Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Bullshit

  • Flogging Blogging

    Flogging Blogging

    Commerce is so utterly grubby and most practitioners of the art are second hand car salesmen, whatever they pretend they are selling or “doing”.

    The blogosphere is no exception; it is an area where people try to practice commerce but usually, it seems unsuccessfully.

    The blogosphere has its fair share of oily salesmen particularly in the world of stock market trading where I spent some years and at times made a lot of money. Until I decided to quit because it had all become too nerve-wracking for my ancient body and mind to put up with any longer.

    In the world of trading I believe that most people must know they are selling nonsense, particularly where they are pushing trading “systems”.

    But it is much the same in blogging generally.

    In particular I am most amused by those whose trade is to sell blogging advice.  Their business seems to be more than usually incestuous and tautologous.  Who knows whether these people make money or not, but it is more than a little ironic that in order to make money out of blogging they have to tell other people how to do so.

    What is that all about then?

    Enough of such scepticism and negativity. I argue elsewhere in favour of freedom of choice: in euthanasia for instance or the use of “recreational” drugs.  It is equally evident to me that those who do not like blogging salesmen should avoid them – they have a choice.

    I tend to avoid “infomercials” and many blogs fall into this category.  Shopping on the internet is different – and very convenient. If I want to find a canoe or a book by Sartre I can do so with ease end enjoyment.

    Infomercials and blogs selling stuff (information or otherwise) under the guise of being interesting and informative are a tedious switch off; so switch them off.

    There is some acceptable crossover. Interesting authors may talk about their life as well as offer books. Newspapers these days are simply money making blogs – and I guess most of them carry advertising to make it pay.

    There is no harm in people being paid for what they do, provided the sales pitch is inoffensive and the goods or services offered are genuine.

    I suppose I have come across too many offensive sales pitches and too many crappy blogs. Perhaps including my own.  Who knows; as in every other area of life, I find myself mired in uncertainty, a certain amount of hypocrisy and much ennui.

     

     

     

  • The Internet Blagger and Bluffer

    The Internet Blagger and Bluffer

    I am always amused by the sheer vastness of the Blagging and Bluffing community on the internet, offering advice on subjects in which they themselves possess no expertise whatsoever.

    I know someone whose motto is “bullshit baffles brains”.  I believe what he means is that if he spouts enough nonsense, his victims will think he knows what he is talking about and buy his second hand cars or cave in to his unreasonable demands.

    Alas, there will always be fools in the world. It was ever thus!

    The internet is a very heaven for such people.

    “Never in the course of human history has so much, of so little value, been written by so many.”

    To misquote Winston Churchill.

    We are all Salesmen now.

    Bloggers, who (like myself) have never made a penny from the written word, hold forth on how to make money from Blogging.  More dangerous by far are the countless thousands out there offering trading and investment advice when (if they had any real experience) they would know they are selling moonshine.

    It must be the sheer ease of the process which has brought out these legions, like bugs crawling from under a stone.

    Go to WordPress or “BottomBook” or a thousand other centres of internet expertise and excellence, press a few buttons and LO!  Suddenly you are baffling other people’s brains with YOUR bullshit!

    Many are called but few are chosen. (Matthew 22:14, for those in doubt)

    Like any other calling, many will try and baffle your brains with their bullshit but few will actually make money out of it.  Their internet blagging career will end not with a bang but with a whimper.

    And yet there are those who will persevere.  You will subscribe to their trading tips, you will buy their fashionware or delight in the prurience of the lives they reveal to you or the breasts they expose to your gaze.

    And then they will go “viral”.

    Apparently this does not entail contracting or spreading STDs (although who knows these days?).

    It means that suddenly their bullshit has baffled not only YOUR brains but those of hundreds, thousands and millions like you.

    Welcome to the Internet!

  • The Salesman

    The Salesman

    Is the “salesman” grubby and embarrassing by definition?  Are they all oily, bumptious and crooked? From the seller of second hand cars to to those who peddle rugs are they all tarred with the same brush? Insincere and self important, is the salesman is out to short change you?  Are they all name dropping two faced asses?

    No, I don’t think they are but when you come across a bumptious fool and one of the bad ones, get out of his way swiftly, run quietly home and lock the door.

    Both characters were fairly harmless by comparison with some examples one may have to deal with.  Salesmen and charlatans (all too often interchangeable terms it seems) have been with us down the ages.

    One could forgive them if they were merely trying to do an honest day’s work (and most of them surely are).  But sometimes you are plagued by a salesman who is so truly awful he gives the entire “profession” a dirty name.

