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 an autist with probably PTSD I can’t reinforce your point enough, between the call of the void and my borderline sociopathic tendencies I’d be killed five times over if folks judged me for my thoughts. If you look at my comments history you will see my sanitized thoughts, my unfiltered ones admittedly aren’t that much worse on a cause and effect level just more impulsive and descriptive.