Truth decay: lying will destroy us

The British way of doing things extends to more than an unwritten constitution. Simon Burton-Jones argues it includes how we lie.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A Pinnochio figure stands on a window sill beside some net curtains.

Milk Chan on Unsplash.

"Why are things so ***t?"

This was the question veteran journalist Gavin Esler was asked as he walked down a Devon street one day by a member of the public who recognised him. It was a very British kind of question, crudely expressing a common underlying feeling. Esler has set out to answer it in his book: Britain Is Better Than This. It isn’t a pretty picture and will be contested. When a government has been in power for thirteen years, blame for the current state of affairs is hard to refute. There are some who do, but not many these days.

Gavin Esler’s previous book, How Britain Ends, looked at the demise of the Union, propelled by Brexit. Esler himself was a member of Change UK, so his position as a remainer is well documented. Scotland’s vote to remain contrasted sharply with an English nationalist vote to leave. Northern Ireland’s fragile peace was put greatly at risk by deepening the divide between the island’s north and south. As a political movement, the Conservative and Unionist Party seemed to defy their name.

Telling fibs in politics is as old as politics, but he and others identify newly organised patterns of lying; untruths being told as a deliberate strategy.

Britain Is Better Than This exposes the lack of a codified constitution as a developing risk. The UK’s deliberately vague and amorphous unwritten constitution has often been a source of its proud exceptionalism. We do it differently because we can, and we pull it off. Esler notes the almost sacred tones in which this is expressed. It is a mystery, using rarefied, opaque language similar to eucharistic liturgy to inspire reverential awe. But when the constitution is essentially unwritten, commentators rather than judges take precedence as interpreters. And there is elasticity: the constitution is what those with power say it is at any given moment. The Crown, the government and the State seem to be used interchangeably, according to the need. If this has worked in the past, it is because of Britain’s ‘good chap’ theory of government, so called because whatever uncertainty may prevail, decent, well-educated, public-spirited people can be relied upon to make it work.

Esler’s point is that the cracks are showing, and more people are poking their fingers through the holes to make them bigger. The Queen’s proroguing of Parliament in 2019 at the request of Boris Johnson was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court, showing the system can rectify issues, but it also demonstrated the risk of future, unscrupulous leaders exploiting those cracks. Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempted curtailing of judicial power in favour of executive authority has set a model which others may follow. Esler’s case for a written constitution and also for electoral reform to introduce fairer systems of proportional representation are not panaceas and he while he recognises this, he prefers them.

As a journalist he is on assured ground in the assessment of what the Rand Corporation has termed truth decay: the growing ascendency of the lie in public debate. Telling fibs in politics is as old as politics, but he and others identify newly organised patterns of lying; untruths being told as a deliberate strategy. This is murky territory for the democratic world. Across global, digital media, we disagree more about facts, blur fact and opinion, prefer personal experience to facts and trust historic sources of information less. Esler’s wants to see media literacy taught more effectively, as Nordic countries do. Deep fake technology is only going to make judgments harder. Courses and syllabuses with a ‘media’ prefix are still considered unserious in some circles, but without this kind of literacy, Britons may become prey for some ugly predators.

We have an uneasy, open marriage with the truth in public and in private (where research shows we all lie far more than we realise).

In 2020, the Edelman Trust Barometer put the UK in twenty-seventh place out of twenty-eight OECD nations for trust in democratic institutions; only Russia lay below. Britain’s mythical capacity for ‘muddling through’ is based in part on our ability to ignore bad news until we can do so no longer; kicking the can down the road may be a truer expression. Gavin Esler has done us all a favour by showing what is at stake. The book’s opening question: Why are things so ***t?, however, only takes us so far. By the end we may know why. What we are able to do about it is the defining question.

In 1998, Jonathan Freedland’s book Bring Home The Revolution struck a nerve. The UK was transitioning from a tired government to a younger, more energetic one; the tech revolution was taking off, millennial optimism was off the leash. Freedland believed the time was right for the UK to become a republic with a written constitution like the USA. A lot has happened since then, and where Freedland’s book captured the hopefulness of the time, Esler’s feels more like a lament; a cry for a better world in the face of the facts.

His implicit call for us to live in truth (as the late Czech president Vaclav Havel would put it) carries most conviction. We have an uneasy, open marriage with the truth in public and in private (where research shows we all lie far more than we realise). The traction of ‘my truth’ rather than, more accurately, ‘my story’ may show how close we have come to a precipice. My truth does not set me free. If we believe the truth sets us free, we also get what David Foster Wallace meant when he observed: 'the truth will set you free, but not until it has finished with you'. Words Christ perhaps left unsaid. Big ideological changes are not afoot in Britain today, but culture is formed of a million daily interactions, where the glue of trust sticks and the power of imitation prevails. Telling porkies when others don’t becomes a tougher gig.

