They Don't Care. - by Aurelien
Trying to Understand the World
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They Don't Care.<br>And they lie to themselves.
Aurelien<br>Aug 19, 2026
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There have been political and ideological systems in history that sought to dictate popular understandings of truth and knowledge; there have been systems that have fought violently over the meaning and control of both of them, and more recently there have been systems of thought that deny that either can really be said to exist objectively. But I think that ours is the first society in history where the ruling classes genuinely don’t care about truth and knowledge, and so don’t give either much importance. They are not actively hostile to either truth or knowledge: they just haven’t found either to be particularly useful or necessary in their own lives and careers. They are happy—indeed eager—to make use of them for political advantage, and to pretend to take them seriously for tactical purposes, but no more. This is an extraordinary state of affairs, and here I discuss how it arose, how it manifests itself today and what the potential consequences may be.<br>These ideas had been vaguely circulating at the back of my mind for a while, but they were brought into focus by the bizarre and almost unbelievable case of the late Jason Arday, the confidence trickster who secured a Chair at the University of Cambridge before being revealed as a liar, a cheat, a plagiarist and fantasist who probably needed treatment. I’m not going to go into the details of that case, except incidentally, but I will just observe that if anything can said to conveniently encapsulate the intellectual and moral depths to which the western ruling class has fallen, then this sordid farce must be a good candidate. It may also, finally, signal the point at which our rulers’ embarrassment (since they are incapable of shame) forces them to do something verging upon the sensible.<br>These essays will always be free, but you can continue to support my work by liking and commenting, and most of all by passing the essays on to others, and to other sites that you frequent. If you would like to take out a paid subscription I won’t stand in your way, (indeed, I’d be very honoured ) but I can’t promise anything in return except a warm feeling of virtue. A special thanks to those who have taken out paid subscriptions recently. I have also set up a Buy Me A Coffee page, which you can find here. ☕️ Thanks to all of those who have recently contributed, and a special thank-you for the many kind words of support I have received from those who have sent money. They mean a great deal.<br>Very briefly, Arday, the youngest Black full Professor in the history of Cambridge claimed to be born autistic, not to be able to speak until about the age of about ten (the details vary) or able to write until the age of eighteen. Somehow he went on to a dazzling academic career including a Doctorate, with visiting fellowships at other universities, and he was an international athlete and an ultra-marathon runner. Oh, and he raised millions of pounds for charities and appeared a lot on TV. Again, many of these details changed over the weeks : their only common features are that they are either lies, or cannot be verified, or there are severe doubts (as with his Doctorate) about whether they were actually honestly gained. Arday has now resigned, both from his job and from life itself, but it’s not clear whether he actually thought he’d even done anything wrong: after all, if there are no objective standards of truth or knowledge, and if the accusations against him were, as he suggested, just a “discourse,” then he had nothing to be ashamed of because nothing he had done was objectively real. (And I wonder whether his suicide, after being found out as eventually he was going to be, wasn’t a last desperate attempt to control the future discourse.)<br>When I first heard about story this I honestly thought it was a joke. I could understand why others thought that Arday would reveal himself as a right-wing prankster out to destroy woke. But no, the story is unhappily real. However, I’m less concerned with this curious individual, than with the social and intellectual decline that made his success possible and, most of all, caused an ancient and quite well-known university to select him, and then to defend him ferociously; not on grounds of truth or knowledge, but by claiming he was a vulnerable individual assailed by racist conspiracies. I declare an interest here: for a very large part of the last fifty-odd years, I have been involved with universities in various countries in different ways, as well as teaching professional students outside a university framework. I have also worked in and for institutions of different types, in and out of government and the academic world. I have a little knowledge of these things, therefore, and so I have been following this squalid affair with professional interest, as well as with the...