On Horseshit: A Field Guide

Human beings are masters of fiction. That wouldn’t be a problem if our fictions stayed in poetry and play. But no — we turn them into metaphysics, theology, political destiny. Then we march, kill, enslave, and oppress under banners made of pure horseshit.

This is not an insult; it’s an anthropology. Horseshit narratives are cultural hallucinations so sticky and persistent they outlast empires. Some are beautiful, some cruel, but all are artifacts of our ape brain groping for order.

Here is a field guide to a few of the biggest piles:

Karma

The promise that cosmic bookkeeping will even the scales. Do evil, and the universe will boomerang it back on you — maybe next life. Comforting? Sure. True? Yeah, right. The gulags, the slave ships, the gas chambers — no karmic justice ever appeared. Horseshit, but enduring horseshit.

Divine Command

Yahweh said it. Allah demanded it. The priest explained it. Therefore you must do it. The “God told me” clause has justified everything from circumcision to crusades to genital mutilation. It is horseshit on fire, and billions still inhale the smoke.

Historical Destiny

Manifest Destiny. The White Man’s Burden. Marx’s inevitable dialectical triumph. The notion that history has a direction and you’re on the right side of it. This horseshit has paved continents in blood. Spoiler: history has no side. We're on our own, and where we go is up to us.

Natural Law

“The natural order” decrees men lead, women obey, gays repent, kings rule, rights are divinely mandated by an Enlightenment-era deity in a powdered wig. No one ever quite explains how they got the transcript of Nature’s decree, but they enforce it with gallows and guns anyway---or dream that doctrines of natural rights will constrain Ted Bundy. Horseshit masquerading as biology.

Progress

The modern secular horseshit. Technology will save us. Markets will free us. Human reason will solve everything. The oceans fouling, the nukes waiting, the apes still fighting in caves with code-level brains — but sure, infinite growth forever, of its own inertia. Horseshit with Wi-Fi.

Why Horseshit Matters

Horseshit isn’t harmless. It encodes in skeins, it ossifies into law, it kills. Once horseshit becomes sacred, it is defended with blood. The Hot Philosophy begins by naming it. Horseshit is not metaphysics. It is primate hallucination, dressed in robes.

Our field guide is short. The piles are endless. But the principle is clear: before we can build anything worth saving, we must shovel---and clean up the stable.

For much more, read The Ass of the Apes.

Meet the janitor of metaphysics, the primate tasked with cleaning up the stable