How to not be judgemental

*puts on a mask*

One may assume the way to not be judgemental is to judge others accordingly. Do not exaggerate their flaws and failures, do not diminish their strengths and achievements and do not claim that you are on a higher pedestal than you really are.

But, because there is still room for judgement, I vehemently disagree.

The only reasonable way to not be judgemental….. is to not judge people at all, not even when they have committed horrible sins. How can we achieve that?

Well, you have to embrace absolute forgiveness.

You have to be absolutely forgiving towards any wrongdoers… even when you are not their victims, they have yet to fully suffer the consequences and they have no remorse.

Yes, many bullies will never suffer consequences for their actions and will never feel any remorse. Yes, Chris Brown is still thriving professionally even after cases of violence against multiple women and a probation was his only punishment.

But, forgiveness is not negotiable; you have to commit to it at all cost… and that includes putting a blind eye and disregarding the victims’ feelings.

If that isn’t your style, you can do this method: before you judge someone, pretend that you have committed equally heinous acts, even though that’ s far from the truth.

Before you judge a cruel and remorseless bully, pretend that you have also remorselessly bullied people to the point where they are traumatised for life.

Before you judge Chris Brown, pretend that you have also committed domestic violence.

Before you judge Nazis, pretend that you have also committed genocide.

Before you judge a pilot whose recklessness caused a deadly accident, pretend that you are also a reckless pilot who caused a deadly accident.

Before you judge that one fascist Capitol insurrectionist who killed a person in drunk driving, pretend that you are also a fascist insurrectionist who have killed someone in drunk driving

I can do this all day.

It is obvious why those methods are effective: they give zero room for judgements.

If you feel obligated to forgive every single sin you encounter without any hesitation or you pretend that everyone is equally sinful, you would feel hypocritical about giving anyone the slightest criticisms, let alone moral condemnations, consequentially refraining yourself from judging others.

Literally zero judgements is the only way to be non-judgemental.

*takes off the mask*

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How to catch a groomer (and virtue signal)

*puts on a mask*

What is grooming?

It is an act of creating emotional bond with a child in order to sexually exploit them later on. But, we know you don’t care about that.

What you care about is making sure queer people remain discriminated against; you don’t want them to grow up feeling empowered and you don’t want them to have allies.

But, we know anti-queerness has become less and less accepted. You cannot call them slurs and openly endorse anti-LGBT policies, let alone incite violence against them. The only method left is to slander them.

You have to literally frame everything LGBT-related as literal child grooming. Whether adoption of children by same-sex couples, queer representations in children’s media or the teaching of queer history at schools, you have to frame them as not only sexually inappropriate for children, but also symptoms of sexual abuse.

You don’t even need solid evidences of grooming. All you need to share articles about queer topics and like-minded people will eat it up. It does not matter if the articles do not mention grooming or affirm its existence. People will only read the headlines and assume the content affirms their beliefs.

If someone says the sexual abuses committed by queer people are isolated cases and not an epidemic, accuse them of trivialising the victims’s sufferings, even though that is not what the person is doing. You have to frame them as complicit for not exaggerating the issue.

And, there is a bonus: people will hail you as courageous heroes who defend those vulnerable children…

… Despite the fact that you couldn’t give less fuck about them.

You never bat an eye about sexual predatory parents, teachers and clergymen. If anything, you only see children as nothing but exploitable assets, as shown by your fellow anti-LGBT crusaders.

Killing two beloved pet dogs with one bullet…. and blaming it on those dirty Queers.

*takes off the mask*

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Why I hate Trevor Noah

*puts on a mask*

He is not funny. But, that is not all. My taste in humour is also objectively the best and I have to constantly remind the world about that.

He refuses to be Jon Stewart. Successors don’t have the right to be themselves. Their duty is to be their predecessors’ clones. That’s literally what succession is about. And Noah never bothers to do that.

He is not balanced. The main requirement of comedy is not humour, it is objectivity. You have to be objective with your jokes. You have to punch at every group equally. You have to treat every single one – no matter how marginalised- as equally immoral and untruthful. If you want biased opinions, go listen to journalists.

He is not American. The Daily Show is a show made by and for Americans. Who gives a fuck about what a foreigner has to say? Americans have the right to invade other countries. But, foreigners have zero rights to even comments about America.

With all of those in mind, we can conclude that he betrays the true purpose of The Daily Show: an all-American, unbiased and anti-woke Jon Stewart comedy.

And if you dare to criticise my opinions, you are trying to censor me!

