Humour and Cruelty. Volume 3 Laughing Matters: Theses and Discussions 9783111256108, 9783111254555

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contents
Brief Remarks on Part 2 of Volume 3
1 Cruelty Against Humour
2 Humour Against Cruelty
3 Concluding Remarks
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Giorgio Baruchello, Ársæll Már Arnarsson Humour and Cruelty, Vol. 3/2

De Gruyter Studies in Philosophy of Humor

Edited by Lydia Amir Editorial Advisory Board Noël Carroll, CUNY, New York, NY, USA; Simon Critchley, The New School, New York, NY, USA; Daniel Dennett, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA; Stephen Halliwell, St. Andrews University, St. Andrews, UK; Kathleen Higgins, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA; John Lippitt, University of Notre Dame, Sydney, NSW, Australia; John Morreall, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA; Robert C. Roberts, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA; Quentin Skinner, Queen Mary University of London, UK.

Volume 3/2

Giorgio Baruchello, Ársæll Már Arnarsson

Humour and Cruelty Volume 3: Laughing Matters Part 2: Theses and Discussions

ISBN 978-3-11-125455-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-125610-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-125657-3 ISSN 2699-3481 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023939319 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

To To To To To To

my co-author. our mothers. May they never read this filth. our siblings, an endless source of cruelty and humour. our descendants, weather permitting. Lydia Amir, the instigator of these four books. What a cruel joke to make! our readers—the whole masochistic lot of you!

Acknowledgments Writing an academic book is, normally, neither particularly amusing nor painfully aggravating. Writing several such books, on the contrary, is both a strangely humorous enterprise and a cruelly taxing task. We must therefore thank Professor Lydia Amir, founding president of the International Association for the Philosophy of Humor, for inspiring and initiating this scholarly endeavour of ours, which has given us plenty of opportunity to experience and reflect upon the two pivotal and titular issues of our work. Similarly, we must thank De Gruyter’s Senior Acquisitions Editor for Philosophy, Christoph Schirmer, who is the person that actually decided to transform the original project, i. e., one scholarly volume, into a considerably bigger one. We mean three such volumes, one of which is divided into two parts, i. e., four physically distinct books! Without him, in short, we would have hardly experienced and reflected upon so much humour and so much cruelty as we did, including their mutual combination. Not to mention the fact that both Lydia Amir and Christoph Schirmer concurred on the additional need to overhaul the citation and referencing standards of the original single manuscript at a point in time when this massive document was almost complete. What a laugh! The number of hours spent on nitty-gritty editorial changes and written reformulations was beyond belief. Consequently, if the reader finds any wrong citations or poor references in this third volume, these two lovely persons are to be held co-responsible for our mistakes—here’s another combination of humour and cruelty, if you were looking for one… And if the reader cannot get the tongue-in-cheek tone of our previous statements, a further combination is also de facto instantiated, on the spot. There are also a few colleagues who, under a great variety of circumstances, were crucial in helping us to establish, debate, and refine specific lines of argument on select philosophical and psychological topics. These are mirrored pari passu in the present third volume which, as hinted above, now comprises two parts. As regards Part 1, Chapter 4, we must thank Dr. R.T. Allen, Britain’s leading expert on Michael Polanyi’s thought. Without Dr. Allen, our knowledge and understanding of the great Hungarian polymath would have remained severely deficient. As regards Chapters 1 and 3 of Part 2, we must thank three Italian philosophers, gifted writers, passionate feminists, and Baroncelli devotees: Athena Barbera, Mirella Pasini, and Paola de Cuzzani. Their sense of humour and their awareness of the struggles within the West’s liberal camp were of immense help to us. Analogously, we must thank an Italian archetypal psychologist, G. Roberto Buccola, and a Canadian critical thinker, Christopher DiCarlo, for important insights into some of the thorniest matters pertaining to the fields of, respectively, psychotherhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783111256108-001

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Acknowledgments

apy and informal logic. These insights proved most relevant vis-à-vis the same two chapters of Part 2. Thirdly, there are colleagues whom we should thank indirectly because they did not mean to assist us in our arduous endeavour and yet succeeded in providing us with valuable food for thought and meaningful lived exemplar. As regards especially Chapter 1 of Part 2, we have to mention all those academics that gave us repeated example of both conscious and subconscious self-censorship. By this we mean the recurrent avoidance of themes, topics, and/or terms that could translate into public outrage, poorer career prospects, and/or prosaic headaches within university departments and/or professional groups. Sometimes, these individuals avoided these obstacles in full cognizance of the obstacles themselves and their own decision not to express what they had come to think about certain themes, topics, and/or terms—not even when their conclusions and usages would have been methodologically justified and/or buttressed by empirical evidence and logical reasoning. Other times, instead, the affective import of these themes, topics and/or terms had been internalised to the point of producing unthinking reactions of avoidance. The devil was just too scary to even begin thinking about it, not to mention proffering its name. As regards Chapter 2 of Part 2, we should thank, also indirectly, the workplace bullies and vicious gossips that we have had the dubious fortune of encountering and enduring in our professional life. Not only have these flesh-and-thorn persons offered us ample and repeated proof of that so-called “Dark Triad” of human personality which keeps being discussed by contemporary psychologists, i. e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, and lack of empathy (aka “psychopathy”). Also, having to suffer their cruel scheming and clever abuses turned out to be an inexhaustible source of bleak jokes without which we would have probably been unable to tolerate the difficulties caused by such obnoxious and, apparently, far-from-rare human beings. Indeed, as John Williams’ masterful 1965 novel Stoner exemplifies, they can even turn up in the world of fictional universities. As to much more pleasant individuals, we ought to conclude these acknowledgments by mentioning Raymond Snider and Audrey Matthews-Hill, who helped us with the time-consuming processes of proofreading and editing. Similarly, with special regard to Chapter 1 of Part 2, we must add the brothers James K. and J. Alan Galbraith, both of whom should be acknowledged for their encouragement, as well as for some clever considerations about the consumption of ice cream in very cold climates. Likewise, we must extend our gratitude to our own families who had to put up with us while busy working on three volumes about humour and cruelty. For our spouses and teenage children, these two concepts became a tangible daily reality. The former was called upon by them in order to let their husbands’ and/or their fathers’ absent-mindedness and mood swings be bearable; the

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latter was implied by the very same husbands’ and/or fathers’ absent-mindedness and mood swings. The tome that you have in your hands (or on your screen) is, therefore, yet another demonstration of how humour and cruelty can criss-cross, contaminate mutually, and combat each other. Akureyri, Iceland, March 2023

Giorgio Baruchello and Ársæll Már Arnarsson

Contents Acknowledgments

VII

Brief Remarks on Part 2 of Volume 3

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1 Cruelty Against Humour 1 1.1 Taking Stock 1 1.2 Responsive Cruelty 11 1.3 Censoring Comedy 69 143 1.4 Charlie Hebdo 2 Humour Against Cruelty 172 173 2.1 Can Humour Be Beneficial? 2.2 Can Cruel Humour Be Beneficial? 210 2.3 Facing Cruelty with Humour 223 3 Concluding Remarks 266 3.1 Humour and Life’s Cruelty 268 276 3.2 Cruel Humour and Life’s Cruelty 3.3 Acknowledging Darkness 279 3.4 Playing with Darkness 288 3.5 Blinded by Light 320 324 3.6 Laughing or Frowning at Darkness? 3.7 Cruel Humour, Class, and Swearing Sheep 3.8 The Humorous Cruelty of Living 342 Bibliography Index

