Growin' Up (?) · 3:24am Mar 12th, 2014
This is an odd journal. It's been on my mind for some time but... I've never thought about articulating it because it seems so odd of a subject. Plus it might offend some folks. It's a little bit like my Wasted World journal but more focused on real life.
One of the problems I can admit was in the other journal that I was hard on the creators of the works. In a larger sense the real issue tends to be the consumers. If an askance glance/hairy eyeball can be given it's to the ones that slatheringly go to stories and say "mutilate Sweetie after she's futa-pumped!" They drink up the misery and agony and demand more. I really can't blame the authors. It was wrong to put most of the blame on them. After all, socialist that I am I understand many things turn on a capitalist bent. The authors may not even believe in what they write but do it for Invisible Hand reasons (I've done it myself.) They can Be insincere. Consumers are sincere. Consumers drive the Fall of Equestria garbage, the foalcon with attached mental destruction, the mutilation, the murder, the madness. They type their desperately creepy comments and go back for more.
But that is not the subject of this journal. Not quite, anyhow, but it's somewhat attached to the point, and I wanted to admit my error which I came to after some thought.
The subject of this journal is... my iPod. More particularly what I have there. I've had the same thing for years. Many years. I don't have a synched iTunes program so I don't have a way to add more stuff. As of right now I have a few 2 Sense episodes, from when he first came back and up to the current episode when I put it on. So from 2006/2007. I've listened to them hundreds of times, because I use the thing wen I do chores or other tasks (I listened to them on repeat when I landscaped a friend's lawn.) I've had time to listen to and analyze the content. Besides numerous errors and misinterpretations, I found myself at odds with the comedic opinions. That made me more aware of a gulf between my taste and a certain comedic taste.
2 uses a lot of casual dead baby humor, to the point of mocking a kindergartener killed by a falling flagpole. As well as jokes about murdering illegal aliens (in the finest tradition of White Nationalists) and the desire to kill or mutilate those with Body Identity Integrity Disorder and Transgenderism. It's not quite nice. And I can't... get into it.
Once, he made a statement that it would be preferrable for an alleged force causing criminals to run their cars off the road to run busloads of Nuns off the road, as though it would be funny. My aunt is a Nun, has been all my life. She's been through a double-mastectomy (and survived the cancer) and just recently went through bone breaking and fusion in her foot because of RA. She's actually become a Mother Superior, which is neat. But if she died... I sure wouldn't stand there and laugh at her body. I'd be on the ground vomiting in grief and pounding the floor. I'd be imagining the funeral, all my family crying their eyes out, seeing her casket laid out in the church, and being lowered into the ground. That's not the height of comedy. It's a monstrosity.
My sister has two children, my niece (who gave me a little Princess Celestia figure when she visited and who also got me a Build-a-bear Rainbow Dash for Christmas) and my nephew (who is completely adorable; I call him no-neck because he's kind of a stocky and it's funny.) The concept of dead babies or toddlers being funny is impossible. The eating babies jokes sicken me because I feel this incredible wave of avuncular protectiveness towards these two innocent little folks. I can't laugh, just be rather confused about how it could be amusing.
It's much like the pony fics I excoriate. For various social and political reasons I can't find enjoyment in any of it. If it's not foals it's the poor and innocent common pony. I feel great compassion for the foal and yearling, the plebe and prole, the minority of every stripe. And sometimes for specific, put-upon ponies such as the Cakes (too frequently forced to divorce, murder or ridiculous adultery and ludicrous swinging that makes no sense at all) Cadance and Shining (similar, with humiliation of Shining) and others in that class of the commonly abused.
I... don't want to say this as a boast or as some kind of big thing. I hesitate to say it. So I'm not being big and overly arrogant about it. I almost feel like this new perspective came from... growing up. As Chat said on the prior journal. Maturing. Not being a mere child.
That's not to say that I don't have traces of what could be looked on as child-like, such as my love of cartoons and my desire to have moments of simplicity. It seems that 'maturity' should be seen as more complex, more nuanced thing than simply being at a certain physical age or fulfilling a rigid checklist.
