On Bullshit

Harry G. Frankfurt’s On Bullshit is in my view hilarious and heartbreaking. As for the latter, the distinctions in the book between lies, bullshit, humbug (new ways of viewing a different attitude related to bullshit like a second cousin), and intention had me reflecting on relationships with friends, family, and partners or dating. Even groups I serve(d) from military to boards, jobs in teaching, to politics, and people I've looked up to. The former, hilarious, relates to my reflection and laughing at how obvious BS is when I understand the difference between this and a ‘bold-faced’ lie. Or, a lie of perception with supporting facts based on the side of belief the individual is on. Having had a relationship with bullshitters is funny in contexts upon reading now. How obvious using this text. Although heartbreaking at the time. Besides owning the book bought a copy of Audible for a few dollars rather than convert text to speech with Speechify. Mostly because I’d like to revisit the topic multiple times without having to retake screenshots for conversion since Speechify only allows so much storage. My purpose for reading and reviewing regularly for use is in regards to marketing. As an aspiring author will undoubtedly be marketing for the remainder of my life. While also teaching others about as a consultant branding is a means of marketing. How we share reality is hugely important. If we develop a strategy on Bullshit for marketing reflects our brand. In the world today nothing goes away. This is how past transgressions while acceptable ‘then’ aren’t now. We will get called out communally for the newly accepted sin. Which was a sin within lack of conscientiousness or training at the time. Building a brand minus bullshit may be a challenge given how we are raised or fear and even who we focus on. Meaning those in the world we idolize who influence us. This book distinctly petitioned to my mind a particular politician. The obvious bullshit by the definition of the book is so obvious when applied. The other definitions where people believe the lies or BS they promote is a whole different ideology due to intention. The intention of which we are aiming for is distinctive. If we are lying there's a method to deception with intent as opposed to the bullshitter who doesn't care one way or another and may or may not believe the crap they're weaving with a certain message they may know very little about. The pandemic certainly has a measure of a little bit of every description in the book. If you're gonna make a review comment without reading the book would make for a very simple misunderstanding of the review and my view on the book or the hot topic of the pandemic. I'm merely sharing observations in brief of how the book aroused a need to dig deeper personally. To ensure bullshit is never allowed in brand marketing not encouraged for client growth. It's my choice to not participate in bullshit or people who exemplify this though before reading the book see how bullshitters had weaseled into my inner circles through life. I laughed at how obvious this is now though at the time can not believe how gullible I was. How I found this book is saw it in a pile Brene Brown had in her office. Why I waited a year to read it through with purpose is to partner with my word of the year, Peace. Every year I pick a word to represent a focus for the 365 days. Rather than my old way of creating a mission and vision statement with ways to accomplish this and a whole lotta reviews of progress, goals, etc. My only goal yearly now is to pick a word. Creatively focus on what this means. Develop a reading list that addresses spaces that interfere with the success of meaning attainment. And, help weed the spaces filled with for lack of a better word bullshit that distracts from what I need, and most of what I want. It’s super easy to pick books about peace. A larger difficulty I’m enjoying is weeding the less obvious challenges. This book has assisted me in recognizing ways I sabotage mental and personal peace tolerating bullshit I wasn’t astutely aware I allowed. Being able to spot the lie is easy. Simple. Mostly. But, bullshit is not so simple. As the person is “never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through”. “The bullshitter … does not reject the authority of truth, as the liar does … he pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are”. Being middle-aged having grown up without present parents am fortunate that a few adults demonstrated healthy attitudes about life. It’s been through faith practice I’ve learned what truth and lies are. How they hurt or help. The art of bullshit was never part of life lessons until adulthood. If you’ve never been hurt by a bullshitter or acknowledged the difference between certain politicians to family or people once considered or maybe still do consider friends this might be a great short read for reflection. Buying on Audible to follow along in the book enjoyed this because I could focus on hearing and digesting. Being read to with some books feels like sharing space with a friend, caring person, or sometimes from a teacher depending on the narrator. This book reads as though it’s a serious subject. Though I had difficulty not laughing based on some examples either from my own life or in the world today. This book vibes like clipping sheers to weed a garden. Or, a tiller if you have so much BS in your life that needs constructive acceptance. This book can be a way of cleaning up life’s garden. Making room for more beautiful flowers and landscapes for enjoyment. I’m laughing at the idea the review is so long for such a short book. Bullshit is deep and I’m hoping this review is the pair of boots you need and or want to wade to the book 😊 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ because some of the book spends a lot of time distinguishing humbug from BS that felt excessive for me to make a point. Having a leather-bound copy of such a little book gives a distinct impression of its value. For this, I’m adding back the ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Though, leaving off my traditional 💯. So not to bullshit the reader into thinking I didn't notice at least one area that vibed four stars. The overall impact of the book's meaning is five stars for me. I got a lot out of this little book. Gained improved senses for what BS is. Knowledge for understanding creating wisdom in the insight of choices is always a blessing. Who needs more space for happiness and less anxiety, fear, distraction? Check On Bullshit out for answers to ways to improve and eliminate with awareness. Owning authentically all decisions makes dealing with bullshit way easier. A little TP and flush. Rather than not cleaning these people away from influence. Consider who you follow on media. Associations. Inner circle people. Is it better to adjust now or continue to tolerate what eats away at personal peace? How you brand yourself eill determine how the world sees and the legacy being left for generations. May we all have more piece, happiness, and understanding and less crap that interfere with our well being and that we share with the world ❤️

