Bullshit Theater

No accounting for taste.

Bullshit Theater

The bullshit avoidance networks of the mind and brain are analogous to a comedy club or a participatory bullshit theater where every neuron in the audience is also a born comedian eager to try out new jokes, laugh, and/or throw rotten tomatoes. Being surrounded by family, they are seldom shy and will eagerly jump up on stage if they see an opportunity to practice slinging bullshit with the best of them without risking too many rotten tomatoes being thrown at them. However, the less riveted the audience is on listening to the jokes being told on stage, the more they chatter among themselves and, the more easily they can become confused as the noise level increases. In physics this can resemble a phase transition or emergent metamorphic effect, however, from their long experience trying to get things accomplished in contentious anarchistic groups the ancient Chinese shaman mastered the dynamics of crowd control around the time of the invention of agriculture. They used the metaphor of the human body being inhabited by no less than eight thousand gods, and devised systematic ways to prevent them from always fighting amongst themselves.

Confusion can set in inside a crowded room as the level of noise increases to the point where many in the audience are not quite sure what is being said, much less who is laughing at what, while any comedians on stage can become equally confused if they can't keep the audience's attention. What might be intended as innocent laughter or innocuous potty humor can be misconstrued as being an intentional insult and, in the resulting confusion, the rotten tomatoes can begin to fly exacerbating the situation. Every accidental pratfall can be misconstrued as an outrageous insult to somebody as the comedy starts to take on a life of its own, complete with unintended consequences or even absolute pandemonium breaking out. One advantage, if done right, is that eight distinctive comedians can represent all the more common varieties of comedy-drama due to their ability to rapidly and efficiently manipulate the patterns of metaphors in matrices using pattern recognition and their innate talents. Combining their talents they can produce creative solutions to a wide variety of problems including noise and crowd control in a bullshit theater, or simple feedback control on a stereo. The difference is this stereo would consist of a million amplifiers that have just enough brains and memory to filter each other out as well as whatever signal you give them.

How gullible the audience happens to be then becomes a critical factor and, for example, sometimes an audience will taunt and jeer a comedian if they don't like their jokes, thus, switching roles by refusing to suspend their disbelief that the comedian has something worth listening to. The audience is comparable to our unconscious mind which is incapable of understanding most of the content of any jokes as we might, yet, possesses its own distinctive sense of often mindless infantile humor which, nonetheless, remains capable of still recognizing a lot of bullshit for the crap it is, in much the same manner as a child might intuitively recognize a lie even if they have no clue why we are lying or what the lie concerns. Laughter becomes an indication of just how much bullshit and truth audiences perceive in anything and also conveys extremely vague contextual information about each individual's emotional state, sense of humor, taboos, social status, etc. but, most importantly of all, communicates their willingness to participate in any bullshit avoidance network. Like blinking LEDs on any stereo, their laughter communicates the fact they might be receptive to new content or should be left alone, adjusted, or turned off altogether.

If an audience believes a joke has a little too much bullshit, they may throw rotten tomatoes or bedlam may even ensue if the comedian cannot regain the confidence and support of the audience. The physical well being of the audience is also a factor and, for example, if their immune system is responding to an infection, such as a cold going around, they can become anxious coloring everyone's sense of humor because our humor, depression, happiness, and anger can all be considered literally infectious, just like sparkling laughter. Likewise, something as simple as the tiniest electric current across our heart can cause anyone to automatically become more fearful, even though we remain unaware of the cause. With a little effort, our bullshit comedy theater can be clearly observed supporting the contextual assumption that the context inevitably trumps any content explaining why stand-up comics tend to swear they just can't predict how the same joke will go over from one day to the next with what are otherwise essentially identical audiences.

The Bagua breaks all this contextual fuzzy logic bullshit down into four root metaphors and eight basic subtypes or archetypes of egotistical bullshit. Although displays of egotistical bullshit are sometimes socially unacceptable, they can also be viewed as our inner toddler struggling to comprehend life. Frequently, toddlers have no clue as to the content of anything which is why they'll put anything in their mouths or can shock us playing with someone's porn collection, torturing the cat, or whatever and about to get scratched or electricuted. For toddlers all bullshit is the same and some just fits in their mouth or it doesn't or is shiny or whatever. Because they don't understand the content of most bullshit they come across, our unconscious mind can even occasionally shock us with the things it mulls over just like discovering a toddler playing with someone's porn collection or torturing a cat or whatever. Our inner toddler or unconscious mind can represent the female caricature of Yin in the Bagua and the conscious mind that of the masculine Yang who, for his part, tends to occasionally make shocking mistakes concerning the context such as stupid assumptions and mistakes that make people are complete idiots.

The caricature of Yin is the toddler-matron-sage and divine fool archetype who I represent in the next chapter as the superficially powerless, and vulnerable appearing dotard Lao Tzu who shrugs off misfortune and abuse from others around her by relying on her ignorant wisdom to bounce back like a champion from adversity. Although the mythological Lao Tzu is traditionally depicted as male in patriarchal Chinese society I've chosen to represent him here as female for a variety of reasons including the fact that Taoism is widely recognized as the most feminine of the popular world religions. Yang is her mate and his caricature is that of the domineering patriarch with the power to cloud our judgment and to hide his emotions beneath mountains of bullshit, but all supposedly for our own good. Yin perceives the world more contextually than Yang who understands content better and the more harmonious their interactions the more affectionate and productive their mutual attempts to avoid bullshit become and the less often they shock each other with whatever they're doing.

