Philosophy of Knowledge and Reality - Bullshit Phenomenon

bull·shit

vulgar slang

noun

noun: bullshit

1. 1.

   stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense.

verb

verb: bullshit; 3rd person present: bullshits; past tense: bullshitted; past participle:bullshitted; gerund or present participle: bullshitting

1. 1.

   talk nonsense to (someone), typically to be misleading or deceptive.

Would you believe that once a philosopher by the name of Harry Frankfurt published an essay entitled "On Bullshit" ? It was later published as a little book, perhaps there was a demand for it ?

Harry Frankfurt, a contemporary American Philosopher claims that "one of the most salietn features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this." How would you characterise bullshitting - how is it, for example, different from lying ?

Bullshitting is the act of exaggerating a singular act based on personal experiences for the purpose of convincing that the speaker has the most extreme experience on the related topic, be it positive or negative. Bullshitting is not telling 100% lies, it is part truth but exaggerated to be bigger than life. 

For example, if the group talks about jungle tracking, one will exaggerate his or his contact's experience as being the most extreme. Everyone is supposed to learn a thing or two from him. He is the "guru" on this topic. This will be bullshitting  It is not entirely true nor false. It is just half the truth exaggerated to be bigger than life itself.

Lying is telling the opposite of truth for the purpose to conceal the truth and deceive others to believe what has been told is the truth. Bullshit is taking part truth and making it the whole truth. 

With bullshit, one can get away with accusations in case something bad happens. With lying, once the truth surfaces, lies be exposed. Bullshit gives blurry effect. 

The two domains with the most prevalent bullshitting are in politics and in marketing. What effect does the mountain of bullshit in marketing have on our economy ? What effect does the mounrtain of bullshit have on our democracy ?


In marketing, the consumers have, time and time again, been convinced that the advertised products are absolutely essential items for daily living, for prestige, for success. All healthy or successful people use such items regularly. The mountain of bullshits are :-

• Selling cars with pretty sexy lady, as if if you buy this car, the model comes with it ? 
• Many years ago, all successful men seem to smoke, growing up in the 1980's, we still watched cigarettes advertisement depicting highly successful statue using certain brand of cigarettes.
• Drinking milk will strengthen and build up your bone structures but it does not tell you that you should drink milk on empty stomach to get the most absorption of calcium into the body system.
• Yoghart drinks are good for your stomach to be filled with friendly bacteria but it is loaded with sugar. 
• Milo is actually sugar-loaded cocoa flavoured milk drink, drinking milo does not necessary turn one into champion.
• Pretty dresses in gorgeous fashions but they are all size zero and most of the female population are size 12 and above ! So Pretty is skinny and thin.

In politics, the bullshitting is even worse, it is further justified by guarding national harmony, economic stability and so it seems that it warrants to lie a little bit in politics. In so doing, the people have been receiving a lot of bullshits and enduring them.

• The parliament has passed the new law with a good majority but most of the member of parliament do not know what they have voted for actually impact the people who voted them in a miserable manner. Most law will have the clause that grant the minister certain power and in so doing, we lose that power. 
• The new public policy is good for the common good of the people but it marginalise certain people. What good is a policy that makes certain people suffers even more ? By allowing that policy to be implemented, the people have lesser power and there is not much of a choice.
• Political Propaganda is special planned agenda of activities to convince the people that something is happening and manipulating people to form a strong opinion about that agenda. By so doing, the people cannot really think democratically, their lenses be coloured lenses ! 
• Every time something bad is exposed in politic, another unrelated bad incident will happen at the same time and the latest happening warrants focus and attention and hence the real issues will not be addressed or avoided.
• Political belief leads to changing of educational text books. Ministry of Education has instructed the textbooks to be rewritten. By removing certain historical data and changing its content, the younger students are fed with a lie which they will grow up thinking this as the truth.

The above is my homework done for the Book "The Philosopher's Book of Questions & Answers" by D.E. Wittkower, PhD. It is a book with questions to open your mind. I undertake it as an exercise to think through some of the philosophical questions pertaining to my "gardening".

