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I think we all believe that we have a neural pathway in our brain that can detect truth from lies, a God-given instinct or sensory system like our sight, smell or taste.

However, I am increasingly concerned that this perspective is too simple. It seems to me that there are a series of filters that we consciously or subconsciously apply to the inputs of information that obscure or cancel some or all of the data. The result is that our powers of reason, problem-solving, and understanding are severely stunted or destroyed, and we don’t always know it.

The Filter of Limited Data

Imagine you are in prison, in solitary confinement, with no phone, or internet, but there is a guard, that over time, you learn to trust. You ask him, in hushed tones, could he bring you some news items from the newspaper when he brings you your meals.

The plan is all set. The guard cuts out one article each meal and folds it into a little square and places it under the main dish on his try. Simple and effective!

As time goes by, you begin to feel much more connected to the outside world now that you are reading your guard’s news selection. But the selection is so small, its size is a filter in itself. The guard may have been trying to be balanced but he couldn’t see his own bias, and his judgement about what he thinks would interest you was based merely on guesswork.

Then there is the paper that the guard selects from. Do you know the political leaning of the paper? Surely, you can’t make that call based on the insignificant sample you are being fed.

In regard to how much of the truth we are being told, I have been reading Terrorism in America by Bill Muehlenberg, Daily Declaration 3 January 2025. Muehlenberg references a website tracking all terrorism attacks, The Religion of Peace. A quote from the article states:

From December 21-27, 2024, alone there were 21 attacks in 10 countries killing 115 people and wounding 58 others. That included one suicide blast. This site makes it perfectly clear that political Islam is a threat to the entire world, and the life, teachings and example of the Prophet has paved the way for this murderous way of life.

I knew about the attacks in the USA on New Year’s Day, and in Germany on 21 December 2024, but I had no idea about the other 19 attacks. The selection filter had clearly been in play for me.

The Filter of Trust

Most of us have been brought up to have no reason to suspect the data we receive, even if we acknowledge that it is filtered and limited, we believe it is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

In the West, we have grown up trusting those around us to always be either neutral or favourable. I think this is ingrained in our DNA, a bias towards trust. To question can be viewed as rude and even evil.

Our society, built as it is on the pillars of our Judeo-Christian heritage, has given us this legacy. But the Left’s agenda has seen a relentless assault on these foundations, to the extent that many parts of society can no longer be trusted to tell the truth. In light of this, I think we need to be extremely intentional about questioning everything we are told. We don’t need to be public with our doubts, but we should hold them close to our hearts until we have corroborating evidence to support or deny the original communication.

As a parent and a teacher, I have made it my habit to always hold back my judgment until I have heard both sides of a story. It is only human nature to paint a picture in the light of our own vantage point, which can’t see the whole picture.

The Filter of Conformity

As part of our herd instinct, very few of us are comfortable standing against the tide of public opinion. I think our natural initial processing of input data is to assess the consensus on the matter. When we have worked that out, we then manipulate our response to the data in the light of the most common perspective. We are naturally conformists.

To be accepted into a community or a family, we naturally put aside any questions we might have. We feel it is much more important for our wellbeing to be accepted by others, because the others in our community or family will be the ones, who in hard times will stand by us and support us. We dare not contradict them.

In recent years, the label “conspiracy theorist” has been bandied about as a pejorative. In the past, this was reserved for flat-earthers, but today, anything that flows against the norm is labelled as a conspiracy. Have we applied this filter, consciously or subconsciously, so that we have accepted a narrative that we are not really comfortable supporting, but for the sake of conformity we go along with anyway?

The Filter of Non-Thinking

Have you noticed that mainstream media no longer presents two or more sides of an issue? The item is always displayed in either a positive or a negative light. This forces us to conform with the presenter’s perspective; we don’t have to think, we don’t have to weigh up the pros and cons — it has already been decided for us. It is assumed we will accept the consensus.

On account of this style of presentation, I would argue that we are no longer being given cold hard facts from the mainstream news media, we are being given opinion dressed up as facts and presented as news.

It seems that the conformity filter aligns us, and then the acceptable narrative can easily be fed to us in one mouthful, which we swallow, unthinking, like babies in their highchairs.

Synonyms for non-thinking include: unthinking, unintelligent, unreasoning, irrational, nonrational and unreasonable. Some synonyms are even more insulting – mindless, dumb, dorky and brainless. We don’t want these labels, surely?

Society seems to have taken delight in taking away our personal responsibility for anything. We are now treated as unthinking subjects, who simply need to be told what to think and what to do.

Take, for example, the 29 July 2024 mass stabbing attack in Southport, UK. The way the authorities and media portrayed this incident seemed to me to indicate clearly that they were at pains to claim that the attack was not a terrorist incident, when all the evidence suggested it was.

Three months later, Nigel Farage gave us an update. The perpetrator was then being changed under the Biological Weapons Act for having dangerous chemicals in his home and under the Terrorism Act for downloading Al-Qaeda material from the internet. But for the horrific murders and injuries, he was still being treated as a non-terrorist!

The authorities and the media are treating us all as babies, incapable of thinking for ourselves. Are we conforming to this filter and allowing others to do all the thinking for us?

The Stockholm Syndrome Filter

The syndrome is derived from a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. In August 1973, four Sveriges Kreditbank employees were held hostage in the bank vault for six days. During the confrontation, a seemingly incongruous link developed between captive and captor… (“Media Bias – Part 3: Sociology“)

Kati Morton has a great piece about this syndrome. In it, she explains that if we are nice to our captors, we believe we will increase our chances of living through it, even to the extent of refusing to testify against them in a court of law when we are set free, and the captors are still firmly behind bars.