The masculine Yang can hide his own responses like a good straight-man and dangle obvious opening lines for jokes in order to bait Yin into responding, similar to dangling something shiny in front of a toddler like a set of keys. However, he cannot prevent Yin from naively exposing all of his bullshit to the light of day in much the same manner as the story of the emperor's new clothes, which, is why comedians have to practice maintaining a straight face and hiding their own laughter. Any representative caricatures will suffice for Yin and Yang including cartoon ones such as Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. Our subconscious mind is our personal audience that listens to all the jokes we crack as well as all the love and beauty we appreciate, and the more surprising the juxtapositions of any bullshit the harder our neurons will laugh.

Because the audience can become the comedians, and the subconscious mind can switch places with the conscious, the difference between the role of the comedian who is actually doing something on stage and the usually more passive audience, can be described as analogous to the mad dash of the toddler for the potty, or as the difference between thinking about doing something and actually doing it. The indeterminate or fuzzy identity of exactly who is in the audience and who are the comedians on stage at any given time means their relationships can be more fully grasped in terms of the obvious functions they appear to serve in any given context, rather than, merely focusing on any specific individual thoughts and behaviors. In other words, the toddler either makes it to the potty in time or they don't and the real question is what function their mad dash serves rather than just what they happen to be doing and thinking at the time. Some toddlers can't tell when they need to go to the bathroom, some are excited about learning how to use a potty, sometimes they prefer to wait until the last second, and some toddlers will hide poop in their diapers and run to the toilet out of guilt or to avoid being caught hiding poop in their diaper. If we only examine their specific thoughts and behaviors we may miss the actual overall function or utility their mad dash serves and become incapable of effectively potty training them or seeing more of the humor in the situation.

Meaning in a bullshit comedy club theater, either a joke flies or it doesn't, but the critical thing is usually both the audience and comedian are counting on being able to produce mutual immersion in their entertainment and, sometimes, the audience is fully prepared to entertain themselves at the comedian's expense or even harshly criticize their lack of competency if the comedian can't help them accomplish their goal to their satisfaction. Just as families are usually counting on the mutual cooperation of toddlers in potty training or sometimes can merely be looking for an excuse to criticize them, abuse them, or whatever. Some comedy clubs are just rougher than others, but no matter how modest someone's role in a bullshit theater it increases everyone's immersion by combining their unique role with that of the rest of the audience in a process similar to entrainment where two clock pendulums will eventually swing in unison and even harmonious resonance if hung side by side. It also suggests future experiments for the more off-the-wall experimental scientists out there.

Any audience actively suspends their disbelief that jokes don't make sense, while the comedians suspend their disbelief that they are not part of the audience. In the moment when the audience laughs hysterically, for example, they become the comedians themselves by spontaneously giving humorous feedback to those on stage, promoting a self-sustaining feedback loop. You could argue this is why laughter can be infectious and uncontrollable because it can unconsciously become an enjoyable feedback loop for stimulating an entire population into paying attention to specific interesting patterns. The audience's laughter informs the comedian that a surprising joke was good and they maybe want to hear more jokes like it. The comedian is a kind of messenger who, at times, is forced to practice keeping a straight face on stage because that is part of what makes their jokes so surprising and, occasionally, an audience will become so excited they will poke playful fun at a comedian until they turn bright red while, other times, the audience may attempt to kill the messenger starting with throwing rotten tomatoes because negativity can also provide stimulating pattern matching experiences for them even if it is of a lower quality that often produces undesired and unintended negative consequences.

Notably, even when people have no idea what they are laughing about and just can't stop themselves from laughing, by default their physical body will eventually interrupt the feedback loop which is the paradox of existence applying normalization to an extreme situation. That people can laugh nonstop for hours, or even years, for no reason is an indication of just how fundamentally important laughter and humor are to life, on even a cellular level, when so often great comedy merely concerns total bullshit. Like a computer program that freezes up and stops responding sometimes the only option left is to reboot the computer by pressing the power button if necessary.

Whatever happens, the show must go on because its the only show in town. Yogi Berra was a baseball player who instantly became famous overnight when coming in from left field at practice one day, he excitedly shout out, "Ninety percent of this game is half mental!" In proclaiming that he exposed his true identity to the world to be that of the glorious swan telling jokes on stage and, simultaneously, the Ugly Duckling in the audience adorably falling on its a*s in perfect comedic timing to whatever is occurring on stage. Growing up is simply part of life and learning to embrace the sometimes sad, frightened, angry, confused, yet, unintentionally adorable and hysterically funny Ugly Duckling we all happen to be fated to be from birth, as well as, the radiant swan. The secret of Yogi Berra style mind-numbing humor is revealed as the adult embracing the elegant simplicity of the toddler who is charming enough to get away with spontaneously giggling at the slightest suggestion that love, humor, truth, or ignorance ever require justification.

Unaware of the content of anything, a toddler's virgin bullshit avoidance networks laughingly declare to the entire world that they are neutral or agnostic and, therefore, open to the subject because it appears to be a joke as far as they can tell. The more extreme and agnostic the juxtapositions of a joke, the funnier it can be considered to be, while the more we rely upon egotistical bullshit to bias our responses the more compelling we can find the stupidest toddler jokes. The ancients said the meanest men will sometimes laugh hysterically at even the lamest toddler jokes because their subconscious mind is more divorced from their conscious mind and takes its humor where it can find it. Ignorant wisdom and agnosticism are the emotional-path-of-no-path which can lead us back to embracing our innate acceptance of both our conscious and unconscious ignorance in surprisingly gentle and heartwarming ways.