Bookmarking References

https://www.zotero.org/download/

Success Stories

http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/8-habits-of-remarkably-successful-people.html

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/03/18/how-do-you-know-if-youre-succeeding/
How Do You Know if You’re Succeeding?

https://hbr.org/2015/07/know-when-to-kill-your-brand
Know When to Kill Your Brand

http://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2014/04/08/why-you-should-be-writing-down-your-goals/
Why You Should Be Writing Down Your Goals

https://hbr.org/2015/07/the-emotional-impulses-that-poison-healthy-teams
The Emotional Impulses That Poison Healthy Teams

Plagiarism Checker

Here is a free Plagiarism Checker :-

1. http://www.plagscan.com/seesources/analyse.php - I have used this and it seems free and ok-ish.
2. https://www.plagtracker.com/upload/ - the free resource is limited.
3. http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/ -
4. http://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker/f0bcedc26f35dce - return percentage of originality Report
5. http://plagiarism-detect.com/ - 
6. https://www.thepensters.com/free-plagiarism-checker-for-students-online.html -
7. http://www.plagium.com/ - 
8. http://plagiarisma.net/ -

Here are recommendations for Teachers :-

http://elearningindustry.com/top-10-free-plagiarism-detection-tools-for-teachers

Are the Poor affected by Food Security ?

In the course of reviewing Food Security of Sabah, there were two distinctive visits to the districts that opened my eyes to understand the meaning of Food Security there. It opens up a completely new meaning of Food Security to various people groups of Sabah.

Food is essential to survival of human beings but human beings are highly adaptive. In the study of Food Security impacts on the poor, we made two rather unexpected discovery that :-

1) The Rural Poor will fair better than the Urban Poor

I was visiting Sapulut Mission Field Center in 2012 and found their daily menu had lots of vegetables and very little protein like meat and not even eggs. I saw that they have a completely different diet from city folks. They may be farmers and but being too far from towns, there is no place to sell their produces except to barter trade or consume themselves for weeks.  When they need protein, they will go into the jungle to hunt or down the river to catch fishes. Life is that simple. No money is involved unless its for "luxurious" items such as tea, coffee, sugar (I think milk is super expensive to them). 

The Urban Poor mainly comprises of kampung folks like school leavers who left their rural villages to work in urban towns and cities, their income is either minimum wages of RM800 per month or higher as they progress to supervisory role. But, they have to rent a place in urban area, share room, work long hours (some even double jobs) and have little time to cook, hence they eat out. The urban poor has difficulty saving for rainy days. After paying rental, mobile fees (which is essential in towns and cities), there is hardly any left for food. So they eat poorly. 

Meanwhile back in the kampung and rural area, they do not have employment, there is no stable income aside from what they could sell from their agricultural produce. They are very poor, in fact, statistically, they are called the hard-core poor. But they can bring food to the table for their families through their land produce, hunting or fishing. They could also barter trade with neighbours. The rural poor has no money but they have food from their backyard.

2) Food Smuggling out of country to neighbouring country is imminent and causing massive loss especially with food subsidy. 

In our field trip to Sandakan to meet up the professors experts group in 2012, we made a visit to a local supermarket after work, we arrived 6 pm and we were told that shop is selling imported stuff really cheap, so we were there to check it out. 

My friend and I stood outside this giant supermarket in down town Sandakan, we stood there amazed by the sight that we saw, actually we were shocked and dumb found ! We saw one patron of the supermarket usually be a team of 3 to 4 persons, each team had many trolleys (giant trolleys), they bought everything in the largest quantity packing and in bulk, Like 10 Kg rice grains, they would buy 30-50 packs; Maggie Mee in box, they would buy large containers comprising many boxes within. Then, it dawn on us that these must be traders or tuck shop owners but why such high volume? Who has the money to buy these items if they are poor ?  The only obvious answer is that they are bringing the food using boats to the near by islands and sell the in the Philippines ! When we studied their food choices, most of the items were subsidised by the government of Malaysia ! What a loss to our national finances. They just smuggle our subsidised food out on daily basis in large quantity !

After that night of observation, I am now a "converted" believer of no-subsidy by the government, it is not healthy because some of our people do not benefit from the subsidy and it get smuggled by the millions out of our country ! I think Food Coupons are better solutions and should be given to the citizens. 

Why is Food Security Important in Sabah's Context ?

Sabah, situated on Northern Borneo, Malaysia is one of the larger island in the world. Being an island, there are challenges of connectivity with the outside world, it is limited to air-borne and sea-borne. On the road, there is only connectivity within the island.

