Theoretical foundations of Western post-truth and Russian lying

The paper analyzes how the three existing social formations ("society of consumption", "society of knowledge", "society of emotional experiencing") relate to the scientific conception of the three realities of human existence: the empirical, the socio-cultural and the existential, arguing that understanding of each of them is based mainly on knowledge and meaning, or on opinion and sense, or on emotional experiencing and empirical experience. The fundamental cause of emergence of "society of emotional experiencing" is transformation of the human world-based on other values and motives: people are orientated towards a model of "good life" in which emotional experiencing of what is desirable becomes prevalent. Research has shown that in a "society of emotional experiencing" the category of objective truth becomes less important. A considerable part of the contemporary world is evolving in the direction of devaluation of truth and prevalence of goals and values of communication. One of the manifestations of the tendency is active use of the word "post-truth" that denotes circumstances in which objective facts have less impact on public opinion than appeals to emotions and personal convictions. The paper describes two main aspects of the phenomenon, analyzing common traits of Western post-truth and Russian lying, and maps out two guidelines for further research into Western post-truth and Russian lying: 1) correlation of cognitive and personal foundations of untruthful statements; 2) rational conscious and emotional unconscious components of utterances; 3) inner psychological conditions and outer societal circumstances encouraging emergence of alternative realities.