1.4. The Green Man Against Everyone

Hack: August 2023, Hawaii, the Town of Lahaina

On 8 August 2023, what would later be called the deadliest fire in modern Hawaiian history begins on the island of Maui. Winds driven to hurricane force by Hurricane Dora, passing hundreds of miles to the south, fan sparks from ignited dry vegetation. Within hours, fire engulfs the historic centre of Lahaina — a town that was the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom in the nineteenth century, a town with two hundred years of history, a town where thousands of people lived.
By 10 August, when the fire is finally contained, the picture is apocalyptic. More than 2,200 structures are destroyed. Lahaina, a historic gem, is practically wiped from the face of the earth. The official death toll exceeds 100 people, but many remain missing, and the true number of victims will likely never be known.
In the following days, what for the philosophical gaze proves no less significant than the fire itself begins. On social media, YouTube, and independent media, thousands of videos and posts appear, whose authors, using satellite imagery, amateur recordings, and their own analysis, put forward theories radically divergent from the official version.
Why did the warning sirens not work? Why did the authorities cut off electricity and water? Why do satellite images show green tree canopies if the fire was so intense? Why do eyewitnesses speak of a "hum" before the fire started, resembling a diesel generator?
From these questions, against the will of those asking them, an alternative reality begins to take shape. A reality in which the cause of the fire was not a convergence of natural circumstances but directed energy weapons. A reality in which the fire was not a natural disaster but a planned action — whether by the military testing new weapons, by some forces seeking to destroy the historical memory of the indigenous population, or by globalists clearing land for new projects.
A phenomenon emerges: the "digital militia" — thousands of people armed not with rifles but with smartphones and access to satellite imagery, contesting the official version of reality using the very same technologies used to assert it. They do not trust CNN, they do not trust the government of Hawaii, they do not trust FEMA. They trust only their own eyes, their own analysis, their own community on Telegram or Discord.
Officials speak of conspiracy theories, disinformation, Russian bots. But for the "digital militia," these accusations merely confirm that the authorities are hiding something. Every refutation generates new questions. Every explanation appears unconvincing against the background of discrepancies uncovered by independent researchers.
Lahaina burned. But along with it, something else burned — the belief that there is one reality, one truth, one version of events that can be established and recorded. The world has fragmented into millions of parallel universes, glued together from memes, satellite images, amateur videos, and alternative interpretations.

From Event to Multiplicity of Narratives

To adequately grasp the philosophical significance of what occurred around the Maui fires, it is necessary to understand: the significant event was not the fire itself (tragic though it was), but the split in the modes of its interpretation.
In the classical epistemological scheme, the event is singular. The Lahaina fire is a physical fact with certain parameters: start time, area of spread, wind speed, burning temperature, number of victims. The task of official services and the media is to establish these parameters with the greatest possible accuracy and communicate them to the public. The task of society is to accept this version as the most reliable, understanding that errors are possible, but not systematic falsehood.
The scheme that materialised in August 2023 was fundamentally different. The official version, published by the authorities and supported by mainstream media, from the very beginning encountered distrust generated not so much by specific facts as by a general disposition: "they cannot be trusted." This disposition, accumulating in Western societies for at least two decades (since the Iraq War and the weapons of mass destruction that were never found), had reached a critical mass by 2023.
The result was a situation that can be called an ontological bifurcation. From a single physical event (the fire), several parallel realities emerged.
Here we are dealing not merely with a conflict of interpretations, but with an ontological stratification. The event no longer possesses a single form. It resembles a wax tablet — a medium upon which competing traces are imprinted. These traces do not reflect the event; they are its being. Reality fragments into a multiplicity of material fixations — images, data, narratives. In this sense, the contemporary event exists not as a fact but as a field of imprints.
In one reality, the fire was caused by climate change, high winds, and dry vegetation. In another, by directed energy weapons. In a third, by a conspiracy to seize land. In a fourth, by a combination of several factors, including official negligence.
These realities do not merely coexist. They conflict. Proponents of each not merely have their own opinion — they actively struggle for recognition of their version as the sole truth. They produce content, expose opponents, find "evidence" and "clues." They live in their realities, and no facts from other realities can shake them, because the very authority that could certify facts (trust in sources) has been destroyed.

