Eroding Literal Truth

This chapter is the longest in the book. It is titled “Eroding literal truth” and considers nine drivers, in addition to electronically-powered popular culture previously discussed, that contribute to the dream society and the rise and fall of literal truth. This first two sections, “Language, literacy and literature” and “Learning in changing environments”, show how the emergence and dominance of reading and writing fixed a new sense of truth, logic, and reason in minds accustomed to oral fluidity. The printing press later exalted these features via learning based on reading rather than doing. In the US, academic departments of English taught us to craft clever lies as well as to believe—amazingly enough—that learning from vivid lies is the best way to grasp and covey truth. But literature may be dying now, along with literacy, replaced by other features that enhance the scaffolding of dream societies: Advertising teaches us to want things we don’t otherwise want in order to live large in the neighborhood, while credit cards allow us to acquire them. Amusement parks, Expos, sporting events (as participants or spectators) similarly seduce us into spending enormous amounts of time in ever grander imaginaries of fun, leisure, and make-belief. Electronic games and virtual reality replace physicality—in war, violence, sex, indeed all aspects of life. The chapter ends with a timeline of technological, social, commercial, military, political and legal developments over the last 60 years that each and cumulatively led to the emergence of a dream society. The dream society is much, much more than K-Pop alone!