*takes off the mask*

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How to be a true lover of cinema

*puts on a mask*

Re-define the word “cinema”

Objectively, it means the production and distribution of films. Nothing more or less. But, it shouldn’t be enough for you.

You have to define “cinema” as “good and artistic” films. You should never acknowledge mediocre films as parts of the “cinema”, even though they objectively are.

You have to be stubborn about it. You have to insist that definition is the only correct definition. If someone dares to spew the objective one, you have to shame them worse than you shame anti-vaxxers.

Be black-and-white

You cannot enjoy both the arts and escapist entertainment. It does not matter if most of the films you love are artistic; enjoying just one Marvel film will cancel out every single drop of your sophistication. One bad apple spoils the barrel.

Turn your love of film into your entire personality

Your self-worth as a human being is entirely decided by your film taste. Love just one bad film and you are as good as a book-burning Nazi.

Worship directors like Coppola, Scorsese and Tarantino

You know, the directors who make violent and/or action-packed films that win awards and profits from all over. You are not a true film lover until you admire the likes of them.

No, filmmakers like Andrey Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman do not count. Their films are too artsy. Good films should be artistic enough for critics, but not too artistic for Hollywood executives.

Yes, awards matter. It does not matter how a great film is. If it does not win any awards, it may as well be a Marvel film. A good filmmaker must commit the appeal to authority fallacy: defining their self-worth solely based on the establishments’ opinions.

Whitewash history

Yes, commercialisation has always existed and it reaches a new high in the recent years. But, you cannot acknowledge that.

You have to assert that commercialisation of cinema did not exist before the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You have to pretend old Hollywood was all about artistic integrity.

You have to ignore that directors like Coppola and Scorsese were given creative freedom NOT because Hollywood executives cared about the arts, but because those young directors increased ticket sales.

Take the human out of cinema

If you love a film simply because of how entertained you are or how enthralled you are by its beauty, then you are doing it wrong.

The only things you should care about are the techniques. Embracing your humanness is antithetical to the true purpose of cinema. You should consume films like a robot would.

Who cares if you are not into crime stories? If a crime film is well-made (and it wins awards), you have to love it. You must choose it as one of your favourite films ever!

Don’t be a human. Be a robot!

*takes off the mask*

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How to protect your identities from tyranny and extinction

*puts on a mask*

First thing first, you must be a supremacist.

You cannot simply see your identity as the only correct one. You must aggrandise it as the only one blessed either by divine power, nature or both. Every person who thinks otherwise is inherently immoral and you must severely punish them once you are in power! You must also demonise anyone simply for not sharing your identity…… with some exceptions.

If they acknowledge your supremacy and are content with their arbitrarily second-class status, then they are worth keeping. You can utilise those tools as tools to advance your agenda.

The self-veneration isn’t enough. You must also start declaring that the mere existence of other identities threatens yours! Other religions exist? Accuse them of trying to impose theocracies! Other ethnicities exist? Accuse them of trying to impose their cultures upon you! Other sexualities and gender identities exist? Accuse them of sexual perversion! Other races exist? Accuse them of racial genocide; God forbids if your women want to breed with their more attractive men!

It does not matter that you are guilty of what you are accusing your victims of. What it matters is you must fool the masses into believing that those numerically-small and politically-powerless people are their biggest enemies.

After the demonisation, you must actively make efforts to discriminate them. You also must believe that discrimination is not discrimination if committed by people like you.

But, you CANNOT explicitly express that. What you should do is advocating for discriminatory or even genocidal laws instead. Combine that with your demonisation of the others, the message will wordlessly conveyed. That way, morons would not dare to call you bigoted.

If those things are too complex for you (they probably are), just remember this mantra:

My identities good, their identities bad.

Take those words to the heart and chant them repeatedly.

Don’t stop until those words violently replace single cell in your body.

My identities good, their identities bad.

My identities good, their identities bad.

My identities good, their identities bad.

My identities good, their identities bad.

My identities good, their identities bad.

My identities good, their identities bad.

Repeat until they have completely taken over your entire life.

*takes off the mask*

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How to make arguments

*Puts on a mask*

It is simple: all you need is your feelings.

You don’t need sound logic and evidences to back your arguments. As long as they feel right for you, that’s more than enough. In fact, they should be based on your feelings.

If you argue using reason and evidences, you have already lost. You have succumbed to the demands of reality. If you want to showcase strength, your arguments must defy those demands!

You can argue that we should never cut off our biological family and our adopted family isn’t our true family because “blood is thicker than water”. You can argue that sex for pleasure is sinful because it hinders procreation. You can also argue that religious neutrality is harmful because it discriminates against your religion.

