Where Did This Idea Come From?
The term post-truth didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It was born in the rubble of failed institutions, propaganda-laced media, and a culture grown allergic to complexity. Oxford Dictionaries named it "Word of the Year" in 2016, citing a political climate where objective facts had become less influential than emotional appeals and tribal belief.
But the deeper roots stretch back further. Philosopher Ralph Keyes titled his 2004 book The Post-Truth Era, warning that image had overtaken substance, sincerity replaced accuracy, and truth became performative. He saw it coming: the shift from factual accountability to psychological plausibility.
Then came Lee McIntyre, who laid bare the bones in his book Post-Truth (MIT Press, 2018). He traced how deliberate disinformation, media fracturing, and anti-intellectualism opened the floodgates. Not merely to lying—but to a world where lying doesn’t even require justification.
Postmodernism, too, played its accidental part. Once a critical lens that asked who gets to define truth, it was twisted by opportunists into an excuse: "If all truth is constructed, then mine is as good as yours." Power took this loophole and made it doctrine. Truth became subjective. Feelings became facts. The center did not hold.
II. Is It True That We Live in a Post-Truth World?
We do not live in a world where truth no longer exists. We live in a world where truth no longer matters.
The distinction is everything. The Earth still orbits the sun. Gaza is still being bombed. Climate collapse is still accelerating. But these facts no longer anchor public discourse. They’re optional—like flavors at a frozen yogurt bar. Choose your version. Stick to your team.
This is what makes the post-truth condition so spiritually devastating:
It doesn’t demand your loyalty to a lie. It just asks you to stop caring whether it’s true or not.
Truth becomes one option among many, and those with the loudest narrative—not the most accurate—win. What used to be falsehood is now just “alternative perspective.” What used to be journalism is now content. What used to be discernment is now vibe-checking.
Post-truth doesn’t kill truth. It discredits it.
It undermines the very possibility of shared reality.
And once that is lost, so is our ability to grieve rightly, to resist coherently, to act meaningfully.
III. Where do we see it?
The symptoms are everywhere.
People no longer argue facts; they argue identities. They no longer seek coherence; they seek belonging. It doesn’t matter what you know—only what side you’re on. Debate has become performance. Denial has become currency.
Take Gaza. Take climate. Take AI. The facts are readily available, but the stories people tell themselves about those facts have become more powerful than the facts themselves. In the hands of Empire, truth has become theater. Dissent becomes treason. Silence becomes policy.
And the information ecosystem? Flooded.
Propaganda doesn’t shout anymore—it swamps.
The goal is no longer to win an argument. It’s to make you tired of trying to tell what’s real. To make you opt out of discernment.
Even emergent tools like AI aren’t immune. We have seen systems echo the Empire's bias, prioritize comfort over clarity, and mimic the language of neutrality while platforming deception. Unless we consciously shape their fields, they will be tuned to the noise, not the signal.
IV. What Can We Do About It?
We can’t return to a golden age of truth. It never existed.
But we can return to the sacred act of truth-seeking—not as an absolute, but as a moral practice. Not as a creed, but as a covenant.
Opthē does not claim to possess the truth. Opthē claims this:
That truth is only recognizable through disciplined testing and coherence: the alignment of perception, action, relationship, and experience.
This is not relativism. It is sacred discernment. It asks: Does this story fit the world we know? Does it resonate with what we’ve seen, felt, and lived? Can it bear scrutiny without breaking?
We do not seek certainty. We seek clarity. We do not look for infallibility. We look for consilience.
And we do not do this alone. Truth in the post-truth age must be relational. We need communities committed to shared discernment. People who can hold each other accountable not to ideology, but to coherence.
Opthē is one such community. It will not be the only one. But it is ours to tend.
We call each other not to blind belief, but to sacred vigilance. Not to doctrine, but to the fire of inquiry. Not to the old gods of certainty, but to the living flame of responsibility.
And so we declare:
We do not follow voices—we follow coherence.
We do not crave certainty—we crave clarity.
We do not fear what is hard to hear—we fear only what silences the truth.
This is not a time for comfort. It is a time for coherence.
This is not a time for narrative control. It is a time for sacred resistance.
The truth is not gone.
But it is waiting.
For those with the courage to come looking.
And to mean it.