yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

John Cleese: Political Correctness Can Lead to an Orwellian Nightmare | Big Think


2m read
·Nov 4, 2024

I'm offended every day. For example, the British newspapers every day offend me with their laziness, their nastiness, and their inaccuracy. But I'm not going to expect someone to stop that happening; I just simply speak out about it. Sometimes when people are offended, they want—you can just come in and say, "Right, stop that" to whoever it is offending them. And, of course, as a former chairman of the BBC once said, "There are some people who I wish to offend." And I think there's truth in that too.

So the idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to. A fellow who I helped write two books about psychology and psychiatry was a renowned psychiatrist called Robert Skinner. He said something very interesting to me. He said, "If people can't control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people's behavior."

And when you're around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what's going to upset them next. That's why I've been warned recently not to go to most university campuses because political correctness has been taken from being a good idea— which is, let's not be mean in particular to people who are not able to look after themselves very well; that's a good idea— to the point where any kind of criticism or any individual or group could be labeled cruel.

The whole point about humor, the whole point about comedy, and believe you me, I've thought about this, is that all comedy is critical. Even if you make a very inclusive joke like, "How would you make God laugh?" Answer: "Tell him your plans." Now that's about the human condition; it's not excluding anyone.

Saying we all have all these plans, which probably won't come, and isn't it funny how we still believe they're going to happen? So that's a very inclusive joke. It's still critical. All humor is critical. If you start to say, "We mustn't, we mustn't criticize or offend them," then humor is gone. With humor goes a sense of proportion. And then as far as I'm concerned, you're living in 1984.

More Articles

View All
Black Hole Star – The Star That Shouldn't Exist
Black hole stars may have been the largest stars that ever existed. They burned brighter than galaxies and were larger than any star today or that could ever exist in the future. But besides their scale, what makes them special and weird is that deep insi…
8 steps to get your sh** together
Here are eight steps to get your together. Step one: Tell no one. The urge to tell everybody you know, especially the people closest to you, about this big change you’re going to make is often overwhelming. Because it feels really good to announce to eve…
Doing these things might feel good, but they won’t derisk your startup.
You could be in that bottomless pit for years and be a startup founder that’s never built a product and has never gotten a single customer because you just cycled in and out of various forms of startup mentorship. The collecting of mentors, advisors—oh, …
How Bitcoin Can Stop War
I’m pretty open about my philosophy. I consider myself a voluntarios, and that means that I think that human beings should be allowed to do absolutely anything they want, so long as it’s peaceful. They shouldn’t be allowed to use aggressive violence again…
Michael Seibel - How to Plan an MVP
My name is Michael. Uh, I work here at Y Combinator. I helped run the accelerator. Uh, before that, I did two YC startups—one in 2007 and one in 2012. Today, I’m going to talk to you about a minimum viable product, so MVP. We always yell at founders to n…
Perimeter word problem (skating rink) | Math | 3rd grade | Khan Academy
Gus plans to install a handrail around a skating rink. The rink forms a 40 meter by 20 meter rectangle. How many meters of handrail does Gus need? So here’s what we know about this skating rink: it’s a 40 meter by 20 meter rectangle. So let’s draw the sk…