(@ Elevia DeNobelia/Syl Sabastian)
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from one of the authors in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own, and no monetary compensation was received for this review.
“Our most earnest intent with this book, is to make sure you, our reader, you personally, don’t suffer needlessly, as a result of a bullshitter or a bullshit-manipulator-narcissist [BMN] in your personal life. We dearly wish you find some assistance here when it comes to empowering yourself to recognise and deal with bullshit. We see the resolution to the problems of the world, starting with you, the individual, at that personal and local level. If we each, in our small way. Develop that discernment which leads to the awareness and understanding of bullshit, we prevent this corruption on the world from spreading and growing, weeding it out at the source, and improving the lives of good persons like yourself in the process.”
In "Out BS!: Overcoming and Understanding Today’s BullSh!t" by Elevia DeNobelia/Syl Sabastian
Our system is broken.
Lying has a long history and examples of this are endless, but what stands out to me in DeNobelia’s and Sabastian’s book is the implicit Orwell's warning: “The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: don’t let it happen,”... “It depends on you.” The pernicious influence of lies upon world history and contemporary cultures is immense and it is my suspicion significant lies are a crucial component in most of the world's preventable suffering. It is no small matter. Ultimately it is up to us to care about lies, especially from those who are paid to inform and represent us, but also in critical person to person communication. We as individuals and as a culture might find our lives much improved if we rejected demonstrable lies and liars, and rewarded those who tell the truth. Especially difficult truths. Our future depends on it.
What is ultimately true is legitimately up for debate, although claims based on evidence verifiable by testing is historically more reliable than unsupported Opinion (Galileo demonstrated that). For example, carefully vetted evidence-based thinking enabled the production of devices that can reproduce this review. Science speaks of probabilities rather than truth, but some claims are highly probable and others are not. That, however, is a matter apart from the decision to lie.
Truth has never existed in any tangible sense other than facts corresponding to be objective reality. All other concepts of big T 'Truth, such as the meta-conscious or subconscious truth “Out BS” describes have a direct correspondence to objective reality. At one time Manifest Destiny was truth. Then came the Scientific Method and with it evidence based truth. People have been manipulating facts from the beginning but never before have I seen a strategy where the facts are simply denied, or accepted while also holding a completely contradicting counter opinion. Post-factual. Ultimately "We the People" will likely see a more responsive and just society when we establish and insist on much higher standards of honestly from the media, our alleged representatives, and ourselves. For that we need books like these that allow us to smell the bullshit a mile away (or a kilometer away because I'm not that good with Imperial metrics...).
How and why does the line between 'need' and 'want' change and move - and can it affect different people differently? For example many of us will laugh or pity the televised scenes of Black Friday madness - thinking at least subconsciously that the madness is that they are suffering or causing suffering - 'for things they don't need'. But - is need an objective measure? Can I know what you need compared to what you want - or for a complex range of psycho- social reasons might my 'wants' actually be your 'needs'? Aren't we aware the people whi promote the Black Friday crazyness are just BMNs as Sabastian and DeNobelia preconise?
To wit:
1. You are qualified as anyone else.
2. Is our press / media free or just make belief free? Follow the ownership, money and interests...
3. You need to address class and privilege. If I attend a public school, hang around with others like me born with a silver spoon up my arse...go to the best universities, have the best connections for jobs, business and politics... how does your average Jo Bloggs compete? Meritocracy is a mirage. Class, connections and corruption is what matters!
4. The politicians in point 3 form our government. How much do they care besides getting reelected every 5 years with never, never promises?
5. Why don't we have electronic voting but we have online banking?
Or you can just buy the stuff you need, and were going to buy anyway in the sales for less money. And less money than what? The price they inflate the item to in the weeks before? All we need is nourishment, medicine, clothes, footwear, a way to get from A to B (see also footwear), and something to cook the food in/on, and shelter though. Oh... and a computer and an internet connection so that we can post our ever so clever “bon mots” on Blogspot/BL's/GR's/(...). Basically, your education and upbringing determines your world view....your world view informs your bias and prejudices...democracy is the worst form of government there is, but it's also the best of what we know...The Internet has changed the global dynamics. A person in India feels as entitled as any American to have work, wage and a family life...Our consumerism is what determines the product we buy and who gets the job...
