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’s probably more fair to say that it’s important to understand WHY you had that thought. Is it conditioning, a past bias against someone else, an unfair stereotype that you are perpetuating, or a lack of understanding?
I have to do this with my anger as sometimes I’m short tempered with someone only to reflect and realize that I’m angry with something else and taking out my frustrations on an undeserving bystander. I try to apologize if I catch myself doing this.
This is very healthy and emotionally mature of you. We would definitely be doing better as a society if everyone who is capable of doing this would.