Never said it all blows.
I’m where I deserve to be. To tell you anything else would be more bullshit. I think saying everyone’s blows is unfair to both myself and everyone else though.
Thanks for noticing and taking the time to read through.
Journal, Diary, & Blogging / I Call Bullshit!
You know how we’ve gotten to a point in our culture where we brush off lies, deceit, false advertising, political spin, bosses and coworkers condescending and selfish mistruths, the opposite sex’s relationship games and manipulations, how we brush all this off as just being the way things are?
What can you do?
That’s just how things work in the “real” world right? Yeah you know what I’m talking about because everyone who reads this has been on both sides of the dishonest give and take that keep things spinning. Some of us are worse than others. Some of us are more easily offended by it all than others. Some of us may even have made noble strides towards disengagement from these societal trends. But you know what?
IT’S ALL BULLSHIT!
All of it. The spinning, the convenient deceptions, the propagandized corporate claims, the half truths we tell our partners to maintain the status quo. All pure and undiluted bullshit. But so are the lies we tell ourselves about how unavoidable it all is, and how we’ve got special justifications for our less than golden relationship with truth. It’s bullshit when we sit and complain about it in others even when we aren’t instigators in it. Even if we just nod gamely when we know our boss or a cop is bullshitting us so we can go about our lives, we are enabling the bullshit and therefore perpetuating it and are ourselves bullshitters too.
It’s become all too easy for us to cozy up to our bullshit over the decades. We work less by ourselves and more in service industries where we have to learn ingratiating skills. We have mega corporate advertising and P.R. firms who exist for the sole unadulterated purpose of creating bullshit to sell us something they know perfectly well we don’t need and doesn’t do what they claim. We’ve become numbed to the steady progression of lies and crap thrown at us that we’ve learned to wade through it and tolerate the stink until we’ve adapted to it.
Another politician lied? Oh well that’s what they do. It’s part of the job.
Lawyer got that criminal off again huh? Oh well, damn lawyers.
That drug caused unreported side effects the pharmaceutical industry covered up? Hope they get sued for a bunch.
Steroids gave him an unfair advantage over opponents? Any player could do it and it really doesn’t make that much of a difference. Still I hope our guys win at all costs.
Minorities in key demographics were blocked from voting in Florida and Ohio? Other guys wanted it more.
People are dying in an invasion based on outright lies regarding WMD’s and terrorist ties? People couldn’t handle the truth. So what’s gonna happen with Social Security you think?
And the escalation of bullshit continues until we don’t know truth from lies and we’ve created generations of bullshitters who treat life and relationships like a political campaign or a formal cocktail party. Being truthful upfront human beings just seems too far beyond the capacity of most people’s egos and materialistic needs. But we don’t examine the price it takes on our spirits, which negates whatever short term benefits we get from playing the game. As the bullshit filters down from demagogue President to outrageous claims of fair and balanced reporting from a propaganda tool owned by a proven bedfellow of the powers that be, to the actor plugging a movie he knows is a piece of shit, to the accumulated imagery convincing you that a beer will get you laid, jeans will make you cool and complete inside, your slight heartburn because you eat like shit is acid reflux disease and your Dr is fucking you if he doesn’t prescribe Prilosec for you, to discredited pseudoscience making a case for creationism and a lack of global warming being given its equal room to debate, to your boss making himself look good at his employees expense, to your girlfriend throwing the power word “love,” around to keep you in thrall, and right on down to your kid promising she’s out practicing for cheerleading when she’s having unprotected sex with her drug source.
And we are all responsible. But can we stop?
I honestly don’t know at this point. I can say I’m a more truthful and honest, non-hypocritical person than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve always sensed bullshit since I was a kid and it was one of the reasons I suspect I was a withdrawn and untrusting child. It’s made me very aware of it in myself. And yet I did my share of self serving lying in my younger days. As I grow older, even more introspective, able to encapsulate higher ethical philosophies to provide further motivation to live honestly, and see the results of others lies and bullshit, I find bullshit more and more distasteful. But am I bullshit free?
No.