    He will claim that black is white, he will lie until he is blue in the face. He will be so full of bullshit and sheer arrogant nonsense that even he has difficulty taking himself seriously.  He will take a few terms of art pertaining to professions in which he has never qualified, mix them all up in meaningless, mangled sentences and try to convince you he is right and you are wrong.

    All the while dropping names of the great and the good to whom he has recently paid homage (or, in his dreams, they to him perhaps).

    The most important things in his life will be trips in private jets, helicopters and yachts and he will worship famous names be they politicians or “bizniss men”, showbiz or royalty.  He will bask in reflected glory.

    If that were all he did he might be forgiven.  But he can be out to swindle and put down all around him.

    The vast majority of salesmen do a good job and an honest day’s work.  But if you come across the sort of fool I have been describing, then run and don’t look back. Whatever else you may do, do not engage him in conversation.

  • New Age Quackery?

    New Age Quackery?

    The New Age movement is a range of spiritual beliefs and superstitions.  Quite often practitioners take a pinch of science and concoct a pseudoscience of fantastical absurdity.  Sadly, practitioners often include one time scientists.

    Such characters have abandoned the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses in favour of quasi religious dogma and ranting mumbo jumbo.  They borrow catch phrases from quantum mechanics or cosmology and twist them into farcical support for their own deluded and untestable product.

    You come across New Agers everywhere and I suspect they consist of the gullible on the one hand and salesmen on the other.  Of course it is always possible that the salesman is a true believer in his own magic but one has to assume that this may be the exception?

    I was watching a video supposedly on consciousness – a lecture given by a man billed as a leading physicist – John Hagelin.  I enjoyed his lucid explanation of physics for the non-scientist but began smelling a rat when he started to compare string theory to meditative trance.  One apparently represents the most basic level of nature and the other (he said) the mind; and apparently they are equivalent.  The guy sounded rather eccentric and on further investigation it turned out he was deeply involved in Transcendental Meditation.

    According to Wikipedia:

    In his book, Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and The Search for Unity In Physical Law (2007), the physicist Peter Woit wrote that identification of a unified field of consciousness with a unified field of superstring theory was wishful thinking, and that “virtually every theoretical physicist in the world rejects all of this as nonsense and the work of a crackpot”.

    But there again maybe Mr Hagelin (a) is correct and / or (b) firmly believes and practices what he preaches.

    Deepak Chopra was once a qualified medical doctor but decided instead to push new age videos, books and pseudo religious jargon.  Worthy scientist Richard Dawkins has said that Chopra uses “quantum jargon as plausible-sounding hocus pocus”.  He is placed by oncologist David Gorski among the “quacks”, “cranks” and “purveyors of woo”, and described as “arrogantly obstinate”.

    Discussing this with a rational, well educated and pleasant electro mechanical engineer this morning brought forth a different view.  My friend believes that there is a place for New Age “belief” because of the paucity of what is on offer elsewhere from medicine or traditional religion. In his view, such quackery makes a lot of people happy and is therefore excusable and beneficial. If I understood him correctly.

    So I guess the argument is that New Age quackery is a harmless placebo which can actually make some people’s lives better. And if it does improves live then I am glad of that. Personally it irritates me to death (as do its awful salesmen) but in a vale of tears perhaps any handkerchief ought to be welcomed.

  • Self-Help Gurus

    Self-Help Gurus

    Self help gurus are guaranteed fakes.  So are all other self anointed gurus.  Avoid them – run for your life and keep your purse locked.

    I have parked this article under the category “health”,  since I find self help gurus the most insidious but you will find this species of pariah in every walk of life and every area of commerce.

    I first noticed them in finance:  such people are a huge danger to your wealth. They promise you will make millions in up and down markets by buying their absurd courses. It is likely they have never traded in the financial markets and that if they have the exercise was a failure.

    It is all about money: getting yours.

    The Dalai Lama doesn’t need to peddle books, nor does the Archbishop of Canterbury.  They may be worth listening to, they may not. But at least they are not looking for you to finance their expensive lifestyles.  Much the same can be said for qualified doctors or therapists.  At least they have (usually!) had a rigorous training in a recognised discipline.

    The real con artists are those who sell books, courses and seminars telling YOU how to achieve happiness and contentment when THEY have singularly failed to achieve any measure of well being and are as far removed from nirvana as it is possible to be.

    I used to buy the occasional self help book or at least books on what one might loosely define as “spirituality”.  But I have this obsessive compulsion to dig deeper into anything I take on.

    That apparently delightful and wise author on the beauty of Sufi poetry turned out to be someone to avoid.  And pseudo religious nutcases promising revelation, synchronicity, union with the divine – take your pick – always turn out to be cynical fakes out to get your money.

    If you need god (I don’t) then read the canon of your chosen faith. If you need advice on happiness or the avoidance of misery read philosophy and medicine.