Gear 9: Facts
What is a fact? Taken in their highest form, act I surely an invitation into someone’s world. To be a cold, hard fat, is to be something, some thought or feeling everyone has to simply accept and move on. A fact is therefore the point a perception becomes torn from individual consciousness, and becomes something that one can demand that many others also can perceive or feel or know.
This ‘observation’ (or fact) becomes the backbone of science. Or better its manifesto. Science expands this dogma in two main ways. On the one hand the idea that a real fact is collective becomes a battle cry. What is it that separates facts from fiction or mysticism from reality? The answer is that many people, including ones own antagonists have to accept some piece of information or explanation as a fact. To say something here and how, and call it science, is then to open up those words to the scrutiny and critique of others. Secondly and just as importantly, facts are expanded to include explication as well as observation one does not then merely observe, one also infers, and invite others to at once to agree or not with the argument, but also to infer other facts from it (and so test the over all theory).
A scientific fact becomes the a productive affair. It is not merely an observation, but also a locus for inferring what will happen. Or could or might happen. The rules of fact making then ( mathematical models, rational arguments, order approaches) are then the rules for collectivising observation, and allowing other to enter in, and navigate themselves around. Tat is the rules of rules are the rules of collectivisation of individual knowledge, of the world. that is scientific paradigms forms rule kits for converting the richness and diversity of the natural, into thoughts and arguments everyone wherever they are can share and mediate upon. While, arguments as facts, and this relationship beyond humanity and into the natural world itself. A good theory, invites elements in reality to participate in someway n the explication. That is they are invited to behave in someway (through an experiment), and the fate of the argument is decided on the strength of their subsequent behaviour. I short then facts become open to a double collectivist: they are shared by many antagonistic individuals but also, at another level the world itself, which similarly participates in their being.
So far so id, Facts such as these have of course revolutionized a world. and yet there are clearly an awful lot of other kinds of fact or truths in this world of ours, the basic ‘fact; prototype, the gear spins into other orbits. In particular there are clear political facts, or media faces, orchestral facts, facts that imply the same rules in different context, and so produce rather different effect, that then jangle across societies and disrupt them in differing ways.
In the domain of politics, the modern debate is clearly typified by four distinct varieties . On the one hand third are the ‘event’ based facts. An even real or imagined (from dangerous dogs or straight Bananas to goggles and conkers) is lifted from a context. It is (in the best Deleuzian tradition) set up as a thing for itself and made to sing alone. it becomes then a well known fact to be bent into political diatribes or daffy argument. That is, the power of an event is to transform a world. Or better it is demand that others change their minds according to what it gives them. To live in a world where the battle of waterloo has happen is then to live a world different from one where it never was (or was not yet). Events are the point at which history changes. And yet this change is often about legends as much as it is about ;facts; as such That is what does the changing is not the vent, so much as the stories that the event creates. Events become then a point at which sentiment or feelings are demanding an embodiment. That is a worry, which might be rather general, becomes expressed in a single moment or impure crystal or invitation to collective fantasy.
As such an event differs deeply form science n that it is often at its most powerful when it is not true. For then I is free for resonate across enticement, and be warped within a million minds, and across infinite worlds. It is then this transforming power that politician uses. They wish o take these urban legends or this world of events and stitch into policy. That is they is to be come a part n the narrative, and set policies that will resonate across many if not all) of the incarnation of events. More than this, it is clearly the role of such urban legend or rumour, to express not truth so much a s gamble and gripe. An even this not a thing then that has truth within it. The act of collectivising, so crucial to faces, becomes then the act by which a collective grumble spreads across the world, and mob is called up, as summons the devil or a storm.
Policy becomes then dictates not by good sense, but by its ability to be a dog whistle’. That is, by its ability to make up an urban legend or well known facts, across some of its combination and provide a theory why that ‘fact happened or at least a mitigation for it, or a way beyond it. Take Cameron recent speech about health and safety. On fact of fact it was utter nonsense, a mere farrago of daily No stories and facts. His example then where simply rubbish (or else made up). But this not the point, As a marketing guy (who only real ability is to sell himself), he new that tedious rules about and fiction matter not at all in the domain of urban legend and rumour. T call up a mob or a rabble (and what is a marketing guy but the modern rabble rousers?), one needs to appeal not to sense or truth, but to the collective prejudice or grumbles within which we express our dissatisfaction for then world.
Urban-legend as event or fact is there at once tied to a supposed event, but also a collective act (a rumour or legend) and has a theoretical element to it (a political message that can be abstracted from it). Ant yet this process is twisted, by the fact that in this process a ‘people’ or party is actively being created. That is these facts do not appeal to an existing world of science, so much as directly create their own audience and their own agenda. There power is then that in creating their mob, which are untied in a reaction and an agenda, the demand the world itself is changed, and challenged, in way the far more modest scientific ;fact; never world.
