terrierista

BOOK REVIEW: "On Bullshit," by Harry G. Frankfurt

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.

What they ought to teach in B-school

How's this for a situation designed to discourage friendship? Two people--a man and a woman--grow up and live halfway around the world from each other. They speak different languages. They meet online and are able to communicate only through email and IM.

No, it's not eHarmony or Match.com. When these two meet face-to-face for the first time, they bring their spouses along. Everybody likes everybody else a lot, and they party for an entire weekend and two evenings. (No, it's not what you're thinking now, either, you naughty little monkey.)

I am the woman. My Sicilian friend, Ross, is the man. We met on MyLanguageExchange.com nearly four years ago. He wanted to improve his English. I wanted to learn a little Italian for a trip my husband and I planned to take in 2005 but which materialized only last month. Ross and I soon decided to leave MyLanguageExchange behind and exchange our own email addresses. We've written to each other several times a week--and sometimes several times a day--for all those years. And when we finally met last month--along with my husband, Jim, and Ross's wife, Gio'--all four of us were as comfortable and happy with each other as if we'd been friends forever.

The odds were stacked strongly against us. Although Ross writes (and speaks) better English than many people I know, "gets" American idiom, and even gets my jokes, my Italian skills are close to nil. Add to that the gender difference, the cultural differences, and the fact that for four years we had no facial expressions or body language to help us process the words, and you're looking at a communication nightmare. But it's a nightmare that never happened, and that's the point of this post.

Ross and I had transparent communication from the start. That doesn't mean it was rudimentary or simplistic: we have discussed almost every topic under the sun, and I long ago quit editing my vocabulary with him. Transparent communication also doesn't have to be dry; he and I break each other up all the time, and it's usually over wordplay! Here's what transparent communication meant to us:

• Transparent intent. From the beginning, we were both up-front about what we wanted: to learn more about each other's language and culture. There were no hidden agendas; the friendship that happened was a gift.
• Willingness to apologize. Neither of us hits just the right note in every email or Instant Message, but we try. When we think we might have offended, we apologize without being asked to. Usually the apology is unnecessary, but just offering it (or receiving it) gracefully makes both our good intentions transparent. A little humility does wonders for a friendship.
• Willingness to say, "I don't understand." It amazes me that many people find it easier to apologize than to admit they don't understand what has been said or what the speaker intended. That's a critical component of transparent communication. Ross and I can communicate freely because I know he'll stop me if I'm using words or phrases he doesn't understand. He knows that I'll do the same. A willingness to say, "I don't understand" shows very transparently that there is an intent to understand.

It's all about manners. Not the pasted-on, pinky-in-the-air variety, but Judith Martin, feet-on-the-ground manners that come from sincere good will. CEOs, leaders of nations, and people seeking mates at Match.com and eHarmony, take note: manners are the glue holding together business relationships, coworker relationships, marriages, and friendships. Be honest; be humble; seek to understand. It's as simple as that.

Do they teach this in business school?

My fantasy B.S.-removal projects

I’ve been tagged by Jodee Bock of You Already Know This Stuff to contribute to a “Turtle Meme” (things I’d love to do if I could just get A Round Tuit). I'm going to call it a "list"--go here for my take on whether blog “memes” should really be called that--but here they are: my pet transparent communication, B.S.-removal projects. Maybe it's a “fantasy list,” but I visit it often.

#1: SCIENCE TRUMPS OPINION. I speak, at their invitation, to the National Press Club about how scientists with integrity have exposed the hypocrisy and bad science in “An Inconvenient Truth.” I explain to these journalists the difference between opinion and fact. Al Gore has an opinion.

#2: COURAGE TRUMPS SENSATIONALISM. I write a brilliant screenplay about the brave little Amish girls in Pennsylvania. Each one, at gunpoint, six months ago, offered her own life for that of her classmates. The film also shows how the Amish community immediately took the wife and kids of the killer into their arms with food, prayer, and forgiveness. Gosh, I know someone famous once said that this is how we're supposed to live, but I can't remember who it was.... There is zero B.S. in this story, and I love how it has the rest of us flummoxed. Even the news media can’t find a way to cheapen it. They report on this virulent outbreak of forgiveness with disbelief but also with cautious respect and an appropriate amount of fear. Good for them.

#3: "THE MATH INSISTS ON IT." I finagle a dinner and brain-picking session with dangerously cute physicist Brian Greene (Harvard, Oxford, Cornell, Columbia), author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos. Now here’s a guy who knows his facts from a hole in the...space-time continuum! :-) If the facts seem, well, counterintuitive, he figures out why they really aren’t. I saw him once in a documentary, talking about the truth of string theory. When the interviewer seemed skeptical, Greene simply said, “The math insists on it.” (In other words, string theory is the only thing that works mathematically with the rest of the math we know about the universe--it's the puzzle piece that makes the other puzzle pieces make sense--so it’s got to be true.) Good math = no B.S. (Al Gore, are you reading this?)