Food Security addresses the issues of having sufficient food for the people to continue their living. It is the basic food requirement for the land to function in the area of agriculture, industry, health and tourism. In every area, there is a unique food requirement.

Sabah imports a total of RM1.3 Billion food products in 2012 and it is a Billion affair. This is a very high amount compared to the GDP of the state, against what we can produce.

Here are the reasons why Food Security is important in Sabah's context :-

1. Being on an island will mean that we are relying on air and sea transport to bring food in and out of our state. There is a high dependence on transportation to bring food to us. This increases the cost of our imported food. In some cases, the air-flown produce costing is mostly in the airfare. 
2. Although Borneo is the third largest island in the world and we have a huge natural resources on the island, majority of the land are Forest Reserve hence, the connectivity on the island is poor. Even between Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak, the proposed Trans-Borneo road is not done. The remoteness of the places on Broneo has even created different food cultures even though we are on the same island.
3. Importing RM1.3 billion a year for food makes us vulnerable and any broken linkage in this food supply such as disaster in the original countries will result in no supply. Take the example of the Japanese's earthquake in 2014, as a result of that, many resources were in great shortage, plants in Japan have been destroyed, within days, we have to find food supply from other countries. 
4. Sabah's biggest strength is in her Natural Resources and abundance in land, with proper management, the land can produce more food and greater harvests. It can produce the right kind of food that we need. There should be food center to allow food bank to be set up to avoid wastage. 
5. Down Stream processing will ensure that our raw materials are being processed and be available as food item to our people. Currently, a lot of our raw materials are exported to Peninsular Malaysia to be processed in the manufacturing plants there and then exports back to Sabah as food items. This is wastage in terms of opportunity loss for our people and land and also increase the cost of food. 
6. The issue of Carbotage is also impacting Sabah greatly, there are countries who are nearly to us and if all food import must enter a single national port namely Port Klang, then this just raise the cost of food for us here. Just take the example of imported Yoghart, in Peninsular Malaysia it is sold as RM1.40 per small pack. In Sabah, it is  RM 2.50 or more per pack. By simple deduction, RM1 is for air or sea transport alone. Considering how much yoghart we consume in Sabah, if all have to come from Port Klang, we have increased the cost of yoghart so much !

Date : 16 July 2015

Original Total Words : 563 words

Adjectives Overdrive

To write well one needs to use accurate and clear adjectives to tell the stories.

http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/adjectives/List-of-Positive-Adjectives.html

This list of positive adjectives are good for meditation on its own.

A List of Positive Adjectives to Get You Started

Most positive adjectives are fun to say. It might be because good words have been constructed by time to describe good feelings. It might be because good feelings surround positive words regardless of how they were built. One thing's for sure: Whatever an aura is, words have them. If you read a list of negative adjectives, you'd feel differently than you would about a list of positive ones. You owe it to yourself to experiment. It only takes a few minutes, and it might meliorate your day––maybe even your life.

Here's a list of 25 words to get you started thinking positively. Change your words and change your world!

1. Amazing
2. Awesome
3. Blithesome
4. Excellent
5. Fabulous
6. Fantastic
7. Favorable
8. Fortuitous
9. Great
10. Incredible
11. Ineffable
12. Mirthful
13. Outstanding
14. Perfect
15. Propitious
16. Remarkable
17. Smart
18. Spectacular
19. Splendid
20. Stellar
21. Stupendous
22. Super
23. Ultimate
24. Unbelievable
25. Wondrous

http://www.momswhothink.com/reading/list-of-adjectives.html

Adjectives are often used to describe the degree of modification.

The adjective forms are positive, comparative, and superlative.

This tree is tall. (positive)
That tree is taller. (comparative)
The last tree in the row is the tallest. (superlative)

Time Adjectives

ancient
brief
early
fast
late
long
modern
old
old-fashioned
quick
rapid
short
slow
swift
young

Quantity Adjectives

abundant
empty
few
full
heavy
light
many
numerous
sparse
substantial

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/wordlist/adjectives.shtml

http://www.momswhothink.com/reading/adjectives-that-start-with-a-to-z-list.html

A-Z of Adjectives ! 

http://www.words-to-use.com/words/real-estate/

Adjectives used in Real Estate line of work ! Cool !

