No Pressure Video

I thought the content was so offensive that it should be seen only by eyes attached to jaded minds. It has become such a big deal on the Internet that I suppose everyone has seen it. The conservative political front has gone nuts over this--I think for good reason--but I can see a less agitated, "It's a bad SNL skit" response. I'll try to explain my agitated one.

Any comedy skit, like SNL, has a history and a context in which they are seen. They are also self selecting: People who watch them have found them entertaining before. People who do not like them or are offended do not watch. This clip was not entertainment; it is an advertisement, a political one, but an ad aimed at the general public. It was created by people with the intent of influencing others to agree with their position. I have heard people who actually thought it was an attack on the position of global warming. In essence, it was seen as a parody of their position. These people failed on every level I can think of from aesthetics to persuasion and I think should be held responsible for that failure.

This debate, the debate over global warming and our response, is exactly that. A debate. A discussion. It is not a war. To present it as a war between well established positions of good and evil is inherently stupid and is offensive to those who are trying honestly to wrestle with the question. Regardless of how urgent the question is, belittling the debate is always an unsuccessful way of starting a debate. Certainty and arrogance are always off-putting--whether in the legislature or the dining room--unless you are a Churchill. These guys are not Churchill.

Utilitarianism is fraught with danger. Modern philosophy has even tried to change its name (and exile it under federal protection). Essentially it places a value on results not acts, hence its new name "consequentalism". Sometimes it smacks of tragedy, the bad effects of good intents. (Is an act of loyalty with an unintended bad result immoral?) More often it is a battlefield decision--sacrificing 10 men for 100 (or 11)--and here it gets sticky, particularly if the battlefield is politics. Showing administrators killing people under their responsibility for a greater cause the victims do not support is not humorous for people who know it has been done before.

There is a larger question here, the question of the astonishing insensitivity of the creators. They seem to be genuinely surprised by the response. That is the reaction of the dogmatist, the man so self absorbed in his own righteousness he is unable to see uncertainty and degree. To him the response is the classic physiological "all or nothing" response and that response occurs in the lab without a brain.