1 post tagged “unkind deeds and cover-ups”
Chapter 1: Unkind Deeds and Cover-Ups in Everyday Life
When someone dumps on us and then tries to cover-up,
a typical response is “You shit!”
Cara said to her lover Nick when she found out he had been seeing another woman, “What do you want? A harem?” An impish look appeared on Nick’s face, and he said, “Two women? That’s not much of a harem.” Cara laughed, tickled by the charm that endeared Nick to her. With her laugh, Cara’s tension lifted, and they talked about other things.
Nick had finessed Cara in an elegant, tailor-made way. His involvement with another woman had hurt Cara, and he covered up through humor. He had been with Cara long enough to know that a humorous response would distract her and lift her mood. Cara cooperated. She enabled Nick to be a shit.
Katherine Armstrong described as “little bitty pellets” the shotgun blast that the vice president of the United States fired into Harry Whittington while hunting quail on the Armstrong ranch in February 2006. She said that she herself had been shot upon occasion, and Harry was fine, sitting up in his hospital bed, “yakking.”
Actually, Harry spent six days in the hospital. A few days after being shot, he had a heart attack when a pellet migrated to his heart.
When Harry left the hospital, he said, “My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week. We send our love and respect to them as they deal with situations that are much more serious than what we have had this week…. We hope that he will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves.”
With these words, Harry enabled the vice president to cover up his unkind deed, in other words, to be a shit. Harry cooperated with the minimization of the vice president’s deeds and his own near-death.
Sophie told her husband Bill, “You’re too sensitive” when he gagged at the bits of beef, carrots, and asparagus, along with lumps of toothpaste and bubbles of spit she had left in the bathroom sink after she had brushed her teeth. Sophie’s words stung Bill. He instantly felt better when he resolved to leave his own mouth garbage in the sink the next time he brushed his teeth. Too sensitive, my ass. He’ll show her.
Sophie not only dismissed Bill’s concerns, but she distracted him away from her own insensitivity by pointing out something wrong with him. Being called sensitive hit one of Bill’s hot buttons. He believed he was too sensitive and was ashamed of that. Rather than be consumed with shame, he vowed to get back at Sophie. Bill bought into Sophie’s cover-up. He enabled her to be shit. By plotting revenge, Bill was on his way to becoming one himself.
Unkind Deeds and Cover-Ups
While differing in their details, these scenarios have much in common. In each of them, someone committed an unkind deed and then tried to cover up through humor, minimization, dismissiveness, and deflection of blame. In the vice president’s case, a spokesperson covered up for him.
In each case, recipients bought into the cover-ups. Harry Whittington may have only given the appearance of buy-in, but he spoke the words of one who enables others to get away with unkind deeds.
On Being a Shit is about such unkind deeds and cover-ups. Instances of being a shit flourish in families, in neighborhoods, at work, and on the highway. The potential for being a shit exists wherever two
or more people congregate. Getting others to believe unkind deeds are their fault is the crowning achievement of being a shit
Unkind deeds and cover-ups extend into politics, business, sports, academic life, and even world affairs. Richard M. Nixon’s “I don‘t recall” cover-up of his knowledge of the Watergate break-in is one of the most famous political cover-ups in the last fifty years. Floyd Landis’ alleged doping during the 2006 Tour de France bicycle race and his apparent cover-ups have made headlines throughout the world.
For more than twenty-five years, I did research on serious violence, such as rape, child molestation, and murder. In their own words, perpetrators described multiple and ingenious ways they evaded responsibility for their behaviors and, whenever possible, blamed others for their own terrible deeds.
As I became familiar with criminal acts and cover-ups, I began to notice variations of them operating in everyday life among persons who had committed relatively minor unkind deeds and who sought to cover them up through evasion, distortion, and blame.
When I read Harry Frankfurt’s best-selling book On Bullshit, I found a name for the unkind deeds and cover-ups that I had noticed for so many years. I termed these everyday acts being a shit and decided to write a book about them. Frankfurt, a philosopher, wrote a philosophical essay. I am a researcher, and the present book is a report on research I conducted.
Why an Impolite Word?
I chose the impolite being a shit over other more respectable terms such as being insufficiently accountable and the evasion of responsibility because the term being a shit fits how we experience unkind deeds and cover-ups in everyday life. When someone dumps on us and then tries to cover it up, a typical response is “You shit!”