Do any of them make sense? No, they don’t. The first uses nothing but a medieval proverb to justifies itself. Each of the other two simply connects two irrelevant things and expects us to see the connections. They are based on nothing but feelings.

And, for that reason, we should praise people who make such arguments. They are so strong, they refuse to let reality dictates their worldviews. They only answer to their feelings. Their feelings are their authority figures.

But, if you don’t want to be honest with yourselves and acknowledge you are slaves to your own feelings, you can choose any authorities you desire. All you need is to say “because BLANK says so!”.

It can be a clergyman, a religion, a politician, a media outlet, a fictional character and even your own parents, anyone and anything which you grew up and still obsessively attached to all the way to your adulthood.

Yes, this is also fallacious and using your parents and favourite characters as references is childish. But, again, this is also the way to show reality that it is not your boss.

*takes off the mask*

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Punching sideways

In general, I despise jokes and satires which punch down.

Punching down can give the impression that marginalised groups create the most number of problems in their societies, despite their lack of political power and smaller population sizes.

I have made a blog post about it. But, it seems I forgot to talk about punching sideways.

Another issue with punching down is the punchers are often ignorant about the problems within marginalised communities. The punches are either full of oversimplifications or inaccurate stereotypes. Do you know who can provide nuanced and accurate information about said communities? Their own members!

Admittedly, I don’t believe you understand a community just because you grew up in it. Fanaticism and cultural cringe can cloud your judgement, compelling you to whitewash and exaggerate the problems among your people, respectively.

But still, if you want to truly understand a community, wouldn’t it make sense to listen people who have lived the life?

I wouldn’t think about this if it wasn’t for a video titled The Darkness by Youtuber Natalie Wynn AKA Contrapoints, in which she asserted that telling funny trans jokes requires knowledge to actual trans experiences. And yes, she has made lots of funny trans jokes.

Disclaimer: I am cis. I certainly don’t know what kind of trans jokes trans people like. But, I have yet to see her any significant backlashes from the trans community regarding her trans jokes.

This also reminds me of Muslim American webcomic artist Huda Fahmy, known for her work Yes, I am hot in this. While she does not create crude content, she constantly makes fun of her fellow American Muslims and, to a lesser extent, the entire Muslim world.

And the fact that she is a hijabi reveals a previously-hidden complexity about Muslims.

When you think of a hijabi, you think of someone who supports shaming of non-hijabis and takes hijab too seriously. That’s what anti-Muslim bigots, liberal Muslims, ex-Muslims and even some moderate Muslims (the old school Indonesian ones, at least) believe.

Huda Fahmy isn’t like that.

For one, she believes in giving women the freedom to wear anything they desire. She despises the idea of shaming them for dressing “immodestly”. In a satirical tone, she offers new dehumanising pro-hijab metaphors which do not involve ants and candies. She even acknowledges that modesty does not prevent sexual harassment.

She also makes jokes about hijabs, including one which she jokes how women become hijabis after bitten by hijampire, who has snaggle pins as fangs.

Never mind non-Muslims. As someone who grew up Muslim in the biggest Muslim-majority country and attended two Islamic schools, I have yet to met a hijabi who makes such jokes. She showcases an aspect of the Muslim world which is hidden even from many Muslims.

Basically, unless your intention is to dehumanise them even further and make them even more prone to discrimination, you have to learn about intricacies of the lives of marginalised peoples before you make fun of the them.

And no, stereotypes are not good enough. They are beliefs about our fellow human beings which are never 100% accurate, but shamelessly waiting to be affirmed.

Apart from the power imbalance, the absence of nuanced perspectives is another reason why punching down is problematic.

Yes, black and white thinking is problematic. It is just a few steps away from misinformation.

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Why can’t people dress like decent human beings?

*puts on a mask*

I keep seeing people dressing like degenerates everywhere! On TV, on the streets! Seriously, when will stop wearing suits and ties?

Do you know who love wearing suits and ties? Politicians, corporate businessmen, pundits who pretend to be journalists, the mobs, conservatives. You know, morally corrupt people!

Seriously, how can you witness them destroying our societies on the daily basis and yet, not only you want to dress like them, you want the whole world to dress like them?

Surely, if you are a truly dignified person, the last thing you would do is to look like them. If you are a truly dignified person, why don’t you wear only jeans and T-shirts?

Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, jeans and T-shirts wearers are not the ones who rule societies and shape them for their own self-interests. They are not the villains here.

If you truly want to look like normal and dignified human beings, you should burn all of your suits and ties and fill your wardrobe with nothing but jeans and tees.

