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Few weeks ago as part of a conversation I was having with BB on the origins of humor, he said (words to the effect) that wouldn’t it be worth it to get rid of humor if we could simultaneously obliterate sexism, racism, class-ism, homophobia, etc?
And I said, No!
Yesterday, my scribbling took an unexpected turn when I found myself describing an underground club in one of the alternate strands in my protagonist’s time-traveling past where people sit around making horribly politically incorrect jokes. That’s all they do! The activity is strictly illegal, and toward the end of the iteration, the club is busted and the participants are all led off to prison.
Why are Jewish men circumcised?
Because Jewish women won’t touch it unless it’s 20% off
What does a black guy do after sex?
Twenty to life.
A young boy and a pedophile are walking through the woods at night. The boy says to the pedophile, “I’m scared!” The pedophile replies, “How do you think I feel? I’m gonna be walking back alone.”
This bit of scribbling almost certainly will not make it into whatever final version of my story ever evolves – it does absolutely nothing to advance the plot. But it was an interesting exercise.
I mean, I get it on the evolutionary level. There are too many human beings on the planet for individualism to continue being any kind of normative behavioral guideline. Human beings have to begin thinking collectively. Since individuality is all about competition, living collectively means obliterating as many of the ingrained competitive advantages as possible i.e. sexism, racism, classism, homophobia etc.
Are sexism, racism, classism, homophobia wrong? Well, they’re certainly distasteful to me.
But I don’t believe there are actually any such things as moral absolutes. Moral absolutes are just tools, pragmatic behavioral controls that evolve as cultures evolve to support evolutionary imperatives.
The political correctness that’s sweeping my particular corner of the universe finds its ideological reflection in the Christian right in the Western world as well as in the fundamentalist jihadist madness of the Islamic reaches, so far as I’m concerned.
One might say each of these milieus is characterized by a lack of tolerance for what it has labeled "objectionable." But, of course, you can’t be expected to tolerate something that’s just plain wrong, can you?
So I’d have to say it’s more characterized by a belief in absolutes.
And my problem is that I don’t believe in absolutes. I never have.
And I said, No!
Yesterday, my scribbling took an unexpected turn when I found myself describing an underground club in one of the alternate strands in my protagonist’s time-traveling past where people sit around making horribly politically incorrect jokes. That’s all they do! The activity is strictly illegal, and toward the end of the iteration, the club is busted and the participants are all led off to prison.
Why are Jewish men circumcised?
Because Jewish women won’t touch it unless it’s 20% off
What does a black guy do after sex?
Twenty to life.
A young boy and a pedophile are walking through the woods at night. The boy says to the pedophile, “I’m scared!” The pedophile replies, “How do you think I feel? I’m gonna be walking back alone.”
This bit of scribbling almost certainly will not make it into whatever final version of my story ever evolves – it does absolutely nothing to advance the plot. But it was an interesting exercise.
I mean, I get it on the evolutionary level. There are too many human beings on the planet for individualism to continue being any kind of normative behavioral guideline. Human beings have to begin thinking collectively. Since individuality is all about competition, living collectively means obliterating as many of the ingrained competitive advantages as possible i.e. sexism, racism, classism, homophobia etc.
Are sexism, racism, classism, homophobia wrong? Well, they’re certainly distasteful to me.
But I don’t believe there are actually any such things as moral absolutes. Moral absolutes are just tools, pragmatic behavioral controls that evolve as cultures evolve to support evolutionary imperatives.
The political correctness that’s sweeping my particular corner of the universe finds its ideological reflection in the Christian right in the Western world as well as in the fundamentalist jihadist madness of the Islamic reaches, so far as I’m concerned.
One might say each of these milieus is characterized by a lack of tolerance for what it has labeled "objectionable." But, of course, you can’t be expected to tolerate something that’s just plain wrong, can you?
So I’d have to say it’s more characterized by a belief in absolutes.
And my problem is that I don’t believe in absolutes. I never have.