I wrote this book to let others know what I have learned from years of research and in so doing to help them avoid being trapped in the maneuvers that are now so familiar to me. With this level of awareness, I freely admit that I have been a recipient of unkind deeds and cover-ups and have expertise in enabling them. I am much better
at being a recipient than an enactor, although I have some talent in that regard as well.
I also wrote this book in the hope that those who enact being shits will enjoy reading about themselves, until, of course, they get to the parts where they see that I am on to them. Then, I cannot predict what they will do, perhaps ridicule the book so they can carry on. A few may see the light and change their ways.
My fondest hope is that On Being a Shit will clue recipients about their parts in the cycle of shitty behaviors, and they will opt out of cooperating with the sometimes clever and not-so-clever strategies of cover-up that hook them into believing that false representations are true.
Developing and Testing a Theory of Being a Shit
In this book, I developed and tested a theory of being a shit. To do so, I applied a scientific method called deductive qualitative analysis (DQA). This approach to theory building draws from two bodies of thought. The first is the work of philosopher Karl Popper who wrote that science is based upon conjectures, refutations, and reformulations. Science begins with conjectures, or theories. Scientists test these theories. They refute and reformulate theories when there is evidence to do so.
The second body of thought is qualitative sociology, where researchers develop and test hypotheses. They seek cases that will refute their theories and force them to reformulate. Their goal is a revised theory that fits the cases on which the theory was tested. This approach is called analytic induction. Detail on method is in the Appendix.
Deductive qualitative analysis involves several steps. The first is to write down everything researchers already know about the phenomena of interest. The next is to review what others have written about the phenomena and related conditions. Based on what researchers learn from these two steps, they formulate a preliminary theory. Then they test the preliminary theory and change it when there is evidence to do so. The final product is a revised theory that fits the new evidence. Researchers typically do DQA in order to come up with a better, more accurate and trustworthy theory. That was my purpose in developing and testing a theory of being a shit.
Steps Involved in the Present Investigation
I followed these procedures in the present investigation. I first wrote out my assumptions, based upon my own research, my professional experience as a social worker, and observations of everyday life. The results of this effort compose Chapters One and Two. Next, I reviewed scholarly writings on the meanings of the word shit and on related conditions, such as humbug, bullshit, and lying. I also consulted cognitive neuroscience for insights this discipline might offer. These reviews are in Chapters Three and Four.
I then developed a preliminary theory of being a shit. This composes Chapter Five. Following that, I tested the theory on a series of cases. The testing is reported in Chapters Six through Nineteen.
In Chapters Twenty through Twenty-Four, I applied the theory to cases where enactors either voluntarily mended their ways or were pressured to do so. Chapter Twenty-Five is a commentary on fake and true accountability. Chapter Twenty-Six shows what not to do when enactor blow back at persons who confront them about their unkind deeds and cover-ups. Chapters Twenty-Seven through Thirty-Two discuss the results of testing the theory. The results include finings that the preliminary theory did not anticipate, such as the joys of being a shit and what to call enactors who fail at being shits.
These final chapters include a revised and tested theory and a discussion of the implications of the revised theory. Included in the discussion are lessons learned on how to resist the tactics that enactors use to cover up their unkind deeds.
The cases on which I tested the theory are stories about people from many walks of life and who covered up a wide variety of unkind deeds. I chose a diverse sample because I want the theory to be useful to many different situations.
I found that the theory fit most cases well. The theory also helped me to see aspects of being a shit I might not otherwise have noticed. Thus, the theory served a sensitizing purpose; that is, it gave me a set of ideas that helped in the analysis of the cases.
No theory can be considered reliable and trustworthy until researchers have tested it exhaustively and deliberately in a systematic way and compared the theory with the facts of each case. Researchers reformulate the theory until it satisfactorily fits all the cases on which it was tested. At that point, the theory becomes both reliable and trustworthy. The present theory of being a shit underwent such testing. It has great promise to enlighten a pervasive human condition.
This book spoofs social science theory-building, while also having a serious side. Who ever heard of testing a theory of being a shit? On the other hand, being a shit happens so often that it warrants close scientific scrutiny. What’s more, this book provides a model of how to do theory testing using qualitative data, something that is of interest to many social scientists.
I hope readers enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it and that its contents enlighten them as much as I have been enlightened.
