Fun, intelligence, and responsibility

It’s easy to see how the world is divided up. Some people have money, some don’t.
Some people have power, some don’t. Some people are beautiful, some aren’t.
We can divide people up along any lines we can distinguish. We talk about the socio-
economic stratification of our society, but we’re still really talking about who has money,
power and status and who doesn’t.
But these are not the real divisors of our civilization. A poor person, given luck and
opportunity, may become a rich person. A disadvantaged person may become a powerful
person, if he/she can convince enough people to back him/her. If we think we aren’t
beautiful, we can change ourselves. Beauty and strength aren’t worth what they once
were.
The one thing nobody can change is intelligence. If you’re born stupid, you die
stupid. There is no escaping the prison of intellect. If you’re born smart, barring
Alzheimer’s or other mind diseases, you remain smart throughout your life.
Look at a TV. What we think of, we elitists, as the quality of a show is really the level
of intelligence it expects of its audience. Shows that are aimed at the stupid strike a lot of
us as reprehensible and faintly disgusting. Shows aimed at those of middle intelligence
are judged of acceptable quality, until people get bored enough with them to point out
their flaws. A show that requires a high-level of intelligence to comprehend is judged as
of the highest quality, and often doesn’t survive very long.
There are entire networks aimed at particular intelligence levels. Politicians aim their
messages at intelligence demographics. Musicians write lyrics with the intellectual
capabilities of their audiences in line. Businesses choose candidates for employment
along the lines of braininess. Intelligence is the real, inescapable, divisor of our society.
I’m not going to change anything. My subject is fun and Fun, and I’ll stick to that.
Fun is democratic. Fun is one of those things that can be tailored to any intelligence
level without sacrificing quality. Fun, the highest of ideals, is open to any.
That said, what I give you in this book is not for the intellectually weak. If you’re
reading this book and understanding it, you’re a smart person, and I’d like to shake your
hand. You may be smarter than me – a lot of people are – and you have much to teach
me. You may be able to improve my message somehow!
But you must remember that the perfect, true Fun is only attainable if all can share in
it. As long as there is one person in the world not achieving Fun, no one ever achieves it.
Knowing this, and acting accordingly, is the basis of Compassion.
It is your job, as one of the smartypantses of the world, to spread the gospel of Fun
whenever you can. This includes everybody, not just other people of your intelligence
stratum. You can give the gift of Fun to anybody and everybody, and never run out of it
yourself.
I learned this one day from my second wife (don’t ask). We were watching TV
together, and being poor had only a very limited selection of channels. She had chosen
some American sitcom, a species of TV show I generally can’t stand. I began my usual
litany of criticism, all of it revolving around the fact that the show was too dumb for
consumption. She finally lost patience with me. “Not everybody can understand your
kind of show,” she told me. “Some of us are at this level. You can’t have everything
your way.”
 Well, she done told me good, there. I sat and watched the show with her, feeling
chastened and changed, and since then, my attitude has been completely different. Not
everyone is capable of PBS. Some people are just on the “When Rats Collide!” level. I
don’t have to watch it, but I have no right to feel superior to those who do. They have
their level, and I have mine, and there is no right or wrong.
What is wrong is that those shows are made by people like you and me to take
advantage of other people without our capabilities. We use them as cash cows, feeding
them the lowest quality material we can get away with. We give them endless repeats of
the same drivel, knowing that we can sell them all sorts of crap with the power of the
medium. It’s us smart people who should be ashamed, not Mr. and Mrs. Gobstopper out
there in vacuumland.
Fun must be aimed at everybody, and there are very few people who are not capable of
grasping the basic message:
Have fun helping other people have fun.
This whole book is merely a guide to that short clause. That is the whole of the law.
I knew a severely retarded man for a short time on Vancouver Island. We shared a
cabin in the woods for a few days. He would sit in a chair and rock back and forth for
hours at a time. He told me that his mind had stopped developing when he was eight; I
was amazed at this. He knew exactly how smart he was, which was not very, and had no
trouble dealing with it at all. He was a cheery sort of guy in his empty-headed way, a
perpetual smile on his funky round face, and seemed happiest when other people smiled
back at him. I enjoyed having such power – to make someone happy merely by being
happy myself. It was yet another lesson from an unexpected source.
