Lecture of the Teach to good project "Humor as a weapon"

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

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Humor as a weapon

What happens when we laugh? We are overwhelmed by positive emotions. Is this good or bad? At first glance, it’s good - because we are happy, we are having fun. But why, then, can you hear such phrases as "stupid humor", "vulgar humor", "low humor", "black humor" and so on, each of which says that not every joke is appropriate and benefits specific people or society as a whole.

To understand why humor and the positive emotions it causes are not always "good", let's look at what our emotions are and what role they play in human life. To do this, we will need to understand how the psyche works.

The structure of the psyche

The human psyche can be schematically represented as an interconnected two-level information system, consisting of consciousness and subconsciousness, which analyze and transform information. In their work, consciousness and subconsciousness rely on the already existing information base, which is called "worldview". Worldview is the totality of all our knowledge and ideas about the world around us. Everything that we have learned, assimilated, accumulated, understood and so on in our life. If the worldview is adequate to reality, i.e. the picture formed in our head corresponds to the processes in the real world, then the person behaves adequately. If there is a kaleidoscope and chaos in the head, then the behavior of such a person will be in the style of "seven Fridays a week." That is, the quality of the work of our psyche as a whole and of each of the systems - consciousness and subconsciousness - largely depends on the reliability and integrity of the knowledge we have accumulated.

We consider the structure of the psyche in such detail, because most of the manipulations in mass culture and the media are based on the impact on the subconscious or the introduction of false information into the worldview. For example, if you deceive a person and convince him that alcohol is food, that is, introduce a false thesis into his ideological picture, then he will continue to consume alcohol, thinking that it is a food product. If a person knows that any alcohol contains alcohol, which is a technical liquid and is not intended for ingestion, then it will be very difficult to convince him to drink wine or vodka. In fact, there are a lot of such deceptions, as in the example with alcohol, in our world. Let's watch a video called "Linguistic Weapons" to see how similar manipulations are used in other areas.

Consciousness, subconsciousness and the role of emotions

Now let's take a closer look at the difference between consciousness and subconsciousness, because they have different information processing capabilities. If from the level of consciousness we can simultaneously keep in attention a relatively small number of objects or processes, and this usually requires purposeful volitional efforts, then the subconscious is able to simultaneously track and analyze huge amounts of information.

Remember, when you are driving a car, how many external factors should your brain analyze at the same time? But most of these processes proceed as if “automatically”. Because of what our subconscious mind can be compared to an "autopilot", which we adjust and correct from the level of consciousness, after which it is able to automatically perform quite complex operations.

For example, a person is learning to drive a car. To do this, he studies the rules of the road for a long time, masters driving - first with an instructor, then himself: he focuses on how to change gears correctly, turn, learns to assess the road situation, and so on. The first days behind the wheel are always in a very tense mode, but at some point, after a week or a month, this whole process ceases to require any serious volitional efforts and largely goes into automatic mode. You can already drive a car and listen to music, or chat about something with a friend, and the whole complex process of driving a car is worked out by your psyche from the subconscious level in automatic mode. That is, in order to learn how to drive a car, you need to load into your subconscious mind a certain amount of information related to this process and get practical skills. In a similar way, a person learns everything in this world, perceiving a large amount of information and using it in practice. But a logical question arises: if a huge number of processes take place at the level of our subconsciousness, then how are the results of information processing delivered to the level of consciousness? Simply put, how does our "autopilot" signal about danger, or, conversely, that everything is in order? After all, our psyche works as a whole. And the answer to this question is the word "emotion". Emotion is the reaction of our subconscious mind to the analysis of a particular situation or specific information.

