In my experience, one of the major problems in Cairo (in addition to the notorious traffic problem) is the prevalence of bullshit (from street, to school, to places of work and worship; and, quite naturally, it has extended to muck up the blogosphere.) And, just like the traffic problem, everyone knows of its existence, each contributes their share, and it takes either great luck or mighty discipline to miss it.

Growing up in such bullshit-filled environment, one can’t help but develop either a high tolerance for it, or an acute allergic reaction to it — or, as is common in Cairo, a schizophrenic combination of both.

The high-tolerance phenomenon is very intuitive — it’s almost an evolutionary necessity; the most adapted are the ones who survive. That is to say, in such bullshit-fogged-up atmosphere, individuals with a high tolerance threshold would be at an advantage, and would therefore thrive! Moreover, not only navigating through this fog, but also exploiting it to one’s benefit would be a favourable skill, and it is therefore no surprise to find it encouraged, even cultivated. We even have a name for individuals who are particularly skillful –fahlawy– which has become synonymous with “clever”.

No doubt it takes a certain cleverness to wade through the mazes of bullshit, but, almost as certain, it comes with the hefty risk of becoming desensitized to bullshit and accepting it as the order of the day. (This is not even going as far as suggesting that “clever” people might come to prefer the kind of environment in which they excel, and would therefore work to sustain the status quo, or even push in the downhill direction where truths are more immersed in bullshit.)

In such a society, it is no wonder then that many a decent truth-seeking individual is marginalized by this process of cultural-selection — some are even driven to commit suicide. But as tragic as this outcome is, it is not the gravest; the undermining of truth to the extent of complete obscurity is a much more serious danger.

On the other extreme, some individuals develop (what I like to call) bullshit-allergy, which (almost always) presents as unwavering (pathological) skepticism. The exposure to a high dose of bullshit, whether gradually over the years or in one lump, drives one to be highly suspicious (to the point of outright dismissal) of any new idea, or even new ways to present an old idea. Creativity is dismissed. Research is dismissed. Alternative ways are dismissed. So are “other” religions, “other” sciences, “other” beliefs, “other” cultures, and “other” peoples. All “other”s are dismissed. (Not to say that “dismissal” is exclusively a symptom of bullshit-allergy and not one of any of a multitude of other social diseases.)

Nature, words on a page, words on a screen, one’s teachers, one’s friends, talking heads on radio and television, and the rest of the world may cry wolf all they want! One already knows the answer, and one is only interested in tidbits of knowledge that confirms that answer. Thank you very much.

As with “cleverness,” and maybe more so, some skepticism is healthy. (Without a healthy amount of both, one goes on wild geese chases way more often than a lifetime can afford.) Too much skepticism, however, halts one in their footsteps. No exploring means no evolving; means no fact-checking; means no understanding. Means truth is compromised.

The interesting and mind boggling thing in Cairo is that you find people with high-tolerance threshold who are also allergic to bullshit! They tolerate the obscene amount of bullshit dumped on them by their government, their work bosses, their teachers, their religious leaders, the police, the media, theatre and cinema, waiters, parking attendants, airport personnel, pretty much all service industry personnel, etc.; just to “survive”. Simultaneously, and without batting an eye at the obvious contradiction, they dismiss any efforts from their government, their bosses, their teachers, their religious leaders, the police, the media, etc.

In most of these cases, whether to unconditionally accept what is being presented -truth and lie- or utterly dismiss it depends on a number of factors that have little to do with whether what has been presented is a truth or a lie. It has to do with other things like: whether it sounds like a truth or a lie; with the audience; with the situation; with the presenter; with the reaction one is expected to have. These determining factors are subjective, and in as much as this is true, either -accepting or dismissing- counts as nothing but the perpetration of bullshit.

Have you ever wished you could pray like an expendable organ?

Half-hearted approaches produce half-ass results.

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.

This is the opening paragraph of an essay titled “On Bullshit” by Harry Frankfurt; Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University, which was written back in 1985, and most recently (Jan 2005) published by Princeton Press as a book.

If you want to know more, check out Prof Frankfurt’s appearance on the daily show, where I -incidently- first heard about the book; or his Princeton Press interview. (A quick google search will link to other videos including lectures on love and ethics.)

The book is a quick and fascinating read, and rings appropriate and true. Mostly, it is about the distinguishing charactersitics of bullshit, and how it’s different from humbug and lying. It also touches upon the dangers of bullshit, before ending with an attempt to answer the question: “Why is there so much bullshit?” (– almost every word in it is worth quoting, but let me only quote this last part:)

The contemporary peoliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These “antirealistic” doctorines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.
But it is proposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at alll without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgement that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not perculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the nature of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.