Harry G. Frankfurt is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. His most recent publication is On Truth, which was published the year after his philosophical investigation, On Bulls***, the subject of my interest in this post. Frankfurt first developed his ideas about bulls*** in a 1986 philosophical investigation of the concept. This was subsequently republished as a small 67-page book in 2005, leading to media appearances such as Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. It is obvious from the fact that our nation elected Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 on a platform of demonstrably bulls*** slogans like "Hope," "Change" and "Yes we can" that the best-seller publicity received by Frankfort's study has more to do with the public's fascination and amusement with its title than with the actual, serious content of the volume. Perhaps if more people actually read Frankfurt's study, they would force our politicians to deal with issues more honestly and forthrightly -- a pressing issue in this election year. (And, no, I'm not supposing that bulls*** is the exclusive province of Mr. Obama or the Democratic party, although they have certainly set new records of late.) While Frankfurt's study of bulls*** may not be philosophically dense or profound, it is far more than a book about (excuse me) “s***s and giggles.” Frankfurt is quite serious. While there are passages that will certainly make the reader smile, this is generally because of the juxtaposition of serious conceptual and linguistic analysis with a subject generally treated as crude and trivial. For example, in his opening pages, he writes: "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bulls***.... I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bulls***, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis." Frankfurt compares bulls*** with adjacent concepts such as "humbug," "lying," and "bluffing," referencing points made by Max Black, Wittgenstein, St. Augustine, and the Oxford English Dictionary. He concludes that unlike the liar, the bulls***ter is never serious about truth. Lying is parasitic upon truth, because the liar is concerned that the truth not be discovered. Like the liar, the bulls***ter is also represents himself falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth; but unlike the liar, who hides the fact that he is trying to deceive us, the bulls***ter hides the fact that truth is of no basic interest to him. "It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," writes Frankfurt. "Producing bulls*** requires no such conviction." He continues: "For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bulls***ting tends to.... Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, of the same game.... The bulls***ter ignores these demands altogether.... By virtue of this, bulls*** is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are." Anyone who wishes to continue making assertions but who no longer believes in the possibility of identifying certain statements as true, cannot do anything but bulls***, says Frankfurt. In conclusion, he asks why there is so much bulls***, and offers two basic hypotheses. First, people bulls*** whenever circumstances require them to talk without knowing what they are talking about. This phenomenon is widespread, obviously, in the public life of politicians, who are expected to be able to talk intelligently about everything under the sun, most of which they are capable of addressing only in memorized sound bites and cliches that are no more than forms of bulls***. Second, the contemporary proliferation of bulls***, says Frankfurt, has deeper sources in "various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality." One response to these "antirealist" doctrines and loss of confidence has been, he says, a retreat from "the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness" to a quite different sort of habit, which involves the cultivation of an alternative ideal of sincerity. "Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature." Frankfurt observes: "But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them.... Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial -- notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bulls***." Sincerity, in other words, generally has nothing to do with having a correct account of what is true.

ineluctible, concise, tightly reasoned and elegantly structured, a true pleasure to experience. A brief gem of mental and especially verbal precision which may be savored with a fine single malt while its subject destroys our civilization.