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Brief Remarks on Part 2 of Volume 3 The present physical (or electronic) tome is the last step in a long and extensive academic project that began in 2019. As we launched into the philosophical exploration of humour and cruelty, little did we know of all the relevant materials, research avenues, underlying themes, associated topics, surrounding controversies, higher aims, and vast wealth of insight and instruction awaiting us along the way. In the end, one planned book became three; and the third book in the line became a two-part instalment. Let us briefly acknowledge all of these steps. Humour and Cruelty, Volume 1: A Philosophical Exploration of the Humanities and Social Sciences (hereafter H&C1) instantiated a massive Begriffsgeschichte of the two titular concepts and of their mutual criss-crossing in the history of the Western humanities and social sciences. In addition, it developed an argument in defence of polysemy, based upon the philosophy of the great 20th-century Hungarian polymath, Michael Polanyi. Humour and Cruelty, Volume 2: Dangerous Liaisons (hereafter H&C2) followed, this time offering an in-depth study of these two notions’ mutual and mutually supportive combinations, i. e., humorous cruelty and cruel humour. In the process, it excavated and emphasised a rather unsettling truth: humour, in all likelihood, always contains a modicum of cruelty, predominantly of the callous type, whether we are aware of it or not. Lastly, Humour and Cruelty, Volume 3: Laughing Matters (hereafter H&C3) came into being and, as stated, ended up being split into two parts.¹ Part 1 provided a simpler and synthetic overview of the Begriffsgeschichte-cum-Polanyian-reflections that had been produced in H&C1, while further adding concise scholarly references to the overall picture, especially with regard to depth- and clinical psychology, 20th-century Marxist thought, neo-Thomism, existentialism, feminism, and select recent studies in the philosophy of humour and its cognates (e. g., irony and laughter). In this way, Part 1 sets the stage for Part 2. All readers who are familiar with H&C1 are therefore free to focus on Part 2 if they so wish, but they must be aware of the specific function and subsidiary features characterising Part 1. As its bookish and self-ironic subtitle indicates, Part 1 comprises the actual prolegomena to Part 2. In particular, Part 1 contains the full, longer, and more detailed introduction to H&C3 as such. Therefore, the present reader, even if s/he is familiar with H&C1 and/or H&C2, is positively and emphatically advised to peruse that bulkier introduction, especially as regards grasping the 1 When we write “here” in “this book” or “the present book”, we mean Part 2 of H&C3. When we write “volume”, it means H&C3 in its entirety. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111256108-002

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overall nature of H&C3, its distinctive hermeneutical and evaluative characteristics, the deeper rationale for the controversial topics and issues that it explores, the purpose and relevance of its many detailed footnotes, and our own sense of humour. What you can read below, then, is a much shorter and veritably succinct summary of the main contents of the remaining sections of H&C3. Part 2 of H&C3, i. e., Chapters 1 through 3 in the present book, crowns the whole multi-volume endeavour by discussing, first of all, the mutual conflicts between humour and cruelty: cruelty against humour, and humour against cruelty. Potent and patent enmities to mirth and jollity are retrieved from a variety of socio-historical contexts, ranging from early-medieval European monasteries to the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre. Along the way, special attention is paid to the cruel humour and humorous cruelty arising thereof, insofar as such phenomena can reveal critical aspects of today’s liberal (or neoliberal) socio-economic order. Two such aspects loom large in this respect: the incongruities between orthodox economic thought and ordinary economic life, especially vis-à-vis their eco-systemic preconditions; and the uncertain limits to personal freedom, including the core value of free speech, particularly though not exclusively in connection with the sexual sphere.² In parallel, settings and circumstances where humour has been used as an instrument to cope with suffered cruelty, whether natural or human in origin, are also retrieved and discussed. These too vary greatly and encompass domains such as hospital wards, 20th-century Jewish ghettoes, paediatric clinics, crime scenes, and contemporary funeral homes. Following that, as explained in the introduction to Part 1, the last chapter of this book covers our own hard-won concluding reflections.³ In it, the key information and the key insights that we have come across in all three volumes—both in the main text and the many detailed footnotes—are recollected, rearranged, and recombined so as to enhance and expand upon the available conceptions of both ‘humour’ and ‘cruelty’, while paying distinct attention to their mutually conflictual aspects, which are the focal point of Part 2.⁴

2 Readers who may be disturbed by prurient topics should stop reading the book now. 3 We make very few trenchant statements. Studying cluster concepts such as ‘humour’ and ‘cruelty’ has taught us much epistemic humility (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). As if being ludicrously fallible was not cruel enough already. 4 As done throughout our volumes, we highlight concepts or ideas by means of single quotation marks and words by means of double ones. Whenever no special emphasis or distinction between concepts (or ideas) and words is needed, then no quotation marks appear. Also, single quotation marks can indicate non-literal usages of certain terms or linguistic expressions.

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In other words, roaming across the conceptual space constructed by our trilogy in general and Part 1’s four chapters in particular, we integrate the materials presented and discussed in Part 2 and reset the most significant information and insights, i. e., as these were accrued and reflected upon throughout our intellectual exploration, yet at a higher level of philosophical awareness and axiological assessment, which is rooted in life-value onto-axiology (LVOA; as also duly explained in the introduction to Part 1).⁵ In this respect, special emphasis is placed upon the psychological, theological, ethical, and metaphysical roots of humour—and its cruel rejection.⁶ The present book’s dedication, acknowledgments and bibliography are exactly the same as in Part 1. The present additional introduction, table of contents, backcover abstract and closing index, instead, are not. As to Chapter 1, 2 and 3 in this book, they are entirely original and, as the reader will easily gather, substantial, at least in terms of sheer length, theoretical analyses, and attendant footnotes. As kindly indicated by two anonymous referees, the conscientious thoroughness and encyclopaedic character of our study are, possibly, genuine points of strength of our extensive research on humour and cruelty. That explains why, after all, we were invited and encouraged to transform our original manuscript into, eventually, four physically distinct books. We do hope that our readers will share these anonymous referees’ positive appraisal of our prolonged and painstaking efforts.⁷ If they will not, then the readers can still enjoy the fact that, as far as the present authors are concerned, working so hard turned out to be a really cruel joke.⁸

5 Since Part 1 and Part 2 belong to the same volume, we write hereby “trilogy” and not “tetralogy”. 6 These roots are discussed to different levels of detail, due to the book’s inherent emphases. 7 Let it be repeated that we, as authors of these books, are able spot all kinds of imperfections inside them, most notably when it is far too late to do anything about it. A cruel irony indeed. 8 As discussed in H&C2, the guilty pleasure of Schadenfreude is a common combination of humour and cruelty.

1 Cruelty Against Humour Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung / In the dead language of a mummy’s tongue, / For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well – / Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell. / Had it been such as consecrates the Bible / Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel. —Barney Stims (Ambrose Bierce)¹

Whether we label it “True”, “False” or “Not Certain”, engaging in “humour” proper is neither doubtlessly wise on the initiator’s side, nor always welcome on the recipient’s one. The malicious ingredient that so many thinkers consider routine of humour—whether in great part of it or in toto—can be too much to bear for too many people.² Alternatively, it can be so to enough people of adequate social clout, whose word is also the last one in legal and/or socio-cultural matters.³ Disorderliness, disrespect, or dereliction are immediately and intuitively associated with humour on many occasions and, most assuredly, with laughter.⁴ In the West, an old Latin adage keeps teaching young children that risus abundat in ore stultorum. ⁵ In the East, its spirit is singularly demonstrated by a sign hanging prominently at the Tuol Sleng, Cambodia’s genocide museum, “warning that any loud talking or laughter is strictly forbidden”.⁶ There is nothing lighthearted or innocuous at play in these cases. Quite the opposite, therein, laughing matters.

