Sometimes We Just Need A Brain

A Pharmaceutical Commercial Parody & The Spirit of Laughter

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The times we’re in are certainly a blast. Everyday seems like a bizarre version of earth that is hard to believe exists. All while we can feel like we’re on the precipice of a huge change. A Great Change.. or as I’ve always called it A Shift.

Depending on how we orient our attention and consciousness, we can feel consistent sadness, frustration, anger and judgement toward our current moment. Or, we can feel those things very briefly, integrate them, and then sense into opportunity - because it is certainly there.

I’m suggesting it’s healthy to feel some sadness, some anger, and some frustration with the state of the world. But also suggesting we want to be careful that it doesn’t become our baseline.

We don’t need to avoid the tough stuff that’s happening entirely, but if we let it consume us we’ll certainly feel like shit. There’s wisdom in tough stuff, and wisdom in knowing how to take in the right amount as we go.

Then there is also how we orient to all that is going on in terms of who is right and who is wrong. Who is on our team and who is against us. What is true and what is not. This, in many ways, resembles the old consciousness yet it’s taking over people’s consciousness immensely.

So often the “in group/out group” thinking clouds our ability to relate and empathize with other humans. The allegiance to one political side or another does the same. We reduce people’s being, beliefs, and experience down to basic judgements because it’s easy and let’s us keep them at bay. I also think how we participate in culture feeds into this.

“They are stupid.”
”They are brainwashed.”
“They believe in propaganda.”

Most people seem to think these things about everyone else.

Since the US election is here:

“Trump is bad.”
“Biden (Harris now) is destroying America”

All of it is bullshit and dubious.

And if we keep orienting to and responding to our current moment with the same old consciousness we’ll be left with the same results: more division, more authoritarianism, more destruction of our commons and a degrading quality of life.

Unintegrated consciousness produces an unintegrated world. Take a look outside.

If you are someone who has been pulling yourself out of the consensus trance for sometime, you’ll likely begin to see mainstream reality as rather bizarre. Even comical! Like it doesn’t make sense and as if it feels ridiculous.

A trance does these things to a society. It makes us believe ridiculous things that don’t make sense. It makes us take one bit of information seriously while ignoring another. It makes us dig our heels into our existing beliefs even when they are proven wrong with evidence. We’ve likely all been in a trance at one point or another.

But now we’re waking up.

Over the weekend I wrote in the CE Insight newsletter when referring to the times we’re in:

“THESE are the times we are in. It’s supposed to be paradoxical.

We have to laugh sometimes, engage sometimes, scratch our heads sometimes, not know sometimes, and just get really friggen comfortable with uncertainty.”

I’d add to that, we have to embrace a new consciousness, and that takes inner work, not only sensemaking.

To me, those who are truly stepping into a new way of being and new consciousness are not seeing this as mainstream vs alternative. Good vs evil. Left vs Right. Elites vs. the People.

They are instead seeing a much more complex picture. We won’t get into this today, but instead we’ll have a laugh.

The other day a friend sent me a comical video that’s a hilarious parody on pharmaceutical commercials and our current trance. Check it out below and then I want to share one other small detail.

I had a good laugh at this (thanks Madhava).

Of course, not every detail has to be taken seriously or as fact, and I’m not suggesting you should just believe all the alt media and never listen to the mainstream etc etc.

Just have a friggen laugh.

I liked this bit because it generally didn’t pick out a group of people and beat on them. It was done in a way that almost everyone can relate to it and have a laugh. I like that kind of comedy. The show Exploding Kittens on Netflix does a great job of tackling our current human predicament without constantly shitting on one side as being the problem. South Park is also great at this.

But there’s something important to point out about how meme-ing and comedy has become problematic and is currently pervasive. It’s when comedy becomes about lazily picking on who we disagree with and don’t like, and becomes the baseline for our entire way of looking at events, people, politics, values etc.

I think of clips of Jimmy Dore laughing his ass off at the suffering of someone he disagrees with. His act has become the baseline of how he sees others. Instead of platforming their ideas and values and maybe discussing how he disagrees, he normalizes the idea of laughing hysterically at their pain. You then see the same sentiment in the comments too.

Dore is certainly not alone in this approach, just an example off the top of my mind.

This to me is like junk food - junk content - it’s cheap, easy, might even taste good if you’re not used to real food, and gives you some satiation, but is it nutritious? What effect does it have on you long term? What about the effect on public health long term?

Comedic memes on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook can be great, but often becomes the one tricky pony influencers use for social commentary. Again, junk content in our feed that constantly reminds us about how stupid our enemy or the out group is.

Slowly but surely, we dehumanize people and become distant from their actual ideas, beliefs and values.

Don’t get it twisted, I sense some people may not get what I’m putting out here. Some might think “it’s just jokes, we need jokes, don’t take it too seriously.”

Should we eat junk food everyday and expect to be healthy? What if we did that as a collective?

I agree, we need jokes. But an honest look at what’s occurring reveals we are in a constant state of othering. It’s junk content masquerading as jokes. And we’re all watching it have a cost and then turning around blaming mainstream media for being divisive when internet behavior may actually be worse.

This cultural orientation toward meme-ing and making fun of our opponents as a default is in large part why there is so much “in group/out group” thinking. It feeds into it.

It’s why many people don’t understand the facts that drive the vaccine cautionary space or why people don’t understand each other’s ideas around abortion or why they support one politician over another. I’d love to ask these influencers, can you steel man the position of the group you constantly make fun of?

Likely not. As millions of eyes join in on the ignorance.

In one way, the same people who call people who don’t agree with them “NPCs” are NPCs themselves. I don’t personally believe anyone is an NPC but hey, I’m trying to make a point here.

(For reference, an NPC is a Non-Player Character in video games. It’s supposed to be an insult to suggest someone does not think for themselves or does not make their own decisions. They lack introspection or intrapersonal communication. This is demonstrated in the film, FREE GUY.)

I believe when we are driven by simplistic thinking and basic assumptions about other people and groups we are not really thinking for ourselves. We’re just operating from programming in our own way.

I’ll cap off by saying, if you’ve spent more than an hour with me you know I joke around and goof off most of the time. I love to laugh. What I’m pointing to is the spirit in which we laugh and joke. Does it replace the way that we see people and connect with people? What is driving our constant need to engage in this way? Why is being curious about other people so hard?

I’m not telling anyone what to do, I’m merely asking: what are you putting out into the field?