To what extent are shared facts necessary in building and maintaining a strong democratic society?
Is a consensus of shared ideas and beliefs - even if these ideas and beliefs be totally fictional - sufficient to create and maintain a strong and well-functioning democratic culture?
Democratic culture we may conceptually define here as one in which all citizens are encouraged to think, discuss, debate, and ultimately to collectively carry out policies made on the basis of such conversations - a somewhat narrower definition than simply the principle of majority rule.
A big question then becomes: is a culture of democracy sustainable even when its collectively-shared ideas and beliefs are fictional i.e. not grounded in facts or reality?
In other words... Are fiction and democracy compatible??
Do fictions masquerading as fact inevitably undermine, or do they have potential to maintain and promote, a healthy culture of democracy?
Conventions such as the use of money can be considered as "fictive" in that neither the concept nor the material manifestations of this concept are found in nature but are uniquely human inventions.
If conventions take not only the form of objects and practices (such as money), but also the form of stories and beliefs about the world, what consequences then arise? What importance and role would facts (as opposed to stories and beliefs) then have or not have in such a type of culture? Do shared fictional beliefs have a similar, or even greater, capacity as shared factual knowledge to enhance and strengthen a society's democratic culture?
Religion is a perfect example. Throughout most of history, free thinkers who doubted the shared religious dogmas of their times typically had to pay a high penalty such as being burned at the stake. However, today there are many countries in the world in which religious beliefs and a culture of democracy do co-exist - even at times (it could possibly be argued) seeming to mutually and symbiotically flourish together.
However..., are democracy and religion ultimately compatible in the long run??
We currently observe that this phenomenon of collectively-believed fictions has now spread out of religious contexts into secular society. "Fake news" is no longer considered any greater an epistemological problem among much of the populace than "fake religious stories" in the past have been (and still are today in revived form). If a report of a human deity materializing on earth via a virgin mother and walking on water appeared just now on today's news, would many people question the likelihood of this being factual, or would they simply believe or pretend to believe it? Would many even care whether this information was indeed true or not? Would their attitudes furthermore greatly - or even mainly - depend on who these claims are coming from?
Add to this the question, to what extent is it essential (or not) that all participants in fact believe all the claims specified by social convention? Or is it enough that everyone simply behaves as though they truly believe?
Is pretending to believe ("fake behaviour" as opposed to the "real behaviour" of truly believing) by definition (not) a form of lying?
Is mass-scale lying in the form of fake behaviour (not) a growing phenomenon and concern that is increasingly characterizing our world today?
Would fake behaviour furthermore (not) facilitate the propagation of "fake information"?
And finally, is mass-scale fake behaviour above all (not) a typical forewarning of and characteristic of all dictatorships???
This meetup will provide us an opportunity to examine, explore and discuss all these ideas more deeply and broadly.
https://www.ias.edu/ideas/democracy-age-lies
