Simply put, we live in a world of bullshit. People are - by and large - bullshitters, or at least they don't care enough to figure out and implement non-bullshit solutions, because bullshit gets the job done so they can go do other things.
I think one would be better served learning how to coexist with the bullshit than trying to put a stop to it, and I'm usually pretty idealistic. It's just too uphill of a battle to fight millions of years of inertia across our whole species (look at the advertising industry, how huge it is, you think we're going to put a stop to that by simply appealing to people's senses of beauty on the Internet or whatever? And that's just one piece of the bullshit).
Except the call to arms is two pronged: call out bullshit, but also don't create bullshit. Don't do it is always achievable, even if it might take some time to extricate yourself from a situation that demands it, and still take care of your family.
Except the call to arms is two pronged: call out bullshit, but also don't create bullshit.
Never gonna happen. Human beings are born to bullshit. The fact that we compete for mates and the way the different genders have differing optimal mating strategies pretty much ensures that. We are always going to bullshit each other to a certain degree, as we try to achieve the ends we are innately wired to pursue.
That doesn't mean we can't fight back against bullshit of the nature described in TFA, but we won't ever live in a world with no bullshit. Or if we do, it won't be recognizable as anything like human society as we know it. If anything, it'd probably look like the worst dystopian nightmare scenario we can think of.
> The fact that we compete for mates and the way the different genders have differing optimal mating strategies pretty much ensures that.
I think we've accumulated some nuance over the millenia. Killing the mating competition, or even lower level violence, is very relatively rare these days. And I'm pretty sure that significant numbers of people approach meeting and mating with more sincerity than bullshit.
Yes, in many ways we have gotten rid of a lot of bullshit since the dawn of society, and one could argue that we have been on a monotonically upward slope over that period. One thing I think some people get wrong is the sense that the bullshit is a new thing, introduced by relatively recent societal/technological developments. People have been calling bullshit since as far back as we have records, and I think on the whole it has actually been steadily getting better, counting by the total percentage of the population that is educated or "enlightened" enough to recognize and condemn and not practice various components of what we are generally calling bullshit behavior.
And "relative" really is a key word here because while this is happening insanely fast on universal time scales, it's actually agonizingly slow within the context of a human lifetime. Which creates a catch 22: I could devote my life to stamping out some form of bullshit (if simply by promoting education), and on my death bed wonder if my efforts were even distinguishable from noise. But it is combined efforts like these that do gradually move the needle, and for each person that makes that evaluation and decides it's not worth it, it will take that much longer.
And I'm pretty sure that significant numbers of people approach meeting and mating with more sincerity than bullshit.
You may be right. But that doesn't contradict what I said. I'm not saying we approach that, or anything else, with complete bullshit. I'm saying we all (or close to all) approach it with some bullshit. Perhaps not even consciously, but we're all trying to sell ourselves, make ourselves look more desirable, etc. in various ways.
Killing the mating competition, or even lower level violence, is very relatively rare these days.]
"Relatively" in this context is ill-defined, but I'd be curious to see the numbers on how many murders/assaults/etc. ultimately involve jealousy over romantic/sexual partners, infidelity, cuckolding, etc.
I don't think this is an example of the naturalistic fallacy, as least not as it's commonly understood[1].
I am not trying to reductively define anything in terms of "natural" properties, which would be an example of the naturalistic fallacy. I'm merely making an observation, that certain levels of bullshit are intrinsic in human nature and that it's probably fantastical thinking to believe we can ever completely eliminate bullshit.
Humans are also "born to lie" and "born to kill", but societies create structure and limits.
And have we eliminated lying or killing?
So too should we strive limit bullshit.
Agreed. We just shouldn't be naive in thinking that it's going to be easy to eliminate it completely. And we should probably acknowledge that it might not even be possible to eliminate it completely.
I think one would be better served learning how to coexist with the bullshit than trying to put a stop to it, and I'm usually pretty idealistic. It's just too uphill of a battle to fight millions of years of inertia across our whole species (look at the advertising industry, how huge it is, you think we're going to put a stop to that by simply appealing to people's senses of beauty on the Internet or whatever? And that's just one piece of the bullshit).