The Management Board of ERSTE Foundation: Boris Marte (CEO), Eva Höltl, Martin Wohlmuth, Wolfgang Schopf (Deputy CEO). Photo: Peter M. Mayr
Truth Is Hard Work Manufacturing Truth is the motto of our 2021 Annual Report. If this makes you raise your eyebrows, you have a good feeling for language. This statement – which we actually want to be read as an imperative, as a request with an invisible exclamation mark! – indeed sounds a bit like “fabricating alternative facts”. Manufacturing Truth sounds like the opposite of what it means: it suggests the search for a “different” truth, scepticism about scientific findings and wellfounded news, which more and more people now feel the need to express aloud. Among a small minority, there has long been a faint distrust. Truth in the singular seems to have shifted sides years ago. Adherents of deconstructivism already share a general suspicion that truth is what used to be called “knowledge of domination”. Last year, American historian Timothy Snyder explained to us in detail that this is not true (see p. 12). He contradicts the postmodern view “from the 20th century” that there can only be truth in the plural because, in his view, this would lead to the dissolution of any sense of community and to isolation, leaving everyone vulnerable to the encroachments of unbridled power. He argues that the 21st century has shown that, for democracies to work, public debate must be based on facts. Factuality, a truth accepted by all, does not fall from the sky, however. It must be, 8
indeed, produced, at times in painstaking ways. Scientists must be able to experiment and publish their findings without hindrance; journalists must be able to research and communicate; teachers should be able to teach verified knowledge, and artists should be able to question old certainties; they should have places to think, to create, to perform. Today more than ever, we need economists and ecologists who are able to conduct research in the field and in the library, entrepreneurs who develop innovations for the good of society. Philosophers and IT specialists will have to equip artificial intelligence with wellfounded criteria of what is right or wrong. Foundations, on the other hand, can enable and promote the production of facts, of basic knowledge, of agreements on correct choices, of protected spaces, of art, and of truth. That is why we exist. Nothing describes, explains, communicates and questions itself automatically. Manufacturing truth, by the way, is much more difficult than simply inventing something out of thin air. Facts have to be verified, and assertions have to be proven. That is hard work. Contexts are often complex and solutions for the future are not easy to find. To this end, ERSTE Foundation has founded the start-up Two Next, for example, to enable
