On Bullshit

“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. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.”

This book serves to pull apart what bullshit is, from its etymology, to its relationship to truth and its difference from lying, to the purpose it serves us. It's philosophical, but not dense, and interesting in that I hadn't though much about what bullshit is prior to this reading (which, I guess, bullshitters rarely do), despite the fact that I readily dole it out (...) and often feel like I'm on the receiving end of it. Generally speaking, we throw around words a lot without considering the nuance of their function and meaning, so this was a fun exercise in diving into a word. Plus, isn't it a bit meta to write a whole damn essay on the meaning of bullshit?

This felt like a single long university lecture. First, the author discussed the linguistic differential of bullshit and its commonly used synonyms. Then it gravitated towards the psychological aspect of bullshitting and how it differs from the psychology and philosophy of lying. The book wasn't something that I expected it to be, sometimes the repeating concept seemed to be a little annoying but overall I got a good idea of detecting the general basic level of bullshit, which is one of the most prevalent problems of our society today.

3.75 stars out of 5