Bullshit (BS) has long fascinated me. When it comes to B, I am a practitioner, student, and purist.
I really enjoyed Henry Frankfurt's short treatise about BS, which he puts as a lack of concern for the truth but not necessarily deceitful. The person BSing is indifferent to whether what they are saying is true or false.
I find myself of late disagreeing with that defintion.
His approach is, of course, descriptive rather than prescriptive; he seeks to explain how we use it, not how we should use it. I think he is largely on the mark regarding how we use it, but he misses a redeeming feature that can join the ranks of ones he already lists.
What he sees in BS:
- A BSer's main motive is to persuade their audience to adopt a particular viewpoint. (note: whether they sustain that viewpoint is irrelevant in many cases; the goal line is the adoption).
- Although BSing involves some manner of truth, the person doing it is not concerned with the fine details that a liar would be, in order to convince someone of a lie. Approximation is the name of the game, not accuracy.
- BSing is ubiquitous. We can find it politics, advertising, and in conversation with friend or coworker.
- Sincerity stands in contrast with BS. The BSer may not be genuinely connected to the topic or position, and the impression they create is
It that last bullet where I separate myself from Frankfurt.
I can't help but BS. It's e normal mode of operation for me with friends, family, and coworkers. I'll take a position I don't actually have, yes, and I will try to convince the other person of the same position, yes, and I will grasp at silly approximations of "truth" to get there, YES!--but this effort is often a bid at sincerity.
On the most surface level, the bid is for the person to understand or remember that I like word play. That is very much a part of who I am. Revealing that through spouting off some BS is a very sincere picture of myself.
On another level, if I'm taking a position that is opposite of my own, it's not BS, it's a lie--unless the other person is BSing too and we are at play. So the position that I am taking, if it is not opposite to my own, is something that I am still figuring out. The BSing is a chance for me to get to what my position actually is set against the mettle of someone else. I'd say the trust I am putting in that person to help me learn something about myself feels pretty genuine.
There is an oppositional argument that I have to acknowledge: These are only as close as I get to sincerity but do not actually count as sincerity. If that's the case, how precious those occasions are when I am sincere sans BS.