by Umberto Eco
I’m not suggesting for one moment that they are after more deaths, since those killed in road accidents don’t, as a rule, take their cars to be repaired, and the next of kin ship them straight to the junkyard. Yet a few good collisions with no fatalities and limited injuries, and the car not being transformed into a coffin and written off, wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Such reports shouldn’t surprise us. Technological innovation, progress, has always produced unemployment, and it all began with the eighteenth-century weavers who smashed mechanical looms for fear of ending up without work. The advent of the taxi must have been disastrous for coachmen. When I was a child, I remember old Pietro being called with his buggy to take my family and our baggage to the railroad station. Public autos arrived a few years later, and he was too old to get a license and take up a new job as a taxi driver. But the pace of innovation at that time was fairly slow, and Pietro would have been close to retirement when he found himself jobless.
Today things are more hurried. I suppose longer life expectancy has caused difficulties for funeral directors and cemetery staff, except that the process has been gradual, and by the time they realized there were fewer sixty-year-olds to bury, they must already have been burying eighty-year-olds who hadn’t died at seventy. Jobs in this line of work—thanks to that mother of all syllogisms, “All men are mortal”—should never be in short supply. If tomorrow scientists discover, perhaps not the secret of immortality but a drug that could suddenly extend the average life to 120 years, we might see funeral directors on the streets demanding financial assistance from the government.
The problem is that in an ever-increasing number of cases the acceleration of innovation will bring ruin to whole categories of labor. Just think of the 1980s crisis of typewriter repairers. Either they were youngsters bright enough to become computer experts, or they found themselves without work.
The challenge is therefore to provide professional training to ensure rapid reemployment. When mechanical looms were introduced, a weaver couldn’t become a mechanical loom maker overnight. But machines today are more or less universal; their physical structure is far less important than the software programs that make them work; so a specialist capable of creating the program that operates a washing machine could fairly easily retrain to work on the program that regulates the dashboard of a car.
To deal with the prospect of accelerated reemployment, a large part of professional training will have to be intellectual development: learning about software more than about the machine’s hardware, its structure, its physical components.
And so, rather than thinking about schooling that offers only two options, university or work, there ought to be an education system that ends just with qualifications in the humanities or sciences, because whoever ends up becoming, for example, a sanitation worker will need the intellectual training necessary to plan and program his or her own reemployment.
This is not an abstract democratic and egalitarian ideal. It’s the same logic as that of working in a computerized society, which requires the same education for all and is modeled on the highest, not the lowest, standard. Otherwise, innovation will always and only produce unemployment.
2003
Speaking with license
Early in 1991 I wrote an article about the Gulf War in which I explained that “friendly fire” is “the bomb mistakenly tossed at you by some shit wearing the same uniform.” After the recent case of Nicola Calipari, the Italian military intelligence officer killed by American soldiers, readers are perhaps more aware that people die from friendly fire. But in response to my article there was a great deal of protest not about the immorality of friendly fire but the immorality of the word “shit.” As well as many letters from readers, I was also criticized by other newspapers so severely that I had to write another article about how many eminent writers had used words of a similar kind.
Practices change over time, and publishers can now print without fuss a translation of On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton University.
“Bullshit” is generally applied to something claimed, said, communicated: “What you’ve said is bullshit,” “That film is real bullshit.” Frankfurt considers the eminently semiotic interpretation of “bullshit” by starting off with a definition that another philosopher, Max Black, had given to “humbug”: “deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of someone’s thoughts, feelings, or attitudes.”
American philosophers are generally sensitive to the problem of the truth of what we say, so they question whether it’s true or false to say that Ulysses went back to Ithaca, even if Ulysses never existed. Frankfurt therefore sets out to determine, first, in what way bullshit is stronger than humbug and, second, what it means to provide a “deceptive misrepresentation” of something short of lying.
The only way of dealing with the second problem is to examine thoroughly all the authorities on the question, from Saint Augustine until today. Anyone who lies knows that what he’s saying isn’t true, and says it to deceive. Anyone who says something untrue without knowing it’s untrue is not lying, poor thing, but is simply mistaken or mad. Let’s say that someone claims, and believes, that the Sun goes around the Earth. We’d say he’s talking humbug, or even bullshit. But according to Black’s definition, anyone who talks humbug does so to provide a deceptive misrepresentation not only of external reality but also of his own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes.
This also happens to those who lie. If someone says he has a hundred euros in his pocket and it’s not true, he is doing so not just to make us believe he has a hundred euros in his pocket, but also to persuade us that he believes it. But Frankfurt explains that the main purpose of a humbug, unlike a lie, is not to create a false belief in relation to the state of things, but rather to create a false impression about what is going on in the speaker’s mind. Since this is the purpose of a humbug, it never reaches the level of a lie. To use an example given by Professor Frankfurt: a president of the United States can use bombastic expressions about the Founding Fathers being guided by God, and he does so not to spread beliefs that he knows to be false, but to give the impression of being a pious man who loves his country.
