Real Quick:
Bullshit, like matter or energy, can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only be made to change forms.
This is an important thing to remember before switching jobs, switching friends, and making any sort of important life decisions. Bullshit is one of the elemental particles of human existence. Things are never better, only different. Your goal in life should be to find the type of bullshit that best suits your personality.
I, for example, greatly prefer the bullshit of highly logical people to that of highly emotional people. And I prefer the bullshit of drunk people to that of sober people. If you're a naturally claustrophobic person, you might want to leave your job working in a mineshaft for one working in an Arizona manure farm. Success is simply a matter of finding the shit that -- for you -- doesn't stink.
Now. Back to work.
Top 5 discussion topics when you don't really want to know shit about somebody:
1) Weather
Oh, weather. The old small talk standby. How I despise talking about the weather! There's really nothing clever you can say that isn't a terrific cliché and you never learn anything interesting or useful by talking about it. It's the epitome of bullshit, and I hate it.
2) Careers
Asking about somebody's career is a way of getting information about them. But it's not really getting into their heart, or even their head. People take careers for money, because they feel they're supposed to, or because they fell into them. They're not always, or even commonly, because the person is passionate about what they do. But they'll no doubt want to show off what they know, relay some workplace anecdotes, talk about their big city dreams of success and notoriety -- which, if nothing else, is a great time waster, and not nearly as boring as the weather.
3) Current Events
Purely informational. Opinions gleamed from such conversations aren't to be trusted, because they're based on the skew of the information. Anything you think learn about a person from a discussion of current events should be taken with a grain of salt...unless the conversation turns political. Which is might. If nothing else, current events are a good jump off for such a discussion...just make sure you can maintain your composure and your tact. Nothing generates hate like cross politics...except maybe religion.
4) Sports
People have favorite teams and favorite players and teams, sports, players that they hate. But the hatred and favoritism is irrational. Favorite teams are often a result of style, acclaim and geography, and not a person's essence. Favorite players are sometimes a result of hero worship over a player with a similar worldview, and occasionally they're just the result of picking the guy with the best record. There's no insight into a person's personality to be had by asking whether they prefer Dominick Hasek or Jean-Sebastien Giguere. I prefer Hasek's nimble save's to Giguere's synchronous ones, but that doesn't really impact my personality at all. Doesn't mean I'm typing this more nimbly, or snubbing lucky adjectives when they come to me.
Still, a lot of people like to talk about sports. There's a lot of room for harmless disagreement BECAUSE spectator sports don't really affect a person. Sport debates are heated and at the end of them there's no hard feelings. This is what makes them such popular bar themes.
5) Clothing, looks and style
Clothing is one of the elemental necessities of humanity...but it's also the easiest and most readily disguised aspect of personality. A guy in a leather jacket and hair down to his ass may be the world's biggest sweetheart. A guy in a clean, crisp suit may be the world's biggest dick. The point is, you know nothing about a person from their style choice, other than how much they care about style, and even THAT can be posed and fake (Right, American Eagle?).
This is why style kids seem so vapid. They're real people with real ideas and real emotions -- they just never come up.
Top 5 discussion topics for really getting to know somebody:
1) Music
You can ask somebody about art, movies, books, and pretty much any other form of media, and chances are they either won't have much of an opinion or will defer to a stock viewpoint on whatever they have most recently experienced. It takes so much knowledge and time to get into film or art that it really isn't worth it for a lot of people -- and others just reiterate whatever their friends think.
But music...everybody has favorites, everybody has opinions, and they're great reflections on a person's worldview. Think what you know about a person just by discovering their car stereo tuned to a country station -- or college radio. Think what you know about a person when you discover they're not into "anything in particular."
Musical interest can of course be posed, and faked, but you can generally fish that out quickly. The old standby from middle school is naming members of the band. If your conversational partner looks lost...hey, they're caught on the lie.
2) Food
Food is a window into a person's passions. Eating is political, social, spiritual, emotional...it's a basic, elemental concept, and it's not generally posed or protected like clothing or shelter. You can tell how bohemian or healthy or dedicated to animal rights a person is. You can tell how much they like to show off or experiment. You can tell if they're a picky bitch. Eating is important!
