Sic 'em, Harry!
In 1986, Harry G. Frankfurt--currently Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University--wrote On Bullshit as an article published in Raritan. In 2005, Princeton University Press published the article as a little 6"x4" book with 67 pages of text. (In 2006 they published Frankfurt's On Truth, but that's a subject for a future post.)
This book is probably placed anonymously on many desks but may not be widely read. I myself just got around to reading it even though I bought it more than a year ago (no, I did not discover it in my in-basket). The loss is mine. Frankfurt's little essay takes us where we desperately need to go.
Frankfurt defines "bullshit"
A truth-teller intends to tell the truth, and a liar intends to tell a lie, but a bullshitter doesn't care whether he's telling the truth or lying. Bullshit has absolutely nothing to do with the facts or the perception of the facts. Bullshit is about only one thing: how the speaker or writer wants people to perceive him.
Is it the truth? Is it a blatant lie? The bullshitter just plain old doesn't give a shit.
So what?
Rampant bullshit is more dangerous than rampant lies. Someone who sets out to lie acknowledges that there is a truth to be avoided. The liar respects and fears the truth. The bullshitter doesn't. A society that accepts bullshit as a way of life loses the ability to tell truth from lies because it doesn't practice that ability.
Why bullshit is pandemic these days
- These days, there is more communication of all types, period.
- These days, sincerity trumps correctness. We've gone from dedication to correctness (Is what I'm saying the truth?) to dedication to sincerity (Do I have really really STRONG EMOTIONS about what I'm saying?) How we feel is more important than what is true. Truth--if, in fact, there is such a thing as "truth"--is relative, so we focus on being "true to ourselves." What can that possibly mean if we acknowledge no truth outside ourselves? This type of bullshit is what bad politicians and lazy advertising agencies manufacture. They aren't lying to us, exactly; they just very sincerely don't care whether or not they're lying.
- These days, we mandate bullshit. "Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about," says Frankfurt. Everyone today is expected to have an opinion on everything, and the more celebrity one has, the more one is asked to opine. Rosie O'Donnell comments on countries whose names she probably can't even spell. Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn opine on camera about the world's most delicate and deathly problems without giving up their personal comfort, wealth, or freedom. And Monica Lewinsky has graduated from the London School of Economics; her master's thesis is, "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity." We know this why? Because ten years ago she fellated a U.S. president while he was conducting international business on the phone, so of course the media will seek her opinions for decades.
We beg these people to bullshit us. We reward them when they do and ignore them when they don't. And the one thing a bullshitter can't stand is to be ignored.
In Hermann Hesse's great final novel, The Glass Bead Game, scholars several centuries in the future ridicule the 20th century for being the "Age of Feuilleton": intellectually weak and addicted to sensational journalism rather than serious reading, writing, and thought. We still live in the Age of Feuilleton.
Our mission, if we want less bullshit, is to forgive less bullshit.
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BONUS: go here to read Drew McLellan's great take on how we all built the House of Imus.
One of the things I was taught when I started in my job was "If you can't dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit". I’d say that little maxim falls in the mandated bullshit category. Another method that goes along with sincerity trumping correctness is loudness. So many people giving their opinions these days seem to believe that the louder they say it, the truer it must be. Of course, that also leads to very little listening.
Posted by: NJ Horner | April 19, 2007 at 12:03 PM
Jane,
How can I comment on this? There are so many gems in here, it's hard to know where to begin. You just plain nailed it on every count. Brava!
And NJ, you make a great point as well.
Posted by: Kathryn Hammer | May 07, 2007 at 05:05 PM