There are books that one wants to buy as soon as we read the title, like this one. A priori, Frankfurt appears as an agent provocateur, as the book is sold on Amazon, where there is a straight no-profanity no-expletives policy. However the book feels a total ploff flop once we start reading, because the expectations were so high, that the book can only fall short. Frankfurt's intention is to define what BS means, the intention behind the concept, if any, the function/s it serves, and what does it not mean. Through this essay, we get to see some of the characteristics that Frankfurt unearths and attributes to BS. Thus, BS is a deceptive deliberate misrepresentation, short of lying, by word and/or deeds, produced in a careless or self-indulgent manner, unrefined and somewhat spontaneous. Its essence is the lack of connection with truth, an indifference to how things really are. Frankfurt identifies BS as connected to 'hot air' or bluff but not as much to nonsense. BS is phony not false, colourful and creative, but not precise or sharp. Frankfurt starts his essay with a cross-examination of the definition of Humbug, as provided by Max Black in 1985. He also compares the meaning and use of the word with the definitions that the Oxford English Dictionary offers of bull, bull session, and BS. He also sketches St Augustine's typology of lies, and, of course, invites Wittgenstein to the party because the whole essay is a Wittgensteinish exercise. One of the aims of this work is to explain the difference between a lie and BS, and I think that Frankfurt succeeds at doing so, because we get to see clearly how both things are essentially different in intention, conception, format, and presentation. Another of the aims of the book is to discuss whether there is more BS today than before and why, and although the discussion on this subject occupies barely two pages, it is quite good and goes straight to the point. One of the most questionable discussions in the book is, paradoxically, one of the things I enjoyed the most. It revolves about a conversation that Fania Pascal and Wittgenstein had in Cambridge in the 1930s. She was feeling really bad after having her tonsils removed, and told Wittgenstein that she felt like a dog run down by a car, to which the philosopher replied, somewhat upset, “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.”. To me, the whole point of the discussion between Pascal and Wittgenstein is that she was talking hyperbolically and metaphorically to express how bad she felt and how unwell she was, and, we can guess, to get a bit of friendly support. But she did not get any because Wittgenstein was not really listening to her, he was hearing the words coming out of her mouth and interpreted them literally, as an autistic person would do. She wasn't implying that she knew how a dog would feel in those circumstances, or that a human and a dog would feel the same, or knew how a dog in those circumstances felt but decided to ignore it for the sake of verbal flourish. The point of the episode is not, like Frankfurt says, on Pascal disregard for reality when she speaks, it is that Pascal and Wittengstein were speaking two different languages because their emphasis is different. Hers is on the flourished colours of her pain. Him is on the literal transcription of reality that he expects from language in a mathematical-like precision. That being the case, to me, the anecdote is pointless in a discussion on the subject at hand. While reading this book, I wondered why the need to give BS 'a' definition, or rather one meaning, or so it appeared to me. The Urban Dictionary allows us to appreciate the different shades of the word in common everyday colloquial language. In my personal life, I have had the word speared at me to mean, depending on the context and the person,: 1/ you don't know what you are talking about (even though I did know what I was talking about). 2/ You are kidding! 3/ You are talking nonsense. 5/ You are lying and you know it, but want to fool me. 6/ I don't believe you, I don't want it to be true! The beauty of language (when a precise definition is not needed for the exercise of law, legislation or relevant philosophical analysis, and when the word has not been used for decades or centuries and its meaning is quite established) is that language is alive, fluid, and in constant movement. At times one has to be familiar with the person to 'get' the way and meaning s/he uses and gives to a certain word, the context, the colour, the intention. There are words with a definition that most people would agree on, while other words have so many different hues and undertones, that offering an unique definition feels like a corset. So, why reducing a word to a sort of ivory goddess-like monolith with a specific colour, material and varnish? Why trying to define philosophically a word that was never meant to be philosophical or used philosophically? I don't mean to say that the exercise in the book is pointless or useless, I mean to say that there is not much philosophy behind Bs, Bsiting and Bsiters, and the exercise feels more about how to approach a concept to define it precisely than anything else. Or said differently, it is more about the exercise itself than about the word that the philosopher has chosen for this book. Which is interesting the same. In a way, this book shows (I don't know whether willingly, as a joke, or whether unwillingly, as an academic exercise gone bananas) the need of the Academia to define colloquial and popular words and concepts to give them a status that they were never meant to have. Or, on the contrary, the need and demand of modern pop culture for its most darling words being stamped with the Academia's seal of approval and the Academia, in response to the demand, takes a leap of faith and dances with BS itself. At least to me, this work feels as if the author had had a great idea, started to write a book, something had happened, and he had interrupted his work and left the work incomplete. Yet, it is a nice read overall with some good points to ponder.

