The Passing Of a Comic Genius
Posted by: Michael in News, Religion and the battle for Common Sense
Today was a particularly sad morning, and not just because I realized it was Monday. I opened my Gmail account to see an email from a friend with a subject line I hoped was some sort of sick joke, “RIP George Carlin”. The body of the email said all that could be said, “Damn shame. At least we got to see him, live”
There is an excellent article about Carlin’s life and misadventures I read on Yahoo News. Click HERE to read it.
George Carlin’s biography and material has molded and influenced some of the greatest stand-up acts of our time. Even Jerry Seinfeld touches on this briefly in his documentary “Comedian”. Good comedy comes from a place of angst and unrest with the world around you. It comes from a strong mind and a strong opinion. (You’ll notice comedians like Dane Cook lack both). Carlin and other great comedians see the absurdity and the senseless acts of genocide and hypocrisy in human life and have used comedy as a voice to speak out.
George’s typical routines center around his disdain for religion, the unaccountable nature of politics, and overall commentary on the state of societies the world over.
George Carlin was certainly the consummate cynic, but he’s probably done more to change the point of view of North Americans than any cheerleader for positivity ever has. Sure Extreme Make Over- Home Edition may give you a new house and a roof over your head, but Carlin will make sure you’re paying more attention to your kids and the things that matter in life instead of your new 50″ Plasma TV and Cadillac Escalade.
Its been said that George Carlin has not only made us laugh for almost 40 years, but he’s been making us think as well. Carlin seemed to take a specific pride in his ability to finger point the backwardness in what humans prioritize and associate with value. In pointing out these absurdities George always claimed, “When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat.”
Several great lessons in hypocrisy I’ve always enjoyed are in bits Carlin have called “Pro-Life is Anti-Women” and The Sanctity Of life (I’ll put these clips at the bottom of the post as well).
At one point, Carlin mentions how Catholics are primarily against abortion, and also very against homosexuality, “Well, who has less abortions than homosexuals?!? Leave these fuckin’ people alone. They are guaranteed to NEVER have an abortion. You think these two sides would be logical allies.” Seriously, take 15 minutes and watch these clips from beginning to end, they’re hilarious. Its easy to see Carlin’s genius at work within the wording, reasoning, and language he chooses in his act. Well, unless of course its your opinions he’s taking aim at, then you’ll likely be royally pissed off. But I think that is what good comedy is. It states a strong and intelligent opinion and doesn’t apologize for it. And if you feel strongly enough to get angry and upset, hopefully you’ll take a moment to evaluate what you’ve heard and see if your own views stand up according.
So I’d like to take this post to say a big Thank You and Goodbye to George Carlin for providing many generations of thinking and reasoning teenagers and adults with ways to laugh at the world around us. Because its typically those that notice there are things to laugh at that are willing to try to make it better. Even if its one person or one show at a time.
Thank You Mr. Carlin.
To get a full picture of George Carlin’s Life and Entertainment Career, WikiPedia also has a full and seemingly accurate write-up.
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I thought of you this morning when I read the news.
Also – are you an atheist, Mike? You’re always posting things like this but never have actually came right out and said if you were or not.
I don’t use the word Atheist personally because too many people confuse the topics of religion and of god when I see them as two very separate conversations.
If you’re asking, and it appears you are, I’m certain religion is a total and complete sham. Under further, or any scrutiny it all comes down like a house of cards. From the resurrection, to the virgin birth, to jesus being the son of god, I think its all total nonsense. There is just so much information out there, not to mention logic and reasoning that prove religion is all a bunch of hocus pocus nonsense. As for there being a god, if I had to make a sizeable wager on the subject, I would go with there isn’t. But I try not to have that discussion, as its frankly much too somber. I like to leave that 1% to chance, that sure, above all reason and various conclusions I’ve come to on the contrary, that 1% leaves a little mystery for me.
