Some Humor for Dealing with Human Induced Climate Change Deniers
I hope this post finds you well.
In this article I try to create some humor. This will help us to reduce the stress our evangelical Christians, republican representatives have created, by denying climate change is human induced and thus preventing the US Government from doing very little if anything to prevent greenhouse gas emissions and advancing carbon capture technology development. Let’s start by learning some components of humor.
A year ago, I watched a series on Netflix called ‘Money Heist’. It is a story about a group of people who take hostages at the bank of Spain and attempt to steal the gold. I know, it’s a simple theme, maybe told too many times, and may not interest you. However, the sub stories of each character along with their interactions, will grab hold of your curiosity and not let go. As the series progresses, each of the characters past is revealed, giving credence to their reasons to commit crimes. If you have time and are bored then this is a good watch.
I learned something about myself, watching this series. My humor! That’s right, my humor. Let me explain. The brother of the main character, Berlin, is this elegant, calm, and charismatic jewel thief that happens to be a misogynist, narcissist, and a psychopath. Even though, he is fiercely devoted to his fellow crew members, he likes to play mind games with them and their hostages.
In this one scene, S1:E8 with 5:45 minutes left, he is trying to get some information from one of the female hostages, who is not answering any of Berlin’s questions. So, Berlin with his calm and patient demeanor starts to tell the hostage his philosophy of a joke. Berlin says, “Did you know that for a joke to be funny, … there has to be some truth in it, … and some pain.” Berlin emphasized the word pain trying to warn the hostage. This is when it dawned on me. Some humor can involve human pain. … He’s right.
My dad told me a story once, which exposed to me his style of humor. I also, have this style of humor but I could never explain how it works. The story involved his dad, Jules Crawford Maxwell and took place in 1948. That was a long time ago, so I must discuss the context before I can explain our family’s style of humor. Before WW2 Jules was in the police force in Pensacola FLA. Then WW2 started and Jules was drafted into the Army and places into artillery. I remember when I was in ROTC at Northeastern University the talk was that everyone graduating was going to be placed into artillery. I don’t know why but during the war while in France, he was put into the Military Police. I think he served out the rest of the war in the military police. He returned to Pensacola when the war ended and entered the Pensacola police force.
In 1948 there was an American Veterans Club, with a manager that would hold after hour parties. The parties included lewd movies (porn), prostitutes and gambling. The gambling consisted of cards games and one arm slot machines. All of this was illegal at this time. On two occasions Capt. Jules Maxwell approached the club manager and asked him to stop the parties due to illegal activities. On the third-party Jules decide to raid the party and arrest the attendees. Capt. Jules asked for help from the Military Police, Shore Police and other Pensacola officers. It was a big night, in all 464 people were arrested. However, and unfortunately, several of the gamblers at the party were important people of Pensacola, and because of this he was let go.
Fortunately, he had a friend who placed workers into merchant marine jobs. So, for the rest of his career he performed lots of marine shipping work as well as hard hat diving, digging trenches in the Florida canals for power and communication lines.
You can see where the humor is. My dad mentioned he and his sister Melissa would kid their dad about this event. They actually laughed at him. Essentially, don’t raid a gambling party until you know if important people are not there. You may think this is strange, macabre humor, He lost his job after all, family livelihood too. But it’s actually a great joke, it involves the truth and pain. Imagine Jules making the raid and then finding out that important people were among the gamblers. I’m sure that was somewhat painful. Was my dad and his sister rude when they kidded their father Jules. No, absolutely not, you see there is another element that makes a joke, empathy. They are actually emphasizing with their dad; they all know they can’t do anything about it. Those people that ran the parties were actually members of Irish and Italian mob or organized crime. There was nothing anyone could do.
It’s kind of a funny style of humor, if you don’t understand it. Another person would think this is rude and sinister, to hear this style of joke and not see the empathy element. When I was in Jr High and in high school a lot of my class mates hated this style, especially the Irish descent guys. I know this because they were quick to tell me they were Irish. I remember at that time I really didn’t know what my descent was so I kept my mouth shut. So, put yourself into Capt. Maxwell’s shoes, the moment when he was informed that one of the attendees, he arrested was the Important people of Pensacola, the very person that employed him. Later the State of Florida destroyed the slot machines. I don’t know how many there were, but I’m sure the owners didn’t like it.
Now let’s talk about our situation. We have climate change deniers in positions of power willing to delay or interfere with climate change legislation, that could reduce green house gas emission and capture carbon from the atmosphere. The legislation passed so far, is simply not enough. We are the leaders of technology and have the most qualified people to address this situation. It is up to us.
The evangelical Christians are actually a cult, there not Christians, I’ll explain this in another article. They seem to do anything the far-right republican and oil elite tell them to do. This includes denying that climate change is human induced when over 95% of our scientist say it is, essentially ignoring our meritocracy. They just seem to do what ever they feel like. In fact, I call them the “We feel it should be this way,” cult. There most cult like behavior is that they can’t be reasoned with. Most dangerous cults are like this. So, basically were stuck. We can’t reason with them. They filter what ever information comes to them, only excepting that which they approve of. This is why I recommend humor to calm our angst.
I actually feel sorry for the evangelical Christians. When climate change hits us big, 20 years from now, they will be the most hated people on earth. Think of this, here we are, with the greatest number of scientist and engineers assembled ever in the history of mankind, with more money that any country has ever acquired, and we are doing so little. Let’s face it, we can technology our way out of human induced climate change, but they will do anything possible to prevent enough money from being allocated for carbon capture or to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Because they feel it is not human induced and have abandoned our meritocracy and ignored our scientist.
So, our three elements of a great joke, some truth, some pain, and the ability to empathize. We will use this to create humor to help us reduce the anxiety we feel, when dealing with climate change deniers.
Q: When will the evangelical Christians admit climate change is human induced.
A: When they feel like it.
Q: When will the oil companies convert to the hydrogen economy.
A: When they feel like they can make money from it.
Here are some books on humor: The Wit of England, Ireland, and Scotland. Books. These books try to describe the style of humor in the region. Fascinating.
The Wit of Ireland: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wicked-wit-of-ireland-myles-byrne/1129800486?ean=9781789290332
The Wit of England: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wicked-wit-of-england-geoff-tibballs/1129800487?ean=9781789290318
The Wit of Scotland: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wicked-wit-of-scotland-rod-green/1129800490?ean=9781789290325
If you know of any other books on humor, please indicate in a comment. I will add it to this list.