The Death of Truth and Politics as Chaos
The Death of Truth and Politics as Chaos
Subtitle: Psychopathology of the Brazilian State
1. Opening — Fractal, 17 years old
You see a piece of news.
Then another one saying the opposite.
Then a short video clip.
Then a meme.
Then someone speaking with absolute certainty.
In a few minutes, the question changes.
It is no longer:
“Is this true?”
It becomes:
“Which side is this on?”
When truth dies, the body stops searching for evidence.
It starts searching for protection.
And politics stops being collective thinking.
It becomes a battle for belonging.
2. Deepening
Truth was never simple.
But now it is being fragmented into fast, emotional pieces.
Technology accelerated this process.
The algorithm does not need to prove anything.
It only needs to keep you reacting.
A lie with anger spreads faster than a careful explanation.
An attack sticks more than historical context.
An enemy—real or imagined—organizes more attention than a complex problem.
This is how politics becomes chaos.
In Brazil, this meets an old structure: inequality, colonial history, religion used as power, fragile institutional trust, and elites that learned to govern through division.
When truth collapses, the State weakens.
Because democracy requires a shared layer of reality.
Without it, each group lives in its own world:
a world of fear,
a world of enemies,
a world of saviors,
a world of conspiracies.
Religion, when captured by politics, stops being a space of meaning and becomes a system of obedience.
Technology, when captured by profit, stops being a tool and becomes an environment of behavioral control.
And elites, when they capture public attention, hide what really matters:
who concentrates wealth,
who controls data,
who influences laws,
who profits from chaos.
The death of truth does not happen when everyone lies.
It happens when people get tired of searching for truth.
That is when a psychopathological State emerges:
a State where collective emotion is manipulated,
historical memory is weakened,
and politics becomes a spectacle of disorganization.
3. Metacognition
Now bring this into your body.
When you read a piece of news, what happens first?
Do you pause?
Do you verify?
Do you compare sources?
Or does your body choose a side before thinking begins?
This is the key point.
Misinformation does not enter only through the mind.
It enters through a tense body.
Through fear.
Through anger.
Through the need to belong.
When we lose fruição and metacognition, truth feels threatening.
But when we return to the body, something changes.
The question shifts from:
“Does this confirm what I feel?”
to:
“Is my body reacting before I understand?”
That small gap is powerful.
It is where critical thinking begins.
It is where Jiwasa returns.
Because truth is not just isolated data.
It is shared reality with responsibility.
Without truth, there is no “we.”
There are only fragmented groups—reactive, vulnerable, and easy to manipulate.
With truth, the body slows down.
Memory returns.
Politics can stop being chaos.
And the possibility of a shared future reappears.
References (Didactic Order)
Books
Hannah Arendt — The Origins of Totalitarianism
Shows how propaganda, fear, and the destruction of shared reality prepare societies for authoritarian control.Hannah Arendt — Truth and Politics
Explains why politics depends on factual reality to avoid becoming manipulation of opinion.Neil Postman — Amusing Ourselves to Death
Demonstrates how media systems can turn truth, politics, and knowledge into entertainment.Shoshana Zuboff — The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Shows how behavior, attention, and prediction became economic assets.David Graeber & David Wengrow — The Dawn of Everything
Challenges the inevitability of hierarchy, domination, and centralized control in human history.
Post-2021 Publications and Reports
Pew Research Center — Global Views of Social Media and Its Impacts on Society (2022)
Indicates that misinformation is widely perceived as a major threat to democratic life.Guess et al. — How Do Social Media Feed Algorithms Affect Attitudes and Behavior in an Election Campaign? (2023, Science)
Shows that feed algorithms influence exposure, political attitudes, and misinformation dynamics.Vasist & Krishnan — The Polarizing Impact of Political Disinformation and Hate Speech (2023)
Links misinformation and hate speech to increased social polarization.Pew Research Center — Social Media and Democracy in 27 Countries (2024)
Shows that the impact of social media on democracy varies, but concern about its effects is widespread.Xu — Misinformation Dissemination on Social Media (2025)
Clarifies concepts like fake news, rumors, and misleading information in digital environments.Germano, Gómez & Sobbrio — Ranking for Engagement: How Social Media Algorithms Fuel Misinformation and Polarization (2025)
Demonstrates how engagement-based ranking systems amplify polarizing and misleading content.
