Received Wisdom and Bullshit
“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”
Chalk this one up to “books I had every intention of reading but life got in the way.”
Back in 2005, while doing some research for a paper for one of my EMBA classes I ran across a book, intriguingly titled, “On Bullshit”, written by American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt. It was an extension of a 1986 essay Frankfurt wrote when he held the chair of the philosophy department at Yale.
I bought it, then before I had time to read it, had a career change, moved across the country, and the book was packed up and remained in a box in my office until today, when a Facebook friend posted a link to a City Journal article that referenced the book. I’ve been thumbing through it today, not really thinking about how things have not changed, but how they have – and for the worst.
By way of Frankfurt’s book and research, “bullshit” left the realm of invective, a term of derision and abuse with no specific meaning and entered the academic lexicon as something more precise and definitive, a term that seeks to capture the flotsam and jetsam that passes for sincere commentary these days.
Daily observation of current events adds legitimacy to Frankfurt’s 1986 observations in that the most prolific purveyors of the art of slinging male bovine fecal matter tend to also be those exhibiting the sincerest of intentions. The phrase “believing your own bullshit” seems relevant.
Frankfurt argues that sincerity itself is bullshit because “rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.”
As we all know, people can be sincere and earnest about what they say and believe – but can be sincerely and earnestly wrong in doing so.
In the aforementioned City Journal article, Guy Sorman (French-American professor, columnist, author, and public intellectual in economics and philosophy) cites Frankfurt’s work as support for the weirdness of contemporary “received ideas” or “received wisdom”, such ideas or wisdom being some concept or opinion which has received general acceptance. That does not mean the ideas or wisdom is actually true or factual, just that they are generally accepted by people.
Sorman goes on to posit that the “bullshit” of today’s world idealizes relativism and sincerity. He writes:
“If everything is relative, then no absolute remains, and thus my truth is equivalent to any other. This is not so, because there are indeed things that are demonstrably true and things that are absolutely false. But this radical distinction is covered over by today’s fashions. Sincerity, in turn, is so respected that it is sometimes held to be higher than knowledge—another fashionable trend. I will add to Frankfurt’s reasons the near-disappearance of religious belief: If God does not exist, who will punish bullshit? It is even possible to imagine bullshit, like fake news, taking the place of faith in satisfying the irresistible need to believe.”
In my opinion, while existing to some degree on the right side of the political spectrum, the bullshit based on received wisdom has not become a way of life as it has on the left. The litany of things the left believes without evidence, and in some cases in contradiction of the evidence, is legion. From the 1960’s idea the world would starve to death due to overpopulation to the current belief the planet will be destroyed by anthropogenic global climate change (of which the only cure is the worldwide communism of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”) the left is devoted to crazy and unfalsifiable premises as long they are sincerely and earnestly delivered by some technocracy.
Sorman refers to the received idea of a “climate emergency” as an example:
“A good contemporary illustration of the opposition between a received idea and rationality or science can be found in the debate, or absence thereof, over a ‘climate emergency.’ The received idea consists in announcing loudly: “Science says.” But science, by definition, says nothing; there are only scientists, who argue among themselves. Reality is opposed to received ideas and to fashionable opinion. The person who repeats received ideas lives in an alternative world, with an alternative truth, one widely shared and thus reassuring.”
In the past, I have commented on their addiction to Apocalypse Porn. To put it mildly, they have a very serious bullshit habit.
The arrogant, evil troll inhabiting the diminutive body of Anthony Fauci is a good example of how bullshit acts as a suit of armor, protecting true believers from logic and reason, and forming the basis of false beliefs that harm rather than help. Saint Anthony’s revelation that it should be criminal to question him, even after his record of flip flops and just being wrong, because he “represents science”. The Fauci True Believers shout “Believe the SCIENCE, heretic!” as they smear bullshit armor all over their bodies in a religious fervor.
The blind belief in the pronouncements of St. Anthony of Fauci is apocalyptic bullshit of the highest order, the most dangerous kind.
None of this must be real or factual, this form of bullshit simply needs to have an element of impending doom for all the world’s civilizations and a need for immediate action or “we are all going to die”.
What could be more sincere and earnest than people wanting to save your life?
Facts do not matter when the end of the world is near. Apocalypse porn addicts have a pattern of latching onto situations that are unfalsifiable in the short term, yet completely falsifiable in the long term. They keep the pot stirred through agitprop, counting on you to be more terrified by this season’s most fashionable catastrophe than the one from last season.
Look, everything follows Herb Stein’s rule: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”. I have no idea when or if the world will end or what will end it – what I do know is that we should never be led by a bunch of hysterics marching down the Main Streets of America wearing sandwich boards emblazoned with “Repent! The End Is Nigh”.
President Ronald Reagan proved he was a man who could smell bullshit from a mile away when he said:
“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”