We live in a post-truth age. It sounds modern, but it isn’t. Defined 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosophical concept ‘Amathia’ helps explain why some leaders and followers believe, cling and spin their web of deceit and disinformation. There is a popular saying—ignorance is the root of all evil. But ancient thinkers were much more nuanced, specific and detailed about the kind of ignorance that is evil.
Amathia is “wilful ignorance”—the stubborn denial of facts and evidence. Philosophers described Amathia as more evil than evil because it was “a refusal to learn”, especially by intelligent or educated people. Standing the test of time is Plato’s definition: “Amathia arises when a person is devoid of understanding, being gripped not only by ignorance, but by arrogance that he is wise, as if he is completely knowledgeable about things he knows nothing about at all.” When entrusted with authority, people with Amathia make poor decisions because of their haughty assumption that their competence in one domain makes them experts in all matters. Their choices can thus have catastrophic consequences, sometimes costing millions of lives.
Greek philosophers emphasise that Amathia is driven by egotism, resentment or self-conceit. They also identified well-known accomplished men who personify Amathia. Socrates accused his brilliant student Alcibiades of Amathia, rebuking him “you dash into politics before you have been educated”. Alcibiades gave terrible advice that contributed to the collapse of Athenian democracy. Philosopher Sextus Empiricus accused Epicurus, the founder of Epicureanism, of Amathia for belittling other fields of study because he nursed grievances against more famous rival philosophers. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was revered as a philosopher-king. Yet, for his successor, he “amathetically” chose his 15-year-old son Commodus. Historians describe Commodus as the most “cruel, demented and dim-witted” Roman emperor.
Consequences are dreadful when the Amathia of a leader combines with his followers’, resulting in “herd mentality, mass emotionalism and uncritical thinking”. Evil is unleashed: Jews gassed, Christians tortured, Black Americans lynched, migrants persecuted, Armenians slaughtered, Romanis medically experimented upon, Africans and indigenous people enslaved, dissidents burned at the stake. Followers don’t question assumptions. They pride themselves on being independent, contrarian, anti-establishment. Yet, they blindly follow their leader, wilfully ignoring to scrutinise his lofty claims, hypocrisies and duplicity.
Through the centuries, this tendency to outsource the brain to something or someone explains the worship of tyrants, godmen, cult leaders or mountains and icons. Perhaps, this also explains why people now outsource their thinking to ChatGPT, social media and generative AI. Experts say this year AI will play a creepy role in the US mid-term elections. Stressed and distracted, and unable to sift truth from lies, many American voters are outsourcing their election decision to chatbots, asking it for advice on who they should vote for.
Micro-targeting of voters, “deep-fake” campaigns and “bot farms” that generate bogus online traffic make it hard to distinguish the real from the fake. Currently, there are more bots online than humans and most new English language content on the internet is written by machines and not by human beings. It makes one wonder: is AI going to do to modern democracy what external conquests and internal exhaustion did to Athenian democracy? The causes of ancient exhaustion mirror contemporary realities—the toll taken by bad governance, ill-informed decisions, costly wars and erratic political behaviour.
Socrates believed Amathia was humankind’s only evil, wisdom its only cure. Greek playwright Euripides wrote 2,500 years ago—“Amathia together with a mob is the greatest evil.”
History repeats, rhymes and red flags.
Pratap is an author and journalist.
