tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post8887012666139676999..comments2024-03-17T11:05:22.464+00:00Comments on The Life And Opinions of Andrew Rilstone: No, but seriously....Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-77341760023061348782023-01-28T15:34:23.976+00:002023-01-28T15:34:23.976+00:00I must go back and look at the Doctor Who speech a...I must go back and look at the Doctor Who speech again. It occurs to me that the Doctor says that SARAH would not kill a baby in response to Sarah saying that the Doctor WOULD kill a deadly virus. The Doctor's initial misgiving is about essentialism vs utilitarianism: the Daleks are evil IN THEMSELVES, but the greatest good to the greatest number might be better served by very evil species existing. (The Time Lord's reason for intervening is that the Daleks will eventually wipe out all over forms of life in the universe, which is only a Bad Thing is you've decided in advance that diversity is better than uniformity.)Andrew Rilstonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05786623930392936889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-63789315270813084442023-01-28T15:34:06.821+00:002023-01-28T15:34:06.821+00:00I must go back and look at the Doctor Who speech a...I must go back and look at the Doctor Who speech again. It occurs to me that the Doctor says that SARAH would not kill a baby in response to Sarah saying that the Doctor WOULD kill a deadly virus. The Doctor's initial misgiving is about essentialism vs utilitarianism: the Daleks are evil IN THEMSELVES, but the greatest good to the greatest number might be better served by very evil species existing. (The Time Lord's reason for intervening is that the Daleks will eventually wipe out all over forms of life in the universe, which is only a Bad Thing is you've decided in advance that diversity is better than uniformity.)Andrew Rilstonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05786623930392936889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-20411037823217822172023-01-28T14:01:22.718+00:002023-01-28T14:01:22.718+00:00I really liked how you broke this down as it's...I really liked how you broke this down as it's a discussion (for all my vim and ranting) I tend not to get too deeply into beyond elevating e.g. trans comedians and others who make the alternatives that y'know, aren't cruel.<br /><br />But you're right. I think there's a hiding behind the word 'irony' and Gervais isn't even able to properly abide by his definition of it. Now, is he a total transphobe? I suspect his transphobia is less in degree than his anti-religious stance (and tb clear, saying this as a religious person, it is perfectly fine to be anti-religious. It might be annoying and when unthinking, can harm those from minority religions, but overall, I don't think it's a bad thing), but it's still in the vein of that liberal contrarian-ness against 'that which people are just meant to go along with as nice liberals' which punches down and doesn't want to own its origins in said contrarian-ness (which in itself is rooted in the irritation of those who don't know their place being too loud and obvious), rather than anything insightful or radical to say.laBiscuitnapperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07085674629106780182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-47770153867351189922023-01-25T20:20:20.011+00:002023-01-25T20:20:20.011+00:00More seriously, there may be an issue about comedy...More seriously, there may be an issue about comedy being entertaining by being transgressive. I went to an old-fashioned school where the teachers were called Masters, and baiting them was an established part of being twelve, but the joke was in not saying the Rude Word. However, a certain amount of old-fashioned comedy, where you find lots of things to rhyme with Jeremy Hunt, depends on constantly stepping back from the edge, like an old-fashioned roller-coaster or an old-fashioned thriller or horror movie where the bad stuff happens just out of shot. Modern comedy may be more about actually crossing the line: less like dodgem cars where is fun to play at crashing, and more like a Formula One race where you kind of expect someone to crash and maybe not come out in one piece. I never took to 'Little Britain' in part not because it crossed the line, but because it loitered there being unpleasant without crossing back. I have not seen Mr Gervais in action, but it may be that having led the audience into some amusing but unpleasant territory, he doesn't find a good way to lead them back to where his moral compass actually lies.Richard Worthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10926026136161902000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-12210065810282808962023-01-25T20:05:26.345+00:002023-01-25T20:05:26.345+00:00I have an idea for a fantasy TV show in which the ...I have an idea for a fantasy TV show in which the main character complains about dwarves and goblins coming over here and taking our jobs: he is called Elf GarnettRichard Worthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10926026136161902000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-60174136086208147172023-01-25T13:54:06.720+00:002023-01-25T13:54:06.720+00:00Oh yes, your main point stands; I led with that! J...Oh yes, your main point stands; I led with that! Just musing on specific examples.