1.1 Taking Stock Humor as the word also implies, moistens and softens, giving life a common touch; it is anathema to grandiosity, fostering self-reflection and distancing us from self-importance. —James Hillman⁷

1 Bierce (2000), 208. As noted in H&C1, laughter has often been tied to Hell’s cruel ruler: Satan. 2 In H&C2, brutal cruelty qua anaesthesia of the heart was shown to be one of humour’s musts. 3 See, e. g., Heltzel (1928) on Lord Chesterfield’s in/famous objections to laughter. 4 As Beattie (1778) noted, although frequently inseparable, humour and laughter are distinct phenomena. 5 “Laughter abounds on the fools’ mouth.” The adage’s origin is unknown, although we know its Latin formulation to be non-classical and to build on classical as well as Biblical references (see Tosi 2013, 813 – 814). 6 Emmerich (2007), par. 11. 7 Hillman (1996), 221 – 222. See also Meerloo (2015, chap. 8, sec. 3, par. 12) on the humourless tyrant. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111256108-003

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In H&C2, we encountered numerous cases and circumstances in which commonplace humour comes across as either unwise or unwelcome, if not both.⁸ We also briefly mentioned a few cases and circumstances that, inside historical societies’ multiple forms of life, occasioned forceful retorts aimed at stopping and/or scolding such humorous conduct.⁹ These cases should be briefly recalled in the context of the present volume.

1.1.1 Representative Examples (1) In 1962, Italy’s courts of law were called into action in response to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s blasphemous short movie La ricotta, starring Orson Welles.¹⁰ (2) In 2012, the US judiciary’s intervention was successfully invoked to have the pornographic parody of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream flavours banned and destroyed in all extant copies.¹¹

8 “Taking stock” qua “making an inventory” is attested from 1736. Yet the oldest etymologies of “stock” refer to “stump, post, stake… log” and, cruelly, “pillory”, i. e., a place of torture (Harper, 2001 – 2021). 9 As to “forms of life”, we follow here Wittgenstein (1953), proposition 19 et passim. 10 In the first degree of judgement (1963), Pasolini was condemned to four months in prison (see Chiarelli 2016). In the second degree, acquitted (1964). In the third and last (1967), the second-degree acquittal was expunged without requesting a new trial because the original crime had been extinguished by a newly passed amnesty. Artistically, we would argue that this short movie is a case of “true humour” à la Pirandello (1920). 11 Using the full force of the law to punish comical pornography may go as far back as Sade’s notorious case, inasmuch as the “Divine Marquis” was jailed repeatedly, under the old King, the Jacobins, and Napoleon, for the scandalous contents of his lewd novels, which literary scholar Lucienne Frappier-Mazur (1996, 2) described, rather innocently, as “parodic… burlesques” exemplifying 18th-century remnants of older “carnivalesque literature”. Naturally, these different characterisations point towards the notorious lexical vagueness of “pornography” itself, which not even the academic experts can define unanimously. See, e. g., the sobering conclusions reached by a “global Delphi panel” comprising 38 such experts (as reported in McKee 2020, 1085), as well as Borgomeo and Manara (2022, pars. 10 – 11), i. e., an interview with one of the most famous graphic artists in Western erotica, who stated: “The edge [between ‘art’ and ‘pornography’] is thin. It has never been stark. The beauty of it is to walk on the edge… With a mere image it is not easy to draw this edge. You need a story. Erotica is the cultural elaboration of sex. Whereas pornography is the sheer exposition of sex … though I don’t find it wrong.” See also Chapter 3.

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(3) Social pressure was raised five years later, this time by Welsh feminists, who successfully vetoed a Benny-Hill-style fun-run on grounds of anachronistic and offensive sexism.¹² (4) In 2018, high-level ministerial powers within the Russian Federation made sure that Antonio Iannucci’s film satire, The Death of Stalin, was not shown in the country’s cinemas.¹³ (5) In the same year, feminist social pressure mounted once more, primarily online, causing US film critic Daniel Edelstein to lose his job at National Public Radio for joking, on his Facebook profile, about a rape scene in Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial 1972 movie about lust and ennui, Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider.¹⁴ (6) One year later, analogous social forces caused a disabled Asda employee, one Brian Leach, to be fired for reposting on social media a joke by the famed Glaswegian comedian Billy Connolly, who had made fun of Muslim suicide bombers in one of his many theatre shows.¹⁵ (7) In addition to these exemplary cases, we noted how parents and educators have frequently intervened in order to prevent their children and/or pupils from engaging in demeaning mockeries and/or unkind mischiefs directed at other people, e. g., classmates, teachers, younger siblings, elderly relatives, eccentric neighbours, etc.¹⁶ ‘True’ humour, as this was understood by elitist thinkers such as Schopenhauer or Pirandello, is probably too rare and too rarefied an artistic expression to be on the daily radar of the same parents, educators, moralists, critics, and/or legis12 “It would be very difficult for The Benny Hill Show to thrive today, as many of the gags tend to be made at the expenses of women and often walk the line between sexism and outright misogyny” (Gray 2013, par. 3). What will survive the now-unknown future censor? 13 The Culture Ministry of the Russian Federation deemed it most inappropriate to circulate a film parodying Stalin on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over the Nazi-fascist invaders (see Luxmoore 2018). Artistically, this satire does not constitute an example of so-called “true humour”, insofar as sheer mockery prevails emphatically over any sincere human sympathy, since none of the characters is depicted with compassion. 14 Albeit controversial, Bertolucci and Last Tango in Paris are still modern classics (see, e. g., Bundtzen 1990). In the cited article, Kipnis (2018, pars. 11 – 12) commented on Edelstein’s episode critically, insofar as she identifies in it a new type of “feminist… encroachment” shifting “from ‘Give me a blow job or I’ll fire you’ to ‘Don’t tell a joke I don’t like or I’ll fire you’”, i. e., not “a more humane treatment of the workforce”. 15 Connolly’s gag still circulates on many internet platforms. Also, “analogous” means neither ‘equivalent’ nor ‘identical’. 16 Parents and educators can teach sometimes the opposite course of action, as already noted by Montaigne (1877).

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lators. In its broader form, i. e., that-which-is-conducive-to-laughter—and/or tosmiling—humour has been rigorously forbidden, or at least passionately discouraged, in connection with a great variety of issues and settings.¹⁷ The instinctive, primeval phenomenon of laughter has itself been condemned on countless occasions as undisciplined, unworthy, unhealthy, and/or ungodly.¹⁸

1.1.2 Refinement Concerning “humour” proper, the most frequently addressed issue of all has been that of distinguishing between ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of it. As amply shown in H&C1, both Shaftesbury and Beattie conceived of this distinction as the line of demarcation between refined and unrefined society, decent and indecent conduct, decorous and vulgar mores, old and new artistry or, in essence, good and bad artistry, as well as good and bad manners.¹⁹ Shaftesbury and Beattie thought that the crucial issue in humorous matters is to find the crucial criterion whereby to discriminate between, on the one hand, the kind of persons that we ought to aspire to be and, on the other hand, the mob that we may happen to be surrounded by or, shamefully, belong to.²⁰ As addressed in Chapter 2 of Part 1 and in H&C1, comparable worries were voiced by Addison and Steele in The Spectator, who added to the tally of desirable refinements the commendable sociable expressions of contagious joviality and unsophisticated cleverness and, to the opposite tally, the despicable ones of vicious libel, cerebral nonsensicality, plebeian vulgarity, and outrageous blasphemy. On a similar note, which was also addressed in the same Chapter 2 and, above all, in H&C1, Hartley highlighted the risks associated with humour for the pivotal sakes

17 An interesting and comprehensive account of traditional philosophical arguments against laughter (i. e., lack of rational self-control, sensuality, pathology, concentration on ‘wrong’ matters, vulgarity) can be found in Kivistö (2008), which focussed on ancient agelastic paradigms recurring in Renaissance and early modern thought. 18 See, e. g., Cicero’s class-based, negative categories of risus [laughter]: inliberale (unbecoming to a non-slave), petulans (impudent), flagitiosum (shameful) and obscenum (lewd) (Graf 1997, 30). 19 As typical of the 18th-century British heralds of refinement, Shaftesbury’s raillery avoids profanities and behaviours such as burping, defecating, urinating, copulating, vomiting, spitting, and farting, with which medieval and early modern buffoons and comedians were, instead, more comfortable, if not obsessed (see, e. g., V. Allen 2007). 20 However preferable, their elitist ideal of humour is not the one and only modern standard.