To show some comparison, contrast Saw/Hostel and The Three Stooges. Some folks laugh over Saw or Hostel or Cupcakes or Cheerilee's Garden. They get excited and delighted by it. The difference, as far as I look on it, is the permanance/effect of it. Saw and similar retains hurt and bleeding and brings death. The Stooges take pokes and prods and bonks then move along as though nothing happened. It's safe. It's not injurious. It's not sadistic and monstrous.
Thinking back to a prior point, the innocence of the victims is often what truly makes it all the more disgusting. The young and the non-ruling-class did nothing to deserve the pain delivered on them. And it's not just "life's unfair" because of telos, intent. "Natural evils" lack directed intent even if it has incidental intent (a bear mauling someone has incidental intent but wasn't put to kill someone; a hurricane lacks all intent.) The highest illustration is the innocence-destruction, purified, in "120 Days of Blueblood." It's a monstrosity from start to end (but keep in mind, Bronystories himself is a wonderful person, one I am proud to work with and who I would dearly love to call 'friend' if he would allow that level of connection.) The evil comes for reasons, with intent, that is disgusting and terrible. Pinkie's horrible murder (and her previous brutal sexual assault) comes because she is an ethnic minority. Big Mac and Applejack and Applebloom's murders and assaults come because a bourgeois boor wanted their lands. He exploited them on every possible level, as the Boss class will do. Rainbow Dash tried to do right for the world, and died for it.
What does everyone think? Does "growing up" make things like dead babies and murdered ponies/adulterous ponies less acceptable, less funny, less interesting, less... everything?
(I had intended to make something of "The Riding Pony" but I realized there was no real connection and I wanted to do it right. That story has been my private bête noir for a while and I honestly need to let out that opposition in some way somehow some time.)
Extreme stories like the one you cited are the spice of life. They can stir emotions in moderation, but can dull the senses if consumed in excess.
Thanks for another insightful blog post, friend.
I think that the analogy of growing up is too linear to really be all that applicable. If different people lost the ability to laugh at dead baby jokes at different points in their lives, then it must not have much to do with growing up. I don't think maturity is that objective, either. You might be mature enough to do your taxes but immature enough to laugh at dead baby jokes.
I don't think it has anything to do with growing up but rather a particular combination of life experiences and factors that make people react in a particular way to something so horrible. You may have your young relatives to anchor you, but the kind of people who laugh at the jokes don't have the outside element and/or the emotional capable to draw the connection required to not laugh.
It's always very difficult to say "This causes that" when it comes to developmental psychology. Two things may be completely coincidental; SMBC puts it better than I do.
It's very easy to look at things we value about ourselves and label them as traits of 'maturity', but I think it's a trap to have 'growing as a person' linked too closely with 'becoming more like me' in one's view of people.
I try to think of maturity in terms of 'how well does this person handle life?' Do they constantly make decisions that go against their own best interests and push away people who would be helpful to them, or do they tend to do what they need to to achieve their goals in a way that pleases them and interact constructively with the people around them?
Maturity comes in may different forms. I value independence, but I know that people can live very satisfying, happy lives depending on others and having others that depend on them. They are not lives that I want to live, but I don't think of them as being less mature because they handle life's challenges in a more social way than I would, and get support from others when I would handle issues on my own.
People I disagree with can be mature. I seem to disagree with you constantly, and you seem to be quite mature. People I don't like can be mature. People I hate can be mature. Evil is not a fundamentally immature thing (though acts of evil can and often are caused by immature impulses). Some people deal very well with life by causing others' lives to go more poorly. That's objectionable and wrong, but I don't think of it as immature.
I don't know anything about the lives of radio people who make shock jokes. Maybe they are not dealing with life very well, but then again maybe they are. I don't think humor has much to do with maturity either way.
quite simply? humanity, if you ask me, is a very thin veneer over some very bestial impulses. Being human requires moderating and controlling those bestial impulses, but it doesn't erase them. Fantasy is a safe way to let the monster out, as so many people put it.
The problems arise when
* you deny yourself fantasy
* you deny others fantasy
* you, through being denied or denying fantasy, are unable to separate fantasy from reality
One of these days I'm going to write that book about becoming human and I'll be able to explain it better than "do what ye will an ye harm none".
1918922 <- this guy.
1919123 <- and this guy actually.
