In his seminal essay On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt seeks to show the difference between lies and bullshit. He argues that lying requires subversion of the truth, that one needs to at least think he knows the truth before lying. On the other hand, bullshit does not care if the truth exists. It is indifferent to the truth. This means that it is easier to come up with BS than lies. And you are likely to get away with it.
We are all guilty of BS every now and then. When comforting people, we often tell them that “everything is going to be alright”. That’s just some low-grade BS. Of course, we don’t know if everything is going to be alright. No one knows. And we are not interested in finding out if everything will be alright.
Such kind of BS is however not as harmful as the BS we see in serious matters such as burning of schools, unemployment and decadence in our society.
When schools are set on fire across the country. Someone may say that it is the head-teachers who are instigating the arson attacks, or that it is because modern parents are irresponsible or because corporal punishment was banned from schools. The declarations may not be lies since no one really knows the truth. But if the person making the assertions is in a position to find out the truth, but does not care to do so. He is peddling some high-grade BS. Many politicians and bureaucrats are full of it.
Our society has normalized bullshit. Often, in our desire to appear smart we come up with simplistic “causes” and “solutions” to the serious and complex problems we face. We don’t want to admit that we don’t know. We don’t want to ask questions. And if we ask questions, we are considered little pricks who want to make life difficult for those in authority. Blind of obedience and lack of curiosity. That is the fodder that feeds the BS we see in our society. The internet and media amplify our propensity to BS.
Bullshit is insidious and generates a lot of smoke that obscures the truth. But like smoke detectors we need to install BS detectors in our social fabric.
Life is life
Fabio