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I think the question is, has anyone saying ANYTHING ever changed anyone's mind?

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I once gave a talk at an education conference about how research changes (or fails to change) teachers' minds. The upshot is that the most popular stuff might very well just be confirming what teachers already believe. But that just means the most popular stuff is the wrong place to look. There is smaller scale change in the way new ideas sneak into our minds and provide meaningful changes to how a person thinks or acts.

A guy like George Carlin only becomes hugely popular if he pretty much is confirming most of his audience's beliefs. That's fine -- that's what it MEANS to be that popular. But I think change is still possible for art, though at a smaller scale.

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The most that a joke changed my mind was during a dark period in college half a century ago. I felt immobilized by perfectionism, fearing that if I did anything it would fall short and undermine whatever positive impression anyone somehow already had of me. Then I came across G. K. Chesterton's sentence: "If something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly." I laughed hysterically by myself for about ten minutes and have felt much better ever since.

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I feel like for me, I kind of went through the opposite. When I was a kid, I would learn about a topical issue from like an SNL sketch or stand-up, and then when I was older I would learn what the real issue was, and change my opinion

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My writing partner and I used to talk about how we learned probably 50% of what we know about classic American culture from MAD Magazine.

"Ever seen Paper Moon?"

"No, but I've read the MAD magazine parody."

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I feel like in the '90s that became "the Simpsons reference"

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“As sung to the tune of ‘My Favorite Things’”

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The best example I can think of for myself is that I used to love Arby’s until The Simpsons made fun of it, and then suddenly I thought Beef and Cheddars were gross.

In terms of political satire, The Colbert Report didn’t change my mind per se, but I didn’t know about the intricacies of campaign finance reform until his fictional run for president bit and I became more engaged on the issue. IMO, that’s where satire can excel: shaping an opinion where there previously wasn’t one.

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"shaping an opinion where there previously wasn’t one."

I think this is a very good way of putting it, @Geoffrey. Comedy can "fill-in" beliefs.

This brings up another related question: are shows like that primarily comedy/satire? Or are they primarily news? It's a pretty recent form—TDS, Colbert, Oliver, these are all shows that have taken up the mantle of being information sources, not topical joke delivery systems. And the teams of writers are doing deep research into the topics at hand--much deeper than say, Carlin investigating war. He knows he doesn't like it (who does?), he comes up with a funny, but facile and unoriginal, explanation for it, it's a boilerplate part of his act. That feels VERY different to me than say a Last Week Tonight segment on "redlining."

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Jeff Maurer (on his I Might Be Wrong Substack) used to write for LWT, and has frequently pulled away the curtain to reveal that it leans more in the entertainment side than truthful information side.

Colbert Report was the pinnacle, IMHO. I think the biggest difference with that show and the others was a willingness to truly listen to his guests, which ran a very broad gamut, and he let his curiosity take him wherever he wanted.

Here’s a dark thought: Satire like Colbert’s skewering of President Bush at the Washington Press Corp Dinner had little effect on the general populace, but a huge effect on bucking up those who would become mid-level functionaries across government, who eventually gummed up the works during Trump’s presidency. In other words, we have met the Deep State, and it is us.

(If you think I’m full of shit, see the name of Jeff’s Substack above)

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I actually don’t think you’re full of shit--but if we’re going to really examine the impact of The Colbert Report, I think we have to acknowledge that there was some portion of people that interacted with that show unironically, who did not get the joke and took Colbert--or at least his attitude and ideas--at face value. I think that show assumed, and required, a level of textural analysis that some portion of the population simply does not apply to media; and the “deliciousness” of the tongue in cheek style doesn’t make up for the 5%, 10%, 20% of the viewership that was engaging with Colberts persona unironically. There was a decadence fundamental to the conceit that I think must be acknowledged. My whole point here is that satire doesn’t seem to work the way comedy people, and comedy fans, desperately wish it to. And if satire is meant to improve the world, then we need to be as clear-eyed as possible about how it works. If it’s just a pressure valve or a personal indulgence, okay; but that’s the opposite of the “satirist as shaman” model prevalent since 1957 or so.