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of personal decorum, devotional propriety, the pursuit of knowledge, and practical expediency.²¹ Conscious of the existing social hierarchies, Beattie integrated all these known risks of humorous conduct with a supplementary note of caution when he wrote about a peculiar danger that he believed to be in store for crafty lyricists, public satirists, and bold gagsters.²² Specifically, Beattie had in mind those colleagues who might dare to make fun of people stationed in high offices and/or expected to perform controlling public functions. As Beattie argued, this daring feat of artistic creativity is guilty of forgetting that the inherent gravity of such eminent official stations makes ipso facto any attempt at mirth socially inappropriate, morally misguided, and civically treacherous, if not politically treasonous.²³ It is people inhabiting lower social strata that should be lampooned, primarily.²⁴ Being the target already unrefined, coming across as unrefined would be less likely for the initiator and, should it happen, less compromising.²⁵

1.1.3 Romantic Warnings On a similar line of assessment, but aiming at an even wider critical target, Hazlitt cautioned his readers about three major problems arising from humour and wit.²⁶ They were: (1) the moral wickedness of far too many comedies seeking cheap, easy laughter from their audiences by means of facile sensationalism;²⁷ 21 Contemporary concerns about political correctness re-enact these older preoccupations (see also Chapter 3 and H&C2). See also Swabey’s (1958 and 1961) representative reflections on worthy and unworthy laughter. 22 This and the other claims associated with Beattie, Hazlitt, et alia were duly tackled in H&C1. 23 Treating high-stationed individuals with the utmost respect has normally implied bans on humour for countless centuries. Colafemmina (2006) recalled the 13th-century Sefer Hassidim chronicle by Yehudah he-Hasid ben Semuel. In it, the Jewish chronicler tells the story of the wise man Ahima’as ben Palitel of Capua, who was captured by the Muslim invaders of Oria, in Apulia, in 925. When Palitel was brought before the King of Egypt, he was reminded by the monarch that “it is forbidden to laugh in my presence” (Colafemmina 2006, 8). 24 Ordinary people keep being the fodder of most comedies, also because the audiences can easily relate to them. Albeit democratic, modern societies are still stratified. 25 ‘Reading’ a setting as enough ‘un/refined’ for a joke is yet another token of tacit integration (see Chapter 4 of Part 1). 26 Once again, a duly referenced account was given in H&C1, to which we must refer the reader. 27 Dukore (2014) presented us with the paradoxical case of George Bernard Shaw. Despite being a playwright creating and staging amusing comedies, he opposed laughter in the theatre as a noisy nuisance. Therefore, Shaw even “composed an insert, dated ‘New Year, 1913’, that audiences re-

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(2) the intellectual laziness of nihilistic wags disregarding higher or deeper ethical, aesthetic, artistic, and/or spiritual matters by way of humorous derision;²⁸ and (3) the evil cantankerousness of sour spirits belching out acid bile by means of stinging satire and/or sore sarcasm, as though apparent levity could legitimise its own rabid spring.²⁹ Hazlitt and, some years later, Schopenhauer, also noted how, despite the many apparent justifications and approbations of humour, the very words “ludicrous” and “absurd” transform immediately into offensive adjectives as soon as they are applied to ourselves or to people about whom we do care for real.³⁰ What is risible in others is therefore shameful to witness in ourselves, and it is painful to fully acknowledge within us, in our family or love relations, and/or among our closest friends and associates.³¹ People capable of ultimate self-irony and uninhibited self-effacement may conceivably exist, as Schopenhauer admitted, but they are most assuredly the exception rather than the norm inside human communities, where we encounter much more ordinarily excesses of pride and prickliness than excesses of humility and ataraxy. Whether desirable or not, Western Stoics and Eastern sages do not make up much of the world’s population.³²

ceived with the program” of John Bull’s Other Island, advising not to laugh aloud during the performances and avoid interruptions (Dukore 2014, 324). 28 God’s terrifying silencing of these inveterate cynical scoffers upon the point of death is among the chief topics in the 1772 poem “Redemption” by Henry Brooke (1792), vol. 1, 383 – 405. 29 As noted, e. g., by Bentley (1967), satire allows a person to unleash her misanthropy and claim to be doing good. 30 The full, duly referenced accounts were given in H&C1. 31 An instance of these two opposite perspectives is provided by lesser forms of corporal punishment, e. g., the stocks, tarring, and feathering, etc. Public humiliation may be the cause of laughter for the spectators, but not for the victims and their kin, lest it should fail in its desired retributive and deterring effects (see Karp 1998). 32 This share of the population may have been different, long ago, in some parts of the world. As Adam Smith (1790, part 5, chap. 2, par. 9) wrote: “[H]abituate[d]” as they are “to every sort of distress”, the “savages in North America, we are told, assume upon all occasions the greatest indifference” and are capable of “magnanimity and selfcommand … beyond the conception of Europeans”. Like “[t]he heroes of ancient and modern history” or the “wise man” praised by the Stoics, the indigenous can, “upon the approach of death, preserve [their] tranquillity unaltered” and thus deserve “a very high degree of admiration” (Smith 1790, part 6, sec. 3, par. 5, and part 7, sec. 2, chap. 1, par. 20). Ironically, these admirable stoical primitives could be sensibly exterminated, “as is usual”, insofar as “the good of the whole” is so duly served (Smith 1904, book 2, chap. 2, par. 86).

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Hazlitt paid special attention also to another dubious aspect of “humour” proper. Indeed, he thought of this issue as being so morally distressing and so psychologically burdensome that it had long remained a “little touched” secret among playwrights and critics alike, i. e., the sexual root of most “comic humour”.³³ According to Hazlitt, there is hardly any “comedy” that does not utilise or thrive upon “the adventures, difficulties, demurs, hear-breadth ‘scapes, disguises, deceptions, blunders, disappointments, successes, excuses, all the dexterous manoeuvres, artful innuendoes, assignations, billets-doux, double entendres, sly allusions, and elegant flattery”, the sole aim of which is “the obtaining of those ‘favours secret, sweet, and precious’” that nobody dares depicting bluntly, leaving it instead “to the imagination” of the audiences to fathom, visualise and fantasise about.³⁴ In the 20th century, as seen in Chapter 2 of Part 1, Freud and the Freudians will further corroborate and deepen Hazlitt’s original insight.³⁵

1.1.4 Respect In the late 20th century, and as noted and addressed repeatedly in both H&C1 and H&C2, Harvey reminded her readers of the complex, perhaps infuriating, yet inevitable moral implications of humorous conduct.³⁶ These implications were said to arise from each ethically competent person’s duty to treat oneself and one another respectfully within the moral community which this person happens to belong to and benefit from (e. g., qua lawful citizen, economic agent, cultural recipient, and discursive actor).³⁷ Trusting gut feelings and relying on the habitual tacit integrations of multiple details, as these were briefly hinted at in Part 1 of H&C3, will not do, according to Harvey, unless we have succeeded in becoming ethically superior persons.³⁸ If we

33 Hazlitt (1845), 12. 34 Hazlitt (1845), 12. Hazlitt was ignorant of or in denial with regard to his day’s erotica. 35 As we observed in H&C1, Roman and medieval comedies were far less prim than those of Hazlitt’s Romantic age. In 19th-century Albion, then, the champions of refinement had won the day, and the complex legacy of Shaftesbury, Beattie and Puritanism had been internalised by those strata of British society around which high culture and official literature pivoted and prospered. 36 We write “infuriating” because it is in the experience of performing the right action out of sheer duty, against one’s own appetites and feelings of approbation, that we have proof of our (practical) reason’s ability to move the will, pace the sentimentalist and hedonic-utilitarian ethical traditions (see also Sidgwick 1907). Whether such experiences are empirically common and/or normatively preferable are major issues that we cannot tackle here. 37 Different individuals may belong to and benefit from a moral community to differing degrees. 38 Do note that, in the paragraphs above, we keep using “moral” and “ethical” as synonyms.

