Yuval Noah Harari extract: ‘Humans are a post-truth species’
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/05/yuval-noah-harari-extract-fake-news-sapiens-homo-deus W e are repeatedly told these days that we are living in a new and frightening era of “post-truth”, and that lies and fictions are all around us. Examples are not hard to come by. Thus, in late February 2014, Russian special units bearing no army insignia invaded Ukraine and occupied key installations in Crimea. The Russian government and President Vladimir Putin in person repeatedly denied that these were Russian troops, and described them as spontaneous “self-defence groups” that may have acquired Russian-looking equipment from local shops. As they voiced this rather preposterous claim, Putin and his aides knew perfectly well that they were lying. Russian nationalists can excuse this lie by arguing that it served a higher truth. Russia was engaged in a just war, and if it is OK to kill for a just cause, surely it is also OK to lie? The higher...