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Norm Macdonald once pointed out in relation to comedians and Trump that German comedians were mocking Hitler's silly moustache well before he seized the reins of power, and did absolutely nothing to halt his trajectory.

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So I need to untangle a couple of things here:

The “full of shit” part was about my crackpot “Young Liberals bonded around Colbert’s Press Dinner monologue and eventually became part of the Deep State that thwarted Trump’s presidency”. Pretty unlikely, but it fits your notion that comedy unites like-minded people.

However, I must also now say, in response to your reply, that part of Colbert’s genius was that he *was* sincere in affinities that were coded “Red State”. Porter Goss, his campaign finance guide, worked on the McCain campaign; his fondness for the troops was deeper than any other comedian with his reach (I’d put him up against Bob Hope, even); he was a devout Catholic (and seemingly not in the Michael Harrington mode)

I wouldn’t even say that Colbert “changed me”, but his generosity towards *everyone* challenged my creed to be open-minded, even when I “knew” someone was trying to pull a fast one. Make no mistake, when that happened on Colbert’s show he was at the ready to skewer it, but I don’t recall a time when he shot first and asked questions never.

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I think they’re still comedy shows, because their primary purpose is to make the audience laugh, but the percentage of news / journalism has increased within them. It’s a stronger cocktail, but the recipe is similar.

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I think most people would agree with you, @Geoffrey, but I find myself watching Oliver less and less because I simply can't laugh at what he's talking about. I think the rise of Fascism in the US since 2016 has really changed the ecosystem--what does satire even mean, if the response of the evildoers is to shrug and do it more? For satire to have a salutary effect, the object of scorn has to possess a baseline of shame that Oliver's targets increasingly don't, and so his "deep dives" frequently feel to me like trauma-magnifiers...which can dispel political activity as much as kindle it.

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I wish we lived in a world where evil doers would feel shame, but I think satirical shows like LWT can serve the purpose of educating and activating the public. I always enjoy when they have a direct call to action, where they tell their viewers to call a congressman, donate to a cause, etc., and it makes a difference.

I agree, though, sometimes these shows get depressing. But I’d rather watch a smart, funny British man tell me America is fucked with jokes than watch talking heads scream talking points at each other.

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You know, I would have expected Bill Hicks’ name to come up during this conversation.

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Hicks is interesting because he died just as he was achieving mainstream acceptance in the US. I think he's at least as good as, and potentially better than, Lenny Bruce (no Old Showbiz stock character bullshit with Hicks). Certainly he's leagues better than Carlin, who too often simply reflected the audience's desire back to them.

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Acceptance isn’t the word I’d use. Recognition, from the general audience world, may be better. He’d long since achieved admiration/jealousy among his peers, which is high praise, and that and $5 will get you a latté.

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I think Hicks was on the verge of becoming huge in the states, after being somewhat anointed in Britain. He was pulling a Jimi Hendrix (a comparison he would’ve appreciated).

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Not really a joke, but Michael O'Donoghue's statement, "Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy," really made me re-evaluate what's funny vs. clever. Sent me into many of same thoughts about "clapter". Made me question how the commercial segments on Saturday Night Live now aren't really parodies anymore, but really product placement with jokes to make it go down easier. Wonder what Mr. Mike would think of that?

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I agree with your basic point about jokes not changing minds. But I also think that reducing it to that doesn’t really refute the idea that comedy isn’t important.

Mostly just tribal and preaching to the choir? I buy that. Carlin’s late work really illustrated that; There are times when he got laughs without even making a joke. That’s a dead giveaway, I think, that you’re coasting and counting on the audience agreeing with you already. I do agree with most of his thinking, but I’ve noticed that conservative humor often strikes me the same way; I’ve heard comics on that side getting laughs just from trotting out a prejudice. That was my dad’s idea of a joke. I’m not sure why I should criticize them but let George off the hook.

