UCLA psychologist David Pinsof writes: We get boatloads of psycho-bullshit from therapists, academics, sociologists, and self-help gurus. We use our childhoods and our parents as bullshit excuses for everything we do, even though our upbringing has barely any influence on who we turn out to be—it’s mostly genes and chaos. We blame everything on imperceptible cultural forces that control everything and are caused by nothing—“the media,” “society,” or “the system.” We talk about “authenticity,” which is supposed be who we really are, even though it’s just who we want to be seen as.
We’re also drowning in political bullshit. We’ve got politicians, pundits, podcasters, op-eds, partisan academics, and slanted news sources, all offering a plethora of moral rationalizations for the cobbled-together, historically contingent policies we’re supposed to support to show allegiance to our political tribe. We gobble up bullshit about how we’re intellectually and morally superior to millions of people who have the same human nature as us—a human nature which includes the tendency to see outgroup competitors as intellectually and morally inferior.
Thanks to the cornucopia of bullshit, we always have the right thing to say at the right time. We always have the perfect platitude, zinger, one-liner, or talking point at the tip of our tongue. It’s probably intimidating to people who weren’t raised in our WEIRD culture. It probably makes us seem like a society of smooth-talking salesman who can convince anyone of anything. When people unacquainted with our bullshit first encounter it, they’re probably awed and terrified.
To all the anthropologists and world travelers out there, I’m genuinely curious: do non-WEIRD cultures share our most advanced forms of bullshit?
Do they pretend to want happiness, or anything like “self-actualization”?
Do they talk about authenticity, humility, not caring about status, and bravely challenging social norms the same way we do?
Do they pontificate on the meaning of life?
Do they think they are special, enlightened humans who have transcended the dark side of human nature?
Do they think morality is about being nice and making the world a better place?
Do they think they don’t care what other people think?
