bullshit
A Princeton professor named Harry Frankfurt recently published a small book or a long essay entitled "On Bullshit."
In a New York Times interview, Frankfurt expressed some bewilderment about why there's so much bullshit around and why few people seem to mind.
I think we accept bullshit because it seems to have become so necessary to survival in the kind of world that has evolved around us.
If I challenge your bullshit, there is a serious risk that you will challenge mine. We need our bull because unrealistic demands have been placed upon us, and most of us need to fake it much of the time.
Farmers, herdsmen and hunter-gatherers have no such difficulties. Nor do truckers, loggers, forklift operators, welders, plumbers... Maybe that's why we often think of people in blue-collar occupations as being blunt, plain-spoken types. They don't need bullshit to survive, and they may not even know how to sling it.
We also are afraid to challenge the bullshit of the powerful, such as the President, because we are afraid of wounding the credibility of the leader who cares for us.
Middle-class Americans find it comforting to ignore the inadequacies of the man who is our leader in these scary times. They prefer to think he is as competent as he appears to be, even though they know that the way he appears to us is pure stagecraft. He presents himself as the plain-spoken, bullshit-free Texan, even though his roots are in New England, and he went to Yale as well as to an exclusive New England prep school--like his father and grandfather before him.
Maintaining an empire may require an imperial leader, an emperor, whose fitness cannot be questioned. We are tending towards that kind of system at the present time. Our empire may well collapse before we get all the way to actual worship of the president, in the manner of ancient Rome or Egypt.
The president slings the bullshit for the same reason that a newspaper reporter, college professor or corporate executive does: He is trying to cope with everyone's unrealistic expectations for him. Nobody faces a greater gap between his human capabilities and other peoples' expectations than the President of the United States.
When I was in journalism school more than 30 years ago, I recall hearing my roommate (a stressed-out, heavy-drinking Vietnam vet with a morose Irish sensibility) expounding on how our age would be remembered..."We had the Age of Faith, then the Age of Reason, then the Industrial Age," he said. "Now we're in the Age of Bullshit."
A Princeton professor named Harry Frankfurt recently published a small book or a long essay entitled "On Bullshit."
In a New York Times interview, Frankfurt expressed some bewilderment about why there's so much bullshit around and why few people seem to mind.
I think we accept bullshit because it seems to have become so necessary to survival in the kind of world that has evolved around us.
If I challenge your bullshit, there is a serious risk that you will challenge mine. We need our bull because unrealistic demands have been placed upon us, and most of us need to fake it much of the time.
Farmers, herdsmen and hunter-gatherers have no such difficulties. Nor do truckers, loggers, forklift operators, welders, plumbers... Maybe that's why we often think of people in blue-collar occupations as being blunt, plain-spoken types. They don't need bullshit to survive, and they may not even know how to sling it.
We also are afraid to challenge the bullshit of the powerful, such as the President, because we are afraid of wounding the credibility of the leader who cares for us.
Middle-class Americans find it comforting to ignore the inadequacies of the man who is our leader in these scary times. They prefer to think he is as competent as he appears to be, even though they know that the way he appears to us is pure stagecraft. He presents himself as the plain-spoken, bullshit-free Texan, even though his roots are in New England, and he went to Yale as well as to an exclusive New England prep school--like his father and grandfather before him.
Maintaining an empire may require an imperial leader, an emperor, whose fitness cannot be questioned. We are tending towards that kind of system at the present time. Our empire may well collapse before we get all the way to actual worship of the president, in the manner of ancient Rome or Egypt.
The president slings the bullshit for the same reason that a newspaper reporter, college professor or corporate executive does: He is trying to cope with everyone's unrealistic expectations for him. Nobody faces a greater gap between his human capabilities and other peoples' expectations than the President of the United States.
When I was in journalism school more than 30 years ago, I recall hearing my roommate (a stressed-out, heavy-drinking Vietnam vet with a morose Irish sensibility) expounding on how our age would be remembered..."We had the Age of Faith, then the Age of Reason, then the Industrial Age," he said. "Now we're in the Age of Bullshit."
posted by whitebeard | 1:19 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home