Politically Incorrect Comedy

The fact that Chappelle is getting a lot of flack from critics indicates a growing divide between the rational and the emotional-intuitive sides of the collective psyche. We’re trying to break bad habits by going cold turkey but end up punishing ourselves when muscle-memory inadvertently jerks us back into our well-worn prejudices. To move forward without tearing ourselves apart, we must honor the irrational, for it has its own internally consistent reasons.

We laugh at racist and sexist jokes because it releases the tension held fast by idealism intolerant of imperfection. Fighting fascism with thought policing perpetuates the authoritarianism upon which the fascism is founded. Like gladiatorial sport did for Rome, politically incorrect comedy can vent primitive drives toward disorder.

The danger of edgy comedy normalizing bigotry used to be offset by the diversity of the crowd attending the same event. Comics in the 80s and early 90s could nonchalantly ask the audience, “How many of you are liberals? How about conservative?” and the crowd would respond without splitting into camps and booing the other. A joke was understood to be a joke and not a slippery slope into death camps or toxic-something culture. This mistrust of a vital venting opportunity for the other side becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as accusations engender defensiveness and eventually preemptive offense.

Polarization will not go away with both sides becoming more authoritarian. As the disequilibrium mounts in culture, we need release valves, and I think acknowledging our prejudices with levity can loosen us up.

Further exploration

You Can't Hit Unsend: How A Social Media Scandal Unfolded At Harvard [npr.org]: Podcast episode about some students' racist and sexist jokes costing them their admission to Harvard, despite the fact that they were often making fun of their own class.

Punishment feedback loop

Xenophobe: You hate because you have been fatally shot. Your body rose from the dead but dead in spirit and seeking revenge. You spread the message of hate through your words and actions, inciting fear and motivating further hate. It doesn't matter that they hate you; at least you have made them feel the wrath that you feel.

Anti-xenophobe: You hate because you have been fatally shot. You seek revenge and call it justice, not caring if the killers die in the process. Dehumanizing the enemy, you provoke him to dehumanize you. It doesn't matter that hate is multiplied in the world; at least you have made them feel the brunt of justice.

Ex-convict: Released from jail having been taught long months or years of "justice", you go out into the world to spread the good word about this so-called justice. They thought punishment will make you good, so you think punishment will make everyone else good, too.

Replace the two characters with whatever us-versus-them you want. It's a positive feedback loop that fools the players into thinking it's a negative feedback loop. Each party expects the other party to give in, but instead, the conflict just escalates.

Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. I see the results of hate, whatever sneaky form it takes, and I turn away from spreading it. I teach you peace by being peaceful despite having been apparently tortured. I say "apparent" because torture requires conscious intent, and my violators were not conscious.

Be Beautiful

What you do is all for yourself.
Even guilt and self-punishment is done in service to self as a means to cleanse evil.
Leave yourself in good hands instead.
Seek not the company of haters; they come only at your calling.
People are multidimensional and holographic reflections of you, so be as beautiful as the world you want to see.

Moral Decision Making and Happiness

Video about how we value ill-gotten gains.

People are more willing to shock themselves for the same amount of money than to shock someone else. In fact, you have to pay them twice as much to shock someone else. People are nice.

Now tell them that the money won't go to them but to a charity. Suddenly, they want to shock themselves more. And they're also even more willing to shock others! Shocking: People can be extra mean if they think they're doing good.

Molly Crockett, your breadth of knowledge in the area of behavioral economics, if I may stretch the term a little, is wide. The humility through which you approach the study of how humans try, fail, and succeed to be good makes me trust your work more, knowing you are observant for more and better information. This is an important topic that could use rational minds to help clarify so we can find a more effective path to happiness for all.

Reason in Means and Ends

Preferences form the basis for how we see the world. At the most fundamental level, organisms can be seen as preference computers. They interpret sensory stimuli as attractive or aversive, gravitating toward the former. Opinions are more or less complex preferences. They add nuance to our movements toward and away from things and situations. Without them, we might as well be the simplest automata like a neutrino careening into the abyss.

From a utilitarian perspective, some basic (e.g., “biological”) preferences drive a complex of preferences and opinions, which in turn engages logical reasoning to maximize the return on caloric investment. This, I believe, is the relationship of reason to opinion. Reason itself is only a means to an end and cannot be an end in itself. Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem cast doubt onto the ability of formal systems like arithmetic and Aristotelean logic to perfectly undergird an epistemology (and, I would venture to say, an ethic).

However, I do see value in cleaning the lens, again from a utilitarian standpoint. To use a computer metaphor, a computer program or algorithm is opinionated in that it drives toward a certain goal, which the programmer decides. However, the steps in its procedures should be strictly deterministic and free from arbitrary preferences. Hence, we should work to enhance the reliability of the mechanical aspects of information processing and to remove the aberrations of the lens through which we see to work toward our goals.

Simulacra and Meaninglessness

I thought the language in A Course in Miracles is too verbose and archaic. Then I started reading Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard. Now that is complicated. I got frustrated reading passages like:

...the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials—worse: with their artificial resurrection in the system of signs, a material more malleable than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all combinatory algebra. (p. 2)

So much ado about nothingness, literally. Exasperated, I pick up ACIM to a random page like a magic 8-ball. The first words that confront me are:

Would God have left the meaning of the world to your interpretation? If He had, it has no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true. The Holy Spirit looks upon the world as with one purpose, changelessly established. And no situation can affect its aim, but must be in accord with it. For only if its aim could change with every situation could each one be open to interpretation which is different every time you think of it. (T.30.VII.1)

Escape the Echo Chamber

The world is merely a story you are writing. Whatever you want to have happen happens. The internet is a prime example of the flexibility of reality. As you search, so shall you get search results. Whatever your political leaning or worldview, you will find the corner of the internet that echoes your sentiments and populates the trenches of the evil other side.

The internet saps your energy because you are the one producing the image you see, but you do this unknowingly, and so you don't notice your energy depleting as you set up the props and puppets that enact the plot you sleeplessly yet somnambulistically wrote. The so-called real world is but a slowed down version of the internet. You eventually find what you subconsciously look for there as well.

If you're tired of make-believe conflicts and making love to blow up dolls, there is a way out. It is to become aware of this constant seeking outside yourself for a confirmation of thoughts you've generated inside yourself. Objectively observe the molding of this sculpture you call yourself by the slings and arrow of outward fortune, which all seem to come from outside yet are your own hands or, more precisely, your own thoughts reacting to the pseudorandom numbers the dark cloud of chaos dances in answer to your rain dance calling for it.

There is a point of decision in which you threw out the peace of nonbelief and began believing things. Perhaps you can remember a time in your childhood when you encountered the thought, "You are a bad boy/girl," and decided it was true. Along with that thought came the promise of punishment from a perceived other to mar the serenity of a mind where thoughts were mere playthings and not the confining walls of granite they were to become. Fight the walls and you testify to their reality while bruising your fists. Deny the walls and you throw away the key while still acting within their confines.

Fortunately there is a window through which you can peek out of this prison and glimpse the endless field of innocence outside. No matter how long you've sentenced yourself to a belief in punishment, there is that hole in the belief that naturally rips apart the entire thought system upon recognition. This is the constructive use of doubt or judgment. You are always so ready to doubt others' ideas and motives; why not apply this skepticism to your own insanity? You are not fundamentally and incorrigibly insane no matter how long you've played at being so. Return to the still point from which you choose all experiences. Rest a while there. And choose again.