“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9
I am reading Manzoni’s ‘The Betrothed’ at the moment, an early nineteenth century Italian novel set in the seventeenth century. The plot includes a few chapters on bread riots in Milan. I was interested to read that false information, conspiracy theories, and fake news spread around the Inns of that city like wildfire. Fuelled by alcohol men considered the events of the riots and enjoyed spinning their own interpretation of events which often had little relationship to what had actually happened and gained a momentum merely by being said and repeated. The same happens later in the novel when plague strikes the city. Foreigners, secret evil influences, enemies abroad, all these things are hysterically blamed when the actual causes are hidden in plain sight. So it seems to me the fake news and conspiracy theories of Twitter and other social media are not such a new phenomenon, perhaps a new means for an old human frailty?
As Manzoni writes, the solution is also hidden in plain sight,
“…in small and great matters alike, it would be possible to avoid traveling that long and tortuous route, if people would only follow a method which has been recommended to them long enough – the method of observing, listening, comparing and thinking before they talk.”
The difficulty is,
“But talking, just talking, by itself – is so much more easy than any of the other activities mentioned…”
Remember, just because something you hear fits in with your prejudices doesn’t make it true, and personal outrage is not a measure of truth.
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