It Isn’t What It Is

 Everywhere you go, people are shrugging and saying it is what it is. It’s the English equivalent of c’est la vie or che sera sera, a reluctant acceptance of the facts, a resignation to fate. A comforting platitude for these discomforting times. But right now, it feels like nothing is what it is.

I receive an email from the company that hosts my website, warning of scammers pretending to be professional website designers. Then there’s a missive from someone offering to place fake ‘subtly handcrafted positive Goodreads reviews’ of my latest book - for a fee, of course. Next, an email entitled ‘Festival Invitation!’ from someone called Claudiuss Blacksmith - no message, just a dodgy-looking box that Claudiuss really wants me to click on. Then a phone message from the mechanics who returned my serviced vehicle with a missing windscreen wiper, denying responsibility for the damage. Fibs and fibbers everywhere.

Scrolling the socials, I watch twin toddlers apparently dancing a perfectly coordinated samba, a man apparently hugging a lion in the wild, and the US President apparently playing soccer in the Oval Office with Cristiano Ronaldo – all AI-generated deceptions.

On the evening news there’s a story about food fraud, a ‘global multibillion dollar problem’, the expert tells us. Fish marketed as ‘caught in the Northern Territory’ have been farmed in Asia. Packets sold as ‘Kakadu plum powder’ contain no traces of plum.

I take an anxious call from an elderly relative whose neighbour just saved him from being scammed by a company pretending to sell cheap solar panels. The world has become a frightening place for him, full of lies and liars. But you don’t have to be elderly to fall for this stuff. Not long ago I spoke to a phone scammer masquerading as a bank security representative, who somehow persuaded me to transfer hundreds of dollars to him.

I would usually seek refuge from all this claptrap by reading a memoir, an authentic tale written by a real person. But the one I was planning to read next - a best-selling account of a middle-aged couple who go on a marathon hike together - has turned out to be full of omissions, exaggerations and fabrications. Listening to music offers no solace – who knows if the artist on my streaming service lives and breathes, or has been digitally generated, along with their songs?

So why does any of this matter? Why can’t I shrug it off, tell myself it is what it is, and get on with my day?

Because every day it feels like our trust - in business transactions, in personal and professional communications, in our elected politicians and creative producers, in all the visual, textual and auditory information we consume - is being eroded. Seeing is no longer believing. Having to ask ourselves at every turn is that true? is that real? is that safe? is generating suspicion exhaustion. And when we tire of having to be sceptical 24/7, we can drop our guard and abandon our critical faculties. When the warning bells become a painful cacophony, we might switch them off, leaving ourselves vulnerable to exploitation by unethical actors.

One dangerous alternative to dropping our guard is to become increasingly dubious and hypervigilant, which could lead to paranoia. When trust feels impossible, fear and rage often replace it. We’ve seen shocking examples in our own country of ‘deep state’ paranoia and mistrust of authorities leading to violence and murder.

What’s new? Surely there’ve always been snake-oil salesmen and lying politicians, spreaders of fake news and producers of optical illusions. Most of the time they’re outed, then either outlawed or voted out. Democratic governments usually try to protect their citizens from shysters with regulations, laws and law enforcement.

But there’s a vicious cycle underway, with democracies eroding as authoritarian governments exploit our fear, rage and mistrust to assert more control over their anxious, bewildered citizens. And as Carl Sagan wrote, ‘If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth… It’s simply too hard to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.’

So how do we extricate ourselves from this quicksand of misinformation? Taking time out from social media can help reduce our suspicion exhaustion. Being wary of AI-generated ‘information’ is vital. An acquaintance recently asked ChatGPT about my relationship history and was confidently informed I’d been married six times, often bigamously (I’ve never been married.) Journalistic techniques like relying on primary sources and cross-checking with secondary sources can help.

We need to maintain our scepticism, seek out and reward authenticity, and practice self-interrogatory honesty. We need to listen to those warning bells, however faint, and heed them. We need to remind ourselves that ethics matter in every area of life. They are the foundations of pro-social behaviour, acting as a bulwark against social chaos. Without honesty, trust and transparency, we can’t be sure that anything ‘is what it is’.