When I’ve looked at a boss who I knew was lying to me and nod numbly and walk away without calling him on his lie I am enabling and engaging in the art of bullshit. I was playing the subordinates roll in the game. I pretended I didn’t know he’s a self serving jackass with a grin. Worse than that I’m quite possible leaving him with the impression that I’m not pretending, but really am as stupid and gullible as he likes to portray his staff to be in order to fly his own flag higher so his superiors will salute. So not only have I bullshitted him back, I’ve lowered myself by allowing the mistaken illusion that I’m too dumb to catch on to this idiots obvious lies, unethical practices, and manipulations.
And now in a position of management myself I find myself doing some sugar coating and stroking to get staff’s cooperation. I nod politely at times when i want to tell these people to suck it up and act like adults. I stifle my opinion in order to not create more issues whether it’s in hearing some of their silly religious beliefs, or in telling them what high school drama queens they are acting like. Sometimes I go to the opposite extreme of the boss alluded to above and give them too much credit. Sometimes it’s warranted and I’m quick to not ever take any myself. But sometimes I want to tell my own superiors what I really think of some of these people in the program I manage and how little I respect many of them.
But I act as if i do respect them. And some I do. But every time I act like I respect the ones I don’t and cater to their attitudes, or not tell them what I’m really thinking in order to be “professional,” I feel like I’m bullshitting. And the job area is just an example of some of the small bullshit I still have in my own life.
And why? So I can keep my job and survive? The normal justification so many of us use. And it’s true and I can’t stop. Not right now. So I too am dirty with bullshit. When I heard the outrageous things my ex girlfriend would say or do and not say, “that’s fucking horrible,” or “You really need to get more therapy,” was I not complicit in relationship bullshit? Sure there were valid reasons at the time and she hid from truth by throwing up obstacles to divert from it and make intrepid examination difficult for any prolonged period. But I could have forced it and risked it all. But hey why ruin a good time right?
I am proud of the fact that I engage in so little bullshit and am a pretty honest person but I am also disgusted that I am not more so or that I have to be around so much bullshit without calling bullshit on people.
I could give more seemingly benign examples of my own imperfection, but you get the point. It’s all this kind of stuff. At least I’m not getting kids killed, depriving people of medications, poisoning food and water, or aggrandizing myself at others expense. But maybe it’s all just different levels of the same thing and most of us would also do whatever it takes to survive at that level. Which takes me back to the culture and our collective easy acceptance of bullshit in so many areas of our lives. What if looking the other way at work is associated however distantly with the self serving bullshit that says capitalism is the foundation of democracy? What if accepting the provable lie that America was founded on Christianity and its principles is inextricably intertwined with convenient dismissals of environmental warnings and the faith that god will take care of the trees and sky? And what if this is also connected to the bullshit rationalizations that lead people to lie and cheat to get a candidate in who professes to believe that same bullshit they do? And what if that results in destroying proven sex-ed and protection programs in favor of faith based abstinence ones that statistics prove lead to more teen pregnancy? And what if that leads to the bullshit lies your teen daughter tells you to keep you from having to face what you know deep down about her having unprotected sex because the truth for you and the effort for her to use a condom are too much trouble? So you all bullshit each other until the pattern is passed on to your 16 year olds daughter’s kid who bullshits his or her way into similar situations and the lousy relationships that usually accompany them 16 or so years later.
It’s a terrible oversimplification to say that all the world’s problems come down to the word bullshit. But our tendency to engage in it goes way back and I worry that it’s not getting any less selected for in this new culture. There is hope in a super observant media culture and instant awareness society that bullshit is exposed more and will eventually be left behind in favor of a technological cultures natural favoring of facts. That is my hope anyway, and like many of our self serving hopes, maybe it’s bullshit. This is what worries me. I don’t want to watch it happen one way or the other. i want to choose truth. We are all products of our environment and we also help shape it. So where does the change need to come from?
