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.
Appreciate your putting this out and and agree with the sentiments, but from what I’ve seen and read about chimpanzees, and I go all the way back to the first Jane Goodall piece in National Geographic Magazine in August, 1963, the chimps and we “sapiens” aren’t all that different; the science says that we share between 95% and 98% of our DNA. So when you refer to us in “chimpanzee” mode, you might as well acknowledge that it’s our mode, too.
I like that. I also have to say … a squid might share a lot of DNA with a jar of mayonnaise, that doesn’t necessarily mean the mayo is particularly good at active cammo nor breeding partners.
“- make something funny without mocking someone”
Well, unless I’m mocking myself. I find self-deprecation (of the humorous kind) to be an amazingly effective tool, where I can point all the fingers at myself, but do so in an empathetic way that draws others in, so they don’t laugh *AT* me, but *WITH* me.
It took me literally decades to get it right, and in fact it didn’t really start working until after my therapy started working, and I saw parts of myself in others, and parts of them in me. So there was no reason to point at them, when I could point at myself and take them along for the ride.
As for good being all around us: It is there, to be sure, but only if we can see and hear it. My mental health issues interfered with this to the point where I distorted what I saw of everyone, which was a reflection of my inner turmoil. What changed that for me is, in part, what I mentioned above. The other, more recent, part is my nightly Gratitude Meditation, where I review my interactions of the day, and see the sparks of gratitude I may have missed (or ignored) in the moment.
The Good truly is EVERYWHERE! But to see it we also need to quiet our inner noise to hear the good whispers surrounding us.
The weirdest thing is, when I’m having a day with too few “gratitude moments”, I’ve started making some! It’s like I need to meet my nightly quota, so the gratitude meditation has some grist for its mill. This was very new for me, being a depressed anxious introvert. While I may have trouble sustaining conversations, I can always delight in finding a spark!
Here’s an example. I occasionally (rarely) have a famine-level hunger for a pair of McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin with Egg. It’s like a homing instinct that can’t be denied. One time in the drive-thru, I heard a voice that made that crappy intercom actually sound wonderful. I enjoyed that moment, but was focused on my famine. Then, on a low-gratitude day, I told her just how good her voice made that crappy hardware sound. She grinned the widest grin of my entire week! I was so beyond grateful that I made that moment happen.
Good can be opportunistic. Sometimes, you need to help make it, to get it in return.
It starts with the little things, and grows from there. It’s great when it also shows up in porn comics!
It’s possible I’ve said this before on here but when people tell me there aren’t good people in the world, I ask them if they know anyone personally who, if they found a wallet in the street with an address in it, wouldn’t return it to its owner. Invariably they say that everyone they know would get it back to the person who had dropped it. Then I ask them again why they think nobody’s good.
We are surrounded by good people who do small good deeds every day. And, importantly, the people who surround us are no different from the people 12,000 miles away.
Billions of small acts of kindness daily. We shall overcome.
To Rhys:
I don’t disagree with your points, just the scale of those points.
I love the people of Israel, Arab and Jew alike. I’m beyond fed up with the leadership both of them keep electing!
Yes, it is important to realize the Hamas attack Last October was, proportionately (per capita), more than double the casualties that 9/11 had for the USA.
But the Israeli response was, proportionately, far worse than the US response in Afghanistan and (especially) Iraq.
But it is scary just how many parallels can be drawn between the US and Israel in the initial attacks.
Evil is easy to find. Especially at the top level of nations.
It is hard, beyond measure, to make good appear at that level. The US used to do “good work” to help poorer nations build and to overcome their health and societal problems. That “good work” has largely been eliminated, and the entire world is worse for it.
Sometimes, evil is the result of good simply walking away. Sure, it’s easy to point at evil and call it bad. It is far harder to point at ourselves and ask what we are doing about it. What good are each of us doing, every day?
Donate to organizations that make real differences in the world. Go to Charity Navigator to find who does best on what you care about most, and what you most want to see changed. Then help make that change happen.
In modern day Israel, the Holocaust is not at a national trauma anymore, it’s a source of inspiration. There are nobody among their leaders who actually remembers it and vowed to never let it happen again to anyone. “How could anyone do something like this” has changed into “we could do something like this, too”. Saying this, of course, apparently makes me a raging anti-semite, despite the fact that criticizing a nation is not criticism towards a religion or even a race, and that criticizing is not wrong when it’s about shit that is horribly wrong.
I’m old enough to remember that Israeli prime minister once shared a Nobel peace prize for making peace with the Palestinians. I was old enough to understand what a ground-breaking moment it was, and how much hope it brought. I also remember him being shot for this, by his own people.
Israel needs this war. Arab nations around it have, some more begrudgingly than the others, slowly accepted the fact that Israel as a country is not going anywhere. But if there are no enemies, there are no excuses. So Israel is making sure Palestinians and their supporters can’t ever calm down. For example, Israel has absolutely no need for illegal colonies it’s setting up in the West Bank. Their only purpose is to piss everyone off. Israel could stop doing this at any given moment and even remove the existing ones, but by doing so it would risk losing a potential enemy. In Gaza it has Hamas, but in the West Bank there isn’t such major force, so the populace itself has to be kept hostile. That’s also why Israel is hammering Gaza, but letting Hamas control it. They’re not trying to eliminate Hamas, they’re hoping something like it would emerge in the West Bank.