Mind, on the rocks?!

I was watching TV this morning before work and I saw a snippet of one of those gag shows. The gag was a kid with crutches looking for some one to help him across the street. Of course after crossing the street the kid simply puts both crutches in a bin next to the road and runs off.

Now what gets me thinking about stuff like this is the exceptionally high level of “acting” or bullshitting employed by a kid who could not have been older than 7 or 8. Now I was very impressed with how realistically he could bullshit through the whole situation without giving away the gag. Normally kids of that age are still slightly naive and have a tendency to not be able to lie so realistically or “with a straight face”.

So then I started thinking about what the difference is between people who get fooled by these gags and people who don’t. And I started thinking about something that you hear all the time “You cant bullshit a bullshitter”.  Now the question is where do we learn to bullshit?, and does our ability to or our proficiency in “bullshit” make us more or less prone to being the so called “victims” of bullshitting?

Well as I see it its our parents who start the ancient teaching of bullshita-maxima, after that its a sequence of friends, teachers, family members, complete strangers and the media. Now just to qualify the media statement they are well known for their ability to twist and bend perspectives until they fit suite, so yes one of the best bullshitting industries in the world. Now all these parties or individuals expose us to bullshit all the time either directly or through observation.

So at the end of the day the human race has been practising the process of social engineering for many thousands of years and I bet we’ll be dong it even longer. And with every generation the complexity and “quality” of bullshit gets better and better. Ever wondered why it is that your grand parents always say “things were simpler in their day”, well that is because the bullshit was of a far more inferior “quality” in their day, and that’s why your parents understand the current bullshit, and why they will tell your children that things were simpler in their day etc etc etc.