The ability to discern bullshit from real evidence is a badly needed skillset these days. Everywhere we look, in the news, on social media, even in personal conversations, there seems to be someone proposing bullshit. There are even people in this world who are proud of their ability to bullshit other people and get away with it! These people are called, appropriately, Bullshitters. If they profit from this ability, they are called Con men, Grifters, Assholes, and occasionally Motherfuckers. But for now we will settle on Bullshitters.
Bullshitting is a common past time and finds itself in most human interactions on some level. We learn early on in life what speaking bullshit can do and how believing bullshit can be harmful. We learn the power of bullshit and begin using it as soon as we learn about it.
You don’t even need to be able to say the word “bullshit” to pick out the bullshitters. Most babies know bullshit when they see it. There’s a thought process called “object permanence” that they can grasp sometime around the age of 9 months, which means that if you hide a toy, the baby knows that the toy exists somewhere, but it is hidden. It didn’t just evaporate into nothingness. Your dog also understands “object permanence.” That’s why hiding the ball from them is so funny. They know the ball exists somewhere, and they refuse to give up until it is found. You cannot bullshit either a baby or a dog for very long.
But ironically…you *can* bullshit a grown-ass human adult! You can convince them to buy things they don’t need. You can convince them to take actions to prevent feelings they have never felt in the first place. You can convince them that a rich person has their best interest in mind, and poorer people are their enemies. You can create a mob of otherwise rational adults and influence them to behave in antisocial ways. You can convince someone to give up their real freedoms in exchange for an imaginary safety.
And every time there is some portion of the people who know, on some instinctual level, that something is wrong, that words and actions are not lining up, that there is Bullshit afoot. If you are alert and paying attention to your own nervous system, you may notice that there’s a twinge of cringe, a momentary tension, a response that feels like a question mark in your body. The internal feeling of “WTF?” It may be in your eyebrows, in your jaw, or your shoulders. It might even be in your torso like a ‘gut feeling.’ Once we start tuning into it, it’s relatively easy to find it.
A mentally stable person will match up their values, their presentation, and their actions, –thoughts, words, and deeds, as it were—with their internal sense of self. This is what we do a lot in counseling. If there’s one of those bases out of line with the others, the subconscious stops respecting the whole self, and their integrity—and also their mental health—suffers. This can lead to depression, anxiety, and often to the worst outcomes. When you have solid integrity yourself this condition is easy to spot in the actions of others.
On the other hand, if someone with a personality disorder, or someone in the midst of a psychotic break, or someone with a very low IQ operates against their own values, they might not suffer in the same way. They seem to avoid the struggle of their inner consciousness at odds with their outer behaviors. They do not react to guilt, remorse, or responsibility for the outcome of their anti-social actions, and will typically not suffer the same self-loathing a stable person will.
This puts all of us stable folks in a tough spot. If we see a Narcissist behave in a way that is harmful to many people, but if our philosophy is to live and let live, it becomes difficult to know if, when, and how to intervene. If Truth is a value of ours, and we hear Bullshit, do we always call it out? If kindness is our value, can we be unkind in order to stop someone from being even more harmful? If we live with a philosophy of ‘stay in your lane, mind your own business,’ can we bring ourselves to stop someone who is doing harm to someone who we will never meet?
In our modern capitalist society, we are taught to question our own inner judgements, to ignore our doubts, and many times we have no tools to deal with what we are encountering. So I offer a few Professional Bitch tips for those of you who are attempting to find mental stability in a world full of bullshit.
First, once you are alert to the sensations of your Bullshit Detector, push pause on all the action you are in the middle of. Stop the speaker and ask for clarity. Pause the video and look up the facts. Put the article aside and Google the common terms being used. If there is pushback from the Bullshitter, this is a very real indication that there is Bullshit happening.
Second, learn to say “I don’t believe you” rather than “You are lying.” One statement is about yourself, the other is about the Bullshitter. If I don’t believe you, you will try harder to convince me with real facts and statistics. If, on the other hand, I call you a liar, I have just started an insult contest.
A third suggestion is to pay attention to who and where and why there is pressure being put on you to believe the bullshit. Facts don’t have to defend themselves. If a Bullshitter tells you that you have limited time to either believe or disbelieve their bullshit, then it’s best for you to declare it bullshit. Pressure is a dead give away.
And Third, do not invest time, energy, money, attention, hope, or dismay into the message of the Bullshitter until you have verified the facts. Ask for more facts if you must, but do not allow yourself to get sucked into the Bullshit until you have proven to your own satisfaction what is true and what is bullshit. If you find you have to walk away, it’s easier to do so if you have nothing to lose.
Finally, if you are positive that you are dealing with Bullshit, do your best to warn others about the trap. Call that bullshit out, in public. Pull it into the light for everyone to see what kind of bullshit this is. To turn a phrase: Call Bullshit on Bullshit.
Your bullshit detector probably works just fine, if you wish to listen to it. At this point, there isn’t much we can do about bullshit that is thousands of miles, thousands of hours, or thousands of dollars out of our reach. But you can disbelieve the bait that is trying to get your time, energy, money, attention, hope, or dismay.
But when the Bullshitters come to scam YOU, are you ready to call bullshit on them?