Genealogy of the Fragmentation of Reality

In classical philosophy, from Plato to Husserl, it was assumed that the world is singular, and our representations of it may differ only in their degree of approximation to the truth. The multiplicity of opinions is a temporary state that will be overcome with the progress of knowledge. Truth is one, and sooner or later it will triumph.
The twentieth century undermined this certainty. Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, showed that scientific paradigms are incommensurable: proponents of different paradigms see the world differently and cannot appeal to neutral facts, because facts are always theory-laden (Kuhn, 1962). But Kuhn was still speaking of the scientific community, which ultimately arrives at a consensus, even if through crises and revolutions.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Philosophical Investigations, introduced the concept of "language games" — a multiplicity of autonomous practices, each with its own rules, its own meaning, its own truth. There is no single language describing reality; there are many languages, each operating in its own domain (Wittgenstein, 1953). But Wittgenstein still assumed that language games could coexist peacefully, without trespassing on each other's territory.
Jean-François Lyotard, in The Postmodern Condition, proclaimed the "end of metanarratives" — the loss of faith in the grand ideas that unified society and provided a single picture of the world. Christianity, the Enlightenment, Marxism, liberalism — all have ceased to function as unifying forces. What remains is a multitude of small narratives, local practices, fragmented discourses (Lyotard, 1984).
The internet and social media have brought this fragmentation to its limit. Everyone can create their own reality, find like-minded people, fortify themselves in their beliefs. Algorithms that select content according to user preferences create "filter bubbles" from which it is nearly impossible to escape. A person lives in a reality constructed for them by algorithms, unaware of the existence of others.
Eli Pariser, who introduced the concept of the "filter bubble," described this as a new form of invisible censorship: algorithms show us what we want to see and hide what might upset or cause us to doubt (Pariser, 2011). As a result, reality shrinks to the size of our news feed, our circle of acquaintances, our preferences.
The Maui fires became an ideal catalyst for the manifestation of this new reality. The event was sufficiently large-scale to attract the attention of millions. It was sufficiently complex to admit multiple interpretations. Information about it came from various sources — official, unofficial, hostile, friendly. And each viewer could choose the version that best corresponded to their already established picture of the world.
The phenomenon manifested in the discussions surrounding the Maui fires can be called epistemological anarchy — a state in which there are no universally recognised institutions authoritatively establishing what is truth and what is falsehood.
In traditional society, the function of establishing truth was performed by religion and tradition. In the modern era — by science and education. In the age of developed media — by journalism and the expert community. Each of these authorities possessed a certain authority, based on recognised verification procedures and on trust in institutions.
The twentieth century undermined trust in these institutions but did not destroy them completely. Even in the 1990s, most people still trusted CNN, the BBC, the New York Times. Even the most cynical media critics still assumed that there was some "truth" that could be known with sufficient effort.
The first decade of the twenty-first century dealt a series of blows to this trust from which it has not recovered. The Iraq War and the weapons of mass destruction that were never found. The 2008 financial crisis, which no one predicted. WikiLeaks and the disclosure of secret documents. Snowden and global surveillance. All of this undermined the belief that we are being told the truth, that we are not being deceived, that official versions are trustworthy.
By 2023, this belief had been definitively undermined. Studies show that trust in the media in the United States has fallen to historic lows — less than 30% of the population trusts major news organisations. The causes of this decline are complex and varied, but the result is evident: the institutions that were supposed to establish truth have lost their legitimacy.
In this situation, everyone becomes their own editor and investigator. People gather information from various sources, compare, analyse, draw conclusions. But they lack the tools for professional verification. They cannot verify satellite images, cannot analyse meteorological data, cannot interrogate witnesses. They can only trust or distrust, choose between different narratives on the basis of criteria far removed from the epistemological.
Jürgen Habermas, in his theory of communicative action, proceeded from the assumption that in an ideal speech situation, people could arrive at a consensus regarding truth. But this ideal situation requires that participants in discourse recognise the force of the better argument and be prepared to change their beliefs under its influence. When trust is destroyed, the better argument ceases to work: it can be declared propaganda, disinformation, part of a conspiracy (Habermas, 1984).

