Wednesday 27th of November 2024
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

factual fudge and comedic relief into the mirror of the human condition...

facts

Society’s defining issues are rarely presented as raw facts and stats, and climate change is no exception. From the performance of funerals for lost species and glaciers to the claim that the best we can do is adapt to impending catastrophe, climate change is often narrated like a classic Greek tragedy. Errors in human judgement set off a chain of events that once in motion inevitably bring extreme suffering, and a powerful sense of helplessness to change what we know is coming.

In many ways, such gloomy perspectives are appropriate. Millions of people are already being displaced or killed by the human-caused destabilisation of our climate. And yet, as environmental scientists and communication specialists point out, such narratives are problematic because they tend to inspire inertia and anxiety rather than action.

Narratives of hope might go some way to changing the script and galvanising a response. But there’s an even more suitable story we can supplement our tragic narratives with: comedy.

This proposal might seem bizarre. There is nothing funny about the prospect of environmental collapse. But while comedies are meant to be funny, they don’t have to be lighthearted or trivial.

Many philosophical approaches to comedy hold that comic effects arise from incongruities: mismatches between what we expect and what we perceive. For French philosopher Henri Bergson, one of the central incongruities used in comedy is when organic life – normally chaotic, changeable, and adaptable – instead acts in a machine-like way. Bergson argues that laughing at this incongruity is a social tool by which we mildly scold each other for not being adaptive and flexible enough.

Bergson extends this idea explicitly to the way humans relate to nature. He gives the anecdotal example of a lady who had been invited by the astronomer Cassini to observe an eclipse of the moon. Arriving late, she asks the astronomer to please begin the viewing anew.

Bergson also describes a character who arrives in town and, learning that there is an extinct volcano in the neighbourhood, exclaims: “They had a volcano and they let it go out!”. Here, comedy arises from the common treatment of the complicated and evolving network of life as mechanical and controllable.

This sort of attitude may seem ridiculous, but it encapsulates a dominant approach to tackling the climate crisis. Rather than trying to infringe less on our environment and allowing it to recover, many are doubling down on the technological harnessing of the natural world that got us into this mess in the first place – and will likely keep making things worse.

Bergson’s comic protagonists behave mechanically in relation to nature, and we laugh about them. But in laughing about them, we laugh about ourselves, too. They can help us reflect on our actions and highlight the absurdity and inefficiency of many human responses to the climate crisis.

Comic heroes

But comedies offer more than just a mode of critique. In addition to the protagonists we laugh at, comedies also provide heroes we laugh with. Rather than having a mechanical grip on their environment, they are receptive to the challenges of a living and changing environment and adapt their actions and goals accordingly.

The ancient philosopher Aristotle highlighted that comic characters are flawed but never wholly bad or evil. Likewise, their actions are often pathetic, but not vicious, and comedies overall are driven by errors and clumsiness. German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel held that it is a peculiar strength of comic protagonists to be able to withstand failure and disaster. Their flawed characters, their struggles with what life throws at them, and their perseverance against the odds make them a good mirror of the human condition.

 

Read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/12/29/comedy-can-help-us-tackle-climate-...

 

Image at top: FACTS. Gus's collection of useless images from the year 1960...

dearth of a coal salesperson...

As a ukulele is played on a beach in Waikiki, Scum Mugpungson, the famous advertising guru, realises in horror that he had left his coal samples in Scumshireland, next to his box of matches. Someone, possibly Arsonic or Lightninia, he thought, was going to use them to set fire to scraggy forests that he had carefully managed by telling crowds of Evangelicholic believers that global warming was a hoax and... that cutting trees down was a god’s gift. Coal had been Scum's passion all his life and unfortunately, apart from a lone indian bilious fake billionaire (eager to destroy the remnants of a precious bird population) few people wanted to buy in worthwhile quantities, for him to make a buck. How bad was that?...

Mugpungson had managed to stay top salesperson of the year, though, by promising a couple of pairs of fake stockings to his mistress, Electorata. But Electorata was not impressed anymore, especially when Scum left her hanging with her hair and pants on fire, to disappear with his wife and kids to a non-Austibuland destination vacation cheap holiday. We know it was cheap, because some pictures showed him, forlorn, scratching his belly-button alone in a mindless thoughtful mode, sitting on a plastic chair — the same one can find in B’ganvillian dirt-grounds, next to greasy old barbecues, around the world. 

Electorata was still waiting for him to turn up in Mallacoota, Bateman’s Bay, Maruya and Bega — as well as other regular bogan holiday spots with a slippery boat ramp and a barn-converted church with cemetery on the side. But Scum's chariot had been no-show on the fast melting roads, until the smell of imminent defeat on the advertising circuit for world top porkies rang bells in Scum's underpants.