I think Carlin was brilliant and endlessly creative; I’m not dismissing his work, just suggesting that it’s not all equally good, when judged as comedy.

It seems to me that the better the comedy, the more likely you are to persuade. Or maybe just move someone’s needle a tiny bit.

As to the issue of whether comedy or satire are important-- I definitely believe my thinking and my character were SHAPED by comics. I listened to a lot of Lenny Bruce as a teen, and a lot of the points he made about hypocrisy and bullshit even among my own tribe really began my habit of questioning even people I mostly agreed with. Bruce also had a kind of romantic love and affection for humanity and for the law, despite his mockery and satire. He believed in us, despite all the obvious reasons he of all people shouldn’t have.

I don’t think any artist or person helped turn me into the person I am, and shaped the way I see the world, more than Bruce. In the short term, it wasn’t so much about him changing my mind about something. It was more a perspective, a complicated way of seeing the world both critically and with love. He got under my skin early in my life. I was raised conservative, but Lenny affected me philosophically and temperamentally more than my family did.

In a more general sense, many comics have helped keep me invested in the terrible human race, because I tend to see even the worst stuff through the lens of comedy, and nothing helps stave off nihilism and depression better than that. I think comedy at its best strikes blows but also encourages us to be tolerant, because sooner or later WE get implicated by the satirical criticism. And this message is more likely to resonate if we’re laughing.

I think this kind of effect is subtle, and may not be such a literal change as immediate changing our opinion about a particular thing. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe ANYTHING does that. That’s not usually the way persuasion works. We’re rarely persuaded in the moment by any art form or argument. Comedy is essential precisely because it changes us eventually, and by the time a change really takes root we probably don’t remember the comic or comics that sparked something in us.

According to experts on how our brains form opinions, it’s all about emotion. We tend to believe we got to our positions though logic but that’s horseshit. We feel things, and then cherry pick evidence and arguments that seem to support the way we already feel about something.

But this isn’t an argument for why comedy isn’t important. This is why comedy sometimes helps where other more serious things don’t. Comedy reaches us emotionally and directly; even when I don’t agree with an implied premise, if i laugh, that comic has scored with me at least a tiny bit. It may not change my position, but it can definitely widen my perspective, and make me less inclined to demonize a person who sees the issue through a different lens.

I hope this is all convincing! I can’t help but think it would have been more effective if it was accompanied by a big boinnnnnng sound.

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I like this all a lot, @Karl, thank you.

Speaking of Bruce, this piece started out as an entirely different piece, one talking about how he and Mort Sahl were both idealists who, when they finally realized that there was no benign authority that would give them the justice they craved, committed suicide. Lenny brought law books onstage, Mort the Warren Report; same thing going on there.

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Um, Mort Sahl didn't commit suicide. Unless you mean career-wise?

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Erb, that is precisely what I mean. Mort’s obsession with the JFK assassination--an obsession I shared for 35 years, btw, so I know of what I speak--was a kind of suicide. And it was based, like Lenny’s crusade was, on a sense that if one simply formulated the correct argument--that if one is so irrefutably RIGHT--those in authority would have to recognize this, and dispense justice. And Mort and Lenny would be seen and celebrated as right, the unjust would be stripped of power and punished, and a great wrong would be shifted. That is fundamental to the satirical mindset, and it’s a distortion, both of human behavior and the nature of authority.

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To your point, I just read, for the first time at age 53, "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett, which could be described as a very seriously silly meditation on just this.

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Yes, it’s a fascinating psychological phenomenon with those guys. Strange combination of powerfully inventive artist and Don Quixote figure.

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Bill Cosby with eating chocolate cake for breakfast.

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Hannibal Buress with Bill Cosby.

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Hilarious. Take a bow.

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I can't think of a specific example but I had to vote yes on the poll. If a specific joke hasn't changed my mind then at the very least comedians like Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle have widened my perspective on how a black man views America. Their comedy is a much better vehicle for perspective then any lecture, book, essay, article I've ever come across.

