More on "On Bullshit"

Not long ago, I covered Harry Frankfurt's seminal work On Bullshit. Bullshit is, as we all know, everywhere and The Economist's most recent Charlemagne column purports to have discovered lots of the stuff in EU affairs. But on closer inspection, I am sorry to say, I think we have to conclude that Charlemagne has done nothing of the sort.

We start with Charlemagne accurately noting that Frankfurtian bullshit is defined as an "indifference to how things really are". As we saw earlier, it is what we might call recklessness as to, or disregard for, the truth which Frankfurt identifies as being essence of bullshit. So far so good.

We also start a mention of "taurascatics" (ho ho ho!) to remind us that we are dealing with naughty words. All par for the course, I'm afraid, but harmless enough.

So where is the Frankfurtian BS in Brussels? Charlemagne starts with something called the EU's Global Gateway initiative. Is that BS? Is Charlemagne really saying that the EU declares that it is launching an initiative (a 'Global' initiative too) with no regard for whether that is true or not? Of course not. In fact, we are told, it is "a perfectly good idea", but "mainly a mixture of existing commitments, loan guarantees and heroic assumptions about the ability of the club to “crowd in” private investment, rather than actual new spending". So, it's not Frankfurtian bullshit at all, just something real but over-hyped. 

Next we have some unspecific references to politicians, journalists, wonks, lobbyists and chancers. I'm sure some of them have, on occasion, indulged in Frankfurtian BS, perhaps after a few drinks or while attempting to impress an attractive stagière. But we are given no examples (except for someone who seems to have blagged his way onto television by bigging up his imaginary think tank) so we have little to go on.

Finally, we get to Boris Johnson. Yes, that Boris Johnson. The budding taurascaticians will be rubbing their hands with glee as they await being told, in the weekly newspaper of record no less, that the Prime Minister is a Frankfurtian bullshitter - a man with no regard for the truth - indeed a man with disdain for it; a "greater enemy of the truth" than a liar.

We are taken back to Johnson in his own Brussels days, as a journalist for the Telegraph. Yes, it's just as you're expecting, we are going to talk about bendy banana bullshit!

But I'm afraid all of our taurascatic expectations are to be dashed. Instead, we are told this:

"the outrageous stories—whether on condom regulation or the bendiness of bananas—were never outright fabrications. Instead, they were, often, bullshit. That made them harder to counter. A takedown of the bendy-banana myth focused on the fact that it was not “Brussels bureaucrats” who decided to regulate them, but national governments which pushed for changes to existing EU regulations. A pedantic clarification missed the wider truth: the curvature of bananas in Europe is a supranational matter."

What is the bendy banana story again? Not too sure when I think about it. I think it is just that the EU had or wanted to have rules about the precise shape of bananas and that's a silly thing to have rules about, let alone continent-spanning rules that are somehow said to be an intrinsic part of building a new civilisation, avoiding war in Europe and other noble endeavours of that kind. And Charlemagne is telling us that, far from being BS, that - the thrust, the gist, the essence of the story - is all true. 

THAT ISN'T FRANKFURTIAN BULLSHIT! It would be Frankfurtian bullshit if Johnson had made up a story about bendy bananas, with no idea whether it was true or not, just because he thought it would sell newspapers, or get him a raise, or amuse the chaps in the friterie of a Friday night. Frankfurtian bullshit is precisely not telling us the "wider truth", in Charlemagne's words, of the essentially ludicrous nature of those who rule us. That's called "telling the truth". Perhaps by exaggerating (for comic or other effect). Perhaps with spin. Perhaps with distortions or lack of context or ... But it's not bullshit. 

(In fairness to Charlemagne, if you agree with the points he is making then you may be inclined to agree with my earlier criticisms of On Bullshit: there are worse things than Frankfurtian bullshit. But that's not the point Charlemagne is making. He purports to be following in Frankfurt's footsteps.)

Finally, we conclude with a limp paragraph that brings in a different kind of bullshit, namely the "bullshit jobs" as described by the late and lamented David Graeber. Now, I've covered Graeber on bullshit jobs here and in more depth here, (and I've said more about Graeber here). All very interesting but worthless, overpaid, underworked jobs are nothing to do with Frankfurtian disregard for the truth.

So where does that leave us? In much the same place I seem to recall finding myself almost any time Frankfurt and his famous essay are mentioned: having read an article in which the writer cites a philosopher and his naughty words but fails to apply them to the subject matter at hand. As you will have appreciated by now, if that writer has not considered whether On Bullshit applies to the phenomenon s/he wants to describe but has ploughed on regardless - if they are reckless or indifferent as to aptness of their use of On Bullshit - then that writer might be the person most despised by Frankfurt: the bullshitter.