The second species of political fact takes the three basic element, the ‘truth’, the sharing and the theory, and throws somewhat differently. There are political ‘truths’ that clearly characterize whole political generation. For example since therapy eighties say, there has been on running war against drugs. The origins of this war are little vague (as will all legend) as are the current reasons for it. They come down in the end to a number of either special cases (that is named individuals who drugs killed or else where part in the death or at least present when someone died), and half worked statistics (the link between cannabis and schizophrenia) . The ‘fear are then stitched into a crusade,, which takes the place of theory. Thus crusade will then have certain ‘well known’ contours: the war demand senseless toughness no giving the wrong signals here), and madness rules (one simply cannot impression all cannabis users, the economy old collapse).In the name of this crusade entrepreneurs are turned into criminals, and an entire industry driven underground and so made actually more dangerous and more problematic. Drugs and crime are then bought together. A fact what of course then strengths to over all collective feeling that drugs are somehow bad.
The role then of this crusade is to take the flimsy evidence and through a policy which actually creates as much as solves the problem, to demand that people want action. Criminality and drugs are caught together then in the same fact’ and the moves against one become the moves against the other. An audience or public is then in effect created by the very theory (or crusade0 that the public are invited to join.
Once this process has started it becomes rather difficult to stop. To declare the truth, that the war of drugs was not won or lost, it simply never happened: drugs were not the kind of thing one can wage war on or about; becomes impossible. To declare this ‘truth is tantamount to allow criminals their freedom. Indeed perhaps this fact (in the best Foucault sense) becomes the truth of this way. It is not merely to criminalise drugs, it is also to druigify criminality. Criminality becomes then stabilized within certain activities or known horrors (and other forms of criminality such as white crime becomes a blind spot). What is more as crimes and drug takers are given together there is a fair chance half the ‘criminals’ that is those worse crimes we worry at, are actual drugged up ( and so their effectiveness reduced). The power of the war against drugs is then not in its power to change the world as fact, so much as the consequences that follow from treating it as it were indeed true.
He third main species of political fact, is perhaps the most scientific. But takes at its starting point its facts, the statistics the science produces. Social science or hard science) becomes then the starting point. Scientific theories or agenda are then turned into political manifestos. And yet of course that is where the trouble really start. A scientific fact might not by one that individuals as they actually live feel able to empathize with. That is that scientific fact will (by the logical of the methodology of sciecne0 exist on a plain removed from the single occurrence. It is then forever what ‘others do. on of those facts, true for a population as a whole and far removed from the wants or demands of any one member of that population. Worse than that these individuals may well feel insulted by the figure or not think I can apply then the (and their prejudcies0.
That is, it a truism of science that is ‘facts actually do not translate very well into collective popular knowledge, and their nuances and subtleties are lost. But it is also a truism that individuals will not necessarily understand the sense in which a scientific facts captures also heir identify wit al the rest). The audience then is simply not listening to the politicians theory, or else demanding hat the theory itself is challenges or changed. The act of collectivising and explication, and turning it into policy becomes then itself problematic and ultimately creative. One cannot simply appeal to a public as one would appeal to a body of scientists.
Theories are then modified no accord to the rules of observation but rather, accident though their rules of implication. The result is then that he throe is curiously suspended between the facts that allegedly gave birth to it, and the collective prejudices which dictate exactly how that fact is applied to the world,. The problem f course is, that such policies (and this was always New Labours problem) are then absolutely hopelessly exposed to the critique of the technocrats who know the facts are being nobbed, and the clamour of the population who never believed the facts in the first place, and so the entire attempt founders.
The final main stay of modern politics, lies n the relatively recent ideas that one ought from performance targets actually create ones own facts. Facts become then something that can be defined firstly by theory as that theory s spun (in the form of policy) to a public. Facts, such as pupils doing better at school or hospitals becoming cleaner, are then forced upon their respective worlds, and the world resounds.
The trouble of course is that the real world never all works like that. Facts cannot be simply, and straight forwardly applied to it (this is why science needs reasons and its inference, but also pertinent, a scientist is an individual who not only knows they will be wrong but also understand that very wrongness as a creative dimension in their world).Lacking then the flexibility of science the world of targets becomes a world to two truths. On the one hand there is the need to fulfil the criterion of ;fact; which has been forced upon the institution. Criterion well then be me, facts will happen. The trouble is that the ‘real world; that is actually what is happening is then lost in the need to inform to the external fact thrust upon the organization. It becomes then a fact generating machine, and such machine always warps the world it finds its within.
The very basic gearing of observation, collectivization, and explication, which lie at the heart of the gear of facts, becomes then as it applied elsewhere in other dimension (here I consider politics, but the media or economics or business also play very much the same series of games). Facts then are torn from the world which created them and as an independent gear, become a scourge for a Gradgrind to warp a world into something quite other than it was. And perhaps our challenge is not, in the face of that other scientific fact, global warming, to find a different type or manner of response