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True enough, @Engineer.

Comedy is a wonderful, and powerful, way to communicate. But I can say that as a satirist, there's writing about ME, and then there's writing about an ISSUE. Two very different aims. When I'm writing about ME, I want to communicate my personal experience to you as a person--I may well impact your beliefs along the way, but primarily I'm interested in getting my experience across. To me, as someone who writes both types of thing, that's very different from my having an opinion about Hank Kissinger, and making a joke about that, and your opinion on him changing because of my joke.

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PS it is part of The American Bystander Style Guide that he should always be referred to as "Hank Kissinger."

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You misspelled “Shitbag War Criminal”

(Did I change your mind? 😉)

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I’ve never had a joke change my mind, but I’ve had comedians change the way I think about comedy. Before going batshit crazy, Jimmy Dore made a great point about comedy being about punching up, not down. And Todd Glass, on his podcast, talked about how he changed his views and ideas about what makes good comedy. That really struck a chord with me.

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Gen X and after comedy people are very intentional about their process; there is a bit of a comedy priestly class. I attempt to avoid this type of systematizing because it feels like merely a new kind of cant. Comedy people declaring something other people laughed at to be "hack" drives me insane. The point of basketball is to put the ball through the hoop.

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This is interesting to me, because although I don’t think I see it the way you do, I’ve always found your insights fascinating--

And my thinking about it is broad and has a basic contradiction-- I’m snobbish about comedy, but on the other hand, if it makes you laugh, it makes you laugh.

I’m going to keep this in mind as I think about comedy from now on. I’m always intrigued by the possibility that I may have been wrong about something.

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The best example of this, bar none, from the Talking Funny show that had Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Louis CK and Ricky Gervais just shooting the shit with one another:

https://youtu.be/8J0RQ4A3jvE

I think it’s noteworthy that Gervais tries to twist the enjoyment into “ironic”, and the other three basically shut him down with “nope, just funny”

(Gervais seems to have been the producer of the show, which is why he’s even up there in the first place. I like a lot of his stuff, but comparable to the other three? No way.)

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Not necessarily one joke, but two Firesign Theatre albums - Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers and I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus - significantly widened my lens.

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Any specific ways, @thomas? BTW Phil and Peter are/were friends of mine. FT is wonderful, and our culture is so much richer for them having been around.

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Tricky, but I'll do my best to summarize (BTW I started the original FT web site in 1998 and was involved in its upkeep for over 20 years). I was a comedy geek in high school, big fan of MAD and a collector of comedy records, some of which I still have in my possession. Being unaware of FT before a chance encounter with a chunk of Nick Danger on a Chicago area 'progressive' FM station, I was compelled to immediately look for their work on vinyl. No Nick Danger in the racks at Korvette's that day, but they did have the aforementioned two albums, about which I knew nothing prior to purchase. Listening to those two albums in sequence pretty much rewired my impressionable brain. In their remarkable talent for world building, they really drove home the point that Everything You Know Is Wrong (not surprisingly, the title of their eighth album for Columbia in 1975). It was not only what they did, but the way they did it, that got my brain to take a sharp left turn - literally and figuratively. A few short years ago, in the before times, Lili and I (along with a fellow FT acolyte, the late Alan Gross) had the opportunity to meet with Phil and Melinda for lunch at a mid-town NYC hotel, at which they were staying for an East Coast visit. At one point, Phil told us that more than anything else, the primary intent of Firesign's work was: Think For Yourself. That nicely summarizes what they did for me - I was never the same after listening to them, and they only have themselves to blame.

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Temporarily Humboldt County. It is my goto framework of the history of the First Peoples, post-WhiteGuys.

“And it’s a beaut, too.”

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This piece, written during the debut season of SNL in 1975, offers two parts of the equation: The comic revealing their “true self”, and a “surplus of education” in the US beginning post WW II:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1975/11/24/a-crack-in-the-greasepaint

So I guess I agree with your theory, and lay it at the feet of an expanding cadre of “knowingness” that was once revolutionary, and now is old hat.

