Recently, I decided to take my interest in writing more seriously and start writing down my thoughts and opinions just to get it out of my head and onto some virtual paper. While I had a general idea of the topics I wanted to write about, I spent a lot of time deciding where to begin. After spending some time trying to figure out a good topic to start with, the answer became obvious: to start with the man whose creative content (one in particular) started an unexpected chain reaction in me that led me to this point in the first place: George Carlin.

But before we go there, a bit of a background about me. In the first 25 years of my life, I was an average Indian kid who was focused on academics, social life, recreation and family. I wasn’t too good at academics, especially after my father passed away when I was 9 years old, and while my school education gave me a pretty good basis for my world views, it not something I reflected too much on as I focused more on just finishing school followed by college. This was made worse by social anxiety and depression that was consuming whatever intellectual bandwidth that was left. Although this got better as I graduated and found a decent job, I spent much of my time focused on only those few things that were close to me and didn’t spend too much time thinking or reflecting on the larger world around me. Certainly not at any depth.

This began to slowly change when a friend of mine shared a bunch of stand-up comedy videos from Bill Hicks, Ricky Gervais and most importantly, George Carlin. At first, I didn’t see much of these videos, and the ones I did watch weren’t different from other stand up comedy I had seen. Some of them were certainly funnier than other popular comedians all those years ago, but looking back at it now, there was something special about George and his HBO specials from the 90’s. This was not the first time I came across George, as I knew him from the ‘Bill & Ted’s’ movies, which I loved as a kid because I used to listen to rock and metal music a lot at that time. But this was the first time I saw him performing his content in his style. And I was immediately captivated. He was funny, he had an explosive style and his mastery over the English language seemed next to none!

But looking back at his videos now, I realize that they were responsible for making me look up and observe the world around me, and more importantly, think critically about the things that I observed. Every new sketch I watched introduced me to new concepts, and his style of comedy made me see them from a different angle than what it would normally seem. From the sanitized language we use that strips the emotion from topics that need our attention to the unique phrases and actions we say and do that strangely brings us together, from inconsistent logic to skepticism about mythical creatures, from fragile masculinity to the self importance of mankind, George would present a beautiful cake, then smash it into pieces to show just how different it looks on the inside. He constantly managed to go beyond the surface of a topic and show how there’s more right below it and how the world as it initially seems to be really needs to be knocked down hard to understand better. And this is something I keep coming back to find out is true about almost anything I have the ability to observe.

Although this was only the start of it all, and I would later rely on philosophy and my free thinking capabilities (as good as they are) to form and grow my world view over the last decade, I realized that the eventual viewpoints I settled on had already been revealed to me by George and seem accurate and relevant even to this day. I find it tough to trust my government, especially after seeing the tricks they play to keep us divided while they run away with money and power. I agree that the middle class is only here to pay taxes and be afraid of not becoming poor, while the poor languish and the rich do little to uplift them. I find certain corporate “language” soulless & deceptive and that the public generally sucks. As for religion, that deserves an article of its own. And while I don’t agree with him on certain things like terror attacks being entertaining or some of his jokes on children, it’s clear to me that George is not just a comedian but an astute philosopher who knew how to see through the non-sense and call a spade a spade.

It’s tough for me to imagine any other person or event that could’ve made me see the world the way I do now. Maybe in an alternate universe, Bill Hicks or Ricky Gervais would’ve been the trigger that set me on this path. But in this universe and this timeline, it was George and his style of comedy that got me to stand up and and take notice of what was happening around me and think through them in the best way possible. And for that, I shall forever be thankful and grateful. Thank you, George!