Bullshit: Common Currency in Public Discussion?

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.
--Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit (2005) Princeton University

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. -- Alberto Brandolini

Diverting Inquiry. When was the last time you asked a question and got a straight answer? If you can remember it, treasure it, because it doesn't happen all that much; particularly, among adults and those children trying to act like them.

When I was a kid I had an uncle who, when I asked him a question, would respond, "Whatsit teeya?" (What is it to you?) This was a very effective response for:

a. blocking a question he probably didn't know the answer to; or
b. extorting some favor in return for an answer he supposedly had; or
c. challenging my personal authority to even ask a question – "Children should be seen and not heard!"

Learning the Game. Kids have a hard time. They're fed the story that honesty and forthrightness always come first. But they soon learn the bitter lesson that it is adults who decide what is honesty and what is impertinence. There is also the painful "one-up(wo)man ship game" to be mastered. Those who are one-up can mistreat those who are not.

By the time we are "grown up," we expect bullshit in politics and commerce; it useful for getting around without having to tell a bald-face lie. Bullshit is not quite lying, but it confers many of the benefits of lying -- and is considered much more "tactful." But, many people still ask with bewonderment, "B. S.? Even in Education and Political Campaigning?!!!" (Drop your jaw at this point.)

Benefits of the Practice. We are quite accustomed to merchandisers "enhancing" the descriptions of their wares to attract us to them. Caveat Emptor, as they say. But why do educators, politicians and even (Horrors!?) religious leaders bullshit?

Because BS is tactful, therefore more likely forgivable than lying. Unlike a suspected lie, it doesn't burden the recipient with the compulsion to check it out and risk being perceived as challenging authority, i.e. "impertinent." Consequently, almost everything stated is cautiously taken with a "grain of salt," a taste that is all too easy to get used to. One can boast to oneself of having a critical mind without running any of the real risks of such a possession.

Most importantly, BS is functional; it works. On your first day, say, in class as a teacher, some wiseacre raises his (just a likely, "her") hand and asks you, smirking pointedly, if you had a "good" night last night. If you say, "My private life's none of your business," you can be reasonably sure that kid's parents are going to complain about your "unfriendliness." (Kid's complaint to helicopter parent: "Our new teacher won't even answer our questions!") Your principal will likely drag you in to remind you that the "acceptable professional conduct needed for renewal of one's contract" requires one to attempt to maintain "good public relations." Better smoke, mirrors and good, old B.S.

However, there is such public trust in educators that, up until quite recently, they could get away with massive bullshit for a longer period than could businessmen or politicians. School districts test their students and report their own results. They wouldn't possibly fake them, would they? (See Gaming the System: a Great Tradition!.)

The Risks. There is, at issue, status and money. Let's look again at my uncle's, "Whatsit teeya?" Certainly few degreed educators can own up to not knowing an answer. Especially when the question appears simple to the questioner or the public listening in. (If asked an uninformed or stupid question, for the sake of appearance one must, it appears, give either a stupid or uninformed answer. But one always has good old BS to the rescue!)

But ask a simple, honest question, and you get BS, too. Is there a kind of extortionary pressure given in an answer? Perhaps, if it takes place at an alumni banquet where a question of concern is brought up. For example a response to such a question might be, "We have several possibilities to address the issue you bring up, but little budget for it."

The challenge to the questioner works if he or she is seen as lower in rank then the person questioned: "I think the salary issue, which most of you will concede has been debated to exhaustion, will be handled at a faculty meeting that takes place after the trustees meet. Your committee chairs will be notified." (I have heard university officials, on many an occasion, say something similar despite having taken no polls to find out how many believe debate has ever reached the exhaustion stage.)

Spreading It. There used to be a farm implement called a manure-spreader. It did what you imagine. Those specimen-donors who believe themselves to benefit from spreading BS imagine that their donees, like growing crops, benefit also. Only the essential growth elements are missing.

For more on this, plus references see what follows. Some years back, before BS was referred to directly and euphemized for the sake of propriety, I asked a group of my university students who had school aged children to report on some of the "sloganeering" they encountered in the children's schools. You can find their essays and further references at

Disciplinary Slogans: A Critique of Three Slogans

Pseudo-Solutions: three disciplinary slogans.

Cordially
--- EGR

Good Lies, Wise Evasions

Tact: to lie about others as you would have them lie about you.
-- Oliver Herford

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
-- M. Twain

One of the rituals we often go through as we gradually acculturate children to adult society is to preach, “You should never tell a lie.” The children, then, are left to figure out where there are exceptions to this “rule.” Moral educators avoid this complexity as “hypocrisy,” primarily because they rationalize that kids are too young to deal with it. Children, thus, learn on their own, sooner or later, when and how a demand for information is to be evaded, or satisfied with what they personally believe not to be true. (What the adults’ fear, realistically enough, is that their own kids will come to disagree with them on this matter.)

Truthfulness, that is, the disposition to reveal on request what one believes to be factual, is valued; not absolutely, as we would have our small children or subordinates believe, but conditionally. It is a matter of priorities.

What are some priorities? Here is a list of a very few, more or less in order: Tact, Personal Privacy, and Misdirection of Threat. Let’s check these out.

Tact is easy: unless one has an especially intimate relationship one does not remark to others -- no matter how true -- that, e.g. their breath stinks, their baby is ugly, their child is stupid; their home funishings, aesthetic horrors; or their relatives, deserving of prison.

Personal privacy is established by our claims to the privilege of rejecting requests for (what we believe to be) truth about matters we consider to be “no one’s business but our own.” However, court or police proceedings often redefine the boundaries here. So may one’s social or organizational status. One doesn’t put off answering a police investigator, or one’s boss, with e.g., “It’s none of your business what I was doing in the office last evening.”

The privilege of demanding truth from others, or denying their requests for the same, is not universally equally distributed. Lying and evasion are techniques (often justly employed) for frustrating claims to such a privilege which may avoid provoking sanctions against forthright refusal.

Misdirection of Threat is quite important. Immanuel Kant insisted that lies should be avoided even if, say, telling a known murderer the whereabouts of a potential victim would enable the latter’s demise. Lying under any circumstances, Kant argued, if it became a universal habit, would undermine the assertability of truth.

Kant’s profound Unwisdom rests on a rather peculiar attitude: that a condition, historically very rare (e.g. lying’s becoming a normal occurrence) would have what is likely a highly improbable effect (destroying all trust in assertions.)

(His perspective also assumes a general acceptance of his Categorical Imperative whereby each individual’s actions would be based on principles acceptable as universal law. But, in reality, few individuals are precedent-setters. And, few precedents apply to everyone universally.)

Pure laziness or disinterest, as Twain suggests, makes persistent, widespread lying unlikely given the personal and social sanctions against it, under present distributions of power to enforce them. Prohibitions against lying, (or against anything else) work not because they press for universality, but for normalcy.

The Moral Educator’s dilemma: woe to the moral educator laboring under conditions where the curriculum is universal and the learner population morally diverse, i.e. adhering to different, incompatible “sacred values.” If moral education is expected here to inculcate moral standards, then diversity conflicts might well make it impossible.

But if moral education is mostly an intellectual excursion into ethical diversity it is unlikely to command much of a commitment (read “budget”) from a vehemently partisan citizenry. Perhaps reducing vehemence is the answer.


For references and to examine these issues further, see Trading-Off "Sacred" Values: 
Why Public Schools Should Not Try to "Educate"


Cordially
--- EGR