Against his will and the dead flowers crown, Mugpungson had to come back home and change the music pronto with a new spiel that would place the blame fair and square on the useless Greens, on the unionised Labor, on GetUp!, and go through custom with a duty-free bag full of prayers and thoughts. He glorified the volunteers, until they asked for a bit of cash so they could wash their charcoal-burnt faces. 

Scum faced a terrible Sophie’s choice. To give or not to give. The Merdoch oracles advised him to keep his hands in his pockets and whistle… But Scum did some quick sums, on a sheet of dunny paper, with his Belgianic accountant and his wind-mill hater Angus who was so good at fudging facts and figures, to see how much he could buy the vote of Electorata once more, without loosing his precious bastard child, Surplusia, nor abandon his forever passion — coal — a product of god’s planet that was so safe that he had brought a big sample thereof, in the Kanbranian temple.

So far this delusional drama is worth a tiny chuckle. Apart from a "liberal" chickening half, Electorata does not care much about Scum anymore — as his love for her was always a sham, without a single trace of altruism nor devotion, but plenty of self-important targeted advertising and US caps hubris.

If Scum had any ethics, he would step off this comedia now. This would be the ultimate sacrifice for Electorate to collect her life insurance back again. But the Devil inhabits the dark corners of hell, that of the on-fire Austurbania continent. With plenty of flying pigs hidden by the mixed smoke signals, Mugpungson has revived his selling skills beyond belief. Unlike Willy Loman, he will polish his failures into saleable napoleonic victories…

Electorata will be conned again...

tough cheese in bega for scum...

Furious residents reeling from the deadly NSW bushfires have confronted Prime Minister Scott Morrison as anger boiled over in one of the towns hardest hit by the crisis.

As a state of emergency is declared for NSW and residents who’ve already lost friends and family in the fires await news of whether their homes are still standing, the PM visited evacuation centres to offer his support.

But while he was welcomed by some evacuees, his visit to the NSW Bega Valley town of Cobargo was cut short after locals told Mr Morrison “you should be ashamed of yourself”. 

In tears, one local woman refused to shake his hand until the PM offered more support to volunteer rural firefighters before.

“I am only shaking your hand if you give more money to the RFS. So many people have lost their homes,” she said after Mr Morrison took her hand.

Another man, who locals identified as a former mayor and National Party member, Bega Valley councillor Tony Allen, then put his arms around the woman to comfort her and said, “Shush”. The Prime Minister then turned his back to talk to another man in the crowd.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/nsw/2020/01/03/victoria-fire-disaster-pm-morrison-heckled/

the deserved unwelcome...

Senior NSW Liberal Andrew Constance says the Prime Minister got "the welcome he probably deserved" when he was yesterday driven out of a bushfire ravaged town.

Key points:
  • Mr Constance, is the NSW Government's Transport Minister
  • The PM yesterday visited the town of Cobargo, which is in Mr Constance's electorate
  • Mr Constance says he did not know the PM was planning the trip

 

Pictures from Scott Morrison's awkward visit to Cobargo, on the NSW South Coast, were beamed around the world and went viral on social media.

People in the town, where a father and son died in a blaze earlier this week, shouted and heckled the Prime Minister during the brief trip.

In one particularly tense interaction, Mr Morrison grabbed the hand of a woman who had refused to shake his hand.

As the Prime Minister was leaving, people swore at him and told him he should be "ashamed of himself" after he "left the country to burn".

Mr Constance is the Member for Bega, which includes Cobargo.

He said he was not aware the Prime Minister would be visiting his electorate.

Follow our live blog for updates on bushfires and the evacuations.

 

"Well, I didn't even know he was coming, I haven't had a call from him," Mr Constance told Seven News.

"To be honest with you, the locals probably gave him the welcome he probably deserved."

"I say this to the Prime Minister today, the nation wants you to open up the cheque books, obviously help people rebuild their lives."

 

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-03/scott-morrison-got-bushfire-welco...

 

 

Read from top.

See also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=46&v=CSSjxsmlkVM&feature=emb...

 

 

this is what's wrong with the scum...

Scott Morrison brushes off angry bushfire reception, saying he doesn't take it personally


After being heckled on a visit to the NSW town of Cobargo, the Australian prime minister says when people are angry they often ‘fixate’

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/03/scott-morrison-br...

 

 

Yes, you've seen it. Scummongeringson has no empathy, nor any solution to offer to "his" populace, but more empty thoughts, more useless prayers and more hot coals — while sort of blaming people's reactions for their predicament... It could be said that this is typical of a pope slapping a woman's hand for holding his for too long, then pontificating on about how we should respect women... The pope is Catholic, but Scummeedoodogshitson is a Pentecostal who like all of these evangelicationing idiots preach empathy without practicing any of it. The word "fixate" has a religious intonation... The word psychopath and Scumcrazypoozson seem to align together very well...