In a nation of phone surveys, telemarketing, focus groups, and spin doctors is there any hope? And who gave birth to who? The growing field of evolutionary psychology has made a good case for certain unsavory human traits developing as survival aids over millennia. Men who rape and kill, impregnated more women and survived to impregnate more so that the violent traits that characterized those males were naturally selected. Ipso facto, we get modern man at war with his anger and rage in a more civilized world of laws and restraints. Women who slept around and ultimately nested with the strongest and most protective male passed those survival traits on so that women to this day bring that covert agenda of self protection for her and her offspring to the dating arena. This all extends to the art of bullshit where as we developed language those that could manipulate and abuse it had an advantage over those that were straight shooters. Lying without compunction, deceiving without remorse, favored those that could do it and get richer and better fed for their dealings. So their types passed on that rich inheritance of bullshit skills. So it would appear likely that we’re fighting human nature when we try to be honest. It is perhaps these flaws we’ve always sensed in ourselves that gave birth to notions of original sin and the fall in the garden.
The thing is we’re still evolving. It doesn’t stop and we have to decide in what direction we want to go and what heritage we want to pass on. I don’t want to be part of the evolution of humanity into game show hosts or airline stewerdesses blankly smiling and saying, “buhbye now.” I want to be the guy in Network screaming, “I’m fed up and I’m not going to take it anymore!” I don’t want to be a passive consumer who has to play the home version of Make Ends Meet with your witty host, Wayne Newton. I want to tell the host to fuck off, he’s an untalented Vegas loser, and not care about losing the gig. I want to tell women exactly how I feel and not care about their reactions. I want truth to permeate upward as bullshit filters down and feeds the grassroots movement to make truth king and crush the empire of lies we all serve day to day.
But hell man, I can’t afford to lose my job.
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
nelson1 reviewed Version 2 -
Read 100%% of the Item
Life is bullshit I agree, and like you say we all participate, I’m of your thoughts only I spoke out therefore I am not working. To sum it up I agree with everthing you typed, but where as you cite women I also cite men, who are just looking for a relationship so they can brag to their mates, they had sex after of course pressurising and bribing their victim into the act, then dumping them, thus the woman gets a reputation of a hoar. Well in my case I’m not interested in neither. And erm oh I’m not a lesbian either.
I dislike the capitalistic society we live in and the fact we should grovel to people less intelligent than ourselves.
There are some typo’s in this, But when you rant it is normally the case.
Capitalise all of your I’s
- add/view comments (3)
hellbunny reviewed Version 2 -
Read 100%% of the Item
How do you know much of what you’re saying isn’t bullshit? What if your cynical outlook on the world has made you view negatively on certain aspects that are not as you see it? I see alot of truth in what you say but not in all of it. Maybe you are creating alot of the negativity to create meaning in your own world. There is alot to be said about existentionalism, and I see alot of it in your blog.
DCAllen reviewed Version 2 -
Read 100%% of the Item
Excellent rant. Urbis should have a category for this. I couldn’t agree more. Loved every word.
Proofreading notes:
A bullshit enabler. Nice.
Nice device in this section: “People couldn’t handle the truth. So what’s gonna happen . . .”
up front human beings = up-front (prenominal compound modifier)
the price it takes on our spirits (the toll it takes?)
short term benefits = short-term (prenom)
bullshit filters down = trickles down?
self serving = self-serving
others lies = others’ lies (This and “one’s” are the two exceptions to the no-apostrophe rule with possessive pronouns.)
subordinates roll = subordinate’s
possible leaving him = possibly
idiots obvious lies = idiot’s
16 year olds daughter’s kid = 16-year-old’s
Nikia reviewed Version 2 -
Read 100%% of the Item
Oh My God! You’re right- it IS all Bullshit. I didn’t really realize how much though, until I read this. Your life sounds like it is in a really GREAT place right now…not. Sorry it all blows I guess- but everyone’s life does. I totally agree with the cheerleader bit- I haven’t ever met one that isn’t like that.
Showing 1 - 4 of 4
Review item
Add to favesCreator
Relevant Links
Item Stats
GENERAL
0 Reviews 0 Comments
Version 1
Latest Activity: about 1 year ago
REVIEW QUEUE
Appeared in Queue: 2 Times
Skipped: 0 Times
Ratings & Rankings
Versions
| Version 2 |
| Version 1 |