The sa国际传媒 Grade 12 curriculum focuses on 20th-century world history and includes units on authoritarian regimes and social and cultural developments.
Given the ever-complicated world of political flapdoodle and folderol, along with reports of the partisan shenanigans that tap dance around any semblance of truth south of our border, this would seem a good time to include a Grade 12 History unit on 颅history鈥檚 鈥淏ig Lies鈥� and their consequences throughout world history.
Maybe not a timely Christmas topic for a column, but timely anyway.
A study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience found that lying is a slippery slope, and when people consistently tell small lies, the brain becomes desensitized to the pang of guilt that dishonesty usually causes. Small lies become big lies.
Politics and sometimes organized religion have always found it convenient to utilize the 鈥淏ig Lie鈥� for their own purposes.
As far back as 1610, political and some religious leaders denied science when 颅scientists such as Galileo, the father of observational astronomy, proposed that the planet Earth revolved around the sun, not vice-versa, and that the earth was not the centre of the universe.
Galileo was tried by the Roman Inquisition, found 鈥渧ehemently suspect of heresy,鈥� and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Fast forward to the 20th century and the 鈥淏ig Lie鈥� promoted by Hitler and his 颅sycophants, using Jews as political 颅scapegoats. As Hitler鈥檚 Reich Minister of Propaganda advised, if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. It worked and Nazism was the result.
In 2008, fraudster Bernie Madoff 颅admitted that his investment firm was 鈥渏ust one big lie,鈥� after he had conned an astounding 颅number of people into handing over their life savings to him. Madoff kept up his fraud for over a decade, bilking $50 billion US from 鈥渋nvestors鈥� who heard from him what they wanted to hear.
For years, the tobacco industry assured customers that cigarettes were neither unhealthy nor addictive. The makers of Old Gold cigarettes claimed 鈥渘ot a cough in a carload.鈥� The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 480,000 habitual smokers die every year because they want to believe that their habit is not dangerous.
Current daily news reports confirm that it is apparently not difficult to persuade a significant number of people that, despite all evidence to the contrary and hundreds of thousands of deaths, not only was the recent U.S. federal election fraudulent but COVID-19 is a hoax, vaccines are dangerous and the wearing of masks is a left-wing plot against 鈥減ersonal freedom.鈥�
Basically, the more an individual or 颅political party lies, the easier it is to do it, the bigger the lies become and the more people buy into the lie.
So how can our kids examine 鈥淏ig Lies鈥� in a constructive, educational way?
The first check, applied to any number of 鈥淏ig Lies鈥� past and present, would be to determine whether the source of the 颅suspected lie has a consistent history of lying about less-consequential matters 鈥� situations where small acts of dishonesty escalate into more significant lies.
A second test would be to ask: 鈥淲ho is the main beneficiary of the lie?鈥� If the 颅propagator of the lie is the main beneficiary, that could also be a tip-off.
Thirdly, what qualifications, experience and hard evidence did the suspected liar 颅provide to back up the lie?
鈥淏ig Lies鈥� work, psychologists tell us, because sometimes even the most 颅outrageous lies align with what individuals want to believe, or ratify secret beliefs 颅individuals don鈥檛 care to admit out loud.
The central lesson of a 鈥淏ig Lie鈥� 颅curricular unit would be that people will believe what suits them or serves their 颅purpose. Fact, evidence and truth have nothing to do with it.
As German-born American political 颅theorist Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism: 鈥淏efore mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their 颅opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.鈥�
If a study of history is to become more relevant as a guide to the future, an 颅analysis of the consequences of 鈥淏ig Lies鈥� over the centuries could be more useful than a study of the litany of events from which, as 颅philosopher and idealist Georg Hegel suggested, we haven鈥檛 learned much at all.
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
