Bullshit and the Art of Crap Detection by Neil Postman

(Delivered at the National Convention for the Teachers of English [NCTE], November 28, 1969, Washington, D.C.)
With a title like this, I think I ought to dispense with therhetorical amenities and come straight to the point. For those of youwho do not know, it may be worth saying that the phrase,“crap-detecting,” originated with Ernest Hemingway who when asked ifthere were one quality needed, above all others, to be a good writer,replied, “Yes, a built-in, shock-proof, crap detector.”
As I see it, the best things schools can do for kids is to help themlearn how to distinguish useful talk from bullshit. I will ask onlythat you agree that every day in almost every way people are exposed tomore bullshit than it is healthy for them to endure, and that if we canhelp them to recognize this fact, they might turn away from it andtoward language that might do them some earthly good.
There are so many varieties of bullshit I couldn’t hope to mentionbut a few, and elaborate on even fewer. I will, therefore, select thosevarieties that have some transcendent significance.
Now, that last sentence is a perfectly good example of bullshit,since I have no idea what the words “transcendent significance” mightmean and neither do you. I needed something to end that sentence withand since I did not have any clear criteria by which to select myexamples, I figured this was the place for some big-time words.
Pomposity:Pomposity is not an especially venal form of bullshit, although it isby no means harmless. There are plenty of people who are dailyvictimized by pomposity in that they are made to feel less worthy thanthey have a right to feel by people who use fancy titles, words,phrases, and sentences to obscure their own insufficiencies.
Fanaticism:A much more malignant form of bullshit than pomposity is what somepeople call fanaticism. Now, there is one type of fanaticism of which Iwill say very little, because it is so vulgar and obvious — bigotry.But there are other forms of fanaticism that are not so obvious, andtherefore perhaps more dangerous than bigotry
Eichmannism is a relatively new form of fanaticism, and perhaps itshould be given its own special place among the great and near-greatvarieties of bullshit. The essence of fanaticism is that it has almostno tolerance for any data that do not confirm its own point of view.
Eichmannism is especially dangerous because it is so utterly banal.Some of the nicest people turn out to be mini-Eichmanns. When Eichmannwas in the dock in Jerusalem, he actually said that some of his bestfriends were Jews. And the horror of it is that he was probably tellingthe truth, for there is nothing personal about Eichmannism. It is thelanguage of regulations, and includes such logical sentences as, “If wedo it for one, we have to do it for all.” Can you imagine some wretchedJew pleading to have his children spared from the gas chamber? Whatcould be more fair, more neutral, than for some administrator to reply,“If we do it for one, we have to do it for all.”
Inanity:This is a form of talk which pays a large but, I would think,relatively harmless role in our personal lives. But with thedevelopment of the mass media, inanity has suddenly emerged as a majorform of language in public matters. The invention of new and variouskinds of communication has given a voice and an audience to many peoplewhose opinions would otherwise not be solicited, and who, in fact, havelittle else but verbal excrement to contribute to public issues. Manyof these people are entertainers. The press and air waves are filledwith the featured and prime-time statements from people who are in noposition to render informed judgments on what they are talking aboutand yet render them with elan and, above all, sincerity. Inanity, then,is ignorance presented in the cloak of sincerity.
Superstition:Superstition is ignorance presented in the cloak of authority. Asuperstition is a belief, usually expressed in authoritative terms forwhich there is no factual or scientific basis. Like, for instance, thatthe country in which you live is a finer place, all things considered,than other countries. Or that the religion into which you were bornconfers upon you some special standing with the cosmos that is deniedother people. I will refrain from commenting further on that, except tosay that when I hear such talk by own crap-detector achievesunparalleled spasms of activity.
If teachers were to take an enthusiastic interest in what languageis about, each teacher would have fairly serious problems to resolve.For instance, you can’t identify bullshit the way you identifyphonemes. That is why I have called crap-detecting an art. Althoughsubjects like semantics, rhetoric, or logic seem to provide techniquesfor crap-detecting, we are not dealing here, for the most part, with atechnical problem.
Each person’s crap-detector is embedded in their value system; ifyou want to teach the art of crap-detecting, you must help studentsbecome aware of their values. After all, Vice President, Spiro Agnew,or his writers, know as much about semantics as anyone in this room.What he is lacking has very little to do with technique, and almosteverything to do with values.
Now, I realize that what I just said sounds fairly pompous initself, if not arrogant, but there is no escaping from saying whatattitudes you value if you want to talk about crap-detecting.
In other words, bullshit is what you call language that treats people in ways you do not approve of.
So any teacher who is interested in crap-detecting must acknowledgethat one man’s bullshit is another man’s catechism. Students should betaught to learn how to recognize bullshit, including their own.
It seems to me one needs, first and foremost, to have a keen senseof the ridiculous. Maybe I mean to say, a sense of our impending death.About the only advantage that comes from our knowledge of theinevitability of death is that we know that whatever is happening isgoing to go away. Most of us try to put this thought out of our minds,but I am saying that it ought to be kept firmly there, so that we canfully appreciate how ridiculous most of our enthusiasms and evendepressions are.
Reflections on one’s mortality curiously makes one come alive to theincredible amounts of inanity and fanaticism that surround us, much ofwhich is inflicted on us by ourselves. Which brings me to the nextpoint, best stated as Postman’s Third Law:
“At any given time, the chief source of bullshit with which you have to contend is yourself.”
The reason for this is explained in Postman’s Fourth Law, which is;
“Almost nothing is about what you think it is about–including you.”
With the possible exception of those human encounters that FritzPeris calls “intimacy,” all human communications have deeply embeddedand profound hidden agendas. Most of the conversation at the top can beassumed to be bullshit of one variety or another.
An idealist usually cannot acknowledge his own bullshit, because itis in the nature of his “ism” that he must pretend it does not exist.In fact, I should say that anyone who is devoted to an “ism”–Fascism,Communism, Capital-ism–probably has a seriously defectivecrap-detector. This is especially true of those devoted to“patriotism.” Santha Rama Rau has called patriotism a squalid emotion.I agree. Mainly because I find it hard to escape the conclusion thatthose most enmeshed in it hear no bullshit whatever in its rhetoric,and as a consequence are extremely dangerous to other people. If youdoubt this, I want to remind you that murder for murder, GeneralWestmoreland makes Vito Genovese look like a Flower Child.
Another way of saying this is that all ideologies are saturated withbullshit, and a wise man will observe Herbert Read’s advice: “Nevertrust any group larger than a squad.”
So you see, when it comes right down to it, crap-detection issomething one does when he starts to become a certain type of person.Sensitivity to the phony uses of language requires, to some extent,knowledge of how to ask questions, how to validate answers, andcertainly, how to assess meanings.
I said at the beginning that I thought there is nothing moreimportant than for kids to learn how to identify fake communication.You, therefore, probably assume that I know something about now toachieve this. Well, I don’t. At least not very much. I know that ourpresent curricula do not even touch on the matter. Neither do ourpresent methods of training teachers. I am not even sure thatclassrooms and schools can be reformed enough so that critical andlively people can be nurtured there.
Nonetheless, I persist in believing that it is not beyond yourprofession to invent ways to educate youth along these lines. (Because)there is no more precious environment than our language environment.And even if you know you will be dead soon, that’s worth protecting.