One can relate bullshit and lying to their everyday life by reading Frankfurt's “On Bullshit.” One hears or speaks bullshit in typical conversations called bull sessions: “The OED defines a bull session as "an informal conversation or discussion…participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves say such things and in order to discover how others respond…” (Frankfurt 9). Individuals often recognize these sessions as bullshit, and they also recognize when people lie. One is lying “as long as he himself believes that the statement is false and intends by making it to deceive” (2). Individual lies are commonly recognized among individuals, but bullshit and lies are both understood among them. But what about the bullshit and the lies we cannot recognize? Have bullshit and lies framed our society? This will be answered as we relate Frankfurt"s concept of bullshit and concept of lying to Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” and to “Ursula LeGuin's “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” We will relate both of those texts to Jean-Jacque Rousseu's “The Social Contract” to relate the bullshit/lies with society. We will start by looking at how society lies to individuals.
Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” is about a village that sacrifices one person each year for better crops. “Used to be saying about "lottery in June, corn is heavy soon"” (Jackson 187). This sacrifice relates to Rousseau. He suggests that one should die if it is required for the solidarity of the State: “…he ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally by the State” (162). This idea is unrealistic. Under the contract that was made to protect them, how could one be forced to die? The village has been deceived by a lie. Frankfurt would agree; he says, “What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false” (10). This can apply to “The Lottery” if one considers the village sovereign to be the liar. The village sovereign, the eldest one, deceives the people in two ways: To think a sacrifice is necessary for fruitful harvest and to think the creators of the lottery truly believed it was necessary. This is a lie because the village sovereign misrepresents the state of affairs , how to better the annual harvest; and also, the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs , the elder's opinion of what could improve harvest.
Obviously the village, the State, is not concerned with improving individuals' harvests by sacrifice, but with maintaining order by sacrifice. Rousseau says,
It follows from what has gone before that the general will is always right and tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are always equally correct. But when factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its remembers, …if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts.
All the members of the village are called to participate in the lottery and to accept the possibility they may die for the good of the village, its general will, which is for better harvest. But a contradiction is blatant in the above passage: The social contract calls for people to express themselves through the general will, but think their own thoughts; Mrs. Hutchinson did not think her village's custom was fair; however, she was sacrificed for the general will. She says, “'It isn't fair,' she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old man Warner was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone."…” (Jackson 189). Mrs. McHutchinson's ideas were stifled and contradicted by the general will, for ill. The village lies because, each year, the individual who dies and their family cannot benefit from the lottery. The individual who must be sacrificed cannot benefit from the general will. Why would an individual be sacrificed for society if his/her sacrifice did not actually better its harvest? The sacrifice, the lottery, is used to maintain order. Everyone in the village is united under the lottery. There are no factions because the sovereign's lie deceives the people to believe harvest will only improve if they unite. But one shouldn't perceive this action as sincere: Everyone unites to murder one individual. Considering this, one might say, “The lottery is bullshit!” But Frankfurt distinguished bullshit from lies. We must read into “Omelas” to understand bullshit.
I just wanted to comment that Le Guin uses Taoist themes in many of her stories. The idea is that the world is in a delicate balance. For light, there is darkness. The neglected child in Omelas creates the balance of the utopian society. The point of the story is that if the citizens of Omelas wish to continue living in bliss, they must see and acknowledge the suffering of the child. After you're done reading it, you're supposed to ask yourself if there's a child somewhere crying for your happiness and if you can keep on living with that knowledge. If you can't, you're like the ones who walk away from Omelas.
