One of my all time heroes is Bill Hicks, sadly no longer with us, who enjoyed great notoriety for standing up and saying exactly what he thought, both positive and negative, even at times repulsive.
If we cannot laugh even at ourselves when we are the butt of a joke, or at least hold our hands up and say 'hey, well that's his opinion' then where does that leave us? Walking around, like characterless clones, afraid of anywhere we tread in case we stand on someones toes? I say that we trample on as many toes as possible, and incite as many reactions as we can.
The problem is that we have engineered such an environment that it is increasingly difficult to say what we want to say. I am not a racist or anti any particular religion. I would like to put that for the record and I would successfully defend that statement in any debate. But if instead of the weak replacement aimed at slightly hinting at my stance on the 'more holier than though' attitude that often surfaces, I had, for instance, voiced my true thoughts on the scandal that followed the publication of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, I am sure I would attract much scathing criticism for posting politically incorrect material on my blog.
I think it is time for some more Bill Hicks footage to lighten the mood...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QiMw1Q65d4
1 comment:
Emma Skipp said...
Hello Oli,
Well I must say what an entertaining blog this one is (not that your others are not) It made me laugh out loud on several occasions. I particularly agree with your statement about taking ourselves too seriously, we do! Why is that? its almost like some kind of "Humankind brainwashing system" encouraging us throughout our lives to achieve, achieve achieve, and all things must be done to better ourselves, but only through discipline and fear of underachieving1 there should be so much more emphasis in the education system about joy, happiness, and fulfilment to quote your good self we do live in a "sterilised social environment" and frankly its fast becoming extremely dull.
Its so funny, I have jus started to type out a reasonably offensive joke for you and not only have I stopped, I have erased it too because I don’t want anyone leaving abuse on your blog (so Ill put it on mine Because I really don't care)
The way I see it is, there is a line with most things, the trick is knowing when you have gone too far, and what your saying has no sense of humour at all, that is when it just becomes offensive, however, should you just be telling jokes (telling, not physically carrying them out)and toys start coming out of the pram so to speak ,it would become apparent to me that the person who is upset by a joke is probably someone I’m not interested in befriending anyway!
Basically what I’m saying is, I realise people have differing opinions of "where the line is" but ultimately if we didn’t live in the politically crazy society we do it would never have been seen as a problem in the first place.
Humour is grossly under- used in our world of madness, I think we should start a movement of introducing extreme laughter to a stranger everyday.. Wonder what the effects would be?
Em x
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