But hey. I can laugh at a dead baby joke. Maybe not all of them, but there are some funny ones. And I have little nephews. There's no... as that guy said, 'linear' relationship between any of this shit.
In fact, dead baby jokes are a terrible comparison for any of the crap you're complaining about. Because they're jokes. Jokes. You're talking about stories and stuff that are supposed to be depressing, not funny. I don't think that many of those fics are written as comedies. (Although Cupcakes was. Apparently the writer simply failed at the comic element.) Point is, some people like those fucked up stories. They get a thrill from them. It still counts as fantasy. But it's not humor. There are, however, people who will find humor in that crap. (As you said, some people laugh at Saw.)
Did it ever once occur to you that those people laughing... simply cannot cope with that kind of thing? And as a defense mechanism, they find it humorous? It's not a conscious thing, it's something that their brain just does on its own. And they might go back for more, because they find it funny. They might not know why they find it funny, but who doesn't enjoy a good laugh? Who cares if it's their brain's inner workings making that happen?
As for the people who find that stuff depressing, and read it anyway... some people are into that kind of thing. You know, masochists? They invented a word for them. Guess some of them could be sadists.
Growing up, eh? Well you made one step in the right direction, understanding business. I cater to my readers too. That's business. There are stories I won't write. But another author may be perfectly willing to, even if they don't personally care for that genre. You want to know what maturity really means?
Understanding the world.
Understanding that some people like dead baby jokes and stories about rape. Understanding that you might have your opinion about something like that, but what you think won't ever actually change another person. Understanding that laughing at a dead baby joke is in no way equivalent to killing an actual baby. Understanding that people can like certain shit, and have their own opinions, and no matter how different they are from you, you will have to cope with their existence and their opinions.
Understanding that there will always be left and right.
Understanding that you. Can't. Change. That.
How old are you anyway? If you don't mind me asking. Since you're... you know, 'growing up'?
1919184
Sounds like you're agreeing with me?
Anyway, I think I agree with you. Comedy is like art - it kind of is what it says it is. (how do you stop the neighborhood kids swinging on your washing line? - with a shovel). There are awful, sexist, mysogynist ones and there are sadistic to downright evil ones (what goes from black and blue to red at the push of a button? - a dead baby in a blender) and yet somebody, somewhere, has laughed at them (whats the best thing about having sex with twenty one year olds? - there's twenty of them). Does it make them bad people?
No, not necessarily. They might also be bad people, but just laughing at crude jokes shouldn't make them criminals. That's thought policing, I don't agree with that.
1919223 Pretty much agreeing with you. I agree with that too.
Maybe the reason its laughed at is because is not tragedy the essence of comedy? and also isn't everything funny in a cosmic sort of way?
1918905
In that, you succeeded. You broke my heart on every level you could. But you did it powerfully. Plebes and proles and the young and ethnic minorities, all hurt because one person was never sent to reform school as a child and his guardians never grew empathy. It still hurts to remember but it stands as a testament to your capabilities. That I want to rip out Blueblood's eyes is just a side-effect. Or give him the Yellow Bastard treatment. Plus I feel sorry for Mr. Cake.
I try my best to entertain or provoke thought. Looks like I managed again.
1918922
Yeah, honestly I wasn't sure if I could "call" it as an effect of maturation. It seems more like a combination of wide-cast empathy and life experiences. For example: homophobes may know gays but still hate them, hate them to the point of saying (perhaps not acting on it but still) they would beat, imprison, exile or kill them because their scaffolded education (including sociolo-religious influences from the pulpit and their party) have successfully dehumanized and (sometimes literally) demonized gays as the most extreme sort of "other" worthy of extermination. In a similar vein, though far lesser are the ones who casually talk of throwing babies in blenders, throwing Nuns off of roofs or meat-grinding screaming, begging ponies.
1919062
I just wanted to note (while taking a positive and very agreeable stance with most of your post) that personally, just personally, I've always considered evil the height of immaturity. For the reasons you said. The impulses tend to be definable as "immature." Plus a lot of the evil seen tends to be petty and childish anyhow. But there are exceptions, of course. Still, some comes down to "Baby wants! If baby doesn't get then X dies and others starve!"
1919123
We disagree often, yet I like it. The contrast between us is instructive and bracing, educational even.
