Glass Half Empty, Glass Half Full of Shit
Recently, various people in my life have been telling me that I’m full of shit. Well, actually, people have always said this, but the reasons have changed over the years. Being “full of shit” is a rather ambiguous phrase. It seems to have several meanings based on the context so I’ve been trying to determine which shit I have so I can flush it away somehow.
When I was young, like many boys, I would make stuff up. It was typical stuff like claiming I had a video game that I didn’t really have or saying I had a friend with the Boardwalk game piece but not the Park Place game piece in the McDonald’s Monopoly game. This prompted the first appearance of the phrase with “shit” being synonymous with “lies”. I grew out of this phase by at least age 10. Saying things I knew were wrong just didn’t seem very much fun and, frankly, I was not very good at it.
From about age 11 to 13, I became a rather argumentative person. In order to win an argument, I would make up facts much in same way Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh do (except my “facts” would be much more believable and closer to reality than theirs). Again, I was full of shit, but “shit” was more lies of knowledge rather than lies of experience. My family retaliated with two very effective tools that humbled me quickly. The encyclopedia was one and the phrase “oh, you must be right!” said in a bitingly sarcastic tone was the other. I retaliated by studying things so I would know the facts and be calmer when discussing things (I’m still working on that last part).
Education and knowledge are great things, but they certainly didn’t decrease my reception of the phrase “you’re full of shit”. In high school, my friends accepted I knew a lot of “random, useless knowledge”, but acquaintances were puzzled why a 16-year-old would have background information on the environment, the Bible or World War II history. People assumed I was lying like a 12-year-old. Some would ask why I knew this information. “I read it,” I would reply. Now they assumed I was lying like a 9-year-old.
Things became more complicated as I became more complicated. I started forming opinions on a conscience level that differed from my beliefs on a subconscious level. I started exploring lines of thought just see if they had merit. I started reading what radical academics thought that opposed mainstream thought. To top it off, I became incredibly sarcastic and cynical to the point where I couldn’t decipher my own belief in the first place. When I speak, am I speaking truth, half-truth or something I’d like to believe? Am I speaking what I logically know, what I believe in my heart or what society has taught me to say? I have no idea.
Needless to say, the “you’re full of shit” line continues to this day. When it’s spoken, I’m not sure if the person means “you’re consciously lying” or “you don’t really mean that” or “you have your facts wrong” or “your perception is way off” or “you’re in contradiction”. To top off this confusion, there is a new anti-intellectual movement in American that rival’s Mao’s Cultural Revolution. So even if I am clear, honest and correct, someone may still say I’m full of it.
When I was young, like many boys, I would make stuff up. It was typical stuff like claiming I had a video game that I didn’t really have or saying I had a friend with the Boardwalk game piece but not the Park Place game piece in the McDonald’s Monopoly game. This prompted the first appearance of the phrase with “shit” being synonymous with “lies”. I grew out of this phase by at least age 10. Saying things I knew were wrong just didn’t seem very much fun and, frankly, I was not very good at it.
From about age 11 to 13, I became a rather argumentative person. In order to win an argument, I would make up facts much in same way Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh do (except my “facts” would be much more believable and closer to reality than theirs). Again, I was full of shit, but “shit” was more lies of knowledge rather than lies of experience. My family retaliated with two very effective tools that humbled me quickly. The encyclopedia was one and the phrase “oh, you must be right!” said in a bitingly sarcastic tone was the other. I retaliated by studying things so I would know the facts and be calmer when discussing things (I’m still working on that last part).
Education and knowledge are great things, but they certainly didn’t decrease my reception of the phrase “you’re full of shit”. In high school, my friends accepted I knew a lot of “random, useless knowledge”, but acquaintances were puzzled why a 16-year-old would have background information on the environment, the Bible or World War II history. People assumed I was lying like a 12-year-old. Some would ask why I knew this information. “I read it,” I would reply. Now they assumed I was lying like a 9-year-old.
Things became more complicated as I became more complicated. I started forming opinions on a conscience level that differed from my beliefs on a subconscious level. I started exploring lines of thought just see if they had merit. I started reading what radical academics thought that opposed mainstream thought. To top it off, I became incredibly sarcastic and cynical to the point where I couldn’t decipher my own belief in the first place. When I speak, am I speaking truth, half-truth or something I’d like to believe? Am I speaking what I logically know, what I believe in my heart or what society has taught me to say? I have no idea.
Needless to say, the “you’re full of shit” line continues to this day. When it’s spoken, I’m not sure if the person means “you’re consciously lying” or “you don’t really mean that” or “you have your facts wrong” or “your perception is way off” or “you’re in contradiction”. To top off this confusion, there is a new anti-intellectual movement in American that rival’s Mao’s Cultural Revolution. So even if I am clear, honest and correct, someone may still say I’m full of it.
posted by American Dilettante at
11:37 AM
2 Comments:
maybe it comes from knowing things intuitively and not being able to qualify or rationalize those things. for example, saying "there is a new anti-intellectual movement in America that rivals Mao's Cultural Revolution" is hard to swallow without knowing where it came from. Maybe "you're full of shit" in the present is a stand-in for "how do YOU know?"
By
Clever Hans, at 1:46 PM
Don't discount those who don't like their cozy worldview challenged by actual facts or empirical evidence. Or, barring that, they really don't like informed people who turn out to be right more often than not.
It seems like someone has to be wrong about 30% of the time to avoid being tagged a know-it-all and despised by others.
But that only works if you admit to being wrong. Because if you own up when you blow it, people are more likely to believe you when you stick to your guns.
Like if you erroneously say that temperature is not correlated with crime levels during the year and realize that you meant to say that hotter summers don't necessary lead to more crime than cooler summers. Just an example.
Oh, and by the way, in your post about being boring versus being interested, you were totally full of shit. :)
By
The Rogue Progressive, at 9:59 AM
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