January | 2017 | The Sociological Yogi

Welcome to the Trumped up age, everyone.

I’m sure like many of you, these last few days (weeks… months… __fill in the blank?__…) have been filled with trying to process the events unfolding in this country, not to mention the ripple effects these events have on the broader world.

Today I want to tackle the increasing importance of practicing satya in the form of radical Truth. Given our current political climate, it is even more imperative that we center our practices on the ethical prescriptions of the yamas. But what exactly does it mean to practice satya, or truthfulness, the restraint from falsehood, the resistance to distortions of one’s reality rooted in ignorance?

The Trumped Up Age

This week was, of course, the inauguration of Trump to the presidency. As I sit here writing this, #DayFour has already seen:

a rollback of the freedom of the press (and see here),
government officials blatantly lying to the public they are supposed to serve (and then calling these lies “alternative facts”? PS. Orwell’s 1984 was meant to be a warning, not an instruction manual),
the targeting of women’s rights, reproductive healthcare and programs serving domestic violence survivors (and their children); all those involved in these decisions were white men (mansplaining, much?), and were in spite of the fact the majority of Americans are now pro-choice, and despite evidence these policies actually harm people,
the targeting of healthcare coverage for all Americans,
disturbing indications of future attacks on LGBTQIA+ rights,
the renewal of dirty energy projects Keystone XL and DAPL (which our president has direct financial investments in that he has NOT shown evidence of divestment from),
indications of the rollback of indigenous rights,
indications of a rollback on the rights of disabled individuals,
the complete deletion of any reference to climate change on the white house website and the promotion of a climate denier to head the EPA,
indications of the privatization of national lands and national parks,
indications of continuing voter suppression under Trump (and see here),
a blatant refusal to release Trump’s tax returns (ever),
and the President officially in violation of the constitution by not divesting in his business interests.
Oh, and I forgot: the targeting of low-income homeowners, veterans, funding for the arts, continuing evidence of disturbing ties between Putin and Trump, the resurrection of a bill proposing the USA pulls out of the United Nations, and a slew of laws being proposed to target protesters and the rights of free speech.

So pretty much it’s been a shit-show. Why list it all? Because frankly, it’s important to remember that this is not normal. Also, experts in authoritarianism recommend keeping a regular list of things changing around you, because as we can see it can be overwhelming to keep track of. Literally, it’s been almost impossible to keep up with the slew of horrible and disturbing news.

Trump and his team have been waging a war on the media, a war on facts, a war on reality in attempts to discredit even the most obvious and verifiable information. This war has also been focused on overloading us with so much at once that it becomes nearly impossible to catch everything, to resist the myriad of ways his administration and the Republicans in the House and Senate are attempting to rollback our civil rights and undermine our democracy. According to journalist Ezra Klein:

The spat over crowd size is a low-stakes, semi-comic dispute, but the groundwork is being laid for much more consequential debates over what is, and isn’t, true. Delegitimizing the institutions that might report inconvenient or damaging facts about the president is strategic for an administration that has made a slew of impossible promises and takes office amid a cloud of ethics concerns and potential scandals. It also gives the new administration a convenient scapegoat for their continued struggles with public opinion, and their potential future struggles with reality… It’s not difficult to imagine the Trump administration disputing bad jobs numbers in the future, or claiming their Obamacare replacement covers everyone when it actually throws millions off insurance.

What happens when our government becomes an untrustworthy and unreliable source of information, when it is our government that lies to us? Social psychologists have found that when faced with falsehoods, especially a torrential downpour of them, commitment to the truth becomes monumentally more difficult.

Our brains are particularly ill-equipped to deal with lies when they come not singly but in a constant stream, and Trump, we know, lies constantly… When we are overwhelmed with false, or potentially false, statements, our brains pretty quickly become so overworked that we stop trying to sift through everything. It’s called cognitive load—our limited cognitive resources are overburdened. It doesn’t matter how implausible the statements are; throw out enough of them, and people will inevitably absorb some. Eventually, without quite realizing it, our brains just give up trying to figure out what is true.

But Trump goes a step further. If he has a particular untruth he wants to propagate—not just an undifferentiated barrage—he simply states it, over and over. As it turns out, sheer repetition of the same lie can eventually mark it as true in our heads. It’s an effect known as illusory truth… Repetition of any kind—even to refute the statement in question—only serves to solidify it…

When false information is specifically political in nature, part of our political identity, it becomes almost impossible to correct lies… In the face of a seeming assault on their identity, they didn’t change their minds to conform with the truth: Instead, amazingly, they doubled down on the exact views that were explained to be wrong. (Konnikova 2017)

It’s important to remember that facts do exist. But it’s also important to recognize that in the Trumped up age, authorities like our government are actively working to undermine our abilities to determine fact from fiction. These attempts make it harder for us to sift through the slew of misinformation being promoted by what have in the past seemed to be legitimate sources.

In this day and age, we all must come together to commit more fully to a radical understanding of what the truth means, and what it means to be truthful. In this day and age, we all must come together to support the development of a yogic culture of radical truth tellers.