For clarity, you can draw an analogy with an airplane. Modern airliners can fly and even land in automatic mode, and at the moment when the ship is flying on autopilot, the crew does not need to track all hundreds of flight parameters - this task is solved by automation. But pilots need to observe several control parameters and warning lights. And if one of them lights up at some point, it means that the situation requires the intervention of the pilot and it is necessary to take control. Emotions serve as an analogue of such "warning lights" in our psyche. For example, we are driving a car while talking to a passenger in the next seat. Our attention is focused on the conversation, and the driving process is practiced from the subconscious level in automatic mode. If a pedestrian or a large hole suddenly appears in front of us, then our emotional background instantly changes: a relaxed state is replaced by stress and tension, which forces us to turn our attention to the situation on the road in order to find a way out of a non-standard situation. After we successfully maneuver and go around the obstacle, we will be able to return to communication with the interlocutor. Here are some more practical examples. Imagine that you are visiting friends, chatting with them or playing some active games, and you are filled with emotions of joy, because your subconscious mind evaluates this environment as the most favorable and useful.

Another situation: you met with a new business partner, and during the conversation you realized that you feel distrust and dislike for him, you are uncomfortable with him, you are filled with negative emotions. You still do not know the reasons for this, but your subconscious mind, having analyzed thousands of nuances in the manner of the interlocutor's behavior, in the intonations of his voice, in the way he is dressed, what he talks about, what topics he touches, concluded that this person should not be trusted, and through emotions signals this to you. Probably, you will refuse any business with this partner, and in the future it turns out that you did the right thing, and you should not have communicated with him. After some time, finding yourself in a calm atmosphere, you can even analyze all those nuances that alerted you. These simple examples clearly show what role emotions play in our life, and what place they occupy in the psyche. Why do you need to know this, and why did we consider this issue in such detail? Because humor is always associated with positive emotions. But positive emotions are good only if they are adequate and appropriate in a specific setting, and lead to positive consequences. In a situation with the same business partner who turned out to be a fraud, would your positive emotions have led to something good if, for example, with the help of humor, jokes or something else, the fraudster managed to make you laugh and establish closer contact?

But what if you start using humor in this way, not against an individual, but immediately against millions of people? What if you make the whole country laugh at the moment when laughter is completely inappropriate? And not just make you laugh, but immerse you in a constant state of ironic and humorous attitude to any serious matter. Let's take a couple of videos as an example to see how modern "great combinators", known to everyone in the image of Ostap Bender, work

TNT - entertains or controls?

In the videos presented, we analyzed mainly the programs of Channel One, but the most popular comedy shows on modern Russian television are broadcast on TNT, and it is he who attracts the largest percentage of the youth audience. Probably everyone has heard the phrase "if you want to defeat the enemy - raise his children." This is exactly the case when it is appropriate to recall it, because TNT is primarily engaged in education, although it positions itself as a purely "entertainment television". We devoted an entire two-hour film "The Whole Truth About TNT" to the analysis of TNT programs and series. It is blocked on youtube, but you can find it by name on other video hosting sites. The film clearly explains how TNT uses humor to systematically promote stupidity, vulgarity, drugs and perversions. How jokes are cultivated over our country, over history, family values; how lack of spirituality is praised, how the audience is imposed on the false notions of "healthy cynicism" or "healthy indifference". All this in a person with a normal psyche cannot but cause rejection.

Only one TNT actor for the entire existence of the TV channel openly expressed his position "against". Alexey Gavrilov, who played the role of Gosha in the popular TV series "Sasha Tanya", left the project, saying that he would not want young people to imitate the behavior of his hero in the sitcom. “Having received the script once again, I realized that I can no longer support the ideology that my hero is promoting through this series. This is laziness, parasitism, alcoholism. In life I am a completely different person, I lead a healthy lifestyle and I urge everyone to do the same. Therefore, I do not want to participate further through my hero in the degradation of the population, this is my firm position!"

But, unfortunately, not everyone realizes that manipulation is often hidden under the guise of entertainment or humor. For example, in the comments to the video reviews of the Teach Good project, you can often come across the opinion that the creators of the videos simply do not have a sense of humor, or that they do not understand satire - they say that all these programs are actually making fun of vices. In reality, the ridiculed evil not only does not disappear from life - it becomes familiar, commonplace, and is more easily accepted by people. Therefore, on all TV channels today there are so many all kinds of laughter. They serve as a kind of anesthesia for society. While the crowd is laughing, and its attention is diverted to all sorts of stupidity and vulgarity, you can calmly carry out those processes that people, if they were in a sober mind, would not allow, or at least resist them.