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want to speak or act in jest, we must consider carefully what the morally salient consequences are likely to be for our targets and/or audiences.³⁹ This deliberate consideration means taking into account, inter alia: (1) the known public and private history of the target/s; (2) the societal group/s with whom s/he/they may identify; (3) the known history of those societal group/s itself/themselves; and (4) a great variety of supplementary aspects that may (or may not) contribute to determining whether our jests are going to be (or not) a source of insensitive pain, self-perpetuating injustice, cumulative oppression, uncivil civility, and/or malevolent glee.⁴⁰ Being funny is no forthright fun, as far as Harvey’s ethically engaged individual is concerned.⁴¹ Our own daily experiences vis-à-vis deciding whether to try to be amusing when we find ourselves in the company of friends, partners, relatives, and/or colleagues are likely to give further credit to this realisation.⁴² According to Harvey, in order for each competent individual’s humour to be “better aimed”, a lot of deliberative spadework is required, at least until that hypothetical, future, and desirable point in time when a better “[m]orally alert humor” will have become second nature to the ethically engaged individual.⁴³ Until that day, as Harvey argues, much remains to be done and ought not to be avoided by each truly responsible person, insofar as “[a]ccidental oversights and even a society-wide lack of awareness account for far more injustices and wrongs than do malice or indifference”.⁴⁴

39 Moral implications arise from deliberation as such. As the Irish philosopher Garrett Barden (2014, par. 1) stated: “the range or scope of [moral] action is the range or scope of deliberate action”. See also R. Allen (2014), 6. 40 In parallel, whilst following Levinas’ ethical thought and terminology, Bidgoli (2020, 82) argued that the moral agent has to determine whether his/her humour is “hospitable” or not. 41 Whether, how many, and how much people are truly interested in doing the right thing, rather than what they fancy and/or convince themselves that it is the right thing when it is not, are huge empirical question marks. 42 We assume most of our readers to have found themselves stranded in such unpleasant social circumstances. 43 Harvey (1999), 15. Harvey neglected how the applicable ethical standards and social expectations can change several times in a person’s life: self-monitoring and self-revision are endless; hence so are the challenges to ‘viable’ humour. As argued in H&C2, this is yet another cruel element of humour that scholars regularly underplay or ignore altogether. 44 Harvey (1999), 142. Contra Nietzsche and his heirs, Harvey (1999, 142 – 143) assumed that wrongs ought to be righted by, ideally, “all members of … the moral community”.

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Deliberative spadework of this kind takes time and effort. It is no joke by any stretch whatsoever of the imagination. If anything, it is a killer of jokes. This is no exaggerated statement on our part. Harvey herself was honest enough to acknowledge in her writings “that for an initial period when the relevant perceptual skills are being acquired, spontaneity may be hindered”; hence preventing “[h]umor” from being “sparkling, quick witted, born on the moment”, and causing it to “become strained and dull”, if not “tediously self-conscious and timid”.⁴⁵ Moral conduct, as scores of grim catechists and stern educators have always signalled, is no laughing matter, not least when the moral matter is laughing itself. As Western pessimists such as Schopenhauer and Cioran remarked upon, life’s inherent cruelty seeps through the most prosaic aspects of our life.⁴⁶ Humour, then, is no exception.⁴⁷ Though there may be room for progressive self-improvement in both social decency and interpersonal playfulness, Harvey did admit that compassionate alertness, moral consideration, tactful sociability, political correctness, or, ultimately, strict ethical conduct are not very friendly to humorous immediacy, spontaneous gaiety, and light-hearted interactions.⁴⁸ Even less can they be friends of scorching satire, anarchic brilliance, and/or unrestrained comedy.⁴⁹ Tellingly, in our young century, the noted US comedian Dave Chappelle has been repeatedly accused of nothing short of “cruelty”, precisely because his shows have been judged to offer “validation” for “regressive” people’s “anti-PC stance” (where “PC” stands for “political correctness”).⁵⁰

45 Harvey (1999), 15. Spontaneity is a crucial component of effective humour under most circumstances which are non-scripted, e. g., married couples’ daily badinage or improvised theatre (see, e. g., Landert 2021). 46 In our research, we have repeatedly referred to three such thinkers: Leopardi, Schopenhauer, and Cioran. 47 We discussed this point in greater detail in H&C2. 48 UK comedian John Cleese stated: “I don’t think we should organise a society around the sensibilities of the most easily upset people because then you have a very neurotic society… From the point of creativity, if you have to keep thinking which words you can use and which you can’t, then that will stifle creativity” (Evans and Cleese 2020, pars. 4 – 6). Complaints on “political correctness” and “the willingness not to offend anybody” have been uttered by Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Gilbert Gottfried, Dennis Miller, Larry the Cable Guy, and Chris Rock (Gomez 2017, pars. 14 – 18). While it is true that there have existed more oppressive regimes, it is hard not to notice how frequently have contemporary artists and comedians complained about PC in their liberal societies. 49 As discussed in H&C2, morality’s curtailing demands on humour and humour’s inherent pugilistic character further corroborate the characterisation of the human condition as, au fond, cruel. See also Chapter 3. 50 Melanie McFarland as cited in Ralkovski (2021), xi (see also xiii – xvii).

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1.1.5 Reprehensible Features In H&C2, we gave pointed examples for each and every traditional “Puritan” criticism of humour, as these were described, debated, and deplored, by none less than John Morreall, during the 1990s.⁵¹ Without embracing any Christian, Protestant or specifically Calvinist theology, we highlighted how there can be troublesome, if not damning, aspects that are typical of humorous behaviour in its ordinary manifestations. Basically, we remarked on the partial truthfulness—yet truthfulness nonetheless—of the traditional accusations stating that commonplace humour is marred by: (1) hostility (e. g., the whole superiority theory and the biopsychological Darwinist account of laughter qua cultural prolongation of baring one’s teeth at another animal);⁵² (2) diminished self-control (e. g., getting the giggles and the evolutionarily perplexing lack of physical self-mastery caused by laughing);⁵³ (3) irresponsibility (e. g., avoiding one’s duties by scoffing at them rather than considering and/or fulfilling them conscientiously);⁵⁴ (4) insincerity (e. g., the late Rush Limbaugh’s “shock jock … kind of just-kidding racism and misogyny, aimed at providing plausible deniability [that] has become a staple of conservatism today” in the US);⁵⁵ (5) idleness (e. g., sniggering at an argument defending an unusual stance instead of thinking it through and determining its soundness);⁵⁶ (6) foolishness (e. g., ridiculing sacred traditions for fun’s sake, whilst becoming with this very act a bad example that others might follow);⁵⁷ (7) hedonism (e. g., drinking oneself silly, as noted and reproached by Hartley);⁵⁸ (8) sexual license (e. g., Schopenhauer’s and Hazlitt’s pre-Freudian observations about the risqué or openly lewd character of much joking);⁵⁹ and

51 Morreall’s philosophy of humour and laughter is discussed thoroughly in H&C2. 52 Many such forms of cruel humour were discussed in detail in our previous two volumes. 53 Ditto. 54 Ditto. 55 Hemmer (2021). See also Tarachow (1949) on the cruel cowardice of the phrase: “it’s only a joke”. 56 Hazlitt’s views are discussed in detail in H&C1. 57 More on this example follows in the present chapter regarding the Buddhist tradition. 58 Hartley’s views are discussed in detail in H&C1. 59 Their views are discussed in detail in H&C1.