- Black Friday Bullshit: The biggest lie is that Black Friday is a major boost to businesses/sales. All that is happening is that 'normal' purchases in November are now delayed - till 25th. And December purchases are bought forward - to take advantage of lower prices. Yes - look out for inevitable headlines about "record activity!!" But it’s just shuffling around the same money - in economic parlance demand elasticity is negative folks. "Record activity" sums it up when it comes to actually delivering stuff. I ordered some printer cartridges just before Black Friday last year which was a big mistake. They are usually delivered promptly with no fuss. This time over a period of four days I was promised deliveries which never actually arrived. In the end I cancelled my order and had start again when the whole stupid Black Friday shemozzle was over!
- IKEA Bullshit, another one selling bullshit - I should fucking ko-ko. Bought a small bedside cabinet a few years back, on the box the words :"Self-Assembly." Fantastic I thought, took it home, sat it down in the front room and watched it for 2 hours. Not a damn thing! It was me that ended up having to do it in the end. Seriously. My experience with IKEA products is that they can be put together once (unless there are parts missing, like I found with mine), but only once. By contrast I had an old flat-pack furniture that was held together with wedges and the like and next to no screws, and had been dismantled and re-assembled often.
- I also tried using a Labrador puppy once as toilet paper once. It was a bit ruff.
- Bullshit jobs. The problem is that workloads get inflated by tasks which managers fail to adequately explain, done in ways that are very sub-optimal. Since we human beings are basically only sentient part-time, the quality of managerial direction is near-universally abysmal. Capitalism used to be able to gradually increase efficiency to winnow out the bullshit - but the pace of change has increased so much in the last 30 years that this process has been overwhelmed. Since the people who most need to up their game are those least able to admit they need to, I see little hope for positive change until some new paradigm emerges. Perhaps when "post-integrity" and "post-truth" memes have brought the world to its knees, new ways to do things will emerge. I am aware of an increasing bullshit component that is mainly about providing bullshit data to prove my compliance with various bullshit initiatives and a bullshit based regime. All the bullshit goes to people who collate and report it to other people who collate and report it to other people who collate and report it to other people. Don't hold your breath if you think if this state of things is going to disappear any time soon. Unless you are doing something clearly socially useful at the point of delivery, like emptying the bins or serving coffee, KFC or fries, most employment could be described as “bullshit jobs”. We’ve all done them, clicking around as a small cog in a complex machine. What we’re doing personally might be important, or it might not be. But in its totality, it keeps the lights on, grows the Economy and generates the tax revenue to keep the Welfare show on the road. The people I know who are the most contemptuous towards “bullshit jobs” are those who take the most in Welfare handouts - handouts funded by the taxes on those who wearily submit to the daily grind, whom they invariably dismiss as “idiots”.
- Ads Bullshit. When I was but a boy of 5 years, my father sat me down and said the following: "Manuel, I need you to listen to me, because this is the most important lesson you will ever learn. You know those commercials you see on TV? Never believe them." Due to my curious nature, I looked to my father and said, "But what if what they're advertising actually works?". Chuckling dryly, my dad held me by the shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said: “Commercials are one of the most common examples of true evil. Bullshit given form.” (translated from Portuguese into English for my English-speaking readers’ sake) Advertising is nothing but pollution-absolute shit. Imagine a wonderful world without it - would be awesome. How proud the slime-bag advertising maggots must be of the shit they produce. The prices in the ads never match what you really have to pay. I remember ordering two theatre tickets online for a play in Lisbon a few years ago. And there was ticket fee, restoration fee, order charge and email delivery fee, which added up to 50% of the ticket price. If I had to buy a bed and a drawer, I imagine having to pay separately for the mirror, which was part of the drawer, and the headboard, which was part of the bed! Bullshit everywhere. If you want to see a company fighting against the consumer bullshit just look at ALDI. The major problem lies in the marketing/advertising sector where the desire to forever alter the marketing, packaging and prices of products serves no useful purpose. One of the reasons Aldi prices are consistently lower is that they largely refuse to play this game, leaving their own brands unaltered for far longer than the ever changing branding elsewhere. On the other hand, some of their products are shite. Different kind of shite, but still shite...
