By Jason Lim
In his "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" speech given at the National Cathedral on March 31, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King uttered the famous words, "We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
I wonder whether he would think the same today. In fact, I would love to be able to ask him a follow-up question in light of the fake news phenomenon that we have been suffering through the last decade. Can the moral arc truly bend towards justice when the underlying arc of truth bends every which way depending on the whims of the tribal beliefs that you happen to belong to? If we can't agree on the truth, or even the facts on the ground, then how do we really know which way justice lies? Or what justice even is?
I would further pose that Gandhi, one of Dr. King's heroes, said, "It is because we have at the present moment everybody claiming the right of conscience without going through any discipline whatsoever that there is so much untruth being delivered to a bewildered world."
The fake news phenomenon really came to global prominence with the alleged Russian disinformation efforts during the 2016 American presidential campaign. However, Korea had already suffered through a massive disinformation campaign that mobilized people and changed the political narrative of the country back in 2008, the first year of Lee Myung-bak administration.
Remember the 2008 U.S. beef import protests? They were months-long daily protests that began as a movement against the full resumption of American beef imports over fears of mad cow disease. Although this episode has since been eclipsed with the much larger and more significant candlelight revolution that impeached President Park Geun-hye, the 2008 protests were a sight to behold: tens of thousands of people ― representing the full spectrum of sociocultural diversity of Korea ― all holding flickering candles to the night sky, swaying and singing to anti-government chants or songs, largely peaceful but vociferous and insistent.
These protests were all sparked by false rumors that American beef posed an unacceptable danger to Korean consumers of contracting mad cow disease. Scientists and government officials announced almost daily that, by all credible scientific accounts, the risk of contracting mad cow disease from American beef was miniscule; to no avail. Their fact-based, scientifically backed truth approved by peer-reviewed journals was helpless against the massive emotional public narrative that the government was once again kowtowing to American heavy handedness by throwing its own citizens under the bus.
A slick, well-written conspiratorial argument against the government's underhanded attempts found more sympathy and following than the pronouncements of the top scientists and experts on the matter who had studied this field for their whole careers. Sound familiar?
Further, the protests were framed as an expression of moral outrage. It was to protect their own families against the spineless greed of the filthy rich elites. Every parent who attended the vigils probably had images of their own kids wasting away from mad cow disease seared onto their brains while well-connected fat cats laughed as they counted their money.
Ultimately, the protests had their intended effect, at least in the short run. The Lee administration had to back off and placate the public sentiment in order to not imperil the remainder of the presidency. In that sense, the power of democracy was quite palpable. But can the spirit of democracy long survive in the absence of the discipline of truth? Or, more accurately, can democracy survive the onslaught of popular grievances that trigger collective moral outrage but aren't based on truth and facts?
In a critical way, this question may remind us of a similar question that has plagued modern day economics. Can classical economics, which assumes that human beings make rational, utility-maximizing decisions based on their best self-interests, survive a reality in which we actually make decisions based on our preconceived biases and attachments defined by our tribal affiliations? The 2008 Great Recession seems to have delivered the answer.
In a similar vein, can democracy, which assumes that people can agree on a shared truth based on a common set of facts, survive a reality where tribal affiliations define their own respective grievances that only recognize facts that fits into their own versions of the truth?
It's a well-researched proposition that our decision-making depends upon the social and cultural contexts in which we are embedded. In fact, we can't really make a decision apart from what we have learned from our community, institutions, and social fabric; our tribal norm. In this case, even admitting that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, one has to ask, with deep trepidation, "whose justice?" Fortunately, we are still waiting for a definitive answer to this question. Hope we are ready for it when it comes.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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I wonder whether he would think the same today. In fact, I would love to be able to ask him a follow-up question in light of the fake news phenomenon that we have been suffering through the last decade. Can the moral arc truly bend towards justice when the underlying arc of truth bends every which way depending on the whims of the tribal beliefs that you happen to belong to? If we can't agree on the truth, or even the facts on the ground, then how do we really know which way justice lies? Or what justice even is?
I would further pose that Gandhi, one of Dr. King's heroes, said, "It is because we have at the present moment everybody claiming the right of conscience without going through any discipline whatsoever that there is so much untruth being delivered to a bewildered world."
The fake news phenomenon really came to global prominence with the alleged Russian disinformation efforts during the 2016 American presidential campaign. However, Korea had already suffered through a massive disinformation campaign that mobilized people and changed the political narrative of the country back in 2008, the first year of Lee Myung-bak administration.
Remember the 2008 U.S. beef import protests? They were months-long daily protests that began as a movement against the full resumption of American beef imports over fears of mad cow disease. Although this episode has since been eclipsed with the much larger and more significant candlelight revolution that impeached President Park Geun-hye, the 2008 protests were a sight to behold: tens of thousands of people ― representing the full spectrum of sociocultural diversity of Korea ― all holding flickering candles to the night sky, swaying and singing to anti-government chants or songs, largely peaceful but vociferous and insistent.
These protests were all sparked by false rumors that American beef posed an unacceptable danger to Korean consumers of contracting mad cow disease. Scientists and government officials announced almost daily that, by all credible scientific accounts, the risk of contracting mad cow disease from American beef was miniscule; to no avail. Their fact-based, scientifically backed truth approved by peer-reviewed journals was helpless against the massive emotional public narrative that the government was once again kowtowing to American heavy handedness by throwing its own citizens under the bus.
A slick, well-written conspiratorial argument against the government's underhanded attempts found more sympathy and following than the pronouncements of the top scientists and experts on the matter who had studied this field for their whole careers. Sound familiar?
Further, the protests were framed as an expression of moral outrage. It was to protect their own families against the spineless greed of the filthy rich elites. Every parent who attended the vigils probably had images of their own kids wasting away from mad cow disease seared onto their brains while well-connected fat cats laughed as they counted their money.
Ultimately, the protests had their intended effect, at least in the short run. The Lee administration had to back off and placate the public sentiment in order to not imperil the remainder of the presidency. In that sense, the power of democracy was quite palpable. But can the spirit of democracy long survive in the absence of the discipline of truth? Or, more accurately, can democracy survive the onslaught of popular grievances that trigger collective moral outrage but aren't based on truth and facts?
In a critical way, this question may remind us of a similar question that has plagued modern day economics. Can classical economics, which assumes that human beings make rational, utility-maximizing decisions based on their best self-interests, survive a reality in which we actually make decisions based on our preconceived biases and attachments defined by our tribal affiliations? The 2008 Great Recession seems to have delivered the answer.
In a similar vein, can democracy, which assumes that people can agree on a shared truth based on a common set of facts, survive a reality where tribal affiliations define their own respective grievances that only recognize facts that fits into their own versions of the truth?
It's a well-researched proposition that our decision-making depends upon the social and cultural contexts in which we are embedded. In fact, we can't really make a decision apart from what we have learned from our community, institutions, and social fabric; our tribal norm. In this case, even admitting that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, one has to ask, with deep trepidation, "whose justice?" Fortunately, we are still waiting for a definitive answer to this question. Hope we are ready for it when it comes.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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