Mockery

Hey blogoverse. I've been crunching some thoughtchildren, and I wanted to wordvomit my conclusionstuffs. I keep seeing the same patterns turning up. People in group A mocking people in group B.

Now, mockery is basically telling someone that a facet of them is worthless. It's so bad, you feel like you have the right to make fun of it publicly. Whether it be their looks, their ideas, philosophies, actions, or whatever. People use mockery a lot. Often when someone goes against social norms, or when someone espouses a train of thought that is perhaps hypocritical or illogical.

But we get too used to mockery. It becomes too easy to dismiss someone else outright by laughing and walking away.

Perhaps the worst part of mockery, however, is that you have announced your lack of intent to hold any kind of reasonable conversation about the topic before dismissing your opponent. But, you've made sure to imply that you making fun of them is more important than anyone learning a lesson or understanding each other.

Basically, you've announced that you have the right to be a dismissive asshole.

It's only when we frame mockery as truly disrespectful that we realize how often we do it. I mock conservativism still. I've mostly stopped mocking things outright, and I try to stick to full/explained criticism. Admittedly, I introduce a small bit of mockery into my criticism on certain topics, and I need to cut that shit out. It's bad form, disrespectful, and helps exactly 0%.

We may not agree with or like an idea. In fact, we might find it patently offensive. And those ideas may never go away. Perhaps mockery is the best way to laugh about something absurd without giving it legitimacy. But then, who are we to decide something's legitimacy?

[I go off topic here to a specific example of mockery and why that specific example frustrates me. Feel free to skip to the next brackets if you don't want to read]

The reason I'm thinking about this at the moment is because a week or so ago, I had a number of friends who all mocked a picture of a half-full bookshelf titled "Men's Studies." They derided it both as being indicative of male ego and as something that couldn't even fill a single shelf. They suggested it was all of history and that giving it a separate section was insulting. To the best of my knowledge, all of the posters are feminists, which is why that behavior shocked and angered me. Mockery from a disenfranchised group is already something that saddens me (in the way that bullying by nerds saddens me), but this particular topic is an issue that I thought feminism was largely on board with.

Noting here that the section was not titled "Men's Rights" or anything that might imply it affiliated with Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) for whom there isn't much love from either myself or most feminists I talk to. No, this section was about men's studies. A gender issue that, frankly, isn't super well-represented elsewhere, since it's specifically about gendered problems faced by males (which definitely exist). If there was a separate "Gender Studies" section, I'd want to see them merged, but if there was just a "Women's Studies" section (which there often is), then I don't see a problem with this section existing as is. It's actually really disheartening that they didn't have enough books to fill a full shelf, though there might be a few decent explanations for that. Regardless, the contribution brought forth by mocking the section's existence is that those people think there are no issues that males suffer that are gendered and ought to be talked about separate from "Women's Studies," which I think is ironically egotistical. Seriously, of all the people to be mocking an earnest attempt to collect and analyze gendered problems, I would think feminists would be on the bottom of that list.

[Alright, I'm done with that tangent, sorry]

There's certainly an argument to be made for not recognizing the legitimacy of an argument or an action once it breaches a threshold of logical absurdity or overall harm to society, but the number of things we can be pretty well certain of is surprisingly low. As a result, mockery usually winds up directed towards something that we don't actually understand that well. Mocking it, thus, is just the best way to not have to think about something that we feel strongly about (even if we don't have much/any evidence to back up our position).

I mock sports. I have a strong feeling about sports, but I don't have any data to back up that feeling. In fact, data would probably suggest that sports are an aggregate boon to society. They give citizens something to be passionate about, something to look forward to, to aspire to. They encourage physical activity, teamwork, companionship, competition. They're a non-lethal method of highlight physical human "superiority." Even if I think they're silly, my position is founded on little more than a feeling. Voicing it as mockery without critical analysis is immature at best and harmful at worst.

I think conservativism at least has a few points that we do have overwhelming data on, like casual voter fraud (it almost doesn't exist), or drug testing for welfare recipients (I have a long Facebook post completely dismantling this untenable position). But even with issues that are kinda' patently absurd, out and out mocking it doesn't really help anyone, does it? I reinforce my personal echo chamber a bit (which isn't necessarily bad), but that's it. I haven't educated anyone on why/how it's absurd. I haven't proven to yourself that I actually understand why I dislike it. I haven't changed anyone's mind. I've shouted at the wind and patted myself on the back for being so sociopolitically aware. Congratulations.

Programs like The Daily Show teach us at least how to couch mockery in an understanding of the facts and exactly what makes them absurd, which is better than nothing. But as much as I love The Daily Show, maybe that's a harmful approach? It's certainly divisive. Although there is some educational value in using entertainment to get a point across. It reaches a wider and younger audience. But it also strikes me as potentially breeding a sense of moral/intellectual superiority that I think is more damaging than helpful. Our intellectual and ideological development peaks around the central demographic for The Daily Show. To think that at that time we're mostly learning that mockery is acceptable discourse is at least a bit troubling on the offset, but I don't have any numbers for that (pot, meet kettle).

If you catch yourself doing it, and you'd be upset if someone else did it to you, maybe it's time to start working mockery out of your daily life and out of your argumentation style. If nothing else, you'll probably start noticing your discussions are a little less angry without it. And hey, maybe you'll change someone's mind without it.