The Things We Say

I'd like to add a little corollary to that rather long post on bullshit I wrote some years ago.

Bullshit, I contend, is not caring about the essential truth of a statement. This is a slight, but I think important, modification of the more usual principle that bullshit simply means not caring about the truth. Someone can respond with a perfectly truthful statement, but it's context that matters : if their response doesn't address the point you were making (e.g. with whataboutism or other kind of diversionary tactic), then that's still bullshit.

I also came up with a whole taxonomy of different kinds of shitty statements, but I digress.

In keeping with the theme, let me get to the point in a slightly roundabout way. All the crazy political shenanigans of late have made me acutely aware of a lesson I wish Younger Me had realised much earlier. 

That is, there are two main reasons that people say what they say. The first is that it's because they believe what they're saying is genuinely true. They argue with each other because they believe it's an innately good thing to get at the truth, and that disagreement is something that fundamentally needs to be corrected. This doesn't mean they're not open to changing their minds (although this can certainly be the case), just that they're deeply concerned with what's right and wrong. I think this is most people's baseline assumption about most other people, at least in a healthy society.

The second is that they're trying to produce an effect of some kind. We all become familiar with this in different ways : our parents lie to get us to behave, advertisers exaggerate and mislead, politicians... well, they do all kinds of crazy shit. We get fooled because our baseline assumption is still that people are basically honest; we become less naïve when we realise that this doesn't apply in all circumstances; we degenerate into cynicism when we start to behave as though this second reason is the norm rather than the first, when we think that agendas are all there are.

All this is probably obvious. The reason I wish someone had told Younger Me this is because it should be explicit. When you raise what's known subconsciously to full conscious awareness, you can act on it. It's easier to remember, easier to be on guard, easier to avoid the pitfalls both of naivety and cynicism. Learning it implicitly means that the idea will only arise through learned patterns, and so only affect behaviour in rather narrow domains; learning it explicitly means you can choose to analyse behaviour in all circumstances.

How does this tie back in to bullshit ? Very simply. A classical bullshitter uses the second intention, saying things without regard for the truth... but they do, importantly, still care about something. They say what they say because they want to manipulate people. They want them to react in some way, maybe as part of a carefully-determined plan, or maybe in a more vague strategy of simply provoking emotion but still with an ultimate objective in mind.

The corollary I want to propose is that maybe there's a truly deep kind of bullshit. Maybe the kind of nonsense – anger inducing, incoherent, aimless, self-harming verbal diarrhea that vents forth from the Orange One's unshapely orifice – maybe this is simply because there's no plan of any kind whatseover. Maybe the deepest kind of bullshitter is someone who says things for no other reason than it makes themselves feel good for a microsecond. No aim in mind, no master plan of manipulation, nothing but ultra short-term "I like saying this". Literally nothing beyond that.

Now, many people are aware of this already : "however stupid you think his is, he's stupider than that" someone said recently. Indeed, this is a position I've long held myself, there simply being no good alternative for the sheer level of incoherency on display... that, and a healthy respect for Occam's Razor. There's just no need to invoke some master four-dimensional chess when sheer stupidity presents a far more believable explanation.

No, the point of spelling this out is only to make it explicit. When you realise that this is (perhaps) the way some people really are, you can begin to see it as a pattern. You can watch out for it. It can help keep you aware that all of us say things in this way from time to time (who hasn't got carried away and realised instantly that they said something they actually thought was total bollocks ?) and so don't need to treat every such statement in the same way. When you see someone who might commit the odd shitpost here and there but knows where to draw the line, when to be serious and respectful and when to just muck around, you know how to respond.

And when you find someone who essentially always communicates in this way... well, then you can decide for yourself if this is something you approve of. Maybe it is, in some roles. Maybe it's fine for stand-up comedians. But if you think that either a) someone talking completely incoherently really believes in what they say; b) they're doing so because they're actually really clever; and/or c) this person is an extremely powerful politician.... then I don't think we can be friends.