The Citizen Against Leviathan

The phenomenon of the "digital militia," manifested in the discussions about the Maui fires, has another side, which can be called the democratisation of the production of reality.
In the classical scheme, the monopoly on the production of reality belonged to the state and its institutions. Today, any person with a laptop and internet access can gather an audience comparable to that of a major media outlet. Anyone can publish their own analysis of satellite images, their own conclusions about the causes of the fire, their own theories about who is to blame. And this analysis can be accepted by millions if it corresponds to their expectations and suspicions.
Michel Foucault, in his lectures on the birth of biopolitics, described how modern power governs not through prohibition but through the production of truth. Power creates discourses that determine what is considered normal, healthy, true. Resistance to power, for Foucault, is possible precisely through the production of counter-discourses, alternative truths, other ways of seeing and speaking (Foucault, 2008).
The "digital militia" produces such counter-discourses. It does not merely disbelieve the official version — it creates its own version, meticulously detailed, supported by visual materials, internally coherent. This version may be erroneous, may be paranoid, but it possesses one important property: it provides a sense of understanding and control in a situation where official explanations do not provide this feeling.
Pierre Bourdieu introduced the concept of "symbolic power" — the capacity to impose meanings as legitimate while concealing the power relations that underlie them. The state and the media possess symbolic power, but in the age of social media, this power ceases to be monopolistic. Everyone can produce symbols, impose meanings, struggle for the legitimacy of their interpretations (Bourdieu, 1991).
The citizen with a smartphone becomes not merely a consumer of information but its producer, interpreter, and disseminator.
Here it is necessary to pause and respond to an inevitable objection. Is not everything described above merely an apology for conspiracy theory? Are we not defending those who see "death rays" where science sees natural phenomena?

This objection is important and requires a serious answer.

First, it must be acknowledged: many of the theories that emerged around the Maui fires are indeed conspiratorial in the worst sense. They lack serious evidence, rely on stretches and manipulations, ignore facts that contradict their conclusions. They feed on paranoia and distrust, not on the pursuit of truth.
But the task of philosophical analysis is not to condemn these theories but to understand why they arise and why people believe them.
Recognition of the multiplicity of narratives does not imply their epistemological equality. Between a hypothesis that has passed the test of scientific verification and a speculative guess, a gap remains. The destruction of trust in institutions does not abolish the distinction between argument and fantasy.
Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, showed that conspiracy theories arise as a reaction to the complexity of the world. It is easier to believe that malicious conspirators stand behind everything than to acknowledge that history is moved by blind forces that no one controls (Popper, 1945). Conspiracy theory provides an illusion of understanding and control in a world where chaos actually reigns.
But Popper, for all his rightness, overlooks something else: sometimes conspiracies really do exist, authorities really do lie, official versions really do conceal the truth. The history of the twentieth century is full of examples of what was first declared a "conspiracy theory" later turned out to be reality — from the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to the CIA's LSD experiments.
The problem is not that people believe in conspiracy theories. The problem is that the very criterion for distinguishing between the plausible and the implausible, between the well-founded and the paranoid, between the proven and the fabricated, has been lost.
Michel Foucault, in his works on discourse and power, showed that truth is produced by specific procedures — procedures that establish who has the right to speak, which statements are considered serious, which institutions possess authority. When these procedures are destroyed, when trust in institutions falls, when everyone feels entitled to establish truth for themselves, what we observe arises: epistemological chaos (Foucault, 1972).
This chaos cannot be overcome by a simple appeal to "believe in science" or "trust the experts." Because the position of the expert itself has been discredited — and partly justifiably. Experts have been wrong, experts have lied, experts have served the interests of power. Why should today's experts be any better than yesterday's?

