Lies — misinformation or disinformation in its polite academic and media dress — fills the news today. Endless stories of lying Congress members, dark money PACs spreading conspiracy theories, media’s deliberate use of misinformation. Not a day goes by without some headline in this realm. The use of such information, however, is not new, although it has never been as prevalent as it is today. Promoting fake news is an ancient tool of power. The weaponization of misinformation for such purposes dates back to Babylon at least 3,000 years ago according to research done by Martin Worthington, a fellow at St. John’s College at Cambridge University.
Worthington is an Assyriologist who specializes in Babylonian grammar, literature, and medicine, and he describes the first example he found in Babylonian literature, “Ea (a Babylonian god) tricks humanity by spreading fake news. He tells the Babylonian Noah, known as Uta–napishti, to promise his people that food will rain from the sky if they help him build the ark. What the people don’t realize is that Ea’s nine-line message is a trick: it is a sequence of sounds that can be understood in radically different ways, like English ‘ice cream’ and ‘I scream’. 1
Martin says […]
Dear Stephen Schwartz,
First of all, thank you for your personal take on the weaponization of lies, one of the most destructive elements of our time. Your dedication and discipline to raise the level of awareness and compassion in our world is now legendary and a true inspiration. Not even hospital procedures keep you from your extraordinary daily self imposed work. You have shown extraordinary intellectual courage to apply science and conduct research in a wide range of fields, often pointing out the deficiencies of our current paradigms to understand and explain our field of knowledge. And you have done it as a renaissance’s man: You are certainly a good candidate for a human being who holds the frequency of cosmic consciousness for our time. I am very grateful that you are in the world and for the light that you cast in it.
Sincerely,
Roberto Dansie, PhD