Whereas with religion, there is no 1% there’s only certainty. But unless someone with religious beliefs is being harmful to anyone else or promoting a harmful point of view i have no beefs with the religious. From an evolutionary perspective I understand why people believe what they believe, and also why its very difficult to sway someone from their beliefs no matter how overwhelming the facts are. Its just human nature. We are creatures of habit, routine and comfort.
And to be honest, in the future I would not be against perhaps raising children with religious undertones, but that is a much larger discussion and not simply explained through exposition in a comment box.
If I haven’t already answered your question; If Team Atheism is on the playing field, I would consider myself in the stands a few rows back. I root for the team, but wouldn’t wear a jersey or star in the lineup
Personally, I believe in intelligent design and I don’t believe that complete order can come from complete chaos. I’m not saying that carbon dating is invalid, or that dinosaurs never walked the earth, or that the universe isn’t expanding, or that I’m intolerant of homosexuals or other faiths. It’s just that, without faith, without God, or a belief in a divine Creator, so many would be lost. Case in point – recovered addicts and alcoholics would’ve never been able to conquer their so-called ‘demons’ without it – such as your buddy George Carlin:
“Several times he’d call young comics who were messed up on drugs, and just introduce himself as ‘George, a recovering addict, and why don’t you go to a meeting with me or we can get together and talk,’ ” says Tom Arnold, 49, who’s also battled with drugs and alcohol. “And it blew them away. Nobody said no.”
Mind you, this isn’t an attempt at a deathbed conversion by any stretch of the imagination… but perhaps Mr. Carlin wasn’t telling us everything…
If you’d ever been to an AA or NA meeting with someone who’s trying to get clean, you’d know that it’s virtually impossible to complete a 12 step recovery program without the acknowledgement of a higher power. Approximately 7 out of the 12 steps are based around God and the serenity prayer is spoken at the end of every meeting with hands joined and heads bowed. (Yes, I can attest to this. I’ve attended about 5 or 6 open AA meetings and 1 gratitude dinner to support a friend recovering from a heroin and alcohol addiction> She’s now 2 years clean and sober – and for this, I thank the God you don’t believe in – everyday).
“Without some sort of spiritual experience, people don’t get well. That’s just a fact. Whatever that means to the individual varies. They have to be willing to get out of their own heads, basically, and have faith that the world won’t spin out of control if they don’t control it. Narcissism is a key personality element and you have to get people out of that. They have to be able to transcend a bit, whatever that means to them.” -Dr. Drew Pinsky
You say you’re a fan of “Team Atheist,” Mike… but something tells me that if you happen to be crashing to the ground in a 747, you’re not going to be praying to Joe Pesci.
Referring to Carlin as “my buddy George Carlin” is insulting, if you’re going to be condescending this isn’t the forum for it; if you’d like to have a polite discussion then I’m all for it.
With that being said, Carlin didn’t believe in god, perhaps a higher power, but definitely not a Creator, and saying so I think is an insult to his legacy and what he’s been saying for 40 years. So it wasn’t a belief in a creator or god that got him over his “demons” as you call it, i think it may have been all the work he started doing with comedy and so it looks like he was exercising his demons with intelligent discussion. But this is semantics since I can’t give Carlin a call and get a straight answer on this.
As for your AA meeting insight, I personally have a friend who works in Occupational Therapy and from his Master’s Studies in Mental Health I’ve been told that a lot of AA doesn’t work. And if you did some research you’d find the only reason that religion and the bible is so heavily involved is because AA was started by a Christian institution. At the beginning the only book allowed in the room was the bible. Addiction takes place in the mind and is a complicated process, picking up a bible and saying a prayer isn’t the cure. It may make the process easier for some people but just because believing in god has helped some drug addicts come clean doesn’t magically make him exist. And I’m sure being in a group of like-minded people that are trying to change their lives, as well as having the support of friends like yourself is another large component in the success of recovered addicts.