3) Religion
Don't fuck with a man's religion, or lack thereof. Arguing religion's a lot like telemarketing...there's a lot of annoyance for the rare gains. There is pretty much no chance that you'll change a devout person's mind. And a doubter's mind is so easily changed -- and changed back -- that there's no reason to do so. Convince a real doubter there's no reason not to eat pork, and he'll be abstaining again first time his mother finds out. And the fact is, though religious beliefs are one of the easiest things to fake and pose, it's also really easy to tell a poseur from a real nut.
Religion is great for getting to know somebody, because they'll attribute their own beliefs to their diety. If a person doesn't like homosexuals, then their god hates f_gs. If a person doesn't own much, then greed is the first step to their hell. Personally, I believe in that everything is the result of everything else -- sort of like a Materialist with Newtons' Second Law on infinite repeat. So I'm inclined to look for the cause of everything. Hence this post.
Oh, and if you bring up religion, make DAMN sure you don't turn it into a pissing contest. Your views are seperate from theres, and they're equal. You THINK you're RIGHT, you don't KNOW they're WRONG. Making such "absolute verities" into possible uncertainties saves you from the wrath of whatever diety or dieties controls those truths.
4) Politics
Politics are in a lot of ways the real morality these days. Not "thou shalt not steal," but "thou shalt only steal when it's legal." Not "thou shalt not kill," but "here's a list of when it's okay to kill." As such, people's politics are windows into what people really feel.
I know...politicians are fakers and poseurs of the worst kind. Not really. If you talk to one, you can drive him into corners where he either has to tow the line or admit what he really feels. Take, for example, the homeless. Most politicians couldn't care less about what happens to them...but the subject is a big jingoist liberal hotbutton. Push it and watch where a guy goes. If he heads along the line without straying, chances are he doesn't care. If he tosses in real ideas and real insight, chances are he does. This is how you figure out what people really want, what people really feel -- by analyzing the originality and insight of their responses. If they're typical, it's obvious the response was memorized to give the appearance of deep social understanding. If they're atypical, they're probably the result of real thought, real problem solving.
It's my opinion that a lot of staunch Republicans just want to keep up the bourgeois tax breaks and intolerance of the 20th Century. And that a lot of card carrying Democrats just want people to like them for their perceived humanity and liberalism -- or to make a crash grab off others that want this. Any political wit beyond this archetype I generally take at face value.
Be careful when you argue politics. There is an opportunity to turn redfaced with rage over the discordant worldview your colleagues posess. There's also the chance to look like a total asshole in front of future friends and lovers. The best way to play is edgewise, like religion. Start small. Don't jump from the topic of welfare reform straight into a concession of your crippling racism. For some reason people can be put off by this.
5) Underwear choice
Actually, I just needed something to round out the 5. But there is a lot you can tell from underwear, and I don't even mean cues about a person's sensuality or devotion to hygiene. I mean that a person's reaction to the subject is telling. It's a topic that's innocent, yet flirtateous, and therefore it probes levels of intimatacy and ease. A lengthy, truthful answer is a sign of safety. A curt or glib response is a sign that you should probably stick to asking about the weather. And it's a great icebreaker...if a tad cliché. It's a way to cull out the truly chickenshit. And it begs a response in turn -- which makes it something akin to a conversational blood pact. At the end of the conversation about underwear, you're almost guaranteed a better bond -- or an addition to you enemies list. Conversations about farting are good for this, too.
I hate people who say that if you're against war, you want our troops to die. This is just a fallacy. My best friend is a marine who speaks arabic. I'm against the war because I DON'T want him to die, and I feel that we're putting him in position to do that for no direct benefit to our country.
I hate people who feel they need to prove their patriotism and loyalty to me. This is not a pissing contest. Nobody's going to deport you for being a little skeptical or for having an original opinion -- we haven't gone that far into "1984" yet. And putting a yellow ribbon or a flag or a picture of a fireman on your car is nothing more than fluff. If you want to support police and firemen, volunteer to fight fires, donate to the benevolency society. If you want to support our troops, make damn sure they're fighting and dying for the right things by keeping America beautiful, safe and free.
