No idea who Girdusky is, but that was an epic line. I was laughing before I even watched the clip.
Let the righteous indignation flow!
No, I think the line was a great shot though.
I think the reason I can't embrace liberalism is because I can't give up my sense of humor.
Like I said, no sense of humor at all. You fellows traded it for outrage and got the short end of the stick.
In fskimospy's, in my opinion brilliantly insightful post 42 of this thread noting that no joke was actually made, he also mentioned the transgressive nature of humor. I want to add my take on that:
Humor, to me is like enlightenment, a sudden shift from one emotional state one habituated attitude to another state, unanticipated and forbidden in our ordinary consciousness. In my opinion then, to experience humor is to experience the release of tension created by the usual requirement to suppress a taboo emotional state. In short humor occurs when suppressed emotions and in particular hostile rage are allowed to manifest safely sanitized by the sudden shift of of attitude. The the tension toward the taboo is suddenly shifted and releases as a new way of seeing the situation appears.
The situation is hopeless but not serious. Life's a bitch and then you die. If I didn't have bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all.
How do humans tolerate the inevitably of suffering and the foreknowledge of our deaths.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
--------------
Isn't the great task in life the inner realization of equanimity in in the face of death made possible only by surrender to fate, itself made possible by the death of the sense of self as separate from everything else that can only be transcended by the enlightened experience that one's self and everything else is a hallucination and deeply implanted misconception of reality, accompanied inevitably by rage at the circumstances by which our sense of ego, the feeling of separation was instilled.
So I suggest to you that your honest statement, 'let the righteous indignation flow' is part and parcel of that suppressed unconscious rage, that your satisfaction in the flow of indignation is just more of the same from you, that you too are full of suppressed righteous indignation and hate that fact so much in others you won't allow yourself to see it unless expressed in a form you can see as humorous and thus have that need. How did you come to imagine yourself different than everyone else, that like them you will not see your own self hate projected out there like we all do?
Righteous indignation is the result of egotistical pride, and that demands ignorance of one's condition. You can't condemn others to the short end of the stick without feeling that need, the need to condemn what would be you if you were able to look in the mirror.
We are what we hate or there would be no contempt at all. But the realization that you and everything else is one and the same changes everything. You haven't yet gotten the joke. Here's one I like:
“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
― Robert Frost
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