A truth that's told with bad intent
              beats all the lies you can invent.
              ---William Blake: AUGURIES of INNOCENCE

              The language of truth is simple.
              ---Seneca: AD LUCILIUM XLIX

              There is a point beyond which even justice
              [truth] becomes unjust [untruth].
              ---Sophocles: ELECTRA

     A dissertation titled "The Demise of Truth" was presented by Dr. Jemail Tabari to the Philosopher's Congress in New Jerusalem on 2048 May 14. The following has been extracted from his work.

     Over the past five millennium, there were three major events which brought truth to its death. First was the written word. From some obscure Chinese Emperor who said, "So as I have spoken, let it be written,"came the first implication that the written word was the truth of what, till then, had only been 'talk' over the grapevine. Even though there may have been in place an official grapevine, the written word was a verification of truth.
     The second event occurred some four and a quarter millennium later, the printed word. Progress was marked by moving from long years of hand coping manuscripts to hundreds of manuscript copies in a single year. This allowed much free time to make slight alterations of the original. Thus with the power of mass produced truth came the power of propagated half-truth. It is this second event which infected truth with its fatal virus.
     Over the next half millennium, what wisdom existed in humankind kept the truth nurtured well enough to confront this new assault. However, within the last quarter millennium, printed word was not only mutated into the electronic word, with visual impact, but also techniques to disguise half-truth as truth were improved such that it was very difficult to identify the real truth. There was real credence in the term, "seeing is believing" and such trust was used by those who controlled their share of the electronic word. This was the third event.
     So, for the past fifty plus years, the world has lived with the absence of truth. People, cults, nations, organizations all write what they want to write. They disseminate their product to any who will receive it. People, cults, nations organizations choose either to believe what's received or simply believe what they want to believe. Truth, half-truth or out right lie it makes no difference. Truth has become lies and lies have become truth; and that is the death of truth.