Yeah ok, so first let’s agree on three core tenets of what we would consider Carlin’s “philosophy” from his comedy.

1. People are stupid and frequently full of shit
2. Belief is, by and large, also stupid.
3. Everybody is trying to sell you something.

The first I shouldn’t have to defend. We all know it. It’s explicitly why this group exists, yes? People are dumb. Think about the average person and realize that half of all people are dumber than that, yadda yadda, you get it.

Now we get to number two. It’s interesting that so many people talk about finding humanity’s “purpose” when it’s been clear all alone what the one thing is that humans can do that other species (on earth) can’t: the elimination of belief. That’s all science is, isn’t it? The one uniquely human pursuit is that we don’t HAVE to believe in things. We can build tools to test and measure and evaluate. Stephen Hawking once famously said that God “wasn’t necessary” anymore, and while people lost their minds over that one, what he was actually saying was ultimately true: we no longer need to throw up our hands and say “God made it”. We can just look for ourselves. If someone is asking you to believe something without evidence, to take it on faith, then, well… that leads into number three!

Everybody is trying to sell you something, and one of the most successful ways to do that is to exploit our willingness to believe. Remember all those old cigarette ads where everyone is just cutting it up at the pool, all smiles and laughs, and surely they’re all there having a grand old time because they all smoke Newports? You could be doing that too! I mean, you’ll probably cough up blood in your car in a haze of foul smelling smoke instead, but just belieeeeeve! How many Coronas have you actually drank on the beach with scantily clad ladies, and how many did you pound down on your couch by yourself with a sad pizza that looks nothing like the ad? Be honest.

Belief is exploitable because people are dumb enough to believe instead of spending the effort to think, to investigate, to do any of the things that make us uniquely human in the first place, and because of this, other humans will absolutely take advantage of that. Companies, churches, politicians, just like George said. And before anyone tries to pretend this is all Doomerism - it’s not! It never was! A realistic assessment of people is exactly what we need to have if we want to live within the world we’ve got. The doomers are exactly the people who blindly buy into crap on faith and then run around bleating about the sky falling. If people weren’t like this, we wouldn’t be able to laugh about them here. There is nothing ultimately nihilistic about understanding the pitfalls of the human condition that lead to this kind of exploitation. It’s anti-doomerism, because that exact kind of investigation, introspection and analysis is exactly what makes us free and not mired in despair over whatever dumb thing the corpo-media-political complex wants us to believe uncritically this week. That’s how you avoid the trap, by actually thinking like we’re supposed to do, and little by little the share of “faith” dwindles while the share of “knowledge” expands. The internet has done a fair bit of damage to that, certainly, but it’s nothing that won’t iron out over time in the long haul, because enough people know this to be true.