#4: GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN. I start a successful class-action lawsuit against toy manufacturers and others who sell sexed-up dolls to three-year-old girls. The lawsuit would include any parents who put eyeliner and lipstick on their preschool daughters, tie a bikini under their armpits, and teach them to shake their booty on a runway.

#5: GIVE ROSIE SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT. I start the "GRSTCA" Foundation for Rosie O'Donnell, who clearly needs some heavy-duty parenting. Our primary goal is to discover the source of her supersized mad-on. Could it be the wealth? The fame? The adoring fans? The almost-unlimited power? Through polite, caring conversations, we try to help her to see that she's acting like a big baby. Failing that, the foundation puts Rosie on time-out until she can learn to control her mouth. Or maybe we really give her something to cry about and send her to Iran for a while. She could interview those British soldiers being held hostage--oh, that's right, she says that's a hoax, just like Al-Queda hijacking two jets into the World Trade Center. Whatever. It's my nature to be patient and understanding with people who are intellectually disabled, but I just don't think we grownups should have to listen to her any more.

I hereby tag Mike Sansone, Timothy Johnson, Jason Alba, and Kent Blumberg to tell what B.S.-vanquishing accomplishments they would perform if could just get A Round Tuit. 

You had me at "Why?"

Maybe it's not true that everything we know, we learned in kindergarten--but it is true that by the age of two we had already mastered the most powerful meaning-clarification tool and B.S.-detector in the history of the universe: "Why?"

Each "Why?" can take us one giant step toward truth and success, if we let it.

If my client says her whole web site needs to be revamped, and we have a conversation where I ask "Why?" enough times and in enough ways, we may get to the truth that last quarter's declining sales were actually the result of local factory layoffs. My client saves a bundle of money and we can get to work on ways to address the real issue.

If my client wants to write a book, and we have a conversation where I ask "Why?" enough times and in enough ways, we may determine that, yes, a book is what he should write. On the other hand, we may find that what he really, really wants--to be seen as the authority that he truly is--can be accomplished more effectively and easily through a campaign of public speaking and carefully placed guest editorials.

If I want to cook a whole pot of macaroni and cheese and eat it at one sitting, but can get a grip on myself and ask "Why?" enough times and in enough ways, I may realize that it's been cloudy for a week, an expected job didn't materialize, and then there's that garage that desperately needs to be cleaned. Sadly, none of these problems can be solved with cheese. Once I grasp this, I can do what needs to be done.

Damn.

JibberJobber + terrierista = true love

When I was going through the "to-blog-or-not-to-blog" self-flagellation, I stumbled across Jason Alba's JibberJobber web site and blog. I found it in one of those delicious late-night link orgies where if you don't leave a trail of breadcrumbs you'll never remember how you got to grandmother's house.

JibberJobber had apparently been created just for me! I was newly unemployed, and JibberJobber is a complete one-stop "career toolset" to help people manage a job search and cultivate relationships during the search and for the rest of their career. Jason is the consummate blogger: generous, helpful, and passionate about linking people with each other. He hooked me up with Kent Blumberg, and together they gently led me into the land of "oh-why-the-hell-not?" The rest is history.

Now Jason has paid terrierista some pretty spiffy compliments in a post entitled, "Two Different Blog Styles -- I Love Both Of Them." I blush to read all the nice things he says, but my favorite is that my first post was "probably the coolest first post" he'd ever read. First posts are terrifying to write and I love that he connected with mine.

Unfortunately, I'm a technoklutz at times. I had made "post-posting" problems for myself with that post and deleted it in frustration, after saving it in a Word doc. (I love TypePad and this wasn't a TypePad problem. It was a Jane's Brain problem.) Jason's remarks this week reminded me to fix it, and he even rounded up some experts to help: Kirsten Dixson of www.brandego.com and also Kent Blumberg. The result? Terrierista's first post, "Less B.S., more success," is now restored for the future enlightenment of all humanity. Thanks for everything, Jason.

Cards on the table

We're back from our long Italian getaway. Three weeks of incomparable art in Florence and Palermo have cleared my mind of some rubbish. Here's what I'm thinking about my life, my work, and this blog. Let me know what you think.

This year, for the first time in my life, I was fired. Without any explanation. I was 53. It devastated me. I felt as if I had a big "L" for "LOSER" stamped on my forehead. Maybe I didn't know what I thought I knew? Maybe I didn't have the skills I thought I had? It's been a long, slow battle since then, one self-esteem skirmish at a time.

But maybe I'm winning, because right now, today--and it could be different tomorrow--here's what I know: I do have knowledge and skills. I like everyone to win. I like learning and teaching. And although I can appreciate cleverness and finesse as much as the next person, put-your-cards-on-the-table honesty in communication is still what gives me goosebumps.

