What John Paul Jones Can Teach Us About Bullshit
And preparing for the worst than can happen
Why do we find so much bullshit when times are easy and so little when times are hard? And what do dragons drawn on the borders of medieval maps have to do with it?
Let us go back to 1779. Captain John Paul Jones of the Continental Navy is in command of the Bonhomme Richard, named in honor of his friend, Benjamin Franklin, who wrote the Poor Richard’s Almanac. Jones was a man of extremes. His eyes burned with such blazing light that John Adams saw a certain “Wildness” in them.1
Jones was hunting British ships and found his prey—the Serapis, commanded by Captain Pearson, a larger ship with fifty guns to Jones’ forty. A trigger happy seaman on the Bonhomme Richard fired first and both ships lit with explosions and flames as cannons hurled eighteen pound iron balls, smaller iron balls connected by a chain or bar that could cut through rigging, and grapeshot—tiny bits of iron—designed not to disable ships but to dismember men. After the first volley, heads, arms, legs, and torsos littered the top deck, which was probably painted red so that the sailors would be focused on the fight and not the blood.
The goal in naval battles was not to sink a ship but to kill so many men that the Captain was forced to “strike”, or surrender. The Captain of the Serapis was so close that he screamed from deck to deck over the din, “Have you struck?” Jones, carrying a sword and twelve pistols in his waist belt woven with gold lace (he had style), replied “I have not yet begun to fight.”2
The Bonhomme Richard was sinking. It was on fire. One of Jones’ allied ships betrayed him and fired on the Bonhomme Richard during the battle. One member of his crew begged him to surrender.
His reply will never be forgotten: “No! I will sink. I will never strike.”
Suddenly, an enterprising sailor on the Bonhomme Richard climbed up the rigging and lobbed a grenade through an open hatch on the Serapis, setting off powder cartridges that blew cannons apart and lit the Serapis on fire. Captain Pearson, against all odds, surrendered to Jones. The battle came to an end.
I am struck by Jones’ lack of bullshit. The words he uttered actually meant something. He would rather die than surrender.
What, then, is bullshit? Moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote a rigorous essay aptly titled On Bullshit. He defines bullshit as speech intended to persuade with complete disregard for truth.
Bullshit is not a lie: If John Paul Jones had said, “I will never strike” and knew that he would in fact strike, then he would be liar.
Bullshit is not the truth: If he had said, “I will never strike” and knew this to be true, then he would be what he was—captain of his soul.
Both liars and the honest know the truth while the former betrays it and the latter owns it. Bullshitters are not liars—they are worse, for they do not care whether what they say is true or false. If he had said, “I will never strike” but had never meditated on what it would mean for his reputation to end up striking after saying he would not, then he would be a bullshitter. If he had never solemnly weighed just how terrifying and painful death can be on a flaming wooden ship or in the cold depths of the sea, then he would be a bullshitter.
So, why is there so little bullshit in hardship?
In comfort, we may live by words alone; in hardship, words must lead to a truth or a lie. In comfort we may merely exist; in hardship we must actually live.
Bullshitters want to be seen as X more than they want to be X, whether X is a warrior, thinker, leader, or whatever. They want to be seen as willing to die for an idea, a cause, a friend, more than they want to be willing to die. It is a false projection of their self. In ease, we have the luxury of being able to bullshit not just a job, a relationship, or a belief, but our selves. Life can be a blur. A zero. A bullshitter can survive eighty years without having lived thirty seconds.
A bullshitter does not ask weighty questions. A bullshitter does not ask why do I live? what am I willing to die for? who am I willing to die for? how do I gain command over myself when the hammer falls? When these questions are held in our palm and silently contemplated, there is no room for bullshit.
My hunch is that John Paul Jones understood this.
How, then, can we use this as a guide to rid our culture of bullshit and bullshitters? Let us imagine how Jones may have prepared, and in doing so rid his soul of bullshit. Let us turn our eyes to the future, then back again, and finally to a visceral, Stoic attunement with the present moment and command of oneself.
Take projection: In hardship, we look ahead. We know that a moment in the not so distant future may be our last and we will be tested. We visualize catastrophe: flaming ships, screaming enemy captains, sailors begging us to surrender, and allies going rogue and blasting our broadsides with cannons.
Take inversion: By looking ahead, we can now follow the thread of worst case scenarios backwards and ask, “How, then, do I train?” How else than by obeying the law that iron sharpens iron? Than by introspection? Than by taking “know thyself” to heart? Than by devoting ourselves to a strenuous life? Than by learning comfort in discomfort? Than by inoculating ourselves against the disease of ease?
Take the dichotomy of control: In working backwards, we wrap our hands around what is under our control and what is not under our control. Neither future nor past are under our command. Nor our ship, our wind, our allies, our fame, our wealth, our dreams, our health, our very own lives—none of this is “ours” and can be stripped from us with one gust of wind or whim of a warlord. What then? When we finally stand on wood planks wet with apple-red blood and stare at gun powder barrels licked by yellow tongues of fire, our minds will, I think, already be made up. Our prior visualizations are now simply reality and our actions are now simply executed. My point is we are ready for that precise moment when every single thing goes wrong because there is no such thing as every-single-thing-going-wrong. It just happens, and we either roll it or get rolled by it.
Why not, then, invert the definition of bullshit? Of what use is speech intended to persuade with zero care for the truth when the path of silence in devotion to the truth lays open?
My sense is that we can institute a hardship mode of mind into our culture without the hardship itself by remembering that hardship is not an if but a when. I imagine it is according to this law that medieval maps primed the mind for hardship. Where the earth was not yet mapped, dragons were drawn on the margins as an elegant warning.
Hic sunt dracones—here be dragons.
The edge of the world was unknown, it was blackness, it was where all that would be under our command if we dared to venture into the dragons den was the muscle inside of our skulls.
What, then, is left but to train this muscle, preparing for the worst and learning what we are inside?
What then? is a passion project.
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See you for the next essay on Tuesday.
Ferling, John. Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Some claim his actual statement was less poetic, but hardcore nevertheless.
Great one, Sam. I’ve had a copy of “On Bullshit” in my bathroom for over a decade now (for obvious reasons). It’s classic for a reason.
When I did a relay swim crossing of the North Channel, our team motto was “HIC SVNT BOS” — for the same reasons you wrote about here (and the fact we all went to Tufts).
The story of John Paul Jones makes me wonder if the word “hardship” came from battle conditions and/or attributes of men who fight on ships during those times. Brilliant piece as always Sam