Source of book: Borrowed from the library
True story #1:
Person A: Posts obviously false, defamatory, and inflammatory claim about Rep. Ilhan Omar. (Maybe one like this?)
Persons B, C, and D: “That’s not true.” Posts debunking from reputable fact checkers.
Person A: “Well, maybe she didn’t say it, but she is so evil it is the sort of thing she would say.”
***
True story #2:
Person E: Posts claim that Hydroxychloroquine cures Covid-19, sourced from a right-wing lobby group, of course.
Person F (me): “That’s not true, and please stop posting stuff like that, because it makes things harder for my wife who cares for Covid patients at the hospital.” Posts multiple peer reviewed current studies giving proof.
Person E: Deletes my comment and blocks me from further commenting, but leaves misleading post up.
***
True story #3:
Joe Biden: Picks woman of color Kamala Harris as running mate.
Il Toupee: ““He said that, and some people would say that men are insulted by that and some people would say it’s fine. I don’t know…”
***
These three stories are good illustrations of what Harry G. Frankfurt defines as “bullshit.” This book is really just a 2005 republication of a 1986 article that Frankfurt wrote. It seems supremely relevant right now, for reasons that are obvious after reading it.
Frankfurt spends the course of the book getting at exactly what bullshit is, what it isn’t, and what it means. To do that, he starts with a related concept of “humbug,” which is an interesting enough idea. The two aren’t exactly the same, but they are related. Humbuggery shares a few commonalities with bullshit, particularly the fact that neither is the same thing as lying (see below), yet are both deceptive. Both also are concerned, not with the truth, but with accomplishing a goal. In illustrating humbug, Frankfurt gives an example of a typical jingoistic Fourth of July speech. It isn’t a lie, even if it fudges the truth. But the point is to communicate (or misrepresent) what the speaker feels about certain things. It creates an impression.
It is clear that what makes Fourth of July oration humbug is not fundamentally that the speaker regards his statements as false. Rather, just as Black’s account suggests, the orator intends these statements to convey a certain impression of himself. He is not trying to deceive anyone concerning American history. What he cares about is what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a patriot, as someone who has deep thoughts and feelings about the origins and the mission of our country, who appreciates the importance of religion, who is sensitive to the greatness of our history, whose pride in that history is combined with humility before God, and so on.
That is pretty good as far as humbug goes, but it isn’t quite bullshit - although it is close. Frankfurt looks then at where we find bullshit, and what that can tell us. On the one hand, there is plenty of off-the-cuff bullshit, made up for the moment - we lawyers sometimes have to do this when things take a turn we weren’t prepared for. (Sometimes this is inadequate preparation, but more often, it is when one or both of the parties say something rather different from what they told us…) But often, bullshit is actually carefully crafted.
The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept.
The real core concept, for Frankfurt, is that bullshit doesn’t care about truth. An intentional lie is, like truth, based on truth. For bullshit, truth is irrelevant. Frankfurt tells of a conversation involving Wittgenstein as an illustration, and posits that the issue wasn’t that his friend said something wrong, but that she didn’t seem to care about accuracy.
Her fault is not that she fails to get things right, but that she is not even trying....He construes her as engaged in an activity to which the distinction between what is true and what is false is crucial, and yet as taking no interest in whether what she says is true or false. It is in this sense that Pascal’s [the friend] statement is unconnected to a concern with truth: she is not concerned with the truth-value of what she says. This is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she presumes to be false: Her statement is grounded in neither a belief that it is true, nore, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth--this indifference to how things really are--that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.
Frankfurt also looks at the related idea of “hot air,” which is a fairly close concept. Both hot air and excrement, as he puts it, are “emptied of all informative content” - of all nutritive value. Likewise, the issue for bullshit isn’t that it is false (although it often is), but that it is phony - it is produced without concern for its truth or falsity.
Again, Frankfurt contrasts this with a true liar:
Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied with truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.
This is definitely true. As I will discuss below, lying is definitely an issue. Frankfurt asserts, and I agree, that bullshit is actually a greater threat to the truth than lies, for that reason. There is an interesting passage that briefly touches on Augustine’s different kinds of lies, most of which are lies for a purpose. The one exception is the lie for the sake of lying - what liars do. Most of us lie from time to time, but it isn’t a lifestyle, exactly.
For most people, the fact that a statement is false constitutes in itself a reason, however weak and easily overridden, not to make the statement. For Saint Augustine’s pure liar it is, on the contrary, a reason for making it. For the bullshitter it is in itself neither a reason in favor nor a reason against. Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost.
…
The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
Now, about the stories above, and the applicability of the concept of bullshit to our own times.
First, the blindingly obvious: Donald Trump is a bullshit artist. In fact, that is really his only skill. He is able, over and over and over and over, to simply ignore truth altogether and say whatever he wants and thinks will get him what he wants. It is easy enough to look at the 20,000+ falsehoods he has told over the course of his presidency and think of him as a liar. And, to a degree he is a pathological liar. But a better description is “bullshitter.” Truth has no meaning to him. It has no effect on his life and never has. (That’s the advantage of wealth, power, and privilege.)
