Advertising The Truth

I was shown to the TED website which for those who dont know contains videos of a lot of smart people giving short talks to other very smart people on topics that could best be described as cool or left-field or futuristic. What they have in common is that hardly anyone thinks these problems are simple or easily solvable. Whether it's the pursuit of happiness, supersymmetry or global warming these guys have their finger on the zeitgeist and man are they pressing hard to burst that zeit.

But wait. Are they really just standing up there, sheepishly delivering their version of The Truth? It would seem to be the case but in fact I think they are really just delivering advertisements for their particular version of the truth. One guy who gave a short talk on the E8xE8 model of supersmmetry ended his talk by showing what a well rounded person he was with pictures of his girlfriend and his passion for surfing. Accompanying his talk were some beautiful graphics illuminating the concept of supersymmetry. Now here's the thing. He could be a baby eating monster and it would make not a jot of difference as to the truth or otherwise of his theory. The universe is neither cool nor basically decent deep down. It doesnt wear hand-knitted jumpers or recycle diligently each Thursday. It wears brown when in town. And pretty much everywhere else. It doesnt eat its greens or apologise for its farts in public. The universe just is. Of course he wasnt claiming that we should believe his theory because he was a cool guy. In fact quite the opposite, he said that in case the theory turned out to be a colossal waste of time at least he would have lived a decent life. What with the surfing and the girlfriend and all. But isnt that how modern advertising really works? I just happen to be a cool guy AND drive this car. Doesnt mean nothing. Except it does.

So what we are really seeing here is a form of advertising like any other. McDonald's would be proud of this guy. I'm sure even if he doesnt discover the GUT he seeks he could get a job in advertising.

If this all seems a little harsh I have to admit I admire the guy's intellect, envy his surfer lifestyle, his chick and his van. (He is not the only one at TED "working a look", as they say in fashion circles - in a inadvisable move, redolent of late-life alcoholism, Lord Rees, the British Astronomer Royal, appears to have adopted a bow-tie. I have quitely observed Prof Martin Rees, as he was before his enoblement, for nearly 20 years and this latest development is unfortunate. Until Harold Bloom dies there should be no additions to the Order of the Bow Tie. Unless Harold Bloom has died in which case I guess it is okay. UPDATE: H.Bloom is still alive so take off the bow tie Marty and step back from the edge).

But there have been other periods in history when large groups of intellectuals, like TED, gathered and used their lifestyle to advertise the veracity of their opinions. I refer to the Middle Ages in Europe when monks and other religious were sure that they pretty much understood (a) how the Universe worked and (b) how to be happy. It was all there in the teachings of the Church. Call it the GUT or God's Undeniable Truth. God made the world, his son Jesus came to earth etc, try not to sin and if you do seek forgiveness via the Church. Pretty simple. And to aid and encourage acceptance of these ideas there were some pretty neat graphics - mostly in the form of illuminated manuscripts and stained glass windows. Of course, even then, there was nothing like a bit of viral marketing to focus peoples attentions on this view of the afterlife but in those days viral marketing meant fear of catching bubonic plague through sinful acts.

This view of the universe and how to live happily in it was complete. There were no doubts as there are today. Indeed had the intellectuals of the day kept their heads down and their hoods up we might still happily believe in it. But they couldn''t and it was the intellectuals that stood outside the mainstream who eventually tore it down from Wycliffe denying transubstantiation in the late 15th century (for which heresy his bones were dug up and burned some 20 years after his death) to Martin Luther some 100 years later nailing his "95 Theses" to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517. While these men did not act alone they certainly acted outside and against the vast tide of accepted intellectual opinion. I suspect that the people in TED see themselves as inheritors of Wycliff and Luther's iconoclasm but may in fact be more like the monks who argued about the legendary number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. I am a monk AND I believe in God. It doesnt mean anything. Except now it does.

Trying to understand that (dis)connection is what this blog is about. The way we send messages about the things we believe in and also act as personal advertisements for those beliefs, even when when we don't realise it, or even necessarily believe in them.

I wonder if some day, when we all exist inside interlinked virtual worlds, we will look back on the current time and our preoccupation with The Truth and wonder why we bothered with such trivalities and we will be pitied for our ignorance and, perhaps, envied for the simplicity of our lives in the same way that we might look back at people living in medieval times, in blissful ignorance, and both pity and envy them.