Remember one of the founders of screen humor - Charlie Chaplin and his film "The Great Dictator" with a humorous parody of Hitler and satire on Nazism. The film was released in 1940, received wide recognition and five Oscars. And what was the effect of the film's distribution? The image of Hitler and Nazism began to be perceived by many as something funny, funny, stupid. Was such a frivolous presentation of a very serious and dangerous topic appropriate in that situation? Today we can answer unequivocally: the film removed the feeling of threat from society, and replaced it with stupid humor and giggle. The meanings promoted by the film hindered rallying in the face of the very real threat of Nazism, and thereby helped Hitler. It is believed that it was for this contribution to world processes that Charlie Chaplin was erected a monument on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Almost all Russian comedians, constantly flashing on the television screen, follow in his footsteps.

Useful and harmful humor - how to evaluate?

However, we do not urge you to go to the other extreme and think that humor, in principle, is only harmful. Humor is just a tool, and the positive emotions it evokes are neither bad nor good in themselves. It is the specific situation and meaning that makes them so. To assess the harm or benefit of a joke, you need to assess the consequences of its distribution. To do this, you need to analyze the following factors:

• the setting in which the joke is made
• the audience it is targeting
• topic to which attention is drawn

The combined analysis of these factors allows us to draw a conclusion about the consequences that will entail the announcement of one or another joke. Depending on our assessment of these consequences, we can rate the joke itself as useful / harmful or good / bad. For example, if in a situation of hostilities, in order to relieve unnecessary stress, a unit commander tells his subordinates a vulgar anecdote, this may help him to normalize the situation in the team, and the negative effect will be insignificant. But if the same anecdote is heard from TV screens, it will serve only as an additional incentive to switch the attention of the mass audience to the instinctive sphere, and thereby do more harm than good. However, the problem is that in most cases people do not bother analyzing the consequences of the spread of jokes and laugh thoughtlessly. As a result, they do not even realize that the overwhelming majority of works of modern "satire and humor" program their psyche for a false emotional assessment of the mocked vices, which not everyone is able to correct rationally, intellectually.

Who will protect against manipulation with humor

Back in 2015, the Politpraktik and Teach Good projects sent an appeal to the director of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bortnikov, in which it was said that TNT TV channel threatened the national security of Russia. In particular, the appeal contained the following information:

“In the information disseminated by the TNT channel, a substitution of concepts is used, when neutral or justifying ways of explaining these phenomena are used to denote vicious or socially dangerous phenomena; as well as manipulative semantics: language, style, aesthetics, speech rate, color, etc. This information contains:

• a) propaganda of sex, vulgarity, lust, licentiousness, vulgarity, debauchery;
• b) promotion of free relationships without creating a family, adultery and treason, one-time sexual relations before marriage;
• c) propaganda of stupidity and infantilism;
• d) propaganda of selfishness and individualism;
• e) propaganda of perversions;
• f) propaganda of consumerism, the cult of money, an idle lifestyle, easy glory;
• g) propaganda of intoxicating substances (alcohol, tobacco and other drugs) …"

The FSB received a short reply that the information sent in the circulation will be taken into account in the work of the department. However, since then the situation on television has changed, if only for the worse. This does not mean that such appeals are useless (it is necessary to inform the authorities so that they have grounds for action when the right circumstances arise for this), or that the Federal Security Service does not understand the importance of the issue. It's just that, no matter how much we want it, the situation cannot change overnight. In the current conditions, neither the FSB, nor any other structure can close the same TNT channel, because everything that was announced in this lecture is still understood by only a small percentage of society. And in order to change the situation, a significant social potential must be accumulated, on the basis of which it will be possible to carry out certain sharp maneuvers against persons engaged in information genocide under the guise of humor and laughter. Therefore, it is so important, on the one hand, not to fall for manipulations under the guise of humor, and on the other hand, to engage in enlightenment and dissemination of truthful information among your environment. The more people will see control technologies bypassing consciousness, be able to identify the real goals of producers of popular films and television content, the sooner the era of “great combiners” in which we live will end.