A Brief History of Bullshit
This pamphlet, completed in 2007, explores Pip's fascination with how and why human beings twist the truth for themselves and others. In this era of 'post-truth' and 'fake news', it seems more important than ever.
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We hope that ABHoB resonates with you and makes you think. It doesn't claim to have the answers. After all, wouldn't that be more bullshit?
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Click the 'W' for the full text (opens as a Word document).
Poems
God amongst his fellow gods
Sat sad and sore distressed.
He could not see the point of it
And neither could the rest.
A million worlds, a trillion worlds
It had all been done before.
Eternal life and almighty powers
Had just become a bore.
He could not wonder at a flower
He knew the God who’d made it.
And the chicken and the egg, no puzzle that -
He remembered when he’d laid it.
For when all is done and all is known
Only boredom is compounded.
So be thankful that you, mortal speck,
By wonder are surrounded.
We weave screens of strange belief,
We weave them with our minds
And use these screens of strange belief
To hide our fears behind.
But then we have another fear
That could be there to stay.
‘Cause then we find we fear the man
Who weaves another way.
This it is, and only this,
Divides the human race.
Would we not better face our fears
Than fear the other face?
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The philosophers stand on top of a hill,
Doubting realities, as philosophers will.
Up in the sky, an engine has faltered.
The course of an aeroplane downwards has altered.
The philosophers ALL fall flat on their faces,
Their little posteriors covered with faeces.
Now, Philosophy’s a game for intellectual high-kickers
But reality, my friend, is the shit in the knickers.
Copernicus was a man
Who thought the world was flat
And his buddies of the time
Thought him sane at that.
All of which goes to show
You may think you’re sane
But you never know.
Herr Tosh, brilliant goon,
Was on a journey to the moon.
With sudden fear he looked behind -
The earth, it was not there.
It was but a figment of the mind
A truth now hard to bear.
If that was so, the moon as well?
He looked too late to see it.
And the spaceship, too, could not be real
With no space in which to be it.
Logic rejecting breadth and weight,
He assumed a mental gaseous state.
(This verse needs another stanza
But you’ll have to grin and bear it.
It would be sheer extravaganza
As you’re not there to hear it.)
If I could but fill my house
With ‘mazing mod devices
I could save an hour a day
In little timely slices.
One machine to top the can
And one to burn the toast.
A dishwasher would, perhaps,
Of minutes save the most.
Then if I could have but one machine
To wash and iron my rainments
Why - then I’d have time for overtime
To keep up with the payments.
Author's note-
"Last week, in Mozambique, a baby was born up a tree surrounded by total flooding. Today I received a piece of junk mail. Nothing unusual about that, but this item was big, elaborate and heavy. Yet so trivial, only asking me to choose between two toilet paper textures, ordinary luxury and super luxury."
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Baby born in a tree,
Now’t to do with you nor me.
Some are rich, some are poor,
Some get junk mail through the door.
But mail junk too comes from a tree,
Magicked by machines and electricity
Created in great stations of power,
Spewing gasses, hour on hour.
The Earth gets warmer,
The weather wetter.
Who cares? Toilet paper is getting better!
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Would I, I wonder, those words dare speak
Wiping my bum in Mozambique?
Master “didn’t think he could”,
Didn’t.
His pride survived.
But he still hadn’t when he died.
At his funeral,
Kind friends lied.
Miss “didn’t think she could”.
Did.
Was hurt and cried
But glad she’d tried.
Became good before she died.
And no-one lied.
Vincent Van Gogh lived his life
Devoid of money, devoid of wife
Even, in his latter years,
Devoid of almost half his ears.
In heaven now, more miserable yet
Seeing the prices his paintings get.
After a world of toil and strife
Who really needs an afterlife?
Seeing your widow more happily married
The riches that came, had you tarried.
Hearing your eminence of yore
Ripped to shreds on Channel 4.
No, when I die I want to snuff it
You can take eternal life and stuff it.
As I started my walk it started to rain and a rain drop fell in my ear,
Imagine my feelings when it spoke to me, in a voice tiny but clear.
“Hi, I’m a molecule, h2o to my friends, and I have a story to tell
And if you’ll kindly lend me an ear I’ll tell it briefly and well
For ten million sad years I moved ten foot, when tied as part of a glacier,
And then it melted and I roved the earth free in times so much happier.
Spent tranquil centuries as part of a pond, then I grew as part of a tree.
And I’m happy to tell that in more recent times I shared in your history.
Your James Watt knew me as steam, and your Scott knew me as ice
And Hitler knew me as part of a dream, but that was not very nice.
Pissed by a drunkard and drunk by a queen, with happily a trip to Niagara between!
And then on to the Victoria Falls - by God, as a molecule that needs some balls,
And now I’m here, lodged in your ear, and soon to part of your skin”
But at that the little voice faded and faded, became inaudibly thin
So I waited and waited with breath abated,
But too late, He’d evaporated!
So I walked my walk and thought my thoughts, and wrote this little rhyme
For I too am a molecule, lone and free, and all space and time is mine.
o.