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(9) anarchy (e. g., loss of discipline among playful schoolchildren, and Beattie’s condemnation of the socially corrosive character of humour directed at political leaders).⁶⁰

1.2 Responsive Cruelty The wisdom of the Creator has decreed that men should live in accordance with justice and act within the limits set by divine law. This wisdom is eternal and immutable, and constitutes one of the norms of God Almighty. Today and always, therefore, the existence of a holder of authority, a ruler who acts as trustee and maintains the institutions and laws of Islam, is a necessity—a ruler who prevents cruelty, oppression, and violation of the rights of others; who is a trustworthy and vigilant guardian of God’s creatures; who guides men to the teachings, doctrines, laws, and institutions of Islam; and who prevents the undesirable changes that atheists and the enemies of religion wish to introduce in the laws and institutions of Islam. —Imam Khomeini⁶¹

Coherently with the repeated and ramified condemnations of commonplace humour that have been expressed by so many thinkers, it is not surprising to discover that humour’s prohibition has also been far from rare inside families, schools, temples, churches, priories, asylums, factories, farmsteads, prisons, public offices, and public functions.⁶² As numerous and as diverse as they are, these social settings are all marked by a distinct or defining attention to propriety, deference, obligation, order, and hierarchy, as well as by a propensity to secure these values by many, if not any, means, including punitive ones.⁶³ Within ordinary settings of this type, commonplace humour can become so unwelcome and/or unwise that its condemnation demands reprimands for whatever sufficiently disreputable laughter, levity, or lightness may have occurred and/or may be likely to occur.⁶⁴ The last laugh is already one laugh too many. The inherent, perceived, and/or alleged cruelty of inappropriate lampooning, impish larking, in-

60 His views are discussed in detail in H&C1. Eo ipso, we have also provided hereby further examples of all the traditional ‘Puritanical’ criticisms. 61 Khomeini (1981), 53. 62 By writing “commonplace humour”, we emphasise that we are not operating in the sole realm of “true humour”, as identified and lauded by the likes of Schopenhauer or Pirandello (see Chapter 2 of Part 1). 63 See, e. g., Cooper (1910), who offered an extensive overview of canings, floggings et similia. 64 Unintentionally, punishments can be compounded with accessory psychological and/or physical pathologies, e. g., a severely neurotic celiac patient raised in a family where “laughing was prohibited” (Garavaglia 2007, 118).

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considerate liveliness, or, say, impertinent ludicrousness can be judged so threatening, so hurtful, so insolent, so base, and/or so mistaken as to require responsive cruelty in turn, which alone may securely put a stop to the former cruelty and/or scold it satisfactorily.⁶⁵ Sometimes, in the extant literature, this typology of responsive cruelty is simply acknowledged. On other occasions, it is detested as excessive, ineffective, and/ or wrong. Sporadically, it is positively appraised. The examples concerning this subject are numerous and diverse, as shown in the following five subsections.⁶⁶

1.2.1 Britons “Time to Be Heard” is a 2011 report concerning a “pilot forum” set up by the Scottish government collecting, and reflecting on, the experiences of 98 individuals who, as children, were fostered in residential care units across the country.⁶⁷ In this report, we read of a number of candid accounts about foster families where “[w]e [children] had good fun amongst ourselves, but … got punished for laughing”.⁶⁸ Another interviewee recalls “the traumatic beating that still haunted him” in a “cottage, where … [t]he house father had once caned him severely on the bottom for laughing in church. He couldn’t sit down for a week.”⁶⁹ As stated by the “Chair and Commissioner” witnessing the man’s recollection: “it was clear that this man, now in his late seventies, still suffered deeply from the memory of that painful and humiliating experience which, even now, still had the power to reduce him to tears”.⁷⁰

65 We focus here on cases of corporal punishment, which is normally an uncontroversial token of cruelty. Still, as will be shown, it is not impossible to find defences of it, claiming corporal punishments not to be always cruel. 66 Different scholars, i. e., different persons, in line with the theory of knowledge outlined in Chapter 4 in Part 1, would be likely to produce a different set of examples, hence a different number of subsections, footnotes, etc. 67 Foster care with boarding-out began in the British Isles to prevent cruelty to children (see, e. g., Buckley 2013). 68 T. Shaw (2011), 27. The report covers cases ranging from the early 1930s to the late 1980s, showing how physical violence decreased overall. Apart from unthinking, habitual, light forms of corporal punishment (e. g., a parent’s slap on the cheek), the report reveals forcefully the sadism of several fosterers, both male and female. 69 T. Shaw (2011), 37. 70 T. Shaw (2011), 37.

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An earlier British study on the corporal punishment of schoolgirls refers to a case of “[g]eneral misbehaviour” involving “[t]welve-year-old Joanne Lund and two other girls at Our Lady’s RC High School in Lancaster”, who “each received two strokes of the tawse across their hands by a female teacher after a prank involving eggs and flour being thrown at a girl who was celebrating her birthday”.⁷¹ Additionally, “[a]t Bedwas Comprehensive School in Glamorganshire, a class captain was caned for making a flippant remark to her class teacher”.⁷² The study’s author, Margaret Stone, explains that whatever zeal may have been employed over so many decades by “[t]he purest anti-punishment idealists, the strict vegans of the educational world”, the world’s schools cannot but mirror the societies in which they operate: Despite the efforts of E.P.O.C.H. [End physical punishment of children], and despite twenty years or more in which the theories of ‘progressive’ childcare writers have become the orthodox view, the vast majority of Western parents still believe that physical punishment has a role in the upbringing of children. A survey taken in 1995 showed that no less than 97 % of mothers use corporal punishment on their children when necessary. Furthermore, where before they were condemned or patronised by the ‘experts’ for their behaviour, they are now beginning to receive their explicit support… According to Australian childcare expert Christopher Green, corporal punishment “…cannot be all that damaging to children. If it were, then our ancestors … must have been a pretty disturbed lot”. When it comes to the crunch, “You can debate all day with a defiant child. You can explain all about the finer points of love, character-building and even your evangelical views against corporal punishment. But the chances are that the words may miss the mark, while the gentle gesture of a smack may land bulls-eye on the target”. All of these views, and the many more like them that are increasingly heard from childcare experts today, would have been absolute heresy even as little as five or ten years ago.⁷³

Refusing to censor categorically all instances of physical discipline—hence diverging from the implicit message of the 2011 Scottish pilot forum—Stone’s enlarged and revised 2002 “documentary survey” claims that “[b]oth corporal and non-cor-

71 Stone (2002), 50. Stone notes that girls have been generally less likely to be corporally chastised than boys. Old gender stereotypes may explain this difference in treatment. 72 Stone (2002), 75. 73 Stone (2002), 119 – 120. EPOCH-like efforts have continued in recent years, e. g., Bower (2015). Incidentally, the same logic of social mirror-likeness applies to the publishing business. Despite the scholastic character of Stone’s book, its online marketing is aimed, not too subtly, at individuals who find the sadomasochistic elements of the book’s theme sexually arousing (e. g., stern school mistresses, submissive schoolgirls). Nihil novum sub sole est. These elements have also been popular in the arts for a long time (see, e. g., Mahon 2020). As equally visible in today’s societies, the promise of erotic gratification is expected to sell much more easily than the promise of intellectual gratification. Perhaps, our volume’s title should read: Humour, Cruelty, and Smut.