In fact, if you truly care about the state of mankind, you should take it even further by ransacking other people’s wardrobes, burn their entire supply of suits and ties and force them to wear jeans and tees!

*takes off the mask*

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‘Cisgender’ is offensive!

*puts on a mask*

Why? Because it puts non-trans people like me in a category… and being put into a category means we have to see trans people as equals…. and, if we see them as our equals, it means they are just as normal… and, if they are just as normal, it means we won’t have any reasons to dehumanise them…

And, if we can’t dehumanise them, how the fuck can we feel good about ourselves? How the fuck can we do that if we don’t have anyone to trample on?

This is a reason why we deliberately frame “cis” as a slur made by trans people. Not because it is actually one, but because many people (especially imbeciles) will fall for it.

That way, there will be more reasons to hate trans people; not only they are perceived as perverts, they will be perceived as bigots as well!

Once the hatred increases, it will be harder for trans people to be seen as human beings… and the harder it is for them to be seen as ones, the longer they will stay marginalised… and the more they stay marginalised, the more we can trample on them…

… And the more we can trample on them, the easier it is for us to stay feeling powerful, to stay feeling like we are the only normal ones.

*takes off the mask*

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Jiří Trnka’s The Hand: not falling for the other side

If it wasn’t for my Intro to Animation class, I would have never heard of this stop-motion animated masterpiece.

To summarise the plot, it tells the story of a harlequin whose impoverished yet contented life of flower pot-making is disrupted by a literal and seemingly-omnipresent hand who demands him to make hand sculptures instead, compelling him to constantly fight for his freedom. Unfortunately, near the end of the story, he dies when one of his pots accidentally fell on his head (seemingly foreshadowed by the recurring accidental pot-breaking). He is given a lavish funeral by the hand.

One can guess why I love this short film.

It is an allegory of censorship enforced under authoritarianism. It sublimely evokes the terror of living as an artist and entertainer in such condition, amplified by the fantastical elements and the atmospheric percussion-oriented soundtracks. In fact, both Wikipedia and IMDB categorise this film as horror.

Unsurprisingly, I picked The Hand as one of the animated shorts I analysed for the final essay. My writings were even abysmal then. Thankfully, I lost it. But, I remember having a great time analysing every single one of them.

While analysing it, I found two peculiarities.

First thing first, the funeral. Why would the hand hold a state funeral to a rebel? Surely, shouldn’t he be demonised as an enemy of the state in the end?

Well, I found an article (forget which one, cannot find it again) about how the USSR and its satellite states honoured their artists posthumously, regardless of how obedient or disobedient they were; the writer said even Trnka himself was given a state funeral.

As I am too lazy to do more research, I cannot confirm or debunk the article’s factual validity. But, as the hand symbolises an authoritarian government (I cannot think of any other interpretations), what the article is saying makes too much sense for me to dismiss.

This reminds me of the legendary and ideologically-dissenting director Andrei Tarkovsky (can’t stop referencing him). After his death, the Soviet authorities regretted that he died in exile. Yes, linking Trnka, a Czechoslovakian puppeteer and animator with, to Tarkovsky, a live-action Russian director who loved exploring the metaphysical aspect of humanity, is far-fetched. But, I can’t help myself.

Oh, and the hand.

At first, I noticed the hand was a left one. I assumed it represented the far-left government of Czechoslovakia. But, when I took a greater look, the hand was not always left.

Sometimes, it appears as a right one. In fact, the first hand sculpture to appear in the video depicts a right hand.  So, I quickly dumped the interpretation, dismissed it as reading too much into things. But then, I remembered the funeral scene, where the hand can be seen making a salute eerily similar to the Nazi one; I could hear my classmates’ shock.

I was more baffled than shocked, as Czechoslovakia was a communist country, not a fascist one. Due to my slowness, it took me days to realise the film criticises authoritarianism in general, not just the communist Czechoslovakian government.

The film also subtly warns us to not fall for any forms of extremism. Your suffering under a far-left government cannot morally justify your support of a far-right government… and vice versa. One form of  zealotry does not justify the other.

I write as if I grasped the thematic depth immediately. I didn’t. Back then, my mind only thought about the Far-Left vs Far-Right.  It took me years to realise how the message is also applicable to any kinds of extreme dichotomies.

Yes, I know I seem to be reading too much into things again. The nazi salute may not be one after all and I don’t know enough about different types of salutes. I also cannot prove that extreme dichotomies in general were what Trnka had in mind.

But, you have to admit: the film does not target a specific ideology. My interpretation fits really well into the narrative.

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