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/100-exquisite-adjectives/

Adamant: unyielding; a very hard substance
Adroit: clever, resourceful
Amatory: sexual
Animistic: quality of recurrence or reversion to earlier form
Antic: clownish, frolicsome
Arcadian: serene
Baleful: deadly, foreboding
Bellicose: quarrelsome (its synonym belligerent can also be a noun)
Bilious: unpleasant, peevish
Boorish: crude, insensitive
Calamitous: disastrous
Caustic: corrosive, sarcastic; a corrosive substance
Cerulean: sky blue
Comely: attractive
Concomitant: accompanying
Contumacious: rebellious
Corpulent: obese
Crapulous: immoderate in appetite
Defamatory: maliciously misrepresenting
Didactic: conveying information or moral instruction
Dilatory: causing delay, tardy
Dowdy: shabby, old-fashioned; an unkempt woman
Efficacious: producing a desired effect
Effulgent: brilliantly radiant
Egregious: conspicuous, flagrant
Endemic: prevalent, native, peculiar to an area
Equanimous: even, balanced
Execrable: wretched, detestable
Fastidious: meticulous, overly delicate
Feckless: weak, irresponsible
Fecund: prolific, inventive
Friable: brittle
Fulsome: abundant, overdone, effusive
Garrulous: wordy, talkative
Guileless: naive
Gustatory: having to do with taste or eating
Heuristic: learning through trial-and-error or problem solving
Histrionic: affected, theatrical
Hubristic: proud, excessively self-confident
Incendiary: inflammatory, spontaneously combustible, hot
Insidious: subtle, seductive, treacherous
Insolent: impudent, contemptuous
Intransigent: uncompromising
Inveterate: habitual, persistent
Invidious: resentful, envious, obnoxious
Irksome: annoying
Jejune: dull, puerile
Jocular: jesting, playful
Judicious: discreet
Lachrymose: tearful
Limpid: simple, transparent, serene
Loquacious: talkative
Luminous: clear, shining
Mannered: artificial, stilted
Mendacious: deceptive
Meretricious: whorish, superficially appealing, pretentious
Minatory: menacing
Mordant: biting, incisive, pungent
Munificent: lavish, generous
Nefarious: wicked
Noxious: harmful, corrupting
Obtuse: blunt, stupid
Parsimonious: frugal, restrained
Pendulous: suspended, indecisive
Pernicious: injurious, deadly
Pervasive: widespread
Petulant: rude, ill humored
Platitudinous: resembling or full of dull or banal comments
Precipitate: steep, speedy
Propitious: auspicious, advantageous, benevolent
Puckish: impish
Querulous: cranky, whining
Quiescent: inactive, untroublesome
Rebarbative: irritating, repellent
Recalcitant: resistant, obstinate
Redolent: aromatic, evocative
Rhadamanthine: harshly strict
Risible: laughable
Ruminative: contemplative
Sagacious: wise, discerning
Salubrious: healthful
Sartorial: relating to attire, especially tailored fashions
Sclerotic: hardening
Serpentine: snake-like, winding, tempting or wily
Spasmodic: having to do with or resembling a spasm, excitable, intermittent
Strident: harsh, discordant; obtrusively loud
Taciturn: closemouthed, reticent
Tenacious: persistent, cohesive,
Tremulous: nervous, trembling, timid, sensitive
Trenchant: sharp, penetrating, distinct
Turbulent: restless, tempestuous
Turgid: swollen, pompous
Ubiquitous: pervasive, widespread
Uxorious: inordinately affectionate or compliant with a wife
Verdant: green, unripe
Voluble: glib, given to speaking
Voracious: ravenous, insatiable
Wheedling: flattering
Withering: devastating
Zealous: eager, devoted

http://www.english-at-home.com/grammar/adjectives/

Knowing what is an adjective and what is an adverb is very important when you learn English grammar. For example, the following sentences are typical mistakes caused by confusion over the difference between adjectives and adverbs.

"He works hardly." (Correct: "He works hard.")
"She writes good." (Correct: "He writes well.")
"It's a really problem." (Correct: "It's a real problem.")

Adjectives describe nouns.
"A good student."
"A nice day."
"He is interesting."

Adverbs describe verbs or adjectives.
"He eats well."
"She learns quickly."
"I'm really tired."