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poral punishments, in the wrong hands, can be either too feeble and ineffective to deter, or unnecessarily cruel and severe”.⁷⁴ According to Stone, “[i]t is impossible to make a hard-and-fast rule”.⁷⁵ Still, as she goes on to argue, it is of interest “that … the cases in this book show that where [schoolchildren] have a choice, they will often choose to be spanked rather than to be given a drawn-out non-corporal punishment”, the long-lasting psychological distress of which is typically underplayed by the anti-punishment activists.⁷⁶

1.2.2 Buddhists Pedagogical concerns and accompanying chastisements have applied also outside Western institutional reports about modern school systems, possibly from the very onset of all great civilisations.⁷⁷ The Tipitaka, one of the canonical texts of the Buddhist tradition, addresses the sort of behaviours that are expected of monks.⁷⁸ Commonplace humour, albeit treated briefly, is deliberately reproached, for “when one laughs, one seems to be mired in the net of the defilements. The pleasure of laughing … is part and parcel of sensual delight and desires, none of which is conducive to the realization of Liberation, or nirvana.”⁷⁹ “According to the Vinaya”, which is the section of the Tipitaka formulating explicitly the monastic code of conduct, “the monk should not open up their robes, laugh loudly, rock

74 Stone (2002), 123. We find here an open claim of the possible non- or lesser cruelty of corporal punishment. 75 Distinctions between “acceptable … fair … corporal punishment” and “cruel beatings” have been made, among others, by “learners” as well as “teachers” in both modern Australia and South Africa (Morrell 2001, 293). 76 Stone (2002), 123 – 124. Stone’s point about corporal punishments being preferable to psychological chastisements parallels Beccaria’s one on life imprisonment being plausibly crueller than death. After all, even commentators favourable to the liberal project admit that ‘classics’ such as Beccaria and Bentham were ambivalent about moral-psychological cruelty, while being adamant about physical cruelty (see, e. g., J. Vick 2015). 77 “Great civilisations”, in our view, leave a legacy of architectural, artistic, spiritual and/or cultural achievements. 78 The Tipitaka and its Pali language are canonical in the Theravada branch of Buddhism, i. e., the most ancient and conservative; the other two main branches being the Vajrayana and the Mahayana—although there exist “eighteen plus schools of Buddhism” (Sugunasiri 2005, 127). See also Conze (1980, 9), who noted that while we know a fair amount about the time of the schisms among the many Buddhist schools, determining what Buddha said is “mere guesswork”, insofar as no original or early-written text exists. 79 Hongladarom (2013), 242.

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himself to and fro near a household, because that would invite disrespect to the monks”.⁸⁰ A supplementary prohibition concerns “monks who tickle fellow monks”, following an incident involving the monk Chabbaggiya, “who played with a fellow monk by tickling the latter with his fingers. The fellow monk laughed so much that he hyperventilated and died. When the Buddha learned about the incident, he reproached Chabbaggiya and laid down the rule that monks were not to tickle their fellow monks with their fingers.”⁸¹ The feckless monk Chabbaggiya resurfaces in several passages of the Vinaya, which depicts him “laughing out loud so that others could see all his teeth, or causing a commotion … or rocking himself to and fro. As a result[,] … the Buddha banned all laughing in the vicinity of the lay householders … except only in the case of illness, being unaware, … smiling … and losing one’s mind”.⁸² Given their role as moral leaders of their community, monks should avoid setting a bad example and causing common people to believe that laughter is innocent and/or inconsequential. “Sensual delight and desires”, as noted, are serious obstacles on the path to “Liberation, or nirvana”. Whatever “humor and laughter” there may be—and the same goes for all of the arts, such as music and dancing— some instances may be allowed, perhaps even praised, but if and only if they are sacred, i. e., if and only if they are based upon and aimed at spreading “Buddha’s serious message”, hence “helping [the] listener realize the Path”.⁸³ An equally stern instruction is contained in the later Buddhist Sutras, which too tackle laughter briefly yet unwaveringly.⁸⁴ In particular, in the Talaputta Sutta, Buddha is said to have conversed with Talaputta, a musician and dancer who, like many others in the same line of trade, performed at weddings, banquets, public celebrations, and other festivals.⁸⁵ In their conversation, Talaputta asks the Enlightened One about whether it is true that artists like himself, whose chief occupation is “making other people laugh … would be reborn in the company of the

80 Hongladarom (2013), 240. 81 Hongladarom (2013), 240. Some scholars use this name to refer to all those Buddhist monks and nuns that broke for the first time the rules laid down in the Vinaya (see, e. g., Pandita 2017). 82 Hongladarom (2013), 241. 83 Hongladarom (2013), 251 and 254. 84 Referring to the later Zen tradition, Morreall (1999, 69 – 71) depicted Buddhism as a ‘typical’ Eastern religion, i. e., as one favourable to humour: “Eastern religions … have not developed a tragic vision of life, largely because they have not had the heroic concern with the individual struggling and suffering”, but rather “gentleness, frugality … humility [and a]cceptance of life.” We doubt the accuracy of his depiction and find it overly selective. 85 The text is known also as Talaputa Sutta.

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mirthful god Pahasa”.⁸⁶ Reportedly, Buddha’s chilling reply to Talaputta is that such a belief is utterly mistaken and “those dancers and musicians would be reborn either in hell or as animals”.⁸⁷ Opting for a life in which one’s main job is to amuse other human beings and give them cause for hilarity is, in a nutshell, choosing a path leading to the most damning post-mortem reprimands.⁸⁸ In the Buddhist creed, no worse punishment can be bestowed upon a person than being cast into “the lower realms”.⁸⁹

1.2.3 Biblicists Analogous infernal perils and didactic preoccupations regarding monks’ and, more broadly, clergymen’s and believers’ humorous behaviours can be found in the Christian tradition.⁹⁰ Similar ones can be identified in its older Jewish ancestry too.⁹¹ In particular, Christianity’s Jewish founder, Jesus Christ, is shown in the Gospels to be displaying a wide variety of human emotions, e. g., rage and sorrow.⁹² In any case, he is never shown explicitly to be laughing or horsing about, no matter how charitable to implied humour and likely light-heartedness our scriptural hermeneutics may wish to be.⁹³ If anything, in Luke 6:25, it is famously stated: “Woe to them that laugh, for they shall weep.”⁹⁴

86 Hongladarom (2013), 240. 87 Hongladarom (2013), 241. 88 On the Buddhist conception of hell, see in particular Braavig (2009). 89 Hongladarom (2013), 248. Only the Buddha’s laughter is praised in the canonical texts, its roots being not in sinful desires or vain pleasures, but the “Doctrine of Emptiness” (Hongladarom 2013, 246; see also Weeks 2012). 90 Given the plurality of Christian confessions, there exists a multitude of interpretations of hell and some sects, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists, deny its very existence. The Presbyterian Perry (2016, 1) argued that, although no extant moral theory has yet accomplished the task, it is not illogical to think that the cruelty of hell may be justified by proving how “God’s eternally tormenting some humans is beautiful, just and worthy of worship”. More cautiously, the Catholic saint Thomas More (1973, vol. 8.2, book 8, 920 – 921, vv. 36 – 38) claimed that the Inquisitor’s “excommunicamus… wherewith many shall be murdered in soul”, is not an act of “cruelty upon his part, but of justice”, i. e., a deserved retribution. 91 Morreall (1999) judged all faiths of the Book to be more tragic than comical. 92 See, e. g., Lamont (2001) on the theological meanings of Jesus’ weeping. 93 See, e. g., Gamboriko (2012) for such an interpretative attempt, however indirectly. 94 We are referring to the Gospel of Saint Luke, of course.

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1.2.3.1 Surly Origins Jesus’ message about laughing matters would not seem to be obscure at all: those who are too foolishly merry in this life are going to pay for it dearly in the next one.⁹⁵ First things come first, and they ought to come first. Serious matters such as leading a virtuous life, helping one’s neighbours, following the Laws of Moses, and securing the salvation of one’s own immortal soul are among such first things.⁹⁶ Having fun in the here and now and guffawing aplenty are not. Too much fun and too much laughter may be an easy path to sin and eventual perdition, i. e., eternal damnation.⁹⁷ In the background of Jesus’ own teaching lies the older Jewish theology on the subject, which is far from positive about the issue of laughter.⁹⁸ Despite the routine association of Jewish culture with humour, the Torah is not kind to hilarity.⁹⁹ As Morreall contended: “[t]he only way God is described as laughing in the Bible is with hostility”.¹⁰⁰ The Almighty, supposedly, can only exemplify therein the superiority theory of humour.¹⁰¹ In line with the plausibly cheerless Hebrew origins of the Christian creed, all early Biblical commentators elected to warn their readers about, and hence not to speak up for, laughter and behaviours leading to laughter: “Ambrose, Jerome, Basil, Ephraim, … John Chrysostom … Basil the Great”.¹⁰² The same is true of Augustine of Hippo too, who is probably the most famous Church Father in the Christian tra-

