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.
As someone who’s been (in the distant past) known to engage in questionable behaviour while black out drunk, you still need to be somewhat of an asshole to act like this. So he did mean it, even if he normally doesn’t want, and would be ashamed, to act this way.
In my case, being an asshole was influenced by my work environment, so I’m doing a lot better today, both on the asshole and the drinking front.
Glad to hear you’re doing better. Thanks for sharing your perspective.