Bono weighs in on how to fight ISIS:
U2 frontman Bono brought his star power to Capitol Hill on Tuesday as he called on members of Congress to take swift action to deal with the global refugee crisis and violent extremism.
Before a Senate subcommittee, one of Bono’s suggestions was to use comedy to fight extremist groups.
“It’s like, you speak violence, you speak their language. But you laugh at them when they are goose-stepping down the street and it takes away their power,” he said.
“So I am suggesting that the Senate send in Amy Schumer and Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen, thank you.”
If you are a K-strategist, you see a violent world, through violent eyes, and recognize that violent people who victimize the weak will only be stopped with death.
But rabbits are different. They literally have no capacity to understand that world. They see the world through rabbit eyes, and thus everyone they see is a rabbit. The game is not who lives and dies, since everyone lives. The game is who is viewed positively by the crowd and has status (and thus get mates), and who is viewed negatively, and does not.
To Bono, being ridiculed by the crowd is his version of death. This rabbit-like r-selected programming so dominates his brain that he actually thinks using violence to fight terrorism would be ineffectual and stupid, and using the comedy of a chubby girl and a screwball comedian is the only strategy which would prove effective.
Imagine how differently they see the world. The more case studies you find, the more fascinating it becomes.
[…] Rabbit War Strategies – Using Comedy […]
Eye-opening, indeed! Another terrific post. Thank you.
First anyone using Bono as an international relations expert should perhaps have a remedial course in rhetoric, specifically the appeal to authority fallacy.
Second, comedy and ridicule are useful, but scale is totally off. When used by a group on a single person, usually very effective. When used by a nation or country on another larger group, it is not the target that is diminished by it and brought in line. It is the country using it that feels a moral boost. This is why in WW2 there were many US propaganda pieces made to ridicule the Axis powers. Not to get the Axis to stop, for it would change little of the minds of the others in the OTHER group. No it is was to boost the moral of the IN group.
I would say that the answer here is ‘silly clever’… but I’m not sure I’d attribute to Bono the aspect of ‘clever’… Although maybe when it comes to making music and money from that music, he might qualify as clever.
(note a ‘silly clever’ person is one who is smart in an area and thinks that makes the smart in all, and thus they proclaim solutions. Their solutions are often silly outside the area of knowledge, hence silly clever, like expecting a Nobel winning Scientist to have great ideas on national defense – I’m looking at you Albert!.)
I agree with Bono.
We should deploy Amy Schumer to ISIS-held territory as soon as humanly possible.
Bono the Bonobo
Har har