Danger! This text could be what it is about: sensationalism with half-knowledge, technical jargon, generalities – and with English words like bullshit.
Hardly any word is more popular among know-it-alls who view life as a competition for opinions and interpretations and strive to score points with wit. Just a little contradiction is okay with the same foul-mouthed excitement: “That’s bullshit” – that’s bullshit!
Those who say it are usually complaining about the rubbish of others: hypocritical excuses, windy arguments, empty promises – to top it all off, they are often delivered in a pompous and presumptuous manner.
The criticism may be justified, but self-criticism is also necessary! The more complicated and hungry for interpretation the world becomes, the more bullshit becomes mainstream. Everyone swims in it at some point.
Bullshit is not cow shit that was reinterpreted at some point and washed into the hybrid-language present as a loan word.
The search for the origin does not necessarily lead to the excrement of cattle. It is more likely that it comes from the English word bull, which came into being in the 16th century – and did not require shit. Bull, in turn, could be of Old French origin to describe “mistakes”, “nonsense” and “contradictions”, “bragging”, “lies”, “deceit”, “mockery” and other trickery. Or it could be the mockery of official letters (with Siegel) served, so-called bulls.
This reading would fit in Protestant England, where the Catholic Pope’s bulls were unpopular. There is also evidence since the First World War that British officers meant the perfect appearance of the uniform when they required soldiers to be bull. So bullshit could have developed military jargon for an exaggerated sense of order, for disproportionate ceremony, and for leadership in general. But as tempting as this all sounds, it is speculation – and possibly bullshit.
Another story is proven. It comes from North America, where at the end of the 19th century a thick porridge was called bullshit – and was already called “B.S.” abbreviated – was. It oozed out of the barrels during oil extraction.
It is also proven that the author T. S. Eliot, who was born in the USA and later lived in England, wrote the poem “The Triumph of Bullshit” in 1915. The English author Wyndham Lewis sent it to the American author Ezra Pound, who had long been corresponding with the Irishman James Joyce about “bullshit”.
So bullshit served as a powerful curse for the English-speaking elite. Suggestively rhyming and exquisitely self-deprecating, T.S. Eliot tells the ladies that they should shove his “impotent, affected and probably parroted drivel up their asses.”
If you look for the meaning of bullshit today, there is more to be discussed than the editorial team of the Duden notes: “Nonsense, something stupid, annoying, something to be rejected.”
The Oxford English Dictionary is more useful, which writes about the verb to bullshit: “to cheat oneself by saying/saying nonsense”. The Cambridge Dictionary goes further: Bullshit is used to “be admired.” It is not based on a single word, but rather on a process. Bullshit is a form of communication.
This process requires a sender and a receiver: one produces bullshit, the other must debunk it. If the bullshit remains unrecognized, it will be spread innocently – exponentially, of course. It is a viral process after all.
It was the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt who warned the world of the pandemic consequences in 1986: “A remarkable feature of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows it. Everyone does their part. But We accept it.”
In order not to fall for the intellectual crap, the same responsible people are required who judge the content of politics or the quality of goods before they make their decision as voters or consumers. They know that bullshit lurks wherever people try to convince or sell them something. And they understand that words are often just a trick. It consists of dramatizing the truth with imaginative language images in order to create tension where there is none and to create pleasure where there would otherwise be none. Let’s think of “Boot Camps” without boots, “Sorry” without regrets or a conference called “Online Marketing Rockstars” because “Online Marketing” alone would be terribly boring.
When it comes to the station’s morals, Frankfurt differentiated between lies and bullshit. If liars know the truth, which they intentionally withhold, it is foreign to the bullshitter. And if you don’t know the truth, you can’t lie. He invents them.
Just like a student without knowledge saying something in an exam. He hopes that bullshit is rated better than – nothing! Fearful of remaining silent or giving a blank slate, he resorts to a form of self-defense that Harry Frankfurt calls “evasive bullshit.” Furthermore, because the student wants to get an optimal grade, he will fabricate “persuasive bullshit”: disingenuous claims in order to score points.
Of course, there is no general answer to how much bullshit each individual person spews in their lives. While once only gods and their self-aggrandizing representatives on earth got away unpunished, outstanding students of bullshit in our world can be elected richly and with a democratic majority. One of them is always in charge somewhere. One who is afraid of the void.
