Last Saturday afternoon, after giving a talk in Oxford, I went for a walk through the parks next to the old colleges, brimming with history. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Barfield. Horse chestnut trees, lawns, rivers, flowers. Leaving the Christ Church meadow, back to the urban area, I overtook a woman laden with a backpack, suitcase, and bulky bundle. I offered to help her and she passed me the cumbersome thing. I learnt that under the case was a dismantled old bike — her previous one had been stolen, and she had just flown this one in from Holland…….

I bet that when E. (I omit her full name) began to delve into mathematical models, ten or fifteen years ago, it all was about getting closer to the truth and acting accordingly. Now, apparently, it is about getting closer to a purpose and bending the truth accordingly.

What matters is purported efficiency, not the actual reality. Utilitarianism and post-truth are two sides of the same coin. A coin that glitters before the light of the screens but which reveals itself to be fake before a bright blue sky. The world is under a spell.

You woudn’t expect an airline to twist things — still, no big deal. Twisting the truth, though, becomes easily harmful in big statements such as those of health authorities on Covid and in the labyrinths built by the infotainment media.

Tolkien, an alumnus of the Exeter College where I dined on that Saturday, wrote about the light of what we know to be true: “I do so dearly believe that no half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.” Nowadays, however, that light is being eclipsed by the advances of technocracy. As Hannah Arendt noted, not caring whether something is true or false is an essential characteristic of individuals in a totalitarian state.

The increasing rule of efficiency over truth is a sign of sliding into totalitarianism. And a sign of the decline of one of the key tenets of human dignity: the inner sense of truth. Gandhi called it satyagraha: “holding fast to truth” or the “force of truth.” A force that we can use and technocracy cannot.