Satya: Radical Truth in Opposition to Radical Lies

In yogic philosophy, satya is commonly interpreted as truthfulness or the restraint from falsehood, with many teachers promoting the idea of truthfulness in thought, word, and deed. But what exactly does this mean in practice?

In the yoga world today, we often misunderstand satya to mean “honesty.” This implies satya entails remaining “true” to our self in ways that allow us to honestly share our personal opinions, and to feel justified in doing so with comments like “I’m simply being ‘true’ to who I am” (oh, the ego is strong!). Thus, satya becomes misinterpreted as saying your “truth,” as you see it, in your words; acting out your “truth,” as you see it, in your actions; and thinking your “truth,” as you believe it, in your mind.

This is often encouraged by the way yoga has become tied to an individualized, capitalistic understanding of the self in the West. In this misunderstanding, satya becomes the act of remaining “true” to an assumed underlying, unique “authentic self” we are encouraged to discover and express through buying things. Thus, satya is misinterpreted as something completely relative, as unique to each person. It becomes individualized as being “true” to one’s ego-self in our thoughts, words, and deeds rather than understanding satya as a commitment and dedication to the uncovering of deep Truth in our self and our life.

This shallow interpretation of satya as honesty isn’t so much about uncovering, understanding, or spreading Truth, but is instead about feeling justified in our personal interpretations, regardless of their flaws or inaccuracies (oh, the ego is strong!). Rather than becoming Truth tellers, we are encouraged to become tellers of our own personal, radical “truths,” regardless of whether or not our personal opinions are actually grounded in fact, regardless of whether or not our personal opinions are actually based on an understanding of the realities that surround us.

Look, I’m all about honesty. It’s a wonderful thing. I encourage everyone to be honest as part of their practice of satya. But let’s get honest here–honesty is not always the same thing as being Truthful. (And to be really honest, this misunderstanding of satya also ignores yogic philosophy regarding the nature of the True self, purusha, and the realities of avidya, ignorance, which lead us astray from understanding the Truth of our self and the world.)

I believe that to truly practice satya, we need to recognize that there is something to Truth beyond just honesty. We need to recognize that adhering to Truth demands more of us than an accurate, honest reflection of our own ignorance. It demands a commitment to understand reality, a commitment to uncover facts, and a commitment to radically express them.

The fact of the matter is, in this Trumped up age the Truth is often unpleasant, uncomfortable, and complex. The yoga industry often avoids this reality, this Truth, because when you are trying to sell something to a mass audience it’s easier to use a quick gimmick and a surface level understanding of satya than to really challenge our students and our selves. It’s easier to promote a false representation of the “truth” as simple, because it’s easier to sell simplicity. We are comfortable with simple things; complex things tend to scare us. Complex things make us uncomfortable. So instead, it’s easier, and more lucrative, to encourage a fantasy understanding of the world as simple, a world where happiness is achievable (if you can just pay enough, or just consume enough), a world where we are encouraged to remain in the bubbles we surround ourselves with that make us feel safe and comfortable, but which are not really True.

In this Trumped up age, I think it’s important we understand satya as a radical commitment to the Truth that surrounds us, even if it is unpleasant, dangerous, or risky to express. We must become radical Truth tellers, not simply tellers of our personal, radical “truths.”

Reinterpreting satya as a commitment to radical Truth implies a responsibility to combat falsehoods, to speak out in support of what we know to be fact. It implies a responsibility to act with honesty and integrity in the face of lies in ways that don’t just serve our ego, but serve those most affected by the realities of our unequal world. It implies a responsibility to utilize Truth to mitigate harm being caused, in accordance with ahimsa and in ways that actively, radically encourage others we encounter to do the same.

It means not being complacent to the harm perpetrated by the systems we are a part of by remaining silent in the face of injustice. A radical practice of satya must promote radical Truth focused on social justice, equity, and inclusivity, and continue to seek the complex reality beneath the charade of simple falsehoods.

Perhaps most importantly, we must recognize that we cannot do this alone. The myriad of falsehoods we face is simply too much for one person to bear the cognitive burden. We must band together, form coalitions, and support organizations and independent news agencies that are committed to promoting the Truth, to preserving fact, and to engaging in investigative journalism. We must form networks of trustworthy, reliable, radical Truth tellers. To combat ignorance and promote radical Truth in the face of radical lies, we must continue to resist together. We must continue to organize, together. We must continue to utilize social media to network with others committed to Truth, and we must continue on-the-ground community organizing to create strong local governments and support systems that value a truthful understanding of reality as it is, not as we want it to be.

We must continue to speak out, even when it is uncomfortable to do so, even when it is potentially dangerous to do so. We must resist efforts to be silenced, and we must be willing to take on the burden of radical Truth-telling despite the risk.

Despite all the horrible, depressing, anxiety-producing news lately, I have been encouraged and inspired by those who are committed to sharing radical Truth, who insist on working towards a better future, a future that values facts and is willing to face the unpleasant realities of our world so that we may solve them. Radical truth is a creative endeavor, and I want to leave you with some of those creators and artists who have begun the brave process of speaking out and calling up. I think it is important for us to all begin to utilize the tools at our disposal to educate, to advocate, to agitate for a better world.

Seek radical Truth. And in the words of a friend of mine, “Stay radical. Stay woke AF.”