Media Outlets Bullshit. It's a lot more complicated. "Supermarket" tabloids have long traded on fantasy. Exaggeration or misleading implications are a staple of advertising, and the word "awesome" is now applied with such abandon that it has practically become an automated response. Accuracy is generally not as much fun as fantasy (though opinions may differ) but accuracy commonly leads to more helpful outcomes, as it would in a doctor's diagnosis (quackery perhaps providing more short-term comfort risking long-term suffering, in politics as well as medicine). You don't have to have a stick up your butt to appreciate honest opinions. As social creatures we are more or less vulnerable to the dynamics of a cult; to basing our sense of status and belonging on certain shared beliefs, the defense of which feels self-protective. Belief becomes cultish when doubt seems necessary or disloyal. I would never argue against maintaining convictions, but rather sparing them from critical examination. And reevaluation, unceasingly. Cult leaders claim that only they speak the truth and demonize any who not compliant. That's anything but democracy. Since power tends to corrupt, it is wise to dilute it, and that speaks well for democracy. As Churchill claimed, it's the worst system except for all the others tried thus far. But democracy requires a commitment to justice for all, and bargaining in good faith. When that commitment slips too far, democracy dies.
Non-Climate Change Bullshit. I think we need to have a deep discussion about the truth, post-truth. Many commentators getting rightly wound up about post-truth, ironically have their own false world views, and clearly false beliefs. Seeing the truth is not about knowing absolute reality, metaphysics. It's about never overstepping the mark about what can be known for certain. This is about seeing the big picture, and where everything lies in relationship to everything else. Now let's start off with the biggest truth. Our economy, our lives, and the whole of our civilization is entirely reliant i.e. sustained by natural ecosystems, natural resources, physical natural systems and the equitable and predictable climate which has prevailed for the last 10,000 years or so. Yet our economic model developed during and after the industrial revolution is unsustainable i.e. at some point our increasing human population, increasing use of finite resources, and our abuse and destruction of biodiversity, natural ecosystems, and natural habitat, means that our economy will collapse, so will our civilization, and billions of people reliant on an organized economy with long supply chains will be in danger of starvation. That is truth, not bullshit. Anthropogenic climate change will crush our economy and destroy our civilization if we don't start understanding and accepting this truth. Yet most of those wittering on about post-truth, have not been accepting this. They live in a fantasy bubble where our economy can continue in it's current form and we will find a magical techno-fix which will solve all these problems. This is magical thinking and delusion, because technological discovery does not work like this. Jet aeroplanes are no fast than they were in the 1950s, and the fastest plane in the world was first went into service in the US air force in 1994. The last time a person stepped on the moon was in 1972. Yet jet aircraft and space travel-exploration have been fields of massive investment. The idea that we can just come up with any technology we like is a profound cultural myth, a dangerous false belief - as post-truth as it gets. Yet the Paris COP21 climate change agreement is based on the assumption of negative emissions technology. Technology to suck excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. No such technology exists, and it may never exist. In other word our whole future, the survival of our civilization is based on fantasy wishful thinking. In fact experts calculate that we are going to massively overshoot the Paris targets. Don't take my word for it, read this blog entry by Professor Kevin Anderson one of the world's leading experts in calculating carbon emissions in the future and the likely outcome of these climate change agreements. Where are those going on about post-truth, when it comes to the post-truth myths that shore up the whole of our present economic model? Climate change denial isn't just what Donald Trump does. The policy of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Theresa May, and every political leader of every major country has been taking us towards dangerous climate change. Dangerous climate change is the point where feedback loops will cut in, leading to dangerous non-linear warming, that we will not be able to stop, no matter how much we reduce our carbon emissions. No one knows when this point will come. Essentially the warmer it gets, the more probable is that we will release dangerous uncontrolled warming. The 2C figure was derived in 