The map and the territory

A trench line near my house.

These days, as I take my morning walk with the dog and traverse hills criss-crossed by trench lines and defended with bunkers and gun emplacements, my thoughts inevitably go to similar but much more deadly defenses that now exist in eastern Ukraine. The ones I pass have never seen active service, unless they have been maintained since the Korean War. 

Along with this sobering thought comes into my mind the Latin maxim I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion: Si vis pacem, para bellum – ‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’ I used to think this argument was too cynical, but now I don’t. Living near the DMZ and reading about Ukraine makes being a pacifist  seem much too dangerous. Then again, I can see we need pacifists to temper the bellicosity of human society, just as long as these pacifists recognize that its the people who are preparing to defend their country against belligerent neighbors who are giving them the peaceful luxury of being pacifists.

I’ve also been thinking about lying. One of the obvious differences between a democracy and a totalitarian regime is the power of the lie. In the latter, lying is perennial and efficacious,, while in the former, it is also perennial but will quite quickly be exposed. This is because in a democracy no one can monopolize the flow of information.

I’m thinking about lying because it seems the Russian people are, on the whole, behind or as least agnostic about the ‘Special Military Operation’. This seems remarkable, doesn’t it?  On the other hand, armed with the intellectual rigour provided by my readings in modern thought, and my copious experiences of mendacity in public and private life, I can counter that, actually, those in support of Ukraine are just as much buying into  propaganda – the stuff spun by the United States. As George Orwell wrote: ‘Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’

In other words, it is tempting to demonstrate one’s intellectual robustness and worldliness by claiming there is basically equivalence between the two sides, that ethical relativism means both sides are constructing narratives.

But this is not at all what Orwell means, and to think it is is a terrible mistake. It is true that the ‘map’ is not the ‘territory’, that the language we use is not a reflection of reality but a sign-system we fabricate in order to make sense of the world. But there is a huge difference between recognizing that the map (language) is not the territory (the world) and claiming there is no access to the latter, which is what some influential contemporary thinkers seem to believe. 

There are objective facts, that is, what can be proved true or false, or can be known to have happened. A fact is the result of consensus, of  cooperation with others. Facts are the hard won consequences of moulding language so it points to  what has been  cooperatively ascertained as constitutive of the world.

This is why, as Sam Harris, perhaps the sanest man on the Internet , in his book Lying writes:, “Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.” The act of lying makes it clear that although language does not correlate exactly with what it refers to, that there is a significant bridge between the two, that the map isn’t a complete fabrication but can serve as a workable - that is to say, fulfilling - guide to the world. But that is precisely why lies are necessary.

Harris, again : “People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs—that is, the more a person’s well-being demands a correct understanding of the world or of other people’s opinions—the more consequential the lie.”  

Lying  is official state policy in places like North Korea and China, and, as it now seems obvious, in Russia. These regimes are not interested in cooperation amongst its citizens to create a useable map. Far from it.   Their top-down models of governance require that only a small cadre are involved in making the map, and as a result, what they produce is not factual but blatantly sectarian. You could call a totalitarian regime’s relationship to fact as based on ‘performative truth’, in the sense that any information’s value lies not in being factual but in being useful to the regime.  It is based on the illusion of total control, that the ruling cabal is in charge.

Lying is necessary if a state believes that it can produce a map in which everything  about the territory is knowable, reachable, manageable, and useful. But that’s impossible.  China’s chaotic and dangerous  volte face concerning its  ‘zero-Covid’ policy, in the present context, can be seen as founded on the failure to recognize that uncontrollability is the nature of the ‘territory’, and that therefore, adaptive transformations in relation to these changes while making the ‘map’ are essential. But the Chinese Communist Party’s map to the social control of Covid was laughably at odds with the territory.

A liar believes that they can control the world through their fabrications, manipulating people so they satisfy their own needs and desires. But the desires of those they seek to hoodwink cannot be controlled, and events always run out of control. This is why big lies will always eventually be exposed. Sooner or later, people begin to notice that the diagrammatic  representation of the world they inhabit is misleading, that the wide straight highway they see on the only map they have access to is leading them - or, more likely, has already led them - over a precipice.  

The inevitability of change means a lie has a short shelf life, and once it is exposed, it will quickly undermine the rest of the epistemological edifice within which it has been nested because people will come to suspect more lies everywhere, even where there aren’t any. This is why totalitarian regime  desperately hold onto their big lies. They have to insist that their ‘map is the only map.

Orwell said: ‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’ Unfortunately, it is also evident that people often want to hear only what brings comfort and a sense of security, and above all, what does not risk puncturing their convictions about themselves. A friend of mine spent the Christmas/New Year period in Thailand, and for a few days she was staying in a hotel next door to a young Russian woman. When my friend broached the Ukraine crisis, the Russian replied that it wasn’t her ‘fault.’

That’s true. But then, no one would want to claim that she, personally, is in any way directly responsible for the brutal invasion. However, we can justifiably argue that her unwillingness to hear what she doesn’t want to hear, to remain within a bubble of self-esteem, should certainly be criticized. Actually, I suspect she probably doesn’t believe Putin’s lies, but rather easily assimilates this recognition because she believes that the ‘West’ is also lying.

It is. But the lies are of a whole different order of magnitude.

 NOTES

Sam Harris, Lying (Four Elephants Press, 2013)

George Orwell, Orwell on Truth (Penguin Books, 2017)