Rowan Atkinson: ‘In a proper free society, you can make jokes about anything’
The idea of making jokes up vs. down seems to be predicated on there being a very hierarchical or class stratified society. While I realize my country (the USA) does have classes and class migration is terribly difficult, we also live under the ideal of a meritocracy.<p>However I do think the younger generations are trying to tell us all that emperor has no clothes. I also think we are swinging too far the other way, where every detail of oneself is used to define our place in society, as evidenced by the proliferation of intersectionality in our culture.<p>Anyway, my point is that both cultures have distinct but different ways of approaching the hierarchy of power but both (arguably) going too far in “protecting” the lower in the social order. My fear is that this has the (hopefully) accidental side effect of reinforcing that very social order. The idea the “elites” need to make rules and laws to “protect” the non-elites is just way to paternalistic for me. For those being protected, it is easy to internalize the protection as being necessary to defend against an intrinsically unfair society. For others, it can “confirm” their belief that those being protected are intrinsically lower than themselves.<p>My overall point is that well-intended acts have undesirable consequences and the pace at which we move is faster than the pace at which we can account for these outcomes.