(An interesting faceoff that was contemporary to this article was Charles Schultz being annoyed by Doonesbury because it wore its politics on its sleeve, and thereby couldn’t be timeless. There, the “knowingness” wasn’t replacing something compartmentalized and schlocky, and the accusation was that the “knowing” work was too shallow!)

You could certainly say that Carlin was truer to himself once he started going on college tours and literally letting his hair grow out, but how “true” to himself were his jokes, or his presentation? Maybe each persona was a facet of himself that was “true”?

I will say that, with Carlin, his observational humor crystallizes things that you may have already noticed, but didn’t bother to interrogate far enough to reach other bizzare, possibly uncomfortable conclusions. And when you compare it with Seinfeld, who was inspired by Carlin, there’s clearly *something* different in their jokes’ impacts. But maybe that’s the “true self” thing? Seinfeld intentionally makes himself a cipher, after all.

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@NY, I'm enjoying this article, thank you.

This bit leapt out at me:

"What is attractive and unusual about [SNL] is that it is an attempt, finally, to provide entertainment on television in a recognizable, human, non-celebrity voice—and in a voice, too, that tries to deal with the morass of media-induced show-business culture that increasingly pervades American life."

This is precisely what I found so wonderful about SNL then, and what I find so upsetting about it now. I spoke for an hour yesterday to a producer of a new documentary about SNL, expressing this sentiment less well than Arlen did.

Oh this is very very good too:

"The other ingredient originally exported by the new English comedians can perhaps best be described as a comedy of surplus education."

This is National Lampoon and generation in a nutshell.

"When Nichols and May used to do improvised parodies of Pirandello, they were connecting to this subterranean pool of expensively acquired surplus information, in the same way that “Monty Python” has appealed to a randomly overinformed audience with its film about the Holy Grail."

You put your finger on the aspect of George Carlin that I find so troubling: authenticity. The Carlin myth, as put forth in Apatow's doc, is that Carlin became true to himself via drugs. This is the same story that is told about Pryor. In Pryor's case, I believe it; in Carlin's case, I kinda don't. Because Pryor changed ONCE, and then remained more or less the same guy for decades; he was a conventional comic who said, "What the hell am I doing?" then went to Berkeley, dropped a lot of acid, got in touch with his racial consciousness, and then--whether it was in some club on the South Side or the Hollywood Bowl--did the same kind of thing, from 1969 to his death.

Carlin began as a conventional comic, then became a hippie comic, then became a harmless flakey sitcom guest star, then became Mr. Angry Old Guy--you could say that all of these were facets of the real him, but the fact that they were all perfectly tuned for showbiz success as a standup comedian makes me think that there was a lot of ART--admitted or not--in all these pivots. And with a comic where authenticity is so large a part of his appeal, that counts. Don't get me wrong, I think Carlin was a consummate performer--his face and voice were amazing instruments and he used them beautifully--but unlike it seems most viewers, I'm not totally convinced he isn't just delivering me a persona.

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I just wanted to remind you of the clip in the Apatow doc of Carlin and Pryor dressed in cardigans on the John Davidson hosted *Hullabaloo!* Pryor in particular already looked like his soul was straining to escape this purgatory he’d ended up in.

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Yes, you can see him squirm, and this speaks to the huge obvious difference between Pryor and Carlin. Carlin could go anywhere, and do anything, and to some degree SAY anything, without fear of losing membership in the White Guy Club. As an African-American Pryor could really NEVER fit into mainstream culture the way Carlin could, which gives his personal journey a level of danger that Carlin's didn't, and couldn't have. Carlin's drug-induced leap from mainstream to counterculltural comedy--while courageous--was performed with a net of privilege, whereas Pryor's was a kind of desperation.