1990s by the Stockholm Environment Institute: “Temperature increases beyond 1.0°C may elicit rapid, unpredictable, and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage,” the report said, suggesting there is nothing necessarily ‘safe’ about a two degree limit.” That's it, they never said 2C of warming was safe, because that level of warming carries considerable risk. They said the danger point of increasing risk starts after 1C of warming. We already have warming in excess of this. We are already in the danger zone where dangerous uncontrolled warming could be unleashed, and the more the climate warms, and the more we put off rapidly reducing our carbon emissions the greater the probability that we will unleash dangerous controllable climate change which will likely crush our economy, and likely destroy our civilization. The whole economic model since the beginning of the industrial revolution is one gigantic inter-generational Ponzi scheme, in which we steal from future generations to lead the high life for a brief time now. This is the truth. Our economy, our modern civilization, is run by con artists i.e. con-men. They have sold the public one huge lie. They have lied and said the economic model they unleashed 200 years ago can continue for more or less ever. When in reality the resources for this economic model, the climate and ecosystems our whole food supply, economy and civilization rely on cannot sustain this economic model. It is very difficult to see how we will make it to the end of this century. We might not even make it past the next few decades. This is the truth, determined by science. Anything which falsely appears to contradict this, is post-truth. It relies on the wishful thinking of magical technology. We have about as much chance of being saved by technology as I have of winning every lottery jackpot for the next year.
Bottom-line: Elevia DeNobelia/Syl Sabastian tell us the truth about who we are and what we settled for. They made me all laugh, cry and think at the same time. This world is not as good as we thought. And the day will come soon...sooner than we think when the world and the people living here will get a major wake-up call. This is not fiction...this is fact! During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. In other words, if everyone else is full of shit, you might as well go with the flow, and be just as full of shit as everyone else. This makes honesty a sin because most of the time being honest is a bad idea. There's an saying a business associate once told me when I was starting out in my professional career; he called it "The Three B's" AKA "Bullshit Baffles Brains." Meaning: when you can't blind 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit! This brilliant book successfully profiles the mind of the Serial Bullshitter in a way I haven’t seen done before, and I’ve read a few, namely the bible “On Bullshit” by Harry G. Frankfurt. "Out BS!: Overcoming and Understanding Today’s BullSh!t" by Elevia DeNobelia/Syl Sabastian is a must-have book for anyone's book collection this Christmas. Buying the book, may help understanding the consumerisation of Christmas (I read it as the final treatise on Everything Regarding Bullshitiness/Bullshitery; a la Heinlein, we also have rough-and-ready dictums that we should tack on our walls - office, at home, etc. -, so that we can take preventive action against pervasive bullshit.) If you want to know about Energy-Entanglements, Walls-of-Energy, Vagueness, Obfuscation, Fuziness, Conspiracies-of-Complicity, Fogs-of-Implication, Bubbles-of-Obfuscation, Independence-of-Being, Myth-of-Agreement, etc., this is the book to use to fight bullshitery! As for myself, I shall be continuing the centuries-long tradition we Portuguese Antãos have pursued with regard to Black Friday and indulging enthusiastically in ignoring this marketing bullshit. Incidentally, did you know where black Friday comes from? It's nothing to do with pagan festival or the birth of a saviour. A store created it as the first time it went into the black.
NB: The difference between lies and bullshit. It's important. The liar is at least constrained by the truth and they can get caught out. The bullshitter is much harder to challenge (I call him or her “The Bullshit Artist”, they are more about convincing you and couldn't care less about the truth. We need to raise consciousness of this so that we can call bulkshit (sic) when we see it. In essence, deception is deception, regardless of semantics. Psychopaths are the masters of deceit. The best liars often tell half truths in order to disguise the deception. But we can also be deceived by someone who leaves out information that would make the truth more obvious. Deception can also take the form of deflection, when those caught in a lie, deflect the seriousness of the lie or obfuscate the truth by blaming others who may have lied before them. It is ALL deception, or as we say in Portugal “Mas c’grande aldrabice”.
