Constructed Truth, Fourth Wing, And Misinformation
Fourth Wing Spoilers Ahead
I’ve been flying through the Fourth Wing series lately, and something that stood out to me, at least as someone who spends a lot of time talking about misinformation, is the way that ‘truth’ is treated in the books. The quote from the first book really stood out to me:
One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history
Because I think we as a society often see truth as objective. There is a is, and there is a is not. But time and time again through history, we see truth being constructed by those with power to benefit them.
The act of a monarch (or a President / Führer) calling the media ‘fake news’ is possibly the clearest example of this. Drawing the line on who is allowed to tell the stories that dictate our history and who is not. Or even the idea that history starts when records begin, and cultures without strong Western-style written records have their stories lost or delegitimised.
And this shapes how we can look at misinformation, because for something to be false or misleading, it means that it goes against some established truth. But if that truth is constructed, and subjective, then misinformation is more like information that doesn’t align with the dominant truth created by those with the power to decide our collective understanding of history.
If Violet were to tell everyone that the Vennin are real, she would just be dismissed by those who rightly believe the truth they have been given their whole life, and she would be accused of ‘spreading misinformation’ about the war with the gryphon riders.
And this leads to a bigger problem we face in the real world when dealing with misinformation – when is it a rebellion against a curated truth created by those in power? And when is it an attempt to shift the truth by those in power? Especially when we are talking about complex topics like climate change, these lines can become blurred, and when there is a belief held by some that climate change is all a left-wing elite conspiracy, and others believe that climate misinformation is being perpetuated by elites with a vested interest in burning the planet, each side sees themselves as the hero, and the other as the sheep blindly following the beliefs of the other side.