To put it even more succinctly than did Harry G. Frankfurt: The business of America is BS. Every leading university should have a center of BS studies, since BS is "one of the most salient characteristics of our culture," yet goes largely unanalyzed. The theoretical unpinnings of BS are notably absent. BS has not "attracted much sustained inquiry." Frankfurt rendered a great public service by meticulously and wittily scoping out the dimensions and charactericistics of BS, in the end arriving at its very essence. Frankfurt's goals in his brief monograph were modest: He aimed to say something helpful, though not decisive, about BS and give only a rough account of what BS is. He provides few concrete examples or illustrations. Although he is quite convinced there is a lot of it, he isn't prepared to state categorically that there is more BS today than in the past. He leaves to the conscientious student the task of determining why an outright lie tends to upset us more than BS. Frankfurt makes only a half-hearted attempt to explain why there is so much BS: "BS is unavoidable [sic] whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about." An obvious example of talking without knowing was Barack Obama's informing us that deep-water drilling for oil was safe. A week later came the BP drilling fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico. Undetered, a year later Obama publicly embraced safe, clean nuclear energy as a cornerstone of his energy policy. A few days after that confident pronouncement, Japan experienced a partial core meltdown at its Fukushima nuclear power complex. But all elected politicians engage in BS, because telling the unvarnished truth and thereby alienating whole swaths of constituents would be politically suicidal. So-called senior scholars at our prestigious think tanks throw the bull because their real, unadvertised purpose is to promote the ideology of their rich backers. Lawyers, of course, say whatever it takes to win the case or burnish the image of their clients. The same holds for lobbyists, who might name a political pressure group of coal-plant operators, the "Clear Skies Initiative." We see repeatedly that drug and medical device manufacturers bury studies that show harm and publish studies that show benefits, studies written by researchers with secret financial ties to the companies themselves. Business school academics in the secret pay of their finance-industry clients publish supposedly disinterested studies on the virtues of deregulation and free markets. Public school administrators and teachers achieve large gains in student performance by rigging the student evaluation tests. Public school history textbooks have prestigious authors' names on their covers but are secretly written by marketing hacks. Government regulators see their mission as promoting and protecting "their" industries instead of safeguarding the public. Food retailers reduce the size of the package, then exclaim "New Lower Price!" even though the price per unit of weight is at an all-time high. It's getting ever harder to see the forest for the BS. Frankfurt's treatise couldn't be more timely or more urgently needed.

It's important to know the difference between a liar and a BS'er. Here's how to learn. Buy the Book!

This topic has always been present in business and professional life, just look at top management in vast majority of successful business organizations. However, topic of Bull* started to dominate political life in last 10 years and it's threatening to blow apart the very basic thread of social order we enjoyed for the last 75 years. Toxic interaction of fear and distrust on one end (public), and primitive and criminal selfish interests on the other (self-made politicians), is fueling collective destructive energy not seen in the West since 20s and 30s of last century. This little book unmasks well the core of such behavior and motivation for it. However, instead of simply and clearly outlying dangers ahead, it too often strays off into irrelevant details and historical scientific references. Which is a shame because our collective psyche could really use some ideas how to deal with complex everyday problems and related fears, instead of venting them off every 4 years in election booths. In summary, Prof. Frankfurt did well in explaining the difference between telling truth, lying and bull*** People in the first two categories still know there is truth, while ones in the last one simply do not care - and that makes them so seductive and destructive.

Very interesting read