Not a one of us can know the whole truth, but we can pretend to know the whole truth. Or at least more of the truth than we actually grasp. This pretense is what I call "bullshit." Our lives are permeated with bullshit. All of us think we know things, when in fact we know nearly nothing (some of the more adventurous subjective thinkers posit that we know absolutely nothing, a truth in and of itself).

Our collective bullshit combines into a Tower of Babel. Billions of wagging tongues sharing their grain of truth in trash bags of bullshit. All of us, from cradle to grave, think we know the truth better than everyone else outside of their ancestors or tribal elders. There are effective ways of determining universal truths. Empricism will yield the truth that fire burns. Logic will yield the truth that all cats are mammals. Statistics will reveal that your chances of winning the lottery are 1 in 53,981,544,960. This is all well and fine when you are living your day to day existence. You will not stick your hand into a fire, you will realize that cats have something in common with you, and you will not play the lottery.

Bullshit arises when you begin to project values, predict outcomes, and in other ways try to make solid what is essentially abstract. For example, it is one thing to empircally ascertain the fact that fire burns. It is another thing to state that fire burns everything. It is one thing to state that the odds of winning the lottery are astronomical. It is another thing to state that whoever wins the lottery is lucky.

I know this is all very condescending and in some ways breathtakingly facile. But I am trying to point out (while painfully glossing over centuries of philosophic inquiry) that we are all, to a person, full of shit. Some are more full of shit than others.

I will now paraphrase Ernest Hemingway: "what an artist needs is a cast-iron one hundred percent foolproof bullshit detector." This is why I have taken the time to define bullshit as I perceive bullshit to be. 99.9999999% of what comes out of our mouth, fingertips, or other means and extensions of communication is bullshit. So if we were to obey the dictate of Papa Hemingway, the detector would always be pinging. I know mine does, especially when it is pointed at me.

I am writing this out of an urgent desire to promote an atmosphere of dialogue and compromise. We can not and will not know much of anything in this lifetime. Most of what we learn is recycled homilies that reinforce emotional needs. When, as a progressive, you deal with a conservative, know that the both of you are steeped in bullshit. The two of you have come from distinct backgrounds and upbringing that have largely molded your views, and many of these viewx are individually sacrosanct. The conservative will nearly always believe that domestic government should be small, money belongs primarily to those who earn it, and hard times usually fall on those who deserve them. The progressive will nearly always believe that a society is only as good as its weakest link, and that participartory government secures the public welfare and promotes domestic tranquility. There are a host of facts, statistics, and truths that can be woven together by either side to prove these assumptions. There are also an army of recriminations and prejudices that can prevent either side from exploring the potential validity of the other. In either case, both sides, no matter our affection or distaste for one or the other, is bullshit because they are beliefs.

I am not saying that nihilism triumphs and that we should not bother. I am saying that the root of our problem is that we universally presume far too much of ourselves and our opinions. I am guilty of this nearly every day... in fact, I am required to do this in my day job. But I do believe that the root of wisdom is to recognize just how little we know and how insignificant we are. Defend your values and opinions forecefully and clearly, but please recognize that what you believe is not objectively true. Understand that belief and, dare I write it, faith dominates our thinking and perpetually wraps us in a fog of ignorance. This should give us all hope that we can set aside our differences (given that they are all made of bullshit) and recognize the essential dignity and jeopardy of our human lives and work together without preconceived rancor to find whatever pragmatic solution may avail us from this current mess.