Bullshit, Society and the Future

One can relate bullshit and lying to their everyday life by reading Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit.” One hears or speaks bullshit in typical conversations called bull sessions: “The OED defines a bull session as “an informal conversation or discussion…participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves say such things and in order to discover how others respond…” (Frankfurt 9). Individuals often recognize these sessions as bullshit, and they also recognize when people lie. One is lying “as long as he himself believes that the statement is false and intends by making it to deceive” (2). Individual lies are commonly recognized among individuals, but bullshit and lies are both understood among them. But what about the bullshit and the lies we cannot recognize? Have bullshit and lies framed our society? This will be answered as we relate Frankfurt”s concept of bullshit and concept of lying to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and to “Ursula LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” We will relate both of those texts to Jean-Jacque Rousseu’s “The Social Contract” to relate the bullshit/lies with society. We will start by looking at how society lies to individuals.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is about a village that sacrifices one person each year for better crops. “Used to be saying about “lottery in June, corn is heavy soon”” (Jackson 187). This sacrifice relates to Rousseau. He suggests that one should die if it is required for the solidarity of the State: “…he ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally by the State” (162). This idea is unrealistic. Under the contract that was made to protect them, how could one be forced to die? The village has been deceived by a lie. Frankfurt would agree; he says, “What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false” (10). This can apply to “The Lottery” if one considers the village sovereign to be the liar. The village sovereign, the eldest one, deceives the people in two ways: To think a sacrifice is necessary for fruitful harvest and to think the creators of the lottery truly believed it was necessary. This is a lie because the village sovereign misrepresents the state of affairs , how to better the annual harvest; and also, the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs , the elder’s opinion of what could improve harvest.