It’s as if the situation of being in captivity subconsciously makes us look for ways to deescalate the tension to the extent that, for self-preservation, we even praise our captors and will seek to do anything to support them by being as submissive and obedient as we can.

We may not be in prison, but I believe we are in information captivity. Are we subconsciously so bound by the information we are being fed that we are made to feel bad for specific individuals, groups or ethnicities? As a result, we modify our behaviour to support them by our submission and obedience.

When I see what happens to those who take a stand against the acceptable narrative, I confess I think twice about how I would respond in similar circumstances. Take, for example, Lyle Shelton’s case. In 2020, he was sued for vilification for his comments regarding Drag Queen Story Time in public libraries. Vision Christian Radio gave us an update a year ago. Lyle was vindicated in court for standing up for children, and it was good news for all those who take a stand against the sexualisation of children.

It certainly feels like we are being forced to self-censor our words and actions for fear of offending specific individuals, groups or ethnicities. Is this not the Stockholm Syndrome filter in action?

The Filter of Denial

We have seen how our environment plays with our mind — how we can emerge with a completely opposite perspective from where we started. I believe that a further development from the Stockholm Syndrome is denial, when we refuse to accept the credibility of the facts presented to us.

Consider Pontious Pilate talking with Jesus at His trial.

Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?”

Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, “I find no fault in Him at all.” (John 18: 37-38)

Pilate found no fault in Jesus, despite hearing Jesus’ confession to being a king. If he believed that to be true, he would surely have had him executed, but he was in denial, so he released him to the Jews.

Also, consider Pilate’s wife in this scenario.

“While he (Pilate) was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent him a message, saying, ‘Have nothing to do with that righteous Man; for last night I suffered greatly in a dream because of Him.’” (Matthew 27:19)

Here we see her acknowledging that Jesus was a righteous man. But if Pilot believed this, he would surely have not released him to the Jewish mob. Again, Pilate was in denial, this time of the truth conveyed to him by his wife. He was in double denial.

This is a most dramatic example, but a perfect illustration of how we can deny the truth when it is standing in front of us or when our spouse is speaking to us.

As a school principal, I often had parents in my office to discuss their child’s behaviour. It was common for them to be in complete denial that their own flesh and blood could have ever started a fight. The filter of denial is extremely strong, especially when the truth impacts us personally.

The Filter of Suppression of Truth

The intentional, carefully choreographed manipulation of facts to magnify one perspective and to hide any opposing voices.

The Great Barrington Declaration was one of the voices of concern about the accepted narrative in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A great number of eminent medical professionals shared their concerns and came together with this joint declaration. However, the establishment quickly mounted a campaign in the mainstream media to discredit this group as a small, deluded fringe who were not facing the facts.

The truth was suppressed, and the lie was promoted as the truth. As the years have gone by, the Great Barrington Declaration has proven to be correct on all counts. Not only had the establishment failed to pay any attention and change their polices, but the vast majority of the public also dismissed these concerns because they had been swayed by the effective suppression of the truth.

How do we know if the inconvenient truth is being suppressed? It is extremely hard; I would say, in some situations, it is impossible to detect, certainly in a timely manner. Therefore, all we can do is acknowledge that suppression is real, it has been used, and I am sure will be used again in the future. This filter is real.

The Filter of Mis- and Disinformation

The establishment has equipped themselves with two new weapons of mind control, the so-called misinformation and its sister, disinformation.

Consider all the issues that we might hope our government might address. Inflation, national security, antisemitism, to name but three. But late last year, they were seeking to legislate their Misinformation Bill. For a great background on this, read Kym Farnik’s “Fight for Freedom: Resist the ‘Misinformation’ Bill”. Yes, they were trying to control our freedom of thought and speech by legislation! Thankfully, the bill failed, for now.

If the authorities can label any view that opposes them as misinformation (false or inaccurate information, especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive) or disinformation (false information which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government organisation to a rival power or the media), where does that leave us? Certainly not in a democracy.

We end up with no way of knowing the truth. We simply become unquestioning slaves who believe what we are told. We are incapable of thinking for ourselves, as we have no objective frame of reference.

What is Truth?

We might believe that we know the truth. If we do, let’s hang on to it with all our might.

Jesus said: I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. (John 9:4)

We can say the same; we must work the works of Him who sent us while we can, as the night is surely coming when no one can work.

While we still know the truth and can recognise the truth, we are walking in the light (1 John 1: 5-7). When we can no longer recognise the truth, that’s because we are in darkness. So, it behoves us to fight for the truth with all our might, as surely those who want to hide the truth from us are the captors who would have us live in darkness under their control.

Let me conclude with a personal story. Since my retirement in 2021 I have reignited my passion for 33.33 rpm vinyl LPs of classical music that I now play on my retro turntable and amplifier.

It thrills me to read the extensive notes on the disc sleaves as I listen to a famous orchestra, imagine their conductor, and listen to a soloist recorded in, say, 1960. The sounds have been imprinted into the tiny groves on the vinyl. I am not dependent on the internet to hear the music, but I do need electricity, I must confess.

I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the recording can’t be manipulated or digitally altered. It is in my hands as I place it on the turntable. The recording I hear in my ears is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth of what actually happened on that specific day, in that concert hall in 1960.

While there are many threats to the truth, internally and externally, I can look to my LP collection on the shelf in my office. There, I know for certain that each record will tell the truth when I play it.

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Image courtesy of Adobe.