<br /><br />I do still think "but *could* you, if you were stood in front of the crib with a gun?" is only part of the story. As you know, I'm not religious myself, but possibly a religious person might phrase the other half of the problem that I'm groping at in terms of "playing God". <br /><br />After all, Cute Baby Davros is Moffat's later interpolation, but in “Genesis of the Daleks” itself the Doctor is faced with touching two wires to wipe our a bunch of goopy science experiments on a production line: that is, the immediate cuteness of the target is pointedly eliminated. <br /><br />As such, I really do think the infamous "Do I have the right?" has less to do with the Trolley Problem as such, and more to do with "does one, mortal man have the right to erase millions of people from ever having existed, even if it's to save a greater number of millions? should any one person ever feel confident in making a choice of such magnitude?". Which rounds back to "what right has the time-traveller to erase the eight billion people currently in existence in the name of stopping some particular past evil"? Maybe in any given small-scale situation it can be correct to kill a particular Nazi, but can this extend unto infinity? Is it right to press a button and make all Nazis ever disintegrate into dust? I think you can be comfortable with small-scale trolley problems, and still recoil at the *scale* of such a decision. It's always "would it be moral to kill Baby Hitler", not "would it be moral to kill Baby Jack the Ripper". Achille Talonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11636339293230261724noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-40264679066813884722023-01-25T10:27:01.958+00:002023-01-25T10:27:01.958+00:00A bear, no matter how he tries
Grows tubby without...A bear, no matter how he tries<br />Grows tubby without exercise<br />Our teddy bear is short and fat<br />Which is not to be wondered at<br />He gets what exercise he can<br />From falling off the ottoman<br />But generally seems to lack<br />The energy to clamber back...<br /><br />Children's books have an ambivalent attitude to fatness, actually. It's certainly true that we laugh with Winnie-the-Pooh, not at him. By the time it got to the TV, it was meant to be endearing that Orinoco womble was fat and lazy -- he was everyone's favourite character -- although in the original books he starts out as a rather rotten bully. Same with Billy Bunter, I believe: in the books he's pretty much just the butt of jokes ("the fat owl of the remove" = the obese retarded kid with glasses) but once it got to TV he was a comedic hero. A lot of this stuff was written when sweets were more expensive or even rationed so obesity was not a problem and weight was a sign of wealth. Oliver Hardy is huge, but it's connected with his pretentiousness. <br /><br />Sudden thought: C.S Lewis is not above making fun of fat people, but the character who betrays his family for sugary treats is pointedly NOT overweight. <br /><br />I think my point stands: size, gender, religion and race can be components of jokes, but to laugh at someone for being fat or black or gay is cruel (even if fat people are sometimes funny.) <br /><br />I think that Gervais' screed and the Genesis of the Daleks sequence are playing on ideas of pity and squeamishness. I suppose the close analogy would be the fatuous Ticking Bomb scenario. Jack Bauer, you may recall, tortured a terrorist suspect's children in order to get information which would potentially save thousands of lives. (SPOILER: It was a ruse: they were actually actors.) But some of the people who argued that it really was Okay to torture terrorist suspects also said that it really would be Okay to torture their children, if it really would stop another September 11th. <br /><br />I think that what would stop us killing baby Hitler or baby Davros is indeed that they are "cute": that we have a deep cut feeling against killing anything which looks like a child. (Hence "drowning puppies" being code for depravity.) Which works well in Genesis of the Daleks, because it's precisely that empathy, that "yuck" factor, which Davros has removed from the Daleks. Prof Richard Dawkins takes it for granted that morality means "the greatest happiness to the greatest number", to the extent that he once argued that aborting disabled foetuses was not only permissible, but obligatory (and any argument to the contrary was rooted in sentiment, and therefore invalid.) The Hitler scenario (and the trolly problem) kind of refutes that narrow view of utilitarian morality -- unless Dawkins thinks that Davros is right and we all ought to become Daleks. Which I sometimes think he really does. <br /><br />The pity argument is often invoked, on both sides, but it never really proves very much. <br /><br />"You say you support the death penalty, but would you be prepared to pull the lever"<br />"Definitely."<br />"Well, you shouldn't be."<br /><br />"You eat meat, but would you be prepared to work in a slaughter house."<br />"Of course"<br />"Well, that proves my point. Meat eaters are callous monsters and we shouldn't pay attention to the opinions of callous monsters."<br /><br />"You say you are a pacifist, but would you kill a German who was going to rape your kids?"<br />"No, not even then."<br />"Well, then you must be a coward."Andrew Rilstonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05786623930392936889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-5622332509374742742023-01-24T23:13:59.611+00:002023-01-24T23:13:59.611+00:00Good post! The main point being well-made and agre...Good post! The main point being well-made and agreed-with, I shall limit myself to ancillary comments. <br /><br />I think the "if someone pointed out a child to you…" problem rides not only on whether there is a difference between "wishing that someone was not alive and personally taking steps to kill them", but on whether there is a difference between real lives and potential lives. You are not merely killing Baby Hitler — or, as the case may be, Davros — to prevent people who already exist from being killed, but to save the lives of people who have, themselves, not even been born yet; of abstract possibilities. And the trouble with *that* line of argument is that it might lead us not only to the dread abortion issue, but even further, to bizarre worldviews where ensuring that the birth rate rises as much as physically possible would be a moral imperative.