Did I see what I saw?

“Is that real?” one of my sisters asked, on seeing the dashcam video of a maxi full of passengers being robbed when the vehicle stopped along the bus route to let a woman dressed in heavy black Muslim garb off at her requested spot.

In what appeared to be a suspicious orchestration, masked men wearing hoodies were waiting exactly at the heavily garbed woman’s stop. Apologies to her if she was not involved in the heist, but the timing of events was too uncanny to be accepted as a coincidence.

The men entered the vehicle and began grabbing passengers’ bags. A few passengers’ screams and muffled voices of protest, and aggressive tones from the robbers can be heard. Perhaps it was the seemingly calm faces of the driver and the woman at the front that made my sister wonder if the scenario was real.

At first, I too wondered: “Is this real or is it some AI thing or filmed skit?”

Seeing the report in Newsday the following day verified it – but only because I/we still largely believe whatever we see in traditional media. In the dashcam video, the woman in the passenger seat is heard asking if she can at least have back her ID card – a loss which (in addition to the entire ordeal, most likely) brings her to tears as the men leave the vehicle. The driver, seemingly calm yet clearly outraged, turns and speeds back up the bus route.

There was a time when neither my sister nor I would have looked at that video and wondered if it was “real.” However, with a proliferation of fake videos circulating online, a world has been created in which “Is that real?” has become one of society’s more commonly-asked questions.

Recently someone sent me a video (posted on a popular local social media crime/news site) of US fighter jets taking off from a landing strip in the ocean and dropping screeching bombs into the water.

“Live fire in Caribbean Sea…” the caption began, adding that US military forces were conducting the exercise.

Was it real? Was it fake? Was it something from some time ago being presented as current? Was it happening somewhere else, but being touted as being “in Caribbean waters”?

What happens to the average human mind that continually dances between “is it real” and “is it fake” polarities? Could this regular vacillation eventually result in increased mental imbalances and psychosis? The psychological back-and-forth between illusion and actuality must happen mainly to people who spend a lot of time online. It is the very rare person these days who, by deliberate choice and/or lack of interest, does not have social media accounts or a smartphone. It is likely that such a person will not be as exposed to the bombardment of shared falsehoods and may experience less of the real/fake conundrum.

However, there may come a day (if it is not already here) when many might also question the traditional media. Are all news reports real? Are reporters creating and dispersing fake news to cause panic and destabilise the minds of certain populations? A recent video shows CNC3 Television interviewing the Minister of Homeland Security about the alleged presence of a US warship in the Gulf of Paria.

The minister’s response: “I have seen no ship. Nobody have (sic) sent any ship to me. So the only way I can answer that is – I have no idea if there’s a ship there, you see?”

The minister’s apparent philosophising is reminiscent of that of George Berkeley, the 18th-century founder of immaterialism/subjective idealism, who upheld
esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”) as the core tenet of his philosophy.

Subjective idealism posits that no material world exists outside the mind that perceives it. For instance, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?”

Local current versions might be: “If no one has a fete in the stadium…no one detonates fireworks every night..no one weed-wacks on supposed-to-be-restful Sunday mornings…no one pounds music from vehicles…does noise pollution exist?’

Astronomer Galileo Galilei is quoted as having said: “I think that tastes, odours, colours and so on…reside only in consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated.”

Close your eyes. Block your ears. Become a senseless society. Problems solved.