What Francis Bacon Knew About Fake News

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“Namaste, Bacon Bhai,” I greeted Francis Bacon in the prescribed patriotic way. I had requested for an interview with him on his 400-year-old essay ‘Of Truth.’ The 400-Year-Old Blog Post: What Francis Bacon Knew About Fake News – That’s the sensational headline I visualised.

Published in 1625, Bacon’s essay on truth explored why humans naturally resist absolute truth though adherence to truth remains essential for moral and social order. The essay opened with a famous biblical reference to Pontius Pilate’s question to Jesus: “What is truth?” said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

Bacon argued that people often avoided the truth, like Pilate, for three main reasons. Firstly, discovering truth requires hard work, critical thinking, and disciplined inquiry. Second: once a truth is accepted, it imposes certain boundaries on thought and behaviour. Finally, humans have a “corrupt love of the lie itself.” Falsehoods, exaggerations, and flattery often feel more comforting or pleasant than cold, stark reality.

Truth is like bright, clear daylight – unsparing and revealing. Lies and illusions are like soft candlelight. Lies add artificial charm, drama, and colour to life, making things appear grander or more flattering than they are. Literature is also a kind of lie, Bacon said, but it is “the shadow of a lie” which serves some good purposes: it entertains and inspires.

The problem is with the other kind of lies: deliberate falsehoods intended to deceive. Why has political falsehood taken precedence over literature? This is what I wanted to discuss with Bacon when I sought the interview.

“Literature offers shadows, propaganda offers power,” Bacon said with a grand gesture. I had read that he wasn’t at all a gentle, warm, or friendly person. Instead, I was warned to expect a deeply contradictory mix of calculating ambition, formal solemnity, intellectual grandeur, and polished vanity. I remembered Alexander Pope describing Bacon as “the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.” Yet I had to address him as Bhai in order to get permission from the PMO to interview a foreigner, particularly one who belonged to colonial England.

“Who wants shadows anymore?” Bacon asked me majestically. “People want power. And falsehoods give you more power than anything else.” He went on to explain that humans don’t just fall for deception out of gullibility; they secretly enjoy falsehoods when they flatter themselves on their national achievements, ancient glory, strong leader, and such. They think they’re becoming great when they proclaim the greatness of their nation, culture, civilisation…

Secondly, Bacon went on, social media algorithms don’t force lies on us; they exploit our natural appetite for them. We share unverified stories not because we know they’re true, but because they feel true and satisfy our tribal loyalties.

“Do you know why Pilate didn’t wait for the answer to his question?” Bacon asked me. “Pilate didn’t believe truth was real or worth chasing. Truth is of no matter to those who want political power.”

“Your country is creating some records in this field,” Bacon went on. “The disinformation campaigns in India today don’t always try to make you believe a specific lie; their goal is often to flood the zone so thoroughly that you give up entirely.”

Rather than sticking to one official defence when there is a crisis, social media platforms and messaging groups are used to spread dozens of competing stories at once. For example, Narrative A says: “The crisis is real, but it’s entirely caused by state governments, not the central government.” The blame might even be passed to Nehru or Babur, Bacon laughed uproariously – and rather uncharacteristically – when he said that.

Narrative B: The crisis is exaggerated by international media looking to defame India.

Narrative C: Oxygen shortages in hospitals are actually a result of hoarding by people of a particular community who are in this business dominantly.

Jesting Pilate could have as well said, “Everything is propaganda anyway, why do we need truth?”

“But your essay ended on a high moral pedestal recommending the pursuit and contemplation of truth as the highest human endeavour,” I said and quoted his own words: “The inquiry of truth, which is the lovemaking or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.”

“Every liar is a coward hiding behind a mask because they lack the courage to face reality,” Bacon asserted. “There is a big irony in it too. You tell a lie because you’re scared of the society, but in that same act you’re being very brave defying the law of Karma.”

Telling lies, especially online or in public life, is the ultimate act of moral hypocrisy, Bacon explained. “You’re so terrified of what society, your colleagues, your political tribe, or an Instagram mob will think of you that you choose to subscribe to a lie. Yet, in doing so, aren’t you openly defying the cosmic order, your own Dharma, and Satya itself? Isn’t that being very brave?”

His parting shot: “A liar is someone who trembles before a social media comment section, but arrogantly thumbs their nose at the universe.”  

 

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