I was reading about Mel Gibson’s anti-semitic rants, and his apology about being drunk* when I remembered this meme. I agree with the meme, that our brains tend to feed us what we’ve heard from our environment, but our conscious mind overrides that with our processed thoughts.
People use “he didn’t mean it, he was drunk/high” as an excuse for racist/misogynist/whateverist comments. The response is typically “you don’t become racist when drunk, you just drop your inhibitions and reveal who you are.”
But if you agree with the First Thought meme, what if being impaired isn’t revealing what you really think, but is preventing you from thinking at all, and just getting stuck on your conditioned response?
*Gibson is just an example. This post is not about litigating whether he personally is racist, but about this sort of behavior in general.
It is absolutely true that many ancient or even fairly modern bits of ‘common wisdom’ have been innacurate, or wildly utterly wrong.
… but, at the same time… some of it actually does hold.
I grew up with an alcoholic dad, basically all his brothers and sisters and mom and dad were as well.
They’ll all tell you how they really feel when inebriated…
Yay for Italian heritage, rofl, I am a keeper of this ancient wisdom, it courses through my very veins.
… and by that I mean oh lord, I also get drunk very easily, fortunately I’ve had enough self control to not ever develop an alcohol addiction…
To steal another Greek phrase and render it in Latin:
modus omnibus in rebus