The Truthiness Out There

Everyone feels entitled to their own point of view. It no longer seems to matter whether such opinions have even the slightest grain of truth to back them up. The brain is a wonderful organ for confabulating reality, and yet we insist that our truth is the real truth. There just had to be a good word to describe this dismal state of affairs.

Stephen Colbert announced the word "truthiness" in his The Colbert Report back in October 2005. It hit such a raw nerve that the word ended up being awarded Word of the Year for 2005 by the American Dialect Society and for 2006 by Merriam-Webster. Pedants, however, noted that the word already existed in the Oxford English Dictionary and meant "truthfulness, faithfulness". The word now has an altogether new meaning.

Colbert expanded on his own feelings about truthiness:

"Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word…

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the President because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?…

Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality."

The easiest people to sell to are salesmen. Similarly, the easiest people to lie to are those who lie to themselves. Truthiness has a certain warm smugness to it that hides one of its synonyms: self-deception. The political and social point that Colbert makes is that those prone to self-deception are also most prone to be decieved by others, be they politicians, journalists, advertisers, whatever.

Interesting that at the foot of the Wikipedia article, under "See also" we find Doublethink, Newspeak and the Noble Lie. Truthiness is not supposed to be flattering.