This digs deep, and potentially renders most of my words and deeds under the umbrella of bullshit — not that otherwise was ever implied. Now that that’s recognized, I have no desire to say anymore, so expect this silence to last for sometime, maybe ever — even this implication of concern for the truth might be labelled as bullshit.

Yes, Marcus, this confirms it; it’s all bullshit anyways.

Update:
Ok, so maybe that was more than a tad overly melodramatic. What can I say, it was late at night, and I had had a difficult day, which amplified the resonance of certain ideas from the book with certain feelings I’ve been toying with. Plus, you have to remember that (if we have learned anything from Cosmo Kramer is that) 94% of our communication is nonverbal; i.e. I’m only using 6% of my skills here. See.

This morning marked the survival of some of “my” constituent cells for three deca-Earth’s-orbital-cycles-around-the-Sun. Only a few cells have subsisted for more, while most have existed for less.

So what’s the big deal, you ask? Good question; not much for now… No deep reflections of the present… No genuine regrets of the past… And no serious considerations of the future… Nothing! (I must say; your timing is very arbitrary anyway…)

And I’ve developed some scar-tissue… and some memories of good fortune, physically manifested as electric charge… so what? What if I shed them all; in a process of rejuvination? What would remain of “me”? Who would “I” be? Some surviving cells in a cerebral cortex? And when “I” look in the mirror, what do “I” see? The same crisis you think you see? How shallow, and how vain.

Hand “me” a cigarette and a drink, and let “me” go out on the balcony to be by “myself” for now.

Later, however, I shall be listening repeatedly to surat al-raa’d [Quran 13:*] — savoring
سَوَاء مِّنكُم مَّنْ أَسَرَّ الْقَوْلَ وَمَن جَهَرَ بِهِ وَمَنْ هُوَ مُسْتَخْفٍ بِاللَّيْلِ وَسَارِبٌ بِالنَّهَارِ#
لَهُ مُعَقِّبَاتٌ مِّن بَيْنِ يَدَيْهِ وَمِنْ خَلْفِهِ يَحْفَظُونَهُ مِنْ أَمْرِ اللّهِ إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ وَإِذَا أَرَادَ اللّهُ بِقَوْمٍ سُوءًا فَلاَ مَرَدَّ لَهُ وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِ مِن وَالٍ
[Quran 13:10-11] —
for, after all, it is in it that it is set that [Quran 13:28] أَلاَ بِذِكْرِ اللّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ

As for you; take what you take of this, leave what you leave of it, and leave what you leave on it.

أَنزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاء مَاء فَسَالَتْ أَوْدِيَةٌ بِقَدَرِهَا فَاحْتَمَلَ السَّيْلُ زَبَدًا رَّابِيًا وَمِمَّا يُوقِدُونَ عَلَيْهِ فِي النَّارِ ابْتِغَاء حِلْيَةٍ أَوْ مَتَاعٍ زَبَدٌ مِّثْلُهُ كَذَلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللّهُ الْحَقَّ وَالْبَاطِلَ فَأَمَّا الزَّبَدُ فَيَذْهَبُ جُفَاء وَأَمَّا مَا يَنفَعُ النَّاسَ فَيَمْكُثُ فِي الأَرْضِ كَذَلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللّهُ الأَمْثَالَ
[Quran 13:17]

Detached enough to be deemed unrealistic, but not enough to be a mystic.

Howcome the youth rush, while those of old age take their time? I mean, given the time each has (on average), shouldn’t it be the other way around?

(below are quotes and anecdotes concerning consistency, or, rather, lack there of. If you know, or at some point in the future you hear or read, a related incident or quote, please remember this post and don’t hesitate to share.)
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Some 2500 kms from where I currently reside, I ran into an acquaintance of mine from other dimensions — from another time and another place (more than ten years ago, we last met, 10,000 kms away). “Ran into” is not quite accurate; he actually spotted me from about fifty meters away -according to him- by the way I dressed!

Admittedly, this is not such an amazing encounter (compared, for example, to running into one’s first love and one’s relative on the same night, together, on their wedding night), but still makes one wonder about the interwinding paths our lives tread.
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Stories come in two flavors: Love stories, and the other kind. Details are only important in the former — Like in school; you pass, you get a grade from A to E, but you fail, it’s always an F! how unfair!