<br /><br />(Of course, time-travel makes all this more complicated by making "the people of fifty years from now", in a very real sense, just as physically-real to the time-traveller as "the population of Australia". This brings up another interesting avenue of moral investigation: forget about Baby Hitler, would it be really moral to erase everyone from our version of 2023 from existence, all to retroactively prevent the ultimately-smaller death toll of World War II? But, interesting as that question is for moral philosophers, it's got even less of a tether to any moral conundrums you might encounter in the real world.)<br /><br />On an unrelated track: I think Winnie the Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit's burrow is not so much making fun of fat people as making fun of gluttonous people; "if you eat too much too quickly, there will be immediate bad consequences for you" is a sound lesson to teach little children, with little to do with short-term weight-gain. I certainly never came away from the cartoon with the impression that its thrust was that there was something inherently funny about being chubby at all; after all, Winnie was always on the rotund side, and quite cute too, and a Thin Pooh would look conspicuously Wrong. (I don't mean to take this too far: of course there is a *bit* of "it is funny when people are shaped weird and can't use ordinary accommodations" to the sequence. But I think it's incidental rather than the main target of the joke.) I say all of this not just for the heck of it, but because, even though on paper it could just as well be argued to be targeting "people who eat unhealthily/too fast", I feel quite differently about the Monty Python bit; there, I feel quite clearly that the "don't eat too much *at once*" satire is at best a fig leaf, and that most of the humour relies in the blunt "haha, weird gross large man" stuff rather than "haha, person reaps ironic consequence for minor vice".Achille Talonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11636339293230261724noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-81546483562677310062023-01-21T20:29:01.945+00:002023-01-21T20:29:01.945+00:00Sorry - everything but Nick M and the troll is me....Sorry - everything but Nick M and the troll is me. <br /><br />- Sophie JaneAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-5388681955716348072023-01-21T16:56:26.170+00:002023-01-21T16:56:26.170+00:00will try my best...it's hard not to post anony...will try my best...it's hard not to post anonymously when Internet keeps demanding I identify traffic lightsNick Mhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03741867414321172768noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-27431205675838267872023-01-21T14:58:51.052+00:002023-01-21T14:58:51.052+00:00Could anonymous people possibly use initials or so...Could anonymous people possibly use initials or something so we know if we have one person posting four time or four people posting once each or some combination?Andrew Rilstonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16934052271846235431noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-74470399731467914932023-01-21T13:41:41.153+00:002023-01-21T13:41:41.153+00:00There’s a lot I could say here but I think I’ll ju...There’s a lot I could say here but I think I’ll just go on existing joyfully as a real trans woman insteadAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-284195552114684702023-01-21T07:08:27.127+00:002023-01-21T07:08:27.127+00:00Also, it’s pretty clear the target of the ‘trans’ ...Also, it’s pretty clear the target of the ‘trans’ routine isn’t people who suffer from gender dysphoria, but people who say that a man who suffers from gender dysphoria is in some sense ‘really a woman’.<br /><br />In the same way that you can imagine a comedian doing a routine about those inter-net groups that give anorexics advice on how to avoid eating, etc, where the target would not be people so suffer from anorexia but people who say that anorexia is in some sense a basic lifestyle choice.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-4829296602442138182023-01-20T19:50:58.047+00:002023-01-20T19:50:58.047+00:00Also, I just remembered this thread by Roz Kaveney...Also, I just remembered this thread by Roz Kaveney on the New Atheists’ war on postmodernism and the rise of public transphobia in the UK, which seems highly relevant:<br />https://nitter.lacontrevoie.fr/RozKaveney/status/1615323602563350531Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-39397312111766126972023-01-20T19:44:10.661+00:002023-01-20T19:44:10.661+00:00I think Gervais and his fans understand the “irony...I think Gervais and his fans understand the “irony” as a convenient way to avoid consequences for their bigoted views. Though there’s some flattery in the mix too - no one actually experiences serious consequences for transphobia but pretending they’re bravely going against public opinion makes them feel goodAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-75725643580225621972023-01-20T18:58:17.785+00:002023-01-20T18:58:17.785+00:00Comment from Nick M
Ricky Gervais may deal in ir...Comment from Nick M<br /><br /><br />Ricky Gervais may deal in irony but his fans seem totally unable to grasp itAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-88494827225777107522023-01-20T18:05:35.752+00:002023-01-20T18:05:35.752+00:00Also and crucially, making it okay to say trans wo...Also and crucially, making it okay to say trans women are really men and shouldn’t use the ladies has an actual effect on the lives of trans women, and of cis women and non-binary people who don’t look feminine enough to suit bigots.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com