But, Dude: Our Furry Friends

First Draft. New Set.

Let’s talk about anthropology today? Strong word to start a set I presume. That’s ok, don’t worry, don’t panic, stick with me, it could be a little rocky, a little wobbly, but as long as I’m here, I take complete responsibility upon myself to handhold y’all and bring you safely and successfully to the destination, the other end.

[pause for a small gag; test the waters]

Wait, that sounds like a whitewater rafting guide giving instructions while y’all are getting into the raft all geared up. Nah, don’t worry, it’s just me, your very own personal entertainer tonight.

What is a conversation? This should be an easy word I’m guessing compared to anthropology? Yes, good. So yes, a conversation is an exchange of ideas or thoughts between two people. The intention is for you to convey your feelings and thoughts to me and for me to comprehend them and respond back to you with my feelings and thoughts. Good.

Now, just a train of thought, stick with me, okay?

You share your thoughts and ideas with me, and I start to shit on them. What are you going to do? One defaulted natural reaction I can think of is, you wouldn’t be as excited or motivated to share your thoughts and ideas with me anymore? Sounds reasonable so far? Good. Let’s see if we can push a little, if I continue to shit on your ideas, you’d maybe even get repelled or disgusted to share them with me. Good so far?

Now let’s escalate this. [sight gag: get onto an escalator]

So you tell me something and I respond to you, my response is bound to go through a series of complex and sometimes even incomprehensible filters, say: my mood, my energy levels, my last meal, my physical health like if I’m in pain, my mental health, state of mind at that instance, and these are just a few that could be counted into the “instance” bucket, and then there could be more from the “lasting” bucket, like my principles, my belief system, my lifestyle, my preferences, my opinions, etc and then there could be a “situational” bucket, something I just witnessed or experienced which influences or clouds my thoughts, like an accident or a dream. And these are just a few example filters I can come up with at the moment, there could be many more. I’m probably just touching the surface of the tip of the iceberg.

[pause for comprehension] [callback to the sight gag] you guys are still with me, right? Not on the raft, on the escalator 😝

Now, in my mind, I can truly, heartfully, and genuinely believe that I’m just responding to you with no ulterior motive of shitting on your ideas, but as my response passes through all of these complex layers of filters, there could be a reasonable chance for you to feel that my response was a shitty one. Actually, more possible than we’d think, because you’d have your own set of complex filters too, not to forget your expectations of me, knowing how much ever you know me and your expectations of a potential acceptable response to your ideas and thoughts.

[pause the escalator to check on audience] [callback to the sight gag]

So far so good? Good. If all of these don’t seem to be complicated enough, I can fuck it up more. Brace yourselves. It only gets anthropological from here. Yeah, that word again. Don’t worry, if I hype it up, I’ll break it down too.

My response that passes through my filters and then your filters could sometimes be reasonably acceptable in a one-on-one set up, but not necessarily, if more people are involved, if it’s a public conversation including family, friends, co-workers, or if it’s a group discussion or the most common one of our generation, the internet. Or if we were to take it up a notch, if it’s Big Brother. There’s a lot of judgment, opinions, perceptions involved. How is my response going to be perceived, and how is your reaction to my response going to be perceived by these bystanders. You would have taken my response without any animosity in the one-on-one conversation but it might not be good enough for a diverse audience setup. Yeah, diverse audience, that’s another layer of complexity, not all audience is going to be the same, they are going to be in a spectrum ranging from “taking a bullet for you” to “putting a bullet in you”, or if it’s a three-dimensional spectrum, that could also include another dimension ranging to “watching the traveling bullet sitting on their couch with popcorn in their mouths”. Yeah, they exist. How do you think Big Brother is still successfully airing even after 20+ years? All thanks to the popcorn eating couch potatoes.

[pause, clear up any potential controversies with this side gag]

No offense intended mind you, they are your most sincere and reliable consumers eating all your j̶u̶n̶k̶ processed food, watching all your j̶u̶n̶k̶ reality TV, and responsibly paying taxes for our economy to thrive.

[back onto the escalator; familiarize the sight gag]

This three-dimensional spectrum of audience, why do you think that’s the case? Well, we all are social beings evolved to work with complex social cues that are bound to be subjective at the core of its evolution. We all are products of our society, it wasn’t a planned, strategic, or educational decision taken, for us to analyze if it was a good decision or not in the hindsight now, but it was the reality that was responsible for the evolution of our species, the reality that mattered. Our species survived and evolved as a society, there’s no two ways about it, and it can’t be changed now. It can’t, I mean time, time just moves in one direction that we know of, you can’t go back and simplify our complex society driven evolution, at least as of yet.

[pause for comprehension, plug in another side gag]

Unless, you know, Christopher Nolan thinks otherwise. I’m all ready and excited to get my mind blown again man with his new movie Tenet. This guy can build an elaborate and detail-oriented story with emotionally invested characters, and an incomprehensible central premise or theme and present it with so much conviction that I start to question our widely accepted concepts of physics. Or maybe I’m part of his easy target audience.

[back onto the escalator]

Our species evolved as a product of our society, and our society evolved as a product of its surroundings. And now, after thousands of years of evolution is when our species, the most superiorly evolved ones that we know of, has got a reasonable handle to shape our surroundings, not control our surroundings, just a reasonable handle to nudge and steer few changes in our surroundings.

[lead back to main thread]

Do you see how fucking complicated “my response to your thoughts or ideas” could be? Now, think about it, how many responses make a conversation? And how many conversations make a relationship.

Did that blow your mind or what? 😝

Yeah, relationships are complex, because we are complex. Interactions between complex organisms are bound to be complex by the nature of our complex evolution.

[pause for the final punch; iterate on this delivery]

I’m glad we decided to tame dogs. Easily cut through these complex relationship structures between our complex beings and keep some sanity in our life getting love from our furry little friends.

[side gag; optional]

taming dogs, taming wolves, taming wolves to become dogs, whatever, but it’s not like one random day, a wolf had a dog as an offspring, it’s a tiny bit more complicated than that. Yay evolution! I nominate “taming dogs” to be our species’ best accomplishment. Hands down.

[Get off the escalator; mic drop; get boo’d]

todo — 
[Feed in a small dog conversation at the beginning, final punch line callback?]
[Have recurring dog references?]
[Plug in Qwerty for a personal touch?]
[Continue our catchphrase?]
[Identify fillers?]
[Window for hecklers?]
[Opening line impact?]
[Refine monologues]
[Always bring back to the main narrative]
[Track set time]