We are unique and that's great. Like here. Perhaps as a consequence of being a socialist, I take a much more human-positive view of humanity, as being more than just a thin veneer over ugly murder-drives. We can be better than that, which is enough totell me there's more going on under there than a simple bestial rage.
1919184
Understanding the world and liking it are two different (though not fully separate) things. It's why there are activists and folks who write in defense of or contrary to positions that exist. I understand America lacks decent social justice and needs universal healthcare. I don't accept it, but I do thugs like support socialist efforts and write in favor of such things.
What I don't do is destroy and act fussy and babyish in service of that. That's my sign of maturity.
I'm in my (very) early 30's. Bit anyone can grow up at any time. Plus I wanted to draw a comparison to my younger self who though such things were funny from an unexamined perspective. Perhaps examination is a sign of maturity.
1919719
In a sense it may be so. No less a luminary than Mel Brooks, a man I respect, said "Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die." From an outside and completely alien perspective it's true, but not absolute. As I said, if it was mf family or friends that's not comedy. Or even if it's simply an innocent person it's not funny. Someone dying, their friends and family stricken with grief, weeping. It's not funny. I understand the impetus to laughter, but life moves forward, and that second of cheap laughter becomes the hard, unfunny aftermath of funeral parlors and graveside baths of tears.
1918905
I missed it before, because I was still sleepy.
Thank you, friend. You are a good person, and I have never felt more proud.
1919835
A lot of everything people do seems to be petty and childish.
And once again you're characterizing acts you disagree with as being immature. Almost any human behavior that's social can fit into the mold of "I want X or else I'll Y", implicitly or explicitly. I want to get paid more or else I'll quit. I want food or else I'll riot. I want independence for my country or I'll kill your soldiers until I get it. I don't think any of these are necessarily immature or evil assertions, nor are they universally mature and good.
There are evil people that rule nations. They have the skills and connections and intelligence they need to hold on to power over millions of people, sometimes for decades. Children cannot organize an election-rigging scheme. Teenagers do not command effective militaries. Genocide isn't a temper tantrum; it's an exercise of complex logistics and tightly controlled publicity for an incredibly heinous purpose. These are things that only adults do. Evil adults, but adults. If these people are immature, what does it say about mature people that so often we do not stop them?
People are very good at characterizing evil as something 'other', something they could never be. Evil people are 'monsters' or 'sick' or 'immature' or 'inhuman'. It's usually not so. They're just humans. Evil humans, but humans. I don't think that there is much (if any) fundamental difference between how my mind works and how the mind of any random guard at a concentration camp or one of the Turks who marched the Anatolian Greeks to their deaths during world war 1. I just lived a different life. I just know better. I've just been taught better. If I were born into their lives instead of my own, maybe I would be evil. I'm not immune. That's why I'm wary. I know those people believed that what they were doing was right, even when it was so incredibly wrong. I could be wrong. Granted, I've never killed anyone, so I'm pretty sure I can't be too far off course, but still.
It's when we underestimate evil that we are most vulnerable to it, both the evil done by others and the evil we are capable of ourselves.
As a small side note (since we text just about daily anyway), 2, from what I've seen, has matured himself. The last Anthrocon I was at ('09, I think, maybe '10, maybe later than that. I know I attended once after I moved), I caught his usual stand-up show. It was obvious his style had changed substantially from the older 2 Sense stuff, and for the better. His style had shifted, his delivery was perfect, his timing was better, and I don't recall any dead baby humor at all.
... That being said, he's still a crass motherfucker.
1919847 Nobody said you can't have an opinion, man.
1919928
Then what is evil? If humans are humans and evil humans are humans and not identifiable by immaturity then how do you distinguish? I know how I do but it's clear your standards may be slightly different. We agree on things like genocide and random slaughter but you used different methods of arriving at the conclusion, so I'd like to know those methods.
1919928
I'm reminded of The Little Prince. In it, adults are described as physically mature, and grown-ups have lost all child-like traits. In a similar comparison: your mass-murdering fucktard examples, they are adults, but they are not mature individuals. They are three year-olds in an adult body doing what they please without caring about consequences.
1932858
Thank you for articulating the point in a clear and succinct manner.
And reminding me I need to read The Little Prince again. My usual takeaway lesson from that is the lesson the fox teaches.