I’m sure he would have understood the above message, had it been clear enough in my
mind to have discussed it with him. But beyond that, me having fun seemed to translate
into him having fun. I ask myself then, would me having Fun translate into him having
Fun?
Of course it would. Fun is a message not aimed at any group of people more or less
than any other. It is the great equalizer, the true democracy, achievable by all. That
some people can understand it in greater depth is not a superiority, but a responsibility.
God (remember that poetic truth?) gave you brains not to make you better than other
people, but to help you to make other people better.
If you manage to get rich and comfortable fulfilling this responsibility, you have
climbed the ladder to perfect Fun to the best of your abilities, and fully deserve your
rewards. If, on the other hand, you have gotten rich, powerful or accumulated status to
no-one’s benefit but your own, you have failed to achieve Fun. People who are selfish,
of any intellectual ability, are shallow and incapable of the depth of fun and Fun of which
you are.
Part of your responsibility is to find ways to package Fun so that others can partake of
it. It’s up to you to save the average man and woman from the depredations of other
intelligent people who have no scruples. It is your peers who enslave the masses with
false religion, false politics, false art and false love. It is people as smart or smarter than
me who suck the fun out of the world to their own gain. It is me who must stop them.
Let me give you an example. Many people absolutely need God. We understand that
God is not a literal truth, or is at least unknowable. Many people are not capable of
making that distinction. To them, there is God or there is not-God, and since it FEELS
better to have God, then there is God. That’s all there is to it.
In order to serve the masses better, we must think on all levels. We must allow poetic
truth (“there is a God”) to triumph for a time over literal truth. To do so is to avoid
condescension, the refuge of the not-quite-enlightened. I enjoy allowing myself to think
of God, even knowing what a mishmash of faith that takes. It’s easy, it costs me nothing,
and I get a warm fuzzy-cuddly glow from it. And it allows me to communicate with
those to whom faith is an absolute.
From this position, I am free to pass along my message: that God wants everybody to
have fun, and doesn’t care whether you believe in him/her/it or not. This is a radically
different message from the one most people of faith hear: that God only loves those who
believe in the literal truth of the “revealed” law, and that he will commit a genocide
against all those who do not. This acidic and vile message is preached to them on a daily
basis, filling them with hate and a sense of superiority that dehumanizes all others.
Without dehumanization, there would be no war, and Charity and Compassion would
reign supreme.
Would my message be better served from a position of elitism? Would Fun be better
served if I thought myself better than you? I accept that I’m a smart guy. I like being
smart. I feel that I deserve the position of Chief Rabbi and Grand Wazoo of the Temple
of Fun. But better than others?
Ok, so I do feel better than some people. There are people in the world who are
genetically or culturally captivated by hate, anger or sadism, and I’m definitely better
than they are. I’m also happier, because I don’t have to be a big bag of negativity the
way they do, but that’s for another chapter. Which brings me to my next point:
You are allowed to think of yourself as better than others if you work harder to
bring Fun to the world than they do.
It’s not a matter of how successful you are, it’s a matter of how hard you work at it. If
you’re of the brilliant persuasion, you may be able to bring Fun to a few people while
hardly trying at all. An idiot who tries to make people happy with every ounce of his
being is better than you.
Of course, there are people who think they’re spreading Fun who aren’t. We give
them an A for effort, and gently try to nudge them in a better direction. I would dearly
love to do a little behavioural therapy on the Pope, for example, a guy who thinks he’s
saving the world by excluding billions of people in it from salvation. Go figure.
I’m giving myself an A for effort, too. This book is my effort. My life, in which I do
my best to avoid negativity and embrace the positive, is my effort. I find myself, more
often than I would life, to not quite be living up to my potential as a spreader of Fun, but
I’m still an A student, and I’m proud of it.
Did that sound arrogant? I suppose it is. I don’t care (I have another chapter in this
book all about that phrase). My smug sense of satisfaction with myself is one of the
rewards I earn with my efforts. Which brings me to my final point:
The one who causes the most Fun has the most fun.