He’s not the only one, however. While politics in general have become more of a popularity contest than ever, the American Right in particular has had to rely on a combination of lies and bullshit to stay in power. There are, as Frankfurt describes above, specific places where they have substituted specific lies where having truth occupy the ground would be problematic. But more often, they can simply bullshit and will be believed. Certainly the way that some people still hear something Trump says and thinks it might be true is puzzling.
I have also experienced way too much bullshit from my former religious tradition. One eye-opener was in a certain sermon. I call it out as lies, but I would probably now classify it as bullshit. The actual truth of history is irrelevant - the propaganda about how white Evangelicals are the only good people in the world is the point. The bullshit is said to create a certain effect - a feeling of tribal self-righteousness - and truth is essentially irrelevant.
Oh, and there was also Bill Gothard, who is more like Trump than you would think. Gothard is essentially Trump without the crudity. But all of the bullshit. So many claims that he made were straight up false - but not exactly lies. While there were a few cases where I think he deliberately substituted a lie for a truth where absolutely needed, it wasn’t his way of doing things. Mostly, he bullshitted. He made claims that he had no idea whether they were actually true or not - and he didn’t care. If saying something got him where he wanted, he would say it. Classic bullshit.
Now, let’s look at the three stories. The Trump one was in the news. And, it is typical Trump: “some people say...I don’t know if it is true” is his modus operandi, from the Obama birtherism to his attacks against Harris; from his dog whistles about racial minorities to his ass-kissing of white evangelicals. Note that the truth doesn’t matter. He says it without even caring if it is true or not - he is able to say it for the effect it has on his listeners, particularly his base. This is classic bullshit. And it is one of literally tens of thousands of examples from Trump. He is essentially bullshit on a stick.
[Note here: this is why people like me who have active bullshit detectors and care about truth more than power find Trump to be completely loathsome.]
The other two stories involve former friends. I have been purging my life of people who repeatedly refuse to engage with truth, but fall back on bullshit, ideology, and slogans. (And, of course, anyone who says racist shit...that’s a deal breaker for me.) In cases like this, where people choose to push bullshit, even when called on it, I’m just done.
Let's look at them. The first one isn’t just bullshit, but slander. It is saying something false about another person to hurt their reputation. I was raised to believe that slander was a serious sin, but apparently it doesn’t actually matter to many white evangelicals these days - they are more than willing to pass along defamatory bullshit without bothering - or caring, apparently - whether it is true. That’s the very definition of bullshit. Does it stir up hate and fear against someone “liberal”? (Particularly if female or non-white, I’ve noticed…) Well, then it might just as well be true. Reality doesn’t matter, just the effect.
The second one is also harmful, because it isn’t just pushing an ineffective and risky “cure,” it is making the lives of medical professionals like my wife harder, because they have to put up with being browbeaten by family members who are sure that all the doctors and nurses are withholding life-saving treatments out of a hate for Trump. Because that has to be the only explanation, right? It can’t possibly be that the science (reality) itself contradicts the claim.
Now, I get it if someone posts something occasionally without vetting it. I prefer to check stuff first, but not everyone does. However, when you get called on it, apologise and take it down. What I don’t get is the way people don’t seem to even care whether it is true. But that is how bullshit works.
By the way, I concealed the demographics of those two ex-friends. I think it might be relevant, however, because I think there is a pattern. Both are Boomers. Boomer females. Boomer female evangelical conservatives. (That might be redundant.) And both have made opposition to abortion their life’s purpose.
I think that last one is also extremely relevant. The anti-abortion industry relies on a combination of deliberate lies (quite a few, actually) but also on a mountain of bullshit. Maintaining that high degree of fear and hate - you have to believe that a large percentage of women worldwide are vicious murderers who have no conscience - while avoiding engagement with the sociological reasons women seek abortions - requires a constant stream of outrage-stoking crap. A mountain of never-ending bullshit. And all that bullshit eventually has an effect. As Frankfurt puts it:
“Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost.”
I believe that is what has happened to a lot of people I know and used to respect. The Evangelical Industrial Complex, like the anti-abortion industry, relies on bullshit. Bullshit and ideology (and a few carefully placed lies at crucial points.) Over years - and especially 6-7 decades - it takes its toll on a person’s ability to think critically - to even engage with reality. Instead, it becomes ideology the whole way down, and a con artist like Trump is able to speak their language - which is...bullshit. (Oh, and hey! Saw yet another Q Anon sticker on the way to work today. What is wrong with you people?!)
Anyway, this is a good, short, and informative read. I think the best takeaway is that bullshit, unlike truth or falsehood, is unconcerned with the existence of truth, facts, or reality. My wife and I, being raised in cults as we were, learned at a young age to detect and reject bullshit. I am hopeful that the younger generations, having survived advertising and corporate focus grouped everything, are better than my parents’ generation at this. I am trying to do my part to help my own kids learn to detect bullshit and insist on truth.
As a lawyer, part of my job is to help people avoid bullshit, particularly that from con artists. If I could just convince my clients to check with me before sending someone money, life would be better. And, if they would just believe that if something is too good to be true…IT IS.
Allen Faulton wrote a great piece on spotting bullshit a couple of years ago, and it is still great.
No comments:
Post a Comment