works “Aku Klik, Maka aku Ada” (I am Clicking, therefore I am),
“Ketika populasi mengarahkan mata mereka lebih ke layer telepon genggam daripada ke lingkungan fisik, imperative-imperatif dunia digital mulai menjadi aturan harian, sikap orangpun berubah. Wajah yang seharusnya terangkat berhadapan dengna wajah lain. Sekarang menunduk menatap wajah gawai untuk merasa bebas dari lingkungan fisik. Di era ini orang mulai takut menghadapi langsung wajah real orang lain yang tidak bisa diskip seperti foto dalam gawainya, bila tak suka”
“When populations are more staring to their screen rather to physical circumstances, the imperatives of digital world has started to become the daily rules, and people behavior have also been changing. The people are supposed to face other human, now people are staring their face to their phone, feeling they are free from physical world. In this era, people are afraid to stare at the face of other human, as they cannot skip or cancel it when they don’t like it, as happened in their phones”
In the page 21, he writes,
“Apakah keadaan ini akan terus berlangsung begini? Kita tidak tahu. Tetapi yang jelas, dunia dengan modus komunikasi konvensional yang terjadi sekarang ini sudah berakhir, dan kita sedang berada dalam situasi yang disebut Thomas Kuhn “anomaly” atau seperti direnungkan Martin Heidegger, penyingkapan realitas baru lewat teknologi. David J Gunkel mendiagnosis bahwa kita sedang berada “perubahan paradigma” komunikasi yang didalamnya “computer dan sistem komunikasi” sedang mulai dimengerti sebagai jenis lain subyek. Yang menurut Don Ihde dalam alterity relation dengan mesin”
“Are we going to live in the situation like this? We don’t really know, but surely, the world with conventional communication like this, has already ended. We are living in the situation that is called by Thomas Kuhn as “anomalky” or has thought by Martin Heidegger as “technology that has revealed new technology”. David J Gunkel has diagnosed that we are living in “the changing paradigm”, our communication is inside “computer and communication system”. We are now trying to understand this as the other object, as mentioned by Don Ihde as alterity relation inside machinery system”.
These questions has invoked our awareness. Now we raise questions, “When all communications has shifted into digital form, has society still been existing? Are human freedom enough when they are driven by technology and all form of artificial intelligence? What is the meaning of “intersubjectivity” when technology is a subject itself? How we explain about body and knowledge, including the concept of mortality, when electronic chips has been attached to human brain and it directly created communication with the machine? As a rational creature, can human brain still in function, when it has changed with artificial intelligence?”
Our situation can be more complicated when the facilitation of information and communication technology are interlinked with the era of so-called “post-Truth”. Generally, it defined as the era when people and society are more relied on the available information without cross-checking, or confirming, which one is the true and which one is false information. Gadget, through its button of “copy, paste, and share” has facilitated it.
Post-truth is our current phenomenon, as the token of the era where people has not enough reflection and thought to the truth of information. The pace and speed to share and spread it are more important than filter it. Our society tend to believe in mislead information, hoax without checking its truth to other sources. This situation has been used by those who are getting benefit from false and mislead information to get what they wants.
When the society has tolerated hoax and false information, we are about to questioning the truth of information more. In one side, people are more aware, but in the other side, we can be more tolerate and permissive to the hoax in our communication system.
The worst scenario is when the truth is apparently believed as the result of crafting and creation, so which one is true and which one is false is getting blurred. However, through this paper, I will show that the fact that we cannot really distinguish and differ between truth and false as it is sometimes not really crystal clear.
In the human history, people are often using tactic and strategies using wrong information to gain their own interests. In every lining of human’s life, from the level of family, neighborhood and community, even until the nation state level, we need honesty as the basic moral value to conduct live in harmony. However, we also know that in specific emergency situation, the concept of honesty can still be debatable. In the field of ethic it is called as relativism.
There are 3 (three) types of morality relativism; first is normative relativism. Human have often involved in the situation that need commitment to keep confidentiality of the matters due to the protection to something or someone, for instance, state’s confidential documents, etc. It needs strong ethical commitment to keep things in high level of confidentiality and it is framed in the dimension of professional ethics, job ethics, etc. Second is Cultural relativism. Every culture has its own ways to see things. The dimension of correctness can various among societies and cultures, and it is all valid in this sense. To impose one way of life as more correct or more valid than others can lead to bigger conflict and social disintegration among society. Third is Metaethics relativism. Metaethics relativism is ethic relativism as the result of similarity and commonness among social groups or communities. It is probably contra with the universal ethical values, but accepted as ethical in certain groups that has the same values. The situation can be tricky when hoax and disinformation has been received as a truth when it has been shared by somebody or some people that has something in common (can be religions, spiritualities, and ideologies) with their audiences.
In post-truth era, social relation has been replaced by socialization through social media. Socialization through social media has now impacted to many aspect of life, individual, social, community, and nation-state. Through social media, the boundaries between social and private life is less distinguished.
Social media gives positive impact in creating new market system, as called sharing economics. For example, many small and medium entrepreneurs are accessing market better through the platform of sharing economics, such as gojek, grab, tokopedia or shopee. Marketplace are getting bigger and doing online business is becoming new opportunity for many people. Even in education, particularly when COVID-19 pandemic has hit, online education is becoming option and solution for long-distance education, such as through zoom or googlemeet platform.
However, despite it opportunity, risk and challenge are like the other side of coin. On the other hand, the usage of social media can be contra-productive when hoax and disinformation are dominating these free spaces. Hoax, fake news, false news are more common and bring the destructive effects when it spread hate speech, hatred, or politics of identity, especially when this kind of news are becoming viral among social media users. Thus, the ‘post-truth’ phenomenon need to be anticipated before it can be growing as a tool to disintegrate and polarize groups and even trigger bigger conflict among societies.
The growing of identity politics, especially that using the religious, ethnic, and specific groups sentiments can potentially lead to the damage of social cohesion in our living as one nation. We must aware that the political events such as general election that has been done earlier this year in our country had created conflict and contestation among groups of supporter, and it is a relief that the elections can finally be successfully held in peaceful and in democratic manners.
The post-truth phenomena can be very disturbing when news and information are played by certain groups to frame their own narration and public opinion. Their narration has been crafted by the rampant using of fake news and hoax that can de- gradate and even destroy the meaning of truth and honesty. Thus ‘post-truth’ has more aims to find the justification rather to find the real truth and correctness.
Epilogue
The truth and hoax are like two sides of coin that we can always find in our life. To be honest or dishonest is human’s consciousness choice. We can always chose to be
angels or demons. In the post-truth era, truth is no longer based on universal morality, but more as public and political correctness. As long as it is supported by big number of people, we often see it as truth, no matter how far is that from truth itself.
In post-truth digital society, truth is creation of interest, needs, will to power. Philosophy, as the mother of knowledge should radicalize itself to be holistically see the problems in the post-truth and working to build digital literacy among society.
We are now ready to move from digital society 4.0 to 5.0. The problems in the future might be soaring, but we can always put the humanity above machinery and technology. The respect to human right should be valued in order to create more humanistic technology. (*ACZ)
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