In last class, we discussed the rather disturbing response which many Americans had to Osama Bin Laden's death. I think that it is worth analysing exactly why this response was so alarming.
The Americans I spoke to about this when it happened said that they were celebrating Bin Laden's death, in particular, not the removal of a potential threat to their safety or the safety of those they cared about. While I could understand celebrating the removal of such a threat (although Bin Laden was no longer all that significant of a threat), and could, to some extent, find it unobjectionable, these people were celebrating something totally different. Their giddy moods were due not to the lifting of a weight on their minds, but to the idea of 'justice' happening to someone that they hated. Some of the common phrases I heard at this time were along the lines of 'he deserved it' 'thank God we got our revenge,' and so on. This displays a rather barbaric endorsement of revenge mentality which I think we must dispose of in order to live ideally moral lives. While it is perfectly natural for many people to feel a desire for, or gratification from, the satisfaction of revenge, I do not think that acting upon these feelings is ethically acceptable in a situation where 'revenge' means the death of a sentient being. It is also unacceptable in many other contexts (perhaps all contexts), but this is perhaps one of the most blatant examples.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Response: Humour and Palatability
In response to Raanan's post "Comedy" (April 30, 2012):
I think that humour and comedy frequently do help to convey important messages. The main benefit, I think, to using humour in this way is that it makes potentially controversial issues less threatening. The work of Terry Pratchett, for example, presents many of the problems of modern society in a funny, fictional context. Reading about the dangers of censoring the press in a story about a fictional world populated with vampires, wizards, and werewolves is far more appealing to many people than reading about the same subject in a bleak, non-fictional treatise, or even in a dark, dystopian-future novel type setting. I think that this same principal often applies to music; musicians can often address serious issues without accruing nearly as much opposition as politicians addressing the same issues. This does not make their messages any less important or well-thought-out; it simply makes them seemingly less threatening to political systems than more officially conveyed messages.
I think that humour and comedy frequently do help to convey important messages. The main benefit, I think, to using humour in this way is that it makes potentially controversial issues less threatening. The work of Terry Pratchett, for example, presents many of the problems of modern society in a funny, fictional context. Reading about the dangers of censoring the press in a story about a fictional world populated with vampires, wizards, and werewolves is far more appealing to many people than reading about the same subject in a bleak, non-fictional treatise, or even in a dark, dystopian-future novel type setting. I think that this same principal often applies to music; musicians can often address serious issues without accruing nearly as much opposition as politicians addressing the same issues. This does not make their messages any less important or well-thought-out; it simply makes them seemingly less threatening to political systems than more officially conveyed messages.
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