Occurred to me that, when we’re creating sexy stories (as one tends to), if you cannot:
- make something sexy without abusing someone
- make something funny without mocking someone
- make a point about immigration/politics without dishonouring an entire race/group
… then you’re a fucking moron, and should probably stop what you’re doing and have a little think. Because what you’re doing is so low-brow and lifeless that you are effectively holding the court of a chimpanzee.
There are many reasons why primate social groups are the way they are, and even our recent ancestors were often not far off the politics of literal poo-flinging. If you were in charge of a village 10,000 years ago, you could hold court simply by being the most violent, and survival within that miserable court meant going along with the crowd as much as possible and hoping the heat didn’t get turned on you. It’s command by fear. Not every village was like that, and those that actually looked after people were more diverse and therefore resilient when it came down to it, hence our anthropological gradual increase in sophistication and civility.
The opposite of diversity – homogeneity – is a death sentence. Just look at Sparta; very impressive that you’re all warriors, congratulations. Wiped out. Because nobody isn’t a strong and brave warrior getting kebabbed by overwhelming numbers. Moltman talks about this, where homogeneity in community is no community at all, but is simply there to corroborate hatred. It works in the short term, and only if you don’t take account of the misery it propagates both short and long -term..
Perhaps controversially, I believe that humans are at their natural core, truly good. Having worked in some incredibly dire situations [see notes in Grace] and seen people at their worst, I am always surprised by people’s kindness and wonder. Even total dickheads, when you take the time to understand them, reveal why it is they’re behaving the way they are. And deep under all the turds, there’s [almost] always this spark of purity, of goodness.
There are exceptions, of course, for example bullies still clinging to the adolescent veneer of youth with a comb-over and a fake tan. And those who would ever vote for such ethically repugnant lying rapists, drawing in a new dawn of corruption and villainy that accelerates us ever closer to complete oblivion, can frankly do one.
Again and again humans are taught (and sadly forget) that if you can’t be effective without being violent, then you’re not very effective. Perhaps you’re simply stuck in Chimpanzee-mode and haven’t learnt how to actually negotiate, how to actually relate. If you can’t be funny without mocking people, then perhaps you’re simply … not … funny. (I’m not saying mockery is never funny, but that if you’re limited to mockery and can’t branch out, then you don’t have a genuine sense of humour, you just have a sense of how much meanness you can get away with). 
And drawing further along this thoughtline, if you can’t have a relationship without diminishing your partner, then perhaps you’re not ready for a relationship … at all.
And those who are ready for relationships will always always reap the real rewards, difficult though love is to navigate.
We see low-ceilinged relationships most clearly in toxic masculinity when it comes to ‘banter’ – a sense of humour based on mockery alone is no sense of humour at all, it is the resort of an un-creative primate, of a medieval squire trying to hold power. And though we may laugh in the moment, it is more the laugh of the howling Chimpanzee wishing to stay out of the firing line; these are not the groups who live amongst true joy.
Let’s be honest, I’m ranting because I’m a touch bored with grievance-based politics that seems to be leaking out of certain countries. If you can’t get people to vote for you without putting ‘the other side’ down, then perhaps you shouldn’t be in politics, and perhaps humans will learn this? One day? Please? It’s deeply sad to see what grievance politics (and its acceleration thanks to investment) has done to America, but I won’t labour that point, other than to say I’m sorry to see it. And in Britain, and in Germany. Good grief. What does it take for people to learn?
I’m sorry to see that Israel, having stared into the void for too long, has indeed become the void, and for some years have been literally acting as Nazis. Today. In the real world. I’m just so sorry to see it.
But with the overwhelming sadness around the world at the moment, the pox-infested polyps in power demonstrating the symptoms of hatred by their yeeting of faeces everywhere they turn, I am reminded to focus on what I can do. I can start fresh. Every day, if needs be. I can message people in need and share my privilege where possible. I can speak up when bad people say their bad words and act as the Primates from which we [sort of] came. I can stand between them and the vulnerable in many cases in the real world. Literally. That’s quite cool. So though I can‘t change the world, I can change this bit.
Just this lil bit.
As our lad Gandalf reminds us;
We all need to work on our beard game, let’s face it.
As someone born, raised and living in a former colony; who lived in London for a time, specifically during 7/7, good humans are a myth. My first memory of what I understood to be bad was Chernobyl at age 6, 3 years prior watching my mother having the shit beaten out of her by her second husband (nevermind the fact that husband number one a giant german cunt beat her too). Since then despite all the supposed good we have achieved we still murder each other by the millions every year, for stuff. Just look up list of wars since 1948. There is no such thing as a good person, we all benefit from the suffering of others, everything you consume caused undue suffering to someone in that supply chain.