Bull Shit Culture

Never before in the history of the world has the common man been subject to such a daily barrage of bull shit. We, in the so called developed countries, are lied to constantly. Thanks to the mass media and mass communication and high-speed transportation, we now hear more lies in a single day than our ancestors of two or three hundred years ago heard in a lifetime. If you were a medieval peasant, the number of individual untruths you were subjected to was limited. The village priest lied to you on Sunday and the lord of the manor or one of his representatives lied to you occasionally, but that was generally it. Life wasn't perfect; you worked hard and you died young. You were sold a bill of goods, no doubt, but at least people weren't trying to sell you something twenty-four hours a day.

Nowadays, it's different. You are a consumer, and as a consumer, you are besieged by salesmen; and it is the job of every salesman to secure your trust, take your money, and then pass your penniless, betrayed carcass on to the next two-bit con artist with a mortgage to pay and a wagon of snake oil to sell. Everyone's a target, and the bulls-eye on our backs is large enough for an experienced marksman to hit from two hundred yards away. No wonder people lose their perspective from time to time. The human nervous system can absorb only so much bull shit before it experiences a BS overload. In this respect, a couple of hours of network television are more stressful than the combined threats of seasonal famine, periodic plague, and marauding armies seeking booty. Meltdown is, both, predictable and eminent.

The truth is that we live in a bull shit culture. Lying is so prevalent and popular and profitable, the concept of the lie has lost most of its negative connotations. Politicians pedal the "Big Lie." Business leaders and their stooges in advertising build a wall around us composed of half-truths, pleasant  delusions, and imaginative flatteries. Anyone that doesn't buy into it all immediately risks damaging themselves. Yet, we know deep in our collective gut that none of it is real. It is this discrepancy, this unbridgeable gulf between what we've been manipulated into believing and what common sense tells us is true that drives the lemming-like rush to the cliff edge that characterizes much of modern life.

The power of articulation is difficult to combat. Once something is spoken, it's generally accepted as a valid pronouncement by 90% of the population. In this way, small lies can be used to construct grand palaces of deceit. Each stone of the fallacious facade is lifted into place via the arms and backs of a million unnamed laborers; each trained and educated to do the pharaoh's work and little else. Those who might question the established and accepted order are dissuaded, both, by the allure of new product lines and by the lash. There are them that shovel it and them that have to walk through it on the way to work. We all know who is who, of course, but no one's allowed to say a word. Cynicism, my friends, is the price you pay for relative sanity.