Postmodernism, post-truth and alternative facts

Derek Berner
1 min readFeb 18, 2017

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Your perception of what is true comes from your five senses, your ability to reason, and the sources you trust.

As such, objective truth, which most of us agree must exist, is nevertheless frustratingly difficult for our squishy hominid meat brains to pin down.

Philosophers have been talking about this bizarre tendency of Truth, which ought to be objective, to stubbornly refuse to act objectively, since at least the Industrial Revolution. Interest in this was renewed in the 1960s with the advent of mass media and again in the 1990s with the internet boom.

Perhaps we ought not be so surprised at the sudden proliferation of “alternative facts” and “fake news.”

Perhaps, rather, we should be wondering how it took us so long to get here.

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Derek Berner
Derek Berner

Written by Derek Berner

Devopsy guy with liberal tendencies.

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