I hate people who believe the government when it says it "has evidence, but can't show you." This is also a fallacy because the government is always trying to show us evidence that they're doing the right thing...and it's often slipshod (think of Clinton's second inauguration with its multicultural Parade of People We Helped).
I hate people who feel angry, sad, happy, nervous, outraged, violated, whatever, merely because they think they should. Emotion is a precious thing but only if it's pure. Homogenizing that shit kills the passion. If you don't feel victimized, don't let anybody tell you to act the victim -- because then you'd be one for sure.
I hate people who don't realize that France, Russia, Germany, China, Australia, Canada, and pretty much the rest of the world has intelligence agencies, too. They aren't as well funded as ours, perhaps, but they sure as hell aren't in rags. If we have intelligence, it stands to reason THEY have the same intelligence, as evidenced by the cold war. And if they look at the intelligence, and make a decision, it is absolutely invalid to say they "don't know what we do" just so we don't have to admit there's little evidence to support our rhetorical bias.
I hate people who tell you that they're conservative, religious, moral and family oriented and then proudly admit they're pro-gun, pro-war, pro-drug war and pro-death penalty. Even though I agree with some of these policies, I think it takes an amazing cretin to clutch a book that says "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself" while talking about hate and violence. It's things like this that cause me to dismiss most religions as "morality shelters" -- institutions people clutch to so they can have an excuse to be bigoted and hateful.
I hate people who can't see the way the world really works because they believe their own hype and rhetoric. Example: it is really illegal to do and sell drugs in this country. You will do serious time if you're caught, and not in some mamby-pamby minimal security white collar joint. They'll have you in Oz without the ruby slippers before you can say William Sessions. And yet, people still do it, because it is easy money or they need an escape. It's pretty obvious that making them more illegal isn't going to make this go away. It's also obvious that "education" isn't helping them go away...shit, the anti drug campaigns at my high school were fairly factual and candid and I don't think it decreased the percentage of kids getting wasted at all. So our drug policy can't work. And yet, we can't reduce any of the funding to these useless programs, because people complain that it will damage "the kids." These are the blind people. "The kids" are already into drugs, maybe even your kids, and no policy or instruction can change that. I don't touch anything stronger than Vitamin C supplements while my brother smoked joints laced with heroin. Same parents. Same instruction. About the same social level. There was obviously something else going on with him. He needed some way to keep him safe while he did this stupid shit, and a reminder that we could get him help when he needed it without reprecussion. Sending him to prison for life helps nobody, and costs us about $35,000 per year. So stop doing it, asshole.
I hate people who can't see the way the world really works because they choose to ignore facts and theories that would invalidate their worldview. A good example is all the people who don't understand science. I identify them by the way they say they don't BELIEVE in evolution, chemistry, etc. What the shit is that? There's nothing to believe when there's hard evidence. Put a grey rat with a white rat and the child is dapple white and grey. Multiply that by 100,000,000 and there's your evolution. Turn on your car. There's chemistry, mechanical and electrical engineering, physics, the preservation of energy, entropy, enthalpy and pretty much anything else you want. There's PROOF, there's nothing to believe. Now turn your car off, take out the key, and start praying for it to start. Does it start? Great, no proof. I guess prayer must be based in BELIEF. Which is why "miracles" are my biggest problem with the Christian bible (#2 is "angels"). For one thing they always seem like superstition tacked on to what is otherwise a tale about a really great guy. For another thing, they invalidate faith because they flat out tell you what to believe. And finally, unless you see them, they're just silly. If a book just told me a guy came back to life and made fish go around real well and such, and it was true story, I would be unimpressd. After all, Whitley Streiber told me that aliens kidnapped a couple and warned them about the coming nuclear war and it was true, too. He even named his book "Communion." I am not impressed by second hand evidence of outrageous claims...I'm inclined to ask the jews and hindus for a little peer review. However, the philosophy of non violence and extreme tolerance and devotion and sacrifice...that's something I can get into. That's the human condition, the heart that validates the science fiction. And I don't see where any of that philosophy expects me to ignore my own eyes, ignore my own deductive reasoning which something (a beneveolent creator, a cunning ordering component of entropy, a stack of turtles) has gifted me with. After all, Thomas had to see the holes in Jesus' hands. Seems to me like the Bible's commanding us to be skeptical.