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Authors elaborate on the ubiquity of B.S.
More articles on this topic: BooksThree authors explored the all-too-common tendency for people in the business world to lie, con, perjure, fabricate and misspeak, all for personal gain.
In business, expressing the pure, undiluted truth will often get you into trouble. Those who shoot from the lip, rather than offer a moderate and inoffensive — or disingenuous — opinion are reviled, mistrusted and scorned.
Yet the truth is what is. It is a fact. Though a nuanced and decorous interpretation of events may serve a supposed higher purpose, successful transactions depend on the objective nature of reality. If there isn’t agreement on a set of values, business and most other dealings are impossible.
When one knowingly dissembles, yet pretends that the opposite of what is said is true, the metaphor invoked to describe it is “bullshit.”
It’s everywhere. The term is routinely heard on broadcast television and basic cable, presumably with the Federal Communication Commission’s consent. The spell-check program on my computer doesn’t even flag the term and demure ladies and cultured gents invoke it epithetically in public.
But in business, the invocation of this cognitive dissonance — when one knows the truth, yet simultaneously thinks or speaks an opposing notion — has always been commonplace. Now, it is pandemic.
Here are three recent books that look at the lies men and women tell — for fun and, quite frequently, profit.
• On Bullshit. Harry G. Frankfurt. Princeton University Press. 80 pages. $9.95.
Harry Frankfurt, a Princeton University philosophy professor, presents a scholarly and formal essay on inflated truth, purposeful obfuscation and pretentious duplicity. A surprise bestseller, the petite volume offers a serious, though profoundly humorous discussion of humbug, balderdash, claptrap, hokum and quackery. I’m sure he had a blast writing it, and the droll prose is a tasty treat.
• Your Call is Important to Us: The Truth about Bullshit. Laura Penny. Crown Publishing Group 256 pages. $21.95.
Laura Penny, a tart 30-year-old Canadian, has a wicked sense of humor, but this book isn’t really a knee-slapper. One by one, she dissects public relations, finance, politics, the pharmaceutical industry, insurance, entertainment and more.
She’s a fine writer, but her view of modern business practices is bilious, to say the least. Much of it is obvious, but that’s probably the point. If any of her protracted rant comes as a surprise, you might be missing something in your business dealings.
• How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions. Francis Wheen. PublicAffairs/Perseus. 336 pages. $12.
Francis Wheen’s book is a very dense historical tour of superstition, mysticism, postmodernism and other extended logical lapses. An Englishman, the author turns his attention mostly to America. An unabashed admirer of the United States as the embodiment of Enlightenment thought, he’s equally disappointed in our growing tendencies toward balancing science with faith and knowledge with belief. He presents a rich and grim tableau of faith healers, politicians, hucksters, holy men, business gurus, contrarians and yahoos.
The paradox of modern culture — that we have more access to knowledge and information but seem to embrace the arcane and illogical — is explored and illuminated. Wheen points out the futility of being a Renaissance man while we slide back into the dark ages in this absorbing and provocative volume. Highly recommended.
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