Pixelated Semantics

A schizotypical inventory

The contemporary proliferation of bullshit

One Harry Frankfurt of Princeton University writes a compelling treatise "On Bullshit":

"The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are.... 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."

He proposes to "begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit" (although surely such an understanding underlies the explicit nature of modern PR, Advertising, Politics, Entertainment, etc) - certainly this article is a useful locus for the aggregated knowledge of BS in most of its salient forms.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 10:32 am ::