The tragedy of war and disinformation

Why do we have the feeling that everything is failing around us? One simple answer is that hopes for peace and prosperity are being dashed daily by rising fears of war.

- ANDREW SHENG

At the anniversary of the Ukraine invasion on 24 February, war seems closer to our shores than before. It is ironic that the most hawkish party on Ukraine is the German Green Party, which is supposed to support the environment, but is now embracing nuclear power and re-arming Germany, even though defense spending will be very carbon intensive and consumes lots of irreplaceable natural resources.

War is a basic human activity. However, whether we decide to go to war or not relates fundamentally to information. Without information, we could still be blissfully unaware of the seriousness of war. Pacific islanders cut off from world information would not be able to join the debate on the Ukraine war, even though they are affected by the carbon emission, inflation, and possible nuclear fallout.

Having been educated mostly in the West, I came to realize that I was blind to my own blindness until the US-China rivalry showed how the power of media and propaganda has distorted any objective evaluation of what is really going on. The West rose on the basis of science, which verifies objective truth through empirical facts tested against reality. There is no objective scientific truth when everything is being looked at from the lens of emotion, anger, and fear.