i am the laziest astronaut

I do not know very much about anything. One thing that I do know is this: without being somebody and without having been that person for a lifetime, there is no way to know what another person truly thinks or feels. You cannot really judge anybody’s actions or opinions, merely react in the way that seems most logical and helpful. I came to this conclusion based on my own experiences with other people’s myriad reactions to my depression and anxiety. People don’t react to the fact that I have it; a lot of people think everybody has it (they don’t). But people do tend to say a lot of horseshit like: “Just cheer up,” or “It’s easy, just stop being sad.” Because I know for certain that nobody knows how I feel or sees all the reasons for my actions, I know that I can never really know these things about anyone else.

In August of last year, Penny Arcade made a comic that mentions rape. It was not the punchline of the joke, but it did not need to be to divide the readership into two distinct groups: those that found it funny, and those that believed it perpetuated a “rape culture” in which the gravity of rape is continually diminished through casual use of the term and the concept.

My view on this subject is pretty objective, I think. I found the comic funny, and had it not received such a public fallout, I probably would have not even noticed the reference to rape, merely the pointed criticism of the perceived “morality” of players’ actions in videogames, specifically how the mechanics of a particular game might remove the humanity from a character’s actions.

But I am not a rape survivor. I cannot know what feelings a seemingly humorous reference could evoke in an individual who has dealt with such an awful event. And even if I was a survivor of sexual assault, I could not possibly know how other survivors would feel, given that the circumstances of their own trauma would be entirely different, as would their upbringing, their brain chemistry, and their genetic disposition to feel or react to events in their own particular ways. There is no real way to know how anyone is going to react to anything.

This is a double edged sword. On the one hand, Mike and Jerry’s initial reaction and decision to make and sell a shirt based on the subject was incredibly insensitive. However: I do not know them personally, but I have met them on a few occasions and followed them for years before I got busy and pretty much stopped following everyone, and they have never struck me as particularly insensitive guys (a demographic I am acutely aware of, given my own particular sensitivities), and so I must conclude that they did not mean to specifically hurt anybody. On the other hand, without knowing how people are going to react, it is impossible to tailor jokes or any other art to appeal to everyone. It is very lame that trigger words can bring on episodes of PTSD. That sucks. But it is unfair to expect other human beings to alter their entire course to avoid subjects that might offend a portion of their audience.

That being said, Mike and Jerry (mostly Mike) reacted to reader/fans’ very real concern and valid opinions with sarcasm and general insensitivity. Mike reacted in a way that was not really helpful or insightful. It was a defensive reaction, which is often necessary or perceived to be necessary. And truthfully, the most damage was done and perpetuated by an anonymous Internet that has no unified interest in effective communication or resolution. We cannot expect people to act rationally in any situation ever. See my note at the bottom of the post for my general perception of human behavior.

All of this was really blown out of proportion on both sides. I think it is important to note that humor involving rape or any other terrible experience is often not intended to poke fun at victims, but to cope with such tragedy through laughter. Take for example Amanda Palmer’s song “Oasis.” A lot of people were offended by this sing-songy joke song about rape and abortion. But the song was borne of a need to deal with Amanda’s own experiences with rape and abortion, and hopefully to help some other people cope with similar tragedy. Most of my own comics deal with depression and real or perceived failure. It is not an accident. That is what is at the heart of any authentic artistic creation: a fundamental truth about the artist, whether experienced directly or vicariously. Jerry’s ultimate response to the backlash was insightful and beautiful and tragic and true: “I am who I am, in the end; the comics I make are the result of my damage.”

You can never know how anybody else feels about anything. The most you can do is react to things as best you can and understand that we all suffer in our own ways, and that sometimes shitty things happen. It sucks pretty hard, but that is the way things are.

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A note about my perception of human behavior:

I think a lot of miscommunication arises from the fact that for some reason most people consider human beings to be “fundamentally good.” I do not share this belief. They are not “fundamentally bad” either. These concepts require context to convey meaning. A very religious person might think that having sex before marriage is “bad.” I do not think that, therefore the action “having sex before marriage” cannot be “good” or “bad” in a universal sense, but only as the terms apply to a specific context, such as “having sex before marriage is bad within the context of the views of the Catholic Church,” or “having sex before marriage is more or less neutral within the context of Jared’s personal worldview.”

One thing that human beings most certainly are, however, is self-serving. It is difficult to overcome this perceived defect, and few actually manage to. And here I am talking about Gandhi and Mother Theresa and “People Who Work With Children and Have No Vested Interest In the Ultimate Belief System of Said Children.”

So it is illogical and irresponsible to assume that people are going to react to things with the wellbeing of other human beings as their primary motive. Not that all motives are self-serving or that people don’t do nice things for other human beings, but that it should not be expected, because we as a species are not inherently imbued with such virtue. It is unfair and unwise to assume differently.

Be the best person you can be, whatever that means to you. We are all uniquely defective, we are all morally neutral to the physical mechanisms of the universe.