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Assisted dying

Comment

29 October 2024

4 min read

Assisted Dying logic makes perfect sense but imposes a dreadful dilemma

The case for assisted dying appeals to choice and autonomy, yet not all choices are good. It means vast numbers of people will face a terrible choice as their life nears its end.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A black and white picture shows a woman head and shoulders, she is looking up and to the side in an unsure way.

Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash.

Two broad cultural trends have led us to our current debate over assisted suicide.

One is the way consumer choice has come to be seen as the engine of successful economies. Emerging from Adam Smith’s theories of rational choice based on self-interest, given a boost by Reaganomics and Thatcherite thinking in the 1990s, the provision of a range of choice to the consumer is usually argued, with some logic, as key to the growth of western economies and the expansion of freedom.

The other is the notion of individual autonomy. Articulated especially in the past by figures such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, the idea that individuals should be free to choose to dispose of their property, their time and their talents as they choose, as long as they don’t harm anyone else, has become standard moral fare in the modern world.

Put these two together, and the logic of assisted dying makes perfect sense. What can be wrong with offering someone a choice? Why should the state restrict individual freedom to end your life in the way you might decide to do so?

Yet expanding choice is not always good. Forcing an employee to choose between betraying a colleague or losing their job is not a fair choice. There are some choices that are unfair to impose upon people.

Assisted dying will lead us to this kind of choice. Imagine a woman in her eighties, living in a home which is her main financial asset, and which she hopes to leave to her children when she dies. She contracts Parkinson’s or dementia, which will not kill her for some time, but will severely limit her ability to live independently (and remember about of third of the UK population will need some kind of longer-term care assistance as we get older). At present, her only options are to be cared for by her children, or to sell her house to pay for professional care.

With the assisted suicide bill, a third option comes into play – to end it all early and save the family the hassle - and the money. If the bill passes, numerous elderly people will be faced with an awful dilemma. Do I stay alive, watch the kids’ inheritance disappear in care costs, or land myself on them for years, restricting their freedom by needing to care for me? Or do I call up the man with the tablets to finish it soon? Do I have a moral duty to end it all? At present, that is not a choice any old person has to make. If the bill passes, it will be one faced by numerous elderly, or disabled people across the country.

Even though the idea may have Christian roots, you don’t have to be religious to believe the vulnerable need to be protected.

Of course, supporters of the bill will say that the proposed plan only covers those who will die within six months, suffering from an “inevitably progressive condition which cannot be reversed by treatment.” Yet do we really think it will stay this way? Evidence from most other countries that have taken this route suggests that once the train leaves the station, the journey doesn’t end at the first stop - it usually carries on to the next. And the next. So, in Canada, a bill that initially allowed for something similar was changed within five years to simply requiring the patient to state they lived with an intolerable condition. From this year, there is a proposal on the table that says a doctor’s note saying you have a mental illness is enough. In the same time frame, 1,000 deaths by assisted dying in the first year has become 10,000 within five years, accounting for around 1 in 20 of all deaths in Canada right now. Some MPs in the UK are already arguing for a bill based on ‘unbearable suffering’ as the criterion. Once the train starts, there is no stopping it. The logic of individual choice and personal autonomy leads inexorably in that direction.

Of course, some people face severe pain and distress as they die, and everything within us cries out to relieve their suffering. Yet the question is what kind of society do we want to become? One where we deem some lives worth living and others not? Where we make numerous elderly people feel a burden to their families and feel a responsibility to die? In Oregon, where Assisted Dying is legal, almost half of those who opted for assisted dying cited fear of being a burden as a factor in their decision. Or would we prefer one where the common good is ultimately more important than individual choice, and where to protect the vulnerable, we find other ways to manage end of life pain, putting resources into developing palliative care and supporting families with dependent members – none of which will happen if the option of assisted dying is available.

Even though the idea may have Christian roots, you don’t have to be religious to believe the vulnerable need to be protected. Changing the law might seem a small step. After all, doctors routinely administer higher doses of morphine which alleviate pain and allow a natural death to take its course. Yet that is a humane and compassionate step to take. To confront numerous people, elderly, disabled and sick with a dreadful dilemma is one we should not impose upon them.