Fake News: Are we Victims Or Accomplices

Why is fake news so prevalent? Who decides what is fake and what is real? Are we victims of fake news or are we accomplices? This past Sunday I had the privilege to partake in a VIP tour of the “City of David”. It is upon this square kilometre where King David begins to build the city of Jerusalem as the capital for all the Jewish people in the land of Israel. As one descends below ground level an ancient world begins to come to life. Many artefacts of great historical significance have been found deep beneath the earth and rubble of this site. Recent finds include biblical names from the times of the Prophet Jeremiah engraved on ancient seals. Even remnants of the clothing of the High Priest have been found. A new excavation has revealed the actual road upon which three times a year hundreds of thousands of our ancestors ascended towards the Temple Mount. As one walks on the actual stone slabs one begins to sense the transcendence and magnitude of Jewish history. Suddenly a thought entered my mind. Wasn’t all this determined and vigorous excavation - involving around the clock shifts as a result of the political complexity and uncertainty of its location - an exercise in digging through a minefield of lies or “fake news” to reveal the truths that lie deep beneath. You see we all make use of lies in varying degrees. We do so in order to protect our comfort zones. We all have weaknesses which with time become our second nature. So we invent lies in order to protect our entrenched positions. Excavation in the “City Of David” - one of the most politically charged locations on the planet - is a most daunting task. It is so for precisely this reason. It reveals an empirical and objective truth against which all “fake news” will eventually dissipate. The lesson for each and everyone of us as we prepare ourselves for the New Year is just as challenging. We must all brace ourselves for internal “excavation”. We must be courageous in digging beneath our own facades created by the little lies which we have told ourselves over the course of time. We have built this exterior in order to protect our comfort zones. We must now muster the courage to let go of our entrenched positions which will allow us on an incredible journey of self discovery. For deep beneath the surface lies an incredible soul, pure and innocent, waiting to be unleashed.