Your final point is another ridiculous copout line that’s been used by christians for decades, a more popular take is, “there are no atheists in fox holes”, this says that when you are faced with death all people look for a god. Well no shit. Of course atheists or christians, or whatever, if you know you’re about to die the mind will try to protect itself from the unbelievable fear you’re experiencing. You will do anything to try and brace yourself for what’s about to happen and make it more palpable for yourself. Just like we rationalize things in our minds about aspects of our lives we don’t particularly like and learn to live with them. Its a coping mechanism. But if you do ever get a chance to interview an atheist right before he crashes in a 747, let me know what he had to say.
Intelligent Design on the other hand is just a nice piece of marketing by the same christians that brought you Creationism years ago. Creationism was taking a lot of flack so voila, you have intelligent design. Complete order did not simply come from complete chaos. Firstly, look around, the last thing we have in this world is complete order (see: Darfur, any world war, and Greys Anatomy), if you took some time and thought about the way the world and we as humans function, its closer to chaos than order. As for the “design” of humans and animals and plants etc, these designs evolved over billions and billions of years. Life on earth didn’t commence with the flicking of a switch. And the fact that some christians believe earth was created over 7 days is even more unbelievable, not to mention the Adam and Eve tale.
There are a lot of atheists out there that wear their knowledge on their sleeve like a badge, like they’ve solved some secret Da Vinci code the rest of the world is just figuring out. I’m not one of those people. I’m happy I’m self-aware, I do cherish the things I know and have discovered with much labored thought, but its not a choice I made. No one chooses to believe what they believe, nor do they choose to change their opinions. You are who you are. Its how you were raised, your experiences throughout life, and the information we’ve individually been exposed to. If tomorrow I decided I wanted to believe in religion and in god, I could not. You cannot force yourself or anyone else to believe in something that doesn’t resonate somewhere within them. Which is another reason why I find the whole “Love only one god and no other gods” type of rules rather ridiculous. If you, for example, were born into a muslim household you would likely now believe in Allah. Not because there is a right or wrong god, but because those are the beliefs you’ve been exposed to. So to say that there are different gods and whoever is right wins eternity in heaven is a joke in my opinion. Lets say for arguments sake that Buddha is the “real god”, so that means that everyone else in the world born into non-buddhist families will be going to hell for worshipping the wrong god? The logic just doesn’t fit together for me.
So like I said, i have no qualms with people that believe in god or a higher power, or even Santa for that matter. Its just from what I’ve read, from what I’ve thought through and what I’ve been exposed to, its religion that does not make any sense to me whatsoever. (either does god, but like I mentioned in my last comment, its a conversation I try not to participate in). I just see life as being a lot more complicated than anything the bible or any religious text has to offer.
I really do appreciate the time you took to read my post and form your comments. I always enjoy reading your opinions fitzie.
“If you’re going to be condescending this isn’t the forum for it”
Meow. Easy tiger.
I apologize, just as you apologized for all of the condescending comments you made about weight and pregnant women a few posts ago…
Though I must admit, it’s quite flattering to know my views piss you off enough to warrant a 7(ish) paragraph response. I don’t think anyone else’s posts are getting that kind of attention!
For someone who claims they’d rather “ride the waves than fight them” you sure do fight a lot. I, on the other hand, don’t have the time nor the energy to be berated for expressing my opinion when it’s clearly invited.
haha I certainly couldn’t get away with not apologizing for some things that I made apparently unclear about the pregnancy post, not to mention a few things I was just completely ignorant about. I definitely learned a few lessons that day, that’s for sure.
Typing comments back and forth makes tone and a pleasant discussion nearly impossible. You didn’t piss me off and I wasn’t trying to berate you, but if you voice an opinion that I disagree with and believe there are many many facts that should be brought to the table that’s what I did. Explaining why I disagree with you and giving you clear points that are contrary to your opinion is hardly berating.
and you’re totally right about the waves, haha, maybe sometimes you have to fight through the big ones to get to the better surf. And yet another analogy is born.
truce.