The Paradox of Digital Testimony

The paradox of the situation manifested in Maui lies in the fact that the technologies that should have brought us closer to truth in fact make it more unattainable.
High-resolution satellite images are available to everyone. Video from the scene can be shot on a smartphone and uploaded to the network in minutes. Data on weather, wind, temperature — all of this is openly accessible. It would seem that humanity has never had such capacities for establishing truth.
But these same technologies also enable the production and dissemination of falsehood with unprecedented ease. Deepfakes, Photoshop, editing, data falsification — all of this has become accessible to the masses. A video that looks like authentic testimony may be entirely fabricated. A satellite image may be edited. Data may be selected to confirm any theory.
Jean Baudrillard, in Simulacra and Simulation, foresaw this situation long before its arrival. He wrote that we are entering an era when signs cease to refer to reality and begin to refer only to other signs. Reality disappears, dissolving into hyperreality — a world of pure simulacra, copies without an original (Baudrillard, 1994).
Paul Virilio, in his works on the "aesthetics of disappearance" and the "vision machine," described how technologies change the very perception of reality. We see the world not with our own eyes but through intermediaries — cameras, screens, broadcasts. This vision is always already distorted, always already mediated by someone, always already someone's interpretation (Virilio, 1994).
In Maui, this paradox reached its limit. People thousands of kilometres from the island saw the fire better than those nearby, because they had access to satellite imagery and analytics. But this vision was illusory — they saw pixels, not fire; data, not suffering; theories, not reality.

From Singular Truth to Navigation in Chaos

The Maui fires and the subsequent war of interpretations pose a question on which the future not only of epistemology but also of politics, ethics, and social existence depends: how to live in a world without a singular truth?
Classical philosophy gave two main answers to this question. The first — sceptical: if there is no truth, then everything is permitted, and the only way out is individual choice. The second — dogmatic: truth exists, and we (the party, the church, science) possess it, and all who disagree are enemies.
Neither of these answers works in a world where technology has made the production of reality accessible to everyone and trust in institutions has been destroyed.
Scepticism leads to cynicism and apathy. If there is no truth, if everything is equally false, then there is no point in anything — not in struggle, not in knowledge, not in action. A person withdraws into their bubble, consuming content that entertains them, and does not attempt to understand the world.
Dogmatism leads to violence. If we possess the truth and they do not, then we have the right to impose this truth on them by any means. Dogmatism is always totalitarian, always aggressive, always ready to destroy dissenters.

A third path is needed — a path that can be called epistemological navigation.

This is not a path to a singular truth — such a truth no longer exists and perhaps never did. It is a path to the ability to orient oneself in a world of multiple truths, multiple interpretations, multiple realities. This ability does not reduce to choosing one version and rejecting all others. It is the ability to hold complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity in consciousness.
Hannah Arendt, in her works on totalitarianism, showed that the destruction of pluralism, the destruction of the multiplicity of opinions, the destruction of the capacity to see the world from different points of view, is a condition of total domination. Totalitarianism demands a single truth, a single party, a single leader. Resistance to totalitarianism begins with the restoration of pluralism (Arendt, 1973).
But pluralism does not mean relativism. To recognise that multiple points of view exist is not to assert that they are all equally true or equally valuable. The task is not to equalise all versions but to learn to distinguish, evaluate, weigh — without guarantees, without final criteria, without absolute certainty.
Jürgen Habermas spoke of "communicative rationality" — the capacity to arrive at agreement through discussion, through argumentation, through recognition of the force of the better argument. This capacity requires certain conditions — trust, respect, willingness to listen. In a world where these conditions are destroyed, one must not abandon communication but create new platforms for it, new formats, new practices (Habermas, 1984).
The "green man," armed with a smartphone and trusting no one — an image that will remain in the history of philosophy as a symbol of a new epistemological epoch. An epoch in which truth is no longer given but chosen. In which reality is not one but many. In which the question "what really happened?" gives way to the question "in which reality do you live?"
And the question that this image poses to us is this: is community still possible in a world where everyone has their own reality? Is society still possible if there is no single truth to bind it together? Or are we entering an era of total fragmentation, where each will live in their own bubble, and no fire, no catastrophe, no event will be able to unite us?
We are entering an era where the event is no longer given as a singular fact but emerges as a medium in which traces — visual, digital, discursive — precipitate. Reality becomes not a substance but an imprint. Not a thing but a registration. Not an order but a field of conflicting fixations.
In this field, there is no ultimate arbiter, but there is a responsibility of discernment. Navigation in chaos requires neither faith nor scepticism, but the capacity to hold multiplicity without abandoning the criterion. In other words, it is not truth that has disappeared — it is its guarantee that has disappeared.