Working Definitions

“All warfare is based on deception.”
–Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I recently learned about an important difference between lying and bullshitting.

In both cases, the goal is to get something. The difference is that lying is when we know the truth but want to hide it; bullshitting is when we don’t believe in the value of the truth itself.

Everyone I share this insight with keeps nodding without hesitation, as if they’ve seen it all their lives. I’ve been surprised each time, even terrified, gaining clarity on how easy it is for me to bullshit myself.

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I learned about the distinction from a book entitled, On Bullshit, authored in the 1990s by one Harry Frankfurt who did not have trouble locating himself and his readers among the bullshitters. “Each one of us has contributed his fair share,” the late Princeton University Professor of Philosophy admitted on the first page.

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about,” Frankfurt elaborated. These circumstances include (1) punishments for making mistakes; and (2) disincentives for admitting, “I don’t know.”

After describing the whole premise of the dominant world with just one word, Frankfurt concluded that bullshitting is more dangerous than lying, because, at least with lying, there is an agreement on the existence of what’s true and what’s false, allowing a shared basis from which to resolve a disagreement.

I’m finding the distinction helpful. Moments keep jumping out when knowing the distinction would have been helpful. Still, we can’t forget that both lying and bullshitting are acts of deception. And in a context of war, let’s remember what Sun Tzu said about deception.

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My sister, the street philosopher, similarly makes an important distinction between mensos and pendejos, where pendejos are the ones who should know better but just act stupid, and mensos are the ones who just accept being stupid.

The common denominator is the word stupid, making necessary a working definition.

The ancestor Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously developed a theory of stupidity while awaiting his own execution at the hands of the Nazis. In his letters, prayers, and poems from prison (1943–1945), the Christian philosopher and theologian who attempted to assassinate Hitler, according to legend, reflected on how ordinary, decent people could passively accept horrific evil. He pointed to stupidity as the problem, defined not as a mental disorder, but as a social disorder, where we surrender our critical thinking and self-reflection, where we surrender our inner freedom.

This surrender happens when we desire to belong to a group where loyalty is valued more than truth, leading us to resist facts that contradict the group, ideology, or leader. When we give up our freedom to think for ourselves, we are easily seduced and manipulated, are happy to follow orders, and become willfully ignorant to the harm we cause.

More moments jump out when this clarity would have been helpful.

Bonhoeffer was warning that stupidity is more dangerous than evil itself, because, as Frankfurt argued about bullshit, there’s no shared basis for resolving differences.

Bonhoeffer was needing to understand back then what we are all needing to understand right now so that we may diagnose the illness: how individually nice, intelligent people and even loved ones, can turn away from human horrors like genocide.

Both Frankfurt’s and Bonhoeffer’s insights can help us build a theory on why mensos and pendejos are so widespread: the menso surrenders critical thinking and becomes stupid in order to belong; whereas the pendejo only pretends to be stupid in order to get away with lying, highly effective in a world that brushes off stupidity more than it brushes off lying.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging in Flossenbürg concentration camp at dawn on April 9, 1945.

He was 39 years old.

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If all warfare is based on deception, what about the self-deception part? What about myself-deception? Am I deceiving myself that a common humanity exists and that I belong to it? Why is my assumption that a common humanity exists at all? How am I so convinced? How do we find the truth of a common humanity in these times? How will I change if it turns out to not be true? Would I even believe it’s not true? Is my loyalty to a common humanity something I value more than truth? How will we agree on truth? What about the ones who don’t believe in the value of the truth? If all warfare is based on deception, what about the self-deception part, and how can belonging and truth be together instead of being apart?

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黄泉, whose name is pronounced “Yomi” and in Japanese means Land of the Dead, a world of darkness almost impossible to return from, believes that even a menso can be rehabilitated into at least a pendejo.

They also agree there’s a lot of bullshitting going on, and say that “just because you stop exercising a muscle doesn’t mean you can never exercise it again,” referring to the human brain.

I think about the circumstances that would need to be in place to exercise truth, to get in touch with our inner freedom, to practice again, to not become a bullshitting menso in the first place.

Kingsley, who coaches youth basketball and has long seen the bullshit, calls his place of practice the House of Mistakes: “A place where it’s safe to make mistakes in order to grow and get better at what you want to become,” he describes it, a situation where the youth don’t have pressures from their parents or their peers, where they can practice at being themselves.

May we all have such a place where we can get our practice in.

in gratitude,

Quiqui


P.S. Now we need working definitions of truth, evil, and common humanity to add to the pile.

August 17, 2026 in the Gregorian Calendar
13.0.13.15.7 – 12 Kej in the sacred Maya calendars

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My book: Palestine 1492: A Report Back