Diary: Lies, Liars and BS

I woke up this morning fully intending to peruse through OpEd and write an article that has been threading its way through my brain for the past few days. Maybe I shouldn't have read OpEd first, since that only succeeded in getting my thoughts moving in a zillion directions, all with no real direction at all. Six cups of coffee later and frustration at its peak, I hit the "save as" button and put it to bed for another time. I went looking for a small book that was given to me as a Christmas gift in 2005 titled "On Bullshit" by Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton. The hardbound copy would easily fit into my hip pocket and is comprised of a mere sixty-seven pages, so I re-read it.

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry."

The author attempts to define bullshit, and in doing so, likens it to a lie, but that necessitates defining "lie", which is not as easy as one might assume. You might ask, how much of advertising is a lie and how much just plain bullshit?

Professor Frankfurt quotes a bit of advice given by a fictitious father to his young son.

"Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through." Which presumes not only that there is an important difference between lying and bullshitting, but that the latter is preferable to the former. . .although the risk of being caught are about the same, the consequences of being caught are generally less severe for the bullshitter than the liar . In fact, people tend to be more tolerant of bullshit than of lies, perhaps because we are less inclined to take the former as a personal affront."

The topic of my intended article was the Bush speech of January 10 and the abundance of commentaries following it. My quandary became how much of what was said was a lie. On re-reading Professor Frankfurt, I wonder just how much was simply bullshit.

"Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. 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 are lies."