Meaning of falsehood
On bullshit, lies, and falsehood
Falsehood isn’t the same as lies or as Harry Frankfurt wrote in one of his essays bullshit. The meaning of falsehood is closely connected with bullshit, and bullshit with truth (there isn’t any). What can we hear the most often? In my opinion bullshit. I will use this word in this article, if it offends you, well you can always stop reading. Do it now or go ahead and try to push through.
Bullshit is more dangerous than lies. Why? Because the truth isn’t even close to the bullshit. Harry Frankfurt suggests that people who are bullshitting you, know exactly what they are doing. Of course, you can always say the same thing about liars, with one major difference. Liars know the truth, they are trying really hard to hide it from you, giving you false information to convince you that the “greater” scheme of things looks differently. Bullshitters don’t lie, they tell, show you things that are false from the beginning, and their intention isn’t to hide anything only to convince you to falsehood or confuse you.
In 2005 Frankfurt’s essay turns into a book which you can easily buy or if you want to search a bit longer download from the web. It is interesting stuff because it shows you the reality you know, and something you experience daily from a completely different perspective. Bullshit is more common than you think. I would personally put it on the same side as fake news. Information that is deliberately created or distributed through the web or from one person to other with no other intention than to give you the wrong picture (of something). Sound scary, and one of the first things you ask yourselves is why, why people keep bullshitting themselves and others?
Can you bullshit yourself?
Yes, and you are doing it constantly every day. When something isn’t compatible with your views, maybe it proves them wrong or you simply can’t accept some notions, or you are engaged emotionally in some topic — then you are on the right track to start bullshitting yourself that you are right, your point of view is valid, and others…well they’re evidently not awoken enough.
Bullshitting is dangerous even if you start practicing it on yourself because you know that things you are speaking and proving to yourself aren’t true. In time you are forgetting about it and more and more start to believe that the way of things that you keep telling yourself is true, and was always such. In that case, you are not a liar you are a bullshitter, and you can start to bullshit others. As you can see bullshit here, bullshit there, bullshit everywhere, and in modern times the amount of it is getting bigger.
So yes you can bullshit yourself and do it even without notice. The amount of information that is reaching you daily is well at best debatable, and in most cases, you do not even want to verify is it true or not. That is understandable, we don’t have much time, we are constantly busy, and if the information sounds plausible and somehow completes our way of thinking then why not — it must be true, right? Or at least should be.
Bullshitting others
Why a person would do something like bullshit. You can think that today the truth isn’t available in high quantities, yet many people would go long lengths to diminish it even more. Fake news in my opinion (correct me if I am wrong) has started a few years back as a joke, common trolling, a way to fight boredom. Those fake news were simple and easy to evaluate — recipients knew exactly where the truth was, and have treated the whole thing as a joke (and mostly bad one as it was). But in time the trend became something more, a way to express yourself and to shake fundamentals — if not the whole world then those personal would do.
Bullshitting others right now, at least in my opinion is a test and something of a pastime. During covid when most of us are stuck in houses and many of daily interactions happen through pc, laptop or smartphone we gain some level of anonymity. So what we do, only because we can? We start bullshitting others. It is easy, it won’t take long, it even could be fun, and everything for the sake of spending few minutes without slowly slipping into madness. Maybe I overreact, but bullshitting as Frankfurt said isn’t connected with truth. So people will actually look and find a way to prepare and promote information that is not only useless but also harmful on many different levels.
I recommend reading Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit”. I am sure that while you read it you will catch yourself many times on thought “well it happened to me yesterday” or “I already know that”. So if you already know then why others and yourself keep bullshitting you?
by Leszek Jasiński