My mission--here reiterated--is to help companies and individuals be straightforward about themselves and their products and services. Let's do stellar work and then put our cards on the table. No "advertising" if it means fudging the truth. No "marketing" if it means being tricky. Life is short. Let's do something we love, concentrate on doing it to within an inch of our lives, and call it good. Everything else will work out.

Thoughts?

The secret to longer life

Okay, so I stupidly overestimated the amount of time I would want to spend blogging while vacationing in Italy. I have, however, come to a nice blogging realization: nothing lasts forever, but in the general course of life, good, true things last longer than lies.

Nothing lasts forever: not fame or pain or power. The more transparent (read: truthful) the communication, though, and the more it tries to achieve good things, the better the chance that it will outlast the bad (Joan of Arcadia notwithstanding).

Take Dante. He ticked off lots of folks with his politics--got himself banished from Florence for life and was lucky that's all they did to him. But no one remembers him for his politics. (Answer quickly: was he a Guelph or a Ghibelline?) No, he's remembered and revered for his poetry, stunning portrayals of flesh-and-blood human beings. That's what has lasted. That's why there are statues of him all over town (with a perpetual scowl on his face, as in, "Sure, you like me now!"

Dante's politics wound up not mattering at all, but the truths that he wrote are still going strong almost 700 years after his death. It will be the same with modern politics. No matter who you campaign for or which way you swing, it won't matter in a year or five or ten. There are sleazebags and good guys on all sides. What will matter is whether you sought the truth, told the truth, and acted truthfully. That's a thought to keep you going when the world seems so full of B.S. that you can't slog through it in hip waders.

What him say? #1

"Our specific conclusions are that if the world were to go past the point of an increase above pre-industrial temperatures greater than 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius, we would be in a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on well-being would rise very rapidly." (John Holdren, Harvard University: Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program. Holdren was a member of a team of U.N.-directed scientists that recently issued a report on global warming.)

When my husband eats my world-famous bean soup, I, too, experience a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on my well-being rises very rapidly.

I'll be in Tuscany and Sicily for the next three weeks. We never go anywhere without my husband's Sleek Black Mistress, and he lets me touch her, so my posts will not only continue, they'll take on a delightful international flavor. After I get the air travel rants out of the way. Ciao!

Sharing the link love

Other people have pretty much written this post for me. The spirit of sharing (and I'm using the term the way it was intended to be used, not as a touchy-feely church-council substitute for the word "telling") in the blog community is a beautiful thing. Anyway, two of my new blogging friends love nothing more than big conversations about big topics.

Mike Sansone at ConverStations posted today about internal corporate blogging. Mike coaches business leaders to use blogs and social media as platforms for conversations, and in this post he gives great advice for allowing an internal blog to grow your business. I couldn't resist pitching in with my two cents' worth.

Phil Gerbyshak at Make It Great! surprised me yesterday when he put out a request that seemed to be more about quantity than quality--so I questioned him. He responded like the gentleman and scholar that he is, and in the process enlarged my understanding of how blogs can work and what they can acomplish. I liked Phil even better at the end of our discussion than I did before it started--which is really what great communication is all about, isn't it?

Get over yourself

Being an editor is not for sissies. They work hard, and the better they are at what they do, the more abuse they take. If you're unsure what an editor actually does (besides mangle your lapidary prose), this description might help. It's from Sue Khodarahmi, managing editor of Communication World, the monthly magazine for members of IABC (International Association of Business Communicators):

Usually I read a story first for content, figuring out what the point is, correcting any immediately apparent typos or grammatical errors, and flagging anything that might need to be confirmed. A second and sometimes third or fourth edit often reveal inconsistencies or gaps in the information--if it jumps from point A to point C, for example, I might rearrange sentences or paragraphs, tighten them up a bit, and reword any awkward phrases. Finally, I look at each word to see if there might be a way to make the story flow a little more gracefully.

This is good normal editing, the day-to-day stuff that makes an article and a publication sing. Khodarahmi is describing what she does for other people's writing, but you may have noticed there's nothing in the list that writers can't do for themselves, too. Writers worth the title will take all these steps toward making their own writing better, even if they're lucky enough to have a good editor.

I would add one self-editing task that Khodarahmi was too nice to mention: GET OVER YOURSELF. The only writing that is strictly for self-expression is writing that you self-publish or do in your private journal. If it's all about you, quality can take a back seat to your ego. No harm, no foul. In all other cases, though, it's not self-expression any more: it's commerce. For public consumption. Someone else's reputation or investment is at stake, and quality--not the purity of your motives or the intensity of your feelings--is what counts.

No matter how brilliant you are, a good editor can make you look better. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.