The Piffle Rating Scale

I was in the midst of reading a large tome about meditation written by a Buddhist scholar that I would prefer to leave unnamed for now.That is mostly because I have respect for the work he has done over the years to promote the Buddhist contribution to psychology.. Although the book was in the 600-page realm, I had the distinct feeling that the important parts could easily have been explained in a 20-page article. Ah, such are the vagaries of the publication industry. But it got me thinking.

In reflecting on this phenomenon, I realized that we have, in the English language, a large vocabulary of words that describe this phenomenon, words such as “piffle”, ”drivel”, balderdash”, ”bunk”, “gobbledygook”, ”gibberish”, ”poppycock”, etc., etc. I will start with Webster’s Dictionary definition of my two favorites:1) piffle: talk or writing regarded as insignificant or nonsensical and 2) gobbledygook: talk or writing that is pompous, wordy, involved, full of long Latinized(or Greek) words .I particularly like the latter term as it refers directly to the phenomenon I am trying to underline. This kind of language is the substrate, the infrastructure if you will, of the “Cult of the Intellect” that I have been working so hard to undermine as I feel it is sabotaging, on many levels,our capacity to problem-solve and be practical.

As I explained in my previous article on Deprogramming, over thev years I have developed a hypersensitivity to this ”drivel” so much so that when I hear it, I get a bad smell in my head. he other sensation I get ,when I do my best to unpack this kind of thinking is that my brain is being twisted into a pretzel-always an indication that these are “mind-productions”

Now, the problematic part of this disconnected thinking is that it has good press and is the “monnaie courante” of the intellectual world. The more difficult something is to understand, the more it is considered profound and credible in that world. You will find it not only in philosophy where it has probably reached its apogee but in all other areas of intellectual endeavor form stream of consciousness literature like Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce and even in so-called “empirical science”. Abstract thought and theory are taken for fact in all of these fields. And the “critical thinking”  supposed to be taught in our educational institutions which was  to save us from wrongful speculation and conjecture has ended up being another force for confusion being  enacted in a reflex and predictable way(social conditioning)  rather than a discerning one.

Thankfully, there are some counterveiling forces at work nowadays. One of them is meditation where one attempts to get beyond the mind to Zen “seeing” and “ hearing” on an inner level. Paradoxically, however you get Buddhist authors like the one mentioned at the beginning of this article who begin reflecting on “no-mind”. Interesting oxymoron involved there lol. Also, you have lucid people like Eckhart Tolle talking to us about words as “pointers” and pointing out that the pointers are not the reality. We also have Byron Katie , one of the California-based spiritual illuminati telling us that all our problems come from the same place-we believe the contents of our own minds! These are salutary influences no doubt. So is the Goleman/Gardiner models of multiple intelligences, Although if I listen to modern-day students I do not hear these models being applied seriously.

Before we can fix this problem we need to identify it correctly. And .horror of horrors ,in imitation of the empirical scientists ,we will try to quantify it. Thus ”The Piffle Index” or “The Piffle Rating Scale”. What you have to do here is examine a given talk or piece of writing and give it a rating from 1-10 based on how much of the verbiage actually refers to nothing other than its own words and concepts. The higher the rating the more the piffle content. Thus, the bigger the number, the worst it is-a kind of intellectual toxicity index. Try it out. You might be surprised at how much of what you have been hearing or reading is bunk! It could change your life when you come to terms with it. You could end up being like Bob Dylan, Bill Gates or Steven Jobs and simply dropping out of university. I will surely not be popular with your parents after that lol! Salaams,Ibrahim