95 Even modern theological attempts at promoting a mirthful Christianity seem to ascribe laughter to God-the-Father rather than God-the-Son; see, e. g., H. Cox (1987). 96 We expect our readers to be capable of grasping, at least hypothetically, such an axiological prioritisation. 97 As we are to explain, how laughter is deemed to be ‘too much’ has varied in Christian history and confessions. 98 See, e. g., Gilhus (1997). As Morreall (1999, 129) wrote: “Within Judaism, we found some comic elements in the early Bible, but then a growing tragic vision in the later Bible… The Holocaust seems to eliminate the possibility of the comic vision from Judaism.” Perhaps, in the centuries that might come, while the memory of the Holocaust merges with those of older horrible massacres and genocides, a Jewish comic vision may resurface. 99 The first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) are the Torah. Also, as an Italian of presumed Jewish ancestry, one of the authors of the present volume can testify to the fact that, in his youth, he was socially expected to display wit and even praised for his alleged “Jewish sense of humour”. 100 Morreall (2016), par. 1. 101 An immense chasm lies between the celestial peaks of Heaven and the subterranean pit of Hell: humour shall be de haut en bas. The faithful “will not only have the last laugh at the end of time”, as Erasmus noted on “Christian laughter”, for “even now [the faithful] laughs more insanely than the worldlings” (Screech 2015, 73). 102 Morreall (2016), par. 1.

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dition, even though he made use of humour in his sermons—perchance even of ‘true’ humour.¹⁰³ Rooted within this old Biblical and theological tradition, most early monastic rules discouraged commonplace humour.¹⁰⁴ As Morreall recalled: One of the earliest monastic orders, of Pachom of Egypt, forbade joking…The Rule of St. Benedict, the most influential monastic code, advised monks to “prefer moderation in speech and speak no foolish chatter, nothing just to provoke laughter; do not love immoderate or boisterous laughter”. In Benedict’s Ladder of Humility, Step Ten is a restraint against laughter, and Step Eleven a warning against joking.¹⁰⁵

Like early Buddhism, early Christianity promised the worst chastisements “in the afterlife” to those individuals who should prove themselves overly prone to laughing and having fun, hence spending too little time contemplating the truly central matters upon which the soul’s otherworldly fate is predicated.¹⁰⁶ Post-mortem penalties were not the only declared threat. “The monastery of St. Columbanus Hibernus had these punishments: ‘He who smiles in the service … six strokes; if he breaks out in the noise of laughter, a special fast unless it has happened pardonably.’”¹⁰⁷ The “Regula of the Irish monk … which dated to the end of the sixth century … [was] notoriously strict” and its use of “six blows” for misbehaving monks is a patent instance of its strictness.¹⁰⁸ Around much of Europe and, before being overrun by Islamic conquerors, in the whole Mediterranean region, monasteries and monks were not always so coercively and unswervingly contrary to merriment among brethren and/or the faithful, whose well-being they aimed at assisting qua Christian duty of theirs.¹⁰⁹ It was theologically, rather than socially, that commonplace humour endured in medieval culture as a sin or, at least, as an offbeat proclivity of the human soul.¹¹⁰ Nobody would ever truly think of stopping it in daily practice.¹¹¹ This

103 See Torretta (2015). 104 Early Christianity’s embrace of dourness can also be explained by its “aris[ing] in part as a reaction to the hedonistic excesses of the Roman elite” (Gimbel 2021, 196). 105 Morreall (2016), par. 1. 106 P. Jones (2015), 169. 107 Morreall (2016), par. 1. See also Ceccarelli (1988) on the ethology of smiling. 108 Maraschi (2018), 3. 109 See, e. g., Felsen (2008). 110 As early as the 10th century, a nun, Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim, was writing plays à la Terence (Classen 2010). She too, then, should be highlighted as yet another female authority relevant to humour research.

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gap between theory and practice being corroborated by numerous literary sources from all over Christendom and, implicitly, by the very rules and chastisements directed at monks, who were supposed to lead a much more austere life than the common person.¹¹² 1.2.3.2 Saintly Relaxations Throughout the long Christian age of Western culture, most people laughed, poked fun at one another, engaged in pranks and larks, attended carnivals and feasts, and enjoyed travesties and farces.¹¹³ In philosophical and theological speculation, however, coming to terms with such a banal fact of life took many centuries and an astounding amount of soul-searching.¹¹⁴ Philosophers and theologians, in this way, signalled their distinctiveness vis-à-vis their day’s commoners, with whom they did not fully identify in, at least, laughing matters.¹¹⁵ The famed French medievalist Jacques Le Goff identified an initial period, in which the official position of the Christian intelligentsia was vigorously negative and forcefully dismissive of humorous conduct.¹¹⁶ This stern condemnation regarded especially clergymen, nuns, monks, and friars, whose lives were meant to be spent striving to be paragons of virtue.¹¹⁷ Artistically, in both illuminations and sculptures, laughter and mockery characterised demons and fools, not saints and clerics.¹¹⁸ Later on, as Le Goff argued, and most assuredly as of the 13th century, 111 Today’s Catholic seminaries and monasteries are not different: groups of men, especially young ones, will find time and opportunity to enjoy one another’s company and be merry. How could they not? 112 See, e. g., Verdon (2001), tackling the attitudes towards and the main forms of medieval hilarity by social rank and setting. See also Lawrence (2015) on the medieval monks. 113 See, e. g., Otto (2001) and Perry and Schwarz (2011). We do not tackle Eastern Christianity, e. g., Nestorianism. 114 See, e. g., Minois (2000), chaps. 4 – 7. 115 See also Chapter 2 of Part 1 and Chapter 3 in the present book on the implicit social hierarchies emerging out of the ethics of humour. Further remarks can also be found in H&C2. 116 Le Goff (1997, 50) noted this logic of frustrated constraint: “There is … from the fourth to the tenth century … a period of repressed and stifled laughter … since it is diabolical laughter by which people are mesmerized. But let us not forget that … we meet in the monastic environment itself the counterpoint of the joca monacorum” [jests of the monks] that “seem to escape repression.” A student of Marc Bloch, Le Goff succeeded Fernand Braudel as director of the prestigious École des hautes études en sciences sociales in the 1970s, where he was crucial in rediscovering the European renaissance of the 12th century and the birth of Purgatory qua theological construct in the same age of socio-economic expansion, especially in the southern part of the Continent (see M. Rubin 1997). 117 The doctrine of the Original Sin made it clear ab ovo that absolute perfection lies beyond our mortal grasp. 118 See , e. g., Feros Ruys (2017) on medieval ideas about and representations of demons.

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not just the arts, but even renowned theologians and novel monastic orders started embracing commonplace humour willingly, sympathetically, and serenely.¹¹⁹ The change of attitude vis-à-vis commonplace humour did not remain a marginal or merely practical phenomenon.¹²⁰ Quite the opposite, it reached all the way up to the most famous and influential Scholastic thinker of medieval Christianity. We mean, obviously, Thomas Aquinas, whose significance as an intellectual representative of Medieval Christendom, especially but not exclusively in the Catholic confession, is impossible to overestimate: Aquinas had always been important within the Catholic Church. Back in his days, he was already a much-admired prodigious intellectual, a driving force within his monastic order and a founder of schools, and even the official Papal theologian under Clement IV… Aquinas was canonized in 1323. During the Council of Trento (1545 – 1563), he had the singular honor of having his most famous work, the Summa Theologiae (completed in 1273), placed on the altar of the church where the meetings were held… In 1567, Pope Pius V… declared him Doctor Angelicus of the Church… [A]s of 1880, Aquinas has also been the patron saint of all Catholic educational establishments. Under Leo XIII… [Aquinas’ philosophy] came to be adopted as the official intellectual basis for the education of the clergyman