In camera vs. on camera – step right up – the battle for the human mind.

Before the twentieth century, facts were reported by witnesses, whose reports were reported, interposing multiple filters between an event and its account. Each filter was a revision, that is, a re-seeing, distorted by emphases, biases, and an audience’s expectations. Reports of a far-away war, for example, might vary diametrically.

The camera made us all eyewitnesses. What the camera conveyed seemed unfiltered fact: this is really how things were. Sophisticated viewers might realize how cameras distort, yet the images convinced. Photographic truth felt irrefutable: we were seeing what happened with our own eyes.

Recently, for reasons I may one day relate, I’ve been watching videos of myself. It’s a horror show: Godzilla’s got nothing on yours truly. Am I really that old, fat, dodgy looking? No! Here on the page is a truer portrait! Here I can be younger, wittier, svelte, not this wreck – but, alas, that’s not how our world informs itself. We’re wary of words, with their ambiguities and tricks, but cameras do not lie. The Carll on replay is the Carll that is!

This bias ruinously disadvantages oldsters. Beauticians and cosmetic surgeons notwithstanding, we look our age. The more we attempt to disguise our antiquity, the more it mocks us. A lift here and tuck there and next thing you know you’re a talking mummy. Cameras compound our misery by poking past makeup into sags and pores. Who’ll ever forget Rudy Giuliani’s hair dye drooling down his cheek! I almost felt for the schmuck. (I said, almost.)

Cameras shove us onstage where, the older we are, the worse we look. The least fumble or stumble transforms an oldster into a laughingstock. With two of them vying for the Presidency, the camera’s gotcha mischief is in full swing. Garble a sentence or mistake a name and you’re gaga!

I’m all for retiring politicians as we do other workers. Their job is too hard, the risks of imbecility too dire. But heaven help us if we judge our leaders by their performances on camera. Where we need their wisdom is in camera, in the privacy of their chambers, where discussions are held and decisions made. Yes, leaders must communicate, but must they tap-dance?

It’s too late to bemoan the primacy of appearances over words as a conveyer of truth. Seeing is believing. The superabundance of data and industry of deceivers make thinking comparatively onerous. Why think – just turn on the TV – those talking heads must know!

To survive, we must try to erect defenses against deceit. Truth must be taught, prized; truth-tellers praised. Deliberate misleaders should be treated as monsters, as they once were. George Washington, yes; George Santos, no.

We must, above all, learn to distrust. This is hard. The camera is so persuasive! Using one’s head takes work and risks ridicule. Who dares demur?

Truth is not binary, yes or no. It is more or less, nearer or farther; at best, partial. Yet humanity can be divided between those who strive for truth and those who spurn it. Liars aren’t hard to spot. And they’re generally recidivists. To shrug “they all do it” is dangerous mental sloth. Do we all “bend the truth” now and again? Of course; to get along, we must. But do we all delude others – to their detriment and for our gain? We do not. We must learn whom to trust and revere them – and the rest revile.

You are a truth-teller; your presence here proves it. Me too – but beware the video: I’m not as dodgy as I look.