Why adjectives and adverbs can be difficult

1. Some adjectives and adverbs have the same form.

"She's a fast driver." (adj)
"She drives fast." (adv)

"TOEFL is a hard exam." (adj)
"The students work hard." (adv)

"She has straight hair." (adj)
"He went straight home." (adv)

2. Not all adverbs end in -ly.

For example: "She works well with others."
"Eagles fly high in the sky."

3. Some adverbs have two meanings.

Hard
"He works hard."
"I hardly know him." (barely)

Close
"She sat close to the conductor on the bus." (next to)
"I listened closely to what he said." (paying attention)

Dead
"You're dead right!" (completely right)
"This snake is deadly – watch out for it." (fatal)

Fair
"He was fairly treated by the Immigration authorities." (justly)
"It's fairly cold today." (quite)

Fine
"How do you feel? Fine." (well)
"Finely chop the tomatoes." (in small pieces)

Free
"The english-at-home.com website is free of charge." (no money needed)
"Children can play freely in this park." (no limits to their freedom)

High
"We'll need to raise prices high in order to survive." (high prices)
"I think highly of him." (a high opinion)
"He's highly paid." (very well paid)

Late
"He arrived late for the meeting." (not on time)
"There have been a few complaints lately." (recently)

Right
"She walked right up to him and demanded to see the manager." (didn't stop until she got close to him)
"He rightly thought that he was going to lose his job." (correctly thought)

Wrong
"He wrongly told her that he had been promoted." (incorrectly)
"This is spelt wrong." (incorrect)
(You can only use 'wrong' when it's after the verb.)

4. Some words that end in -ly are not adverbs, but are adjectives.
For example, lovely, friendly, silly, lonely.

"She is silly."
"She behaves in a silly way."

"Her children are lovely."
"He treated her in a lovely way."

5. Some verbs are followed by adjectives.

"You look good today!"
"This soup tastes nice."
"He seems pleasant."
"I don't feel very happy at the moment."

In these examples, you are describing the subject (such as 'the soup') rather than the verb ('tastes').

Adjective order

If you have more than one adjective, what order do you put them in? For example, is it "a green leather chair" or "a leather green chair"?

Here are some guidelines for adjective order.

1. The closer the adjective to the noun, the more it defines the noun. So we'd say "an antique engagement ring" rather than "an engagement antique ring" because "engagement" defines what sort of ring it is.

The further from the noun, the less closely the adjective defines the noun.

2. We separate two adjectives with a comma (not "and"). So, "she had a small, yappy dog" and not "She had a small and yappy dog".

3. We use "and" after the verb "to be" and with colour adjectives.
"The dog was small, white and vicious. It wore a red and white jacket when it went out for walks."

Adjective order

Opinion, size, shape, age, colour, origin, material, defining

Examples:
She wore a beautiful, white, wedding dress.
Her mother wore an ugly, big, square, green hat.
The groom wore a stylish, grey, Italian suit.

Adverbs of frequency

We use these adverbs of frequency to say how often we do something.

always
often / frequently
usually / generally
sometimes / occasionally
hardly ever / rarely
never

For example, "I always drink coffee in the morning" means I drink coffee every morning.

Be careful of the pronunciation of "rarely". The "are" part of the word is spoken like the word air. The word has two syllables – 'rare' and 'ly'.

Putting these expressions into a sentence

These words go before the main verb.

"She often goes to the beach in summer."

They go after the verb 'to be'.

"He is occasionally late for meetings."

They go after 'modal' or 'auxiliary' verbs.

"It can sometimes get cold in the UK."

"I have never been to the USA."

'From time to time' is an expression that means the same as 'sometimes'. It normally goes at the end of a sentence.

For example, "I go to restaurants from time to time."

Some verb and adverb partnerships

Some verbs and adverbs go together naturally in English and it's often helpful to learn them as expressions.

act quickly: "We have to act quickly if we want to agree to their deal."

listen attentively: "She listened attentively to what her boss was saying."

play fair: "I don't feel that you are playing fair – you seem to change your mind when it suits you!"

search thoroughly: "The police searched the house thoroughly, but couldn't find any evidence."

sigh deeply: "He sighed deeply when he heard the news."

sit comfortably: "She was sitting comfortably on a sofa when he walked in."

speak softly: "It was difficult to hear her as she was speaking softly."

think carefully: "Please think about this carefully – it's a big decision."

vary widely: "Marriage customs vary widely from culture to culture."

work hard: "We work hard in the office."