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This seems to be a very American phenomenon. Just as US sitcoms generally have a moral at the end of each ep and UK ones don't - and shows like Seinfeld and IASIP are so *pointedly* amoral that IMO they only serve to reinforce my point - a high percentage of American comedians since Lenny Bruce seem to have decided it's more important to save the world than make it laugh, while British standups prefer to stick to observing that having kids disrupts your sleep schedule and rain is annoying. And while I prefer America for standup on the whole, I just have no interest whatsoever in the full-bore Carlin "angry secular preacher" model. To quote Norm yet again, comedians aren't modern-day philosophers, modern philosophers are.

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The break comes in the late 50s and probably has to do with US Cold War politics.

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Same time as the Beats, I can't help but notice!

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Yes yes and the abstract expressionists, and politicized for the same reason!

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I had to take a few days to mull this over. My answer to this question is multi-leveled. When I was a young kid, the impressionable mush between my ears I think actually was greatly influenced by jokes. While my granddad was a Racist SOB and my folks pretty conservative, my reading of MAD magazine at 10yrs old pretty much subverted any of their influences. A few years later, National Lampoon entrenched this rebellion even further. But was it from just one joke that changed my mind away from that? No. It was more like a firehose of jokes. Which of course plays into Mike's point, no one joke can change a mind. I think that in the same way propaganda works, you need a barrage of jokes, satires, and comics to alter one's perception for better or worse. It all depends on who's feeding you the jokes. It was rumored that Joe Stalin could always raise a loud round laughter, and then a change of heart, amongst his commisars ...right before he ordered them all shot.

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The poll's closed... But, yes, maybe more like a series of jokes, and - or a series of similar jokes heard a number of times - followed up by research and contemplation, has changed some opinions.

In order for this to happen, though, it seems a person must already be somewhat openminded and abiding at a certain level of consciousness.

The long tradition of art, literature, humor, philosophical discourse, spiritual teachings, and literacy itself has had wonderful moments - but doesn't seem to be expanding consciousness quickly enough to turn the terrible tide.

Social media and new media has had a fun time undoing the artistic and philosophical progress humanity has made so far in only two decades

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Despite the adage of "You cannot reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into." I think you can definitely laugh people into a position they didn't previously have. (Or explain a concept to them that sticks.)

After hearing "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy" I finally understood Hedonic Adaptation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBtKNzoKZ4&ab_channel=LisaZielinski

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Jason, I'm so glad you brought this up because I remember seeing this bit and thinking, "Yes. I have had this thought since I was five. And, Louie?" He stops at the bitchiness, but doesn't really release into transcendence. You can stop at any single point and look around and marvel at the progress.

Whether coming to this same conclusion in 1974 means that I was a particularly precocious five year old or this is just the way a mind tilted towards comedy tends to think, I have had this experience SO FREQUENTLY listening to comedians--and Louis CK in particular, perhaps because he was born in '67 and me in '69-- it's what started me down this path of "Maybe comedy doesn't change minds. Maybe the mind of each audience member is static."

And then decades of writing satire and engaging with audiences on those works moved me from that place to "Satire, which desperately wants to change minds, DEFINITELY doesn't change minds." And then when I juxtaposed that conclusion with the cultural space occupied by comedy people -- the reverence, the craving towards them, the priestliness they both cultivate and are assigned -- I sensed something important about how contemporary American intellectual culture is working (or not working).

Also: Hedonic Adaptation is, it seems, very similar to the Buddhist conception of the mind?

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Re: 'Also: Hedonic Adaptation is, it seems, very similar to the Buddhist conception of the mind?'

Absolutely. The 'wanting' is the operative piece. Some better-articulated versions of explaining it can be found with the recordings of Alan Watts; I illustrated some of this for Sam Harris' "Waking Up" app a while back, after he secured the rights to the tapes of his old teachings. Worth a listen!

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Alan Watts is quite a favorite of mine. I once watched a biography/documentary about him which revealed that when he was a young kid, he wanted to be Fu Manchu. I CAN RELATE.

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