The chief characteristic of bullshit, as opposed to humbug, is that it’s a false statement proffered to make us believe something, but the speaker has no interest in whether what he’s saying is true or untrue. “The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides . . . is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest.” Our ears immediately prick up at statements such as this, and indeed Frankfurt confirms our worst suspicions: “The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept.” The aim of bullshit isn’t even to misrepresent states of affairs; it’s to create an impact on listeners barely capable of distinguishing between true and false, or those who have no interest in such subtleties. I think those who talk bullshit also rely on the poor memory of their listeners, which allows them to talk a continual and contradictory stream of bullshit: “However studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds . . . he is also trying to get away with something.”
2005
Conciliatory oxymorons
Only a few years ago, when using the word “oxymoron” one had to explain what it meant. People would cite well-known examples such as “parallel convergences,” and explain that an oxymoron is created when two contradictory words are put together, such as “strong weakness,” “desperate hope,” “gentle violence,” “senseless meaning,” and in Latin, formosa deformitas, concordia discors, and festina lente.
Now oxymorons are all the rage. They’re often found in the press, and I’ve heard politicians talk about them on television. Either everyone’s been reading treatises on rhetoric or there’s something oxymoronic goin
g around. It could be argued that this is not symptomatic of anything. Linguistic fashions are continually developing through laziness and imitation. Some last a morning, others survive longer. Young people in the 1950s used to say “beastly,” and more recently “absurd,” without referring in any way to zoology or Ionesco. “Wait a minute” became “wait a sec,” though not because time had actually shortened; or people would say “exactly” rather than “I do” (even when they got married in church), not through any concern for mathematical accuracy but from the influence of television quiz shows.
I suspect, though, that the oxymoron has become more popular because we live in a world that has seen the disappearance of ideologies that sought, at times ineptly, to reduce contradiction and impose an unambiguous view of things. Debates are held from contradictory positions. If you want a glaring example, we have Virtual Reality, which is rather like Concrete Nothing. Then there are Intelligent Bombs, which appears not to be an oxymoron, though it is when we consider that a bomb, by its very nature, is stupid and ought to fall where it’s thrown—otherwise, if it does what it pleases, it risks becoming Friendly Fire, a magnificent oxymoron, if by fire we mean something brought about to harm someone who is not a friend. The Exportation of Freedom seems fairly oxymoronic, if freedom is by definition something that a population or a group earns through personal determination and not through imposition by others. If we think about it, there’s also an implicit oxymoron in Conflict of Interests, since it can be interpreted as Private Interest Pursued for the Public Good, or Common Interest Pursued for Particular Personal Advantage.
I’d like to point out that the Global Mobilization of the Antiglobal Movement is oxymoronic, as are the Peace Army and Humanitarian Intervention, if intervention means, as it does, a series of warlike activities in someone else’s country. I see more of them closer to home, judging from the electoral program of a Fascist Left, and I think Clerical Atheists are fairly oxymoronic. I wouldn’t exclude expressions that we’ve become quite familiar with, such as Artificial Intelligence and Electronic Brain, if the brain is something soft within our skull, and don’t forget Embryos with Souls. Likewise, to remain bipartisan, I think a proposal put forward by the center-left for Compulsory Community Service Volunteers is just as oxymoronic.
In short, when people can no longer make sense of ideas that are incompatible, they resort to Conciliatory Oxymorons to give the impression that what cannot coexist coexists—the peace mission in Iraq, the Italian laws against the judiciary, politics on television and farces in the chambers of parliament, the banning of unauthorized satire, retrospective prophecies such as the third secret of Fátima, Arab kamikazes, former student activists of the 1960s who work for Berlusconi, liberal populism. And lastly, same-sex marriage virtuously opposed by cohabiting divorcées.
2006
The human thirst for prefaces
What I’m going to talk about happens not just to me, but to all who have published books or articles and enjoy a certain authority in their field. And you don’t have to think only of great poets, Nobel Prize winners, or emeritus professors. I believe, indeed I know, that the same is true of head teachers of provincial secondary schools, who may never have published anything but have a reputation in the local community for being learned, respectable, and reliable. It also happens to those who are thought of as neither learned nor reliable, nor perhaps even respectable, but have become celebrities, perhaps for having appeared in their underpants on a talk show.
All end up being asked to write the preface to someone else’s book. To this kind of request each reacts in his own way, and some regard it as a welcome act of recognition. Others, like me, receive a dozen requests a month on subjects of all kinds, and from all sorts of people: the worthy colleague, the poetaster paying to be published, the first-time novelist, the inventor of a new perpetual motion machine.
Apart from finding it impossible to read every manuscript, and not wishing to sound like one of those prefacers who charges by the line, I now reply that, having said no to many close friends, it would seem offensive if I said yes to an outsider. And the matter usually ends there. But when it’s a friend who asks, I take the time to write a more detailed letter explaining what I have learned from many decades of experience in the book world. I explain that the motive for my refusal is to save him or her from a publishing disaster.
There are only two instances in which a preface is not a bad thing. One is when the person being prefaced is among the dead: a young scholar might introduce a new publication of the Iliad, and Homer will not be any the worse for it. The other, a famous and venerable author writing the preface for a new young talent. This is an act of paternalism, though the debut author will not worry about that, but will be proud of it, since he or she venerates and admires the matchless prefacer, and is pleased that the success of this first work will be assured. All other cases—by a living scholar to a living author, and by an adult to an adult—are a death blow to the author.
Generally the author or the publisher, in asking for a preface, imagines that the prefacer might help to sell a few more copies. The effect on a discerning reader is the following: “If this author, about whom I know nothing, needs help from this prefacer, it’s an indication that I’m better off knowing nothing about him or her, since he or she is clearly someone of little importance whom the prefacer has helped out for reasons of friendship, pity, political solidarity, or perhaps for money or sexual favors.”
If I go into a bookshop and find a book, let’s say memoirs in post-Wilhelmine Germany, my first reaction is “Good God, how ignorant I am. I knew nothing about this author. He or she must be a great expert on post-Wilhelmine Germany!” It’s a natural feeling. If, at a conference, someone refers to a book by So-and-So, someone I’d never heard of, my first reaction, if I have any sense, is to feel a cultural inadequacy and promise myself that sooner or later I will search this author out. But if I find the work of So-and-So in a bookstore and see it has a preface by some big name, my mind is instantly put at rest: of course I didn’t know So-and-So, because clearly he or she needs help to get noticed.
This line of reasoning is, I think, obvious, consistent, and persuasive, and when I explain it to the person who asked me to write a preface, I add that personally I wouldn’t wish to be prefaced by anyone—on the contrary, I’m against the practice of the university professor writing a preface for the student, since it’s the most lethal way, for all the above reasons, of exposing the youth and immaturity of the author.
And yet my interlocutor often remains unconvinced, and suspects my reasoning is inspired by ill will. And as I get older, many of those I’ve tried to help by my refusal become hostile.
Unless it happens, and I promise it actually did happen, the person then publishes the book at his own expense using my courteous letter of refusal as a preface. Such is the human thirst for prefaces.
2006
A noncomrade who gets it wrong
A website called La storia nascosta (The Hidden Story) quotes something I’m supposed to have said in El País: “The Red Brigades had the right idea about fighting against multinational companies, but were wrong to believe in terrorism.” It implies that I would go along with the formula “comrades who get it wrong,” and concede that “one could agree with the ideas, but not with the methods.” And it concludes: “If this is all Italian culture has to say thirty years after the assassination of Aldo Moro, it’s the same old story. Alas.”
But the site also has comments from visitors, including these sensible words from an anonymous person: “I rather doubt that Prof. Eco would have said something so banal. Foucault’s Pendulum includes, among other things, his own personal assessment of the Red Brigades in the 1960s and ’70s, which certainly doesn’t glorify the world of terrorism. I would be curious to know his exact words, and not the version that comes from the newspapers.” The person who runs the website, on the other hand, has read neither my Foucault’s Pendulum nor the articles I wrote in La
Repubblica at the time of Aldo Moro’s kidnapping and murder, which were republished in my book Sette anni di desiderio (Seven Years of Desire). That is his right, which I will defend until my dying day. But I suspect he hasn’t read my interview in El País either, based on a number of paragraphs in Italian, and which the article summed up in a few lines. To make a deduction from incomplete and false premises is an error of logic.
I will nevertheless respond, out of respect for that cautious anonymous contributor, and for others who, from a visit to this insidious website, might be led astray in all good faith.
What I said in the Spanish interview was the same as I had written thirty years ago. I said that the newspapers described the statements of the Red Brigades as “insane” when they talked about the so-called “Imperialist State of the Multinationals,” whereas, though expressed in rather colorful terms, it was the only idea that was not insane—save for the fact that the idea was not theirs but had been borrowed from European and American publications, in particular the Monthly Review. Talking at that time about the State of the Multinationals meant believing that world politics was no longer determined by individual governments but by a network of transnational economic powers who could moreover decide on questions of war and peace. In those days the prime example was what became known as the Seven Sisters, the seven oil companies that dominated the world’s petroleum industry. But today even children talk about globalization, and globalization means that the lettuce we eat is grown in Burkina Faso, washed and packaged in Hong Kong, and sent to Romania before being distributed to Italy or France. And that is the government of multinationals, and if the example seems banal, think about how large transnational aircraft companies can influence the decisions of the Italian government when it comes to the future of Alitalia.