“Everywhere she went, she was told how great she was, how smart she was, how talented she was. Before long she was believing every word of it.”

That line is from the thriller The Terminal List by Jack Carr, and refers to one of the fictional characters, the US Secretary of Defense who was married to a Congressman. I touched on the point of this post in another thread, but it might be clearer with its own explanation. The abbreviation BOBS refers to “believing one’s bullshit.”*

The line from the novel describes a syndrome that I first recognized in myself a long time ago after an embarrassing experience teaching at an Army school. As I mentioned in another thread, after becoming accustomed to my students’ hanging on my every word of wisdom for a couple of years about subjects that I was very familiar with, I was put in the position of teaching a subject that I didn’t know much about other than what was in a old, very brief lesson plan. When asked a question in the class that I didn’t really know the answer to, I basically just guessed. I was the instructor, right? Whatever I thought was correct, must be correct. How could I be wrong?

Well, I was wrong, and one of the students who actually knew the right answer (and who outranked me) set me straight to my undying chagrin. At that point I realized that I had unconsciously fallen into the trap of assuming that because no one had ever challenged anything I’d ever taught from the podium before, anything that popped into my head must also be correct. In other words, I believed my own bullshit.

In reflecting on the experience, I came to realize that I wasn’t the only victim of believing one’s bullshit, and to one degree or another, it’s so common as to be an almost universal human trait. But the degree to which people suffer it and how they display the syndrome varies widely among individuals based on different factors.

Probably the most important factor in catching the BOBS disease is being surrounded by sycophants who continually reinforce someone’s beliefs about themselves. The process often starts with fan worship, and that’s most common about celebrities such as singers, actors, sports figures, or other entertainers. Soon, however, the people who are allowed into an inner circle realize that there are benefits that go along with being part of the circle, and because they like it, they become careful to avoid doing or saying anything that might get them ejected from their special association with fame and glory.

And then the next step for those special people that is that, like most of us, they begin to offer their opinions and beliefs about things that have no relevance to why they attracted followers in the first place. A movie actor who has a following of loyal fans may decide that she should do what she can to end what she believes to be an immoral war, and when she raises the idea, no one close to her objects. She then goes off and consorts with the enemy without any real understanding or perhaps concern of how such an act will be perceived by some people outside of her sycophantic circle.

That sort of thing is a somewhat special case of the BOBS disease, though. It’s more common in people who aren’t famous and who exhibit the disease’s symptoms in more limited ways to fewer others. Examples are anyone who is a boss or otherwise in charge at some level in an employment or other hierarchal or supervisory setting: parents, teachers/instructors, coaches, managers, religious clergy, despots and dictators, et al.

Even if the individual is subject to occasional challenge and criticism—politicians being an obvious example—those challenges have no force if the person is immune and shielded from any consequences of being wrong. We see countless examples of politicians’ being reelected or otherwise being supported in various ways over and over regardless of how irrational or invalid their statements may be. With enough support and lack of accountability, they can blithely continue to believe their own bullshit and be convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is the stupid one.

It’s even worse, of course, if the challenger puts himself at risk by saying anything. For example, an employee of a small company is unlikely to object to or challenge the pontifications of the owner even if they are clearly wrong. After I realized that a store manager where I worked had no interest in a rational discussion about his religious beliefs that he occasionally inflicted on the staff, I simply shut up and made no more effort to point out his obvious ignorance about the matter. Although I was unlikely to have been fired and wouldn’t have cared much if I had been, it simply wouldn’t have been worth the other consequences of doing that. As the antiwar protesters pointed out during the 1960s, “Just because you’ve silenced someone doesn’t mean you’ve convinced them.”

So, why this post? Other than just to get it off my chest, perhaps some people will recognize how the BOBS syndrome affects them personally, just as I did after the embarrassing teaching incident I experienced so long ago.

* The original expression was “believing one’s own bullshit,” or BOOBS, but that as the meaning of that word has evolved to its present reference to female anatomy and therefore might be offensive to some or otherwise be inappropriate, I shortened it to BOBS. (And no offense intended to any Roberts in the audience .)

The military (and other organizations as well) are horrible about this. It is reinforced by years of "that's how I was taught" nonsense. When you dig down you discover that you are doing something that was required in the A model but is completely unnecessary in the C model but we all had been taught by A model guys so by goodness that is how it is done.

That is one reason I love and hate discussion forums. It is an easy venue to call out and get called out without any actual trauma. Or it should be. If I say something stupid, I absolutely should expect and appreciate being corrected. Keeps me from saying the same stupid thing in an environment where it could actually cause me trouble.

Problem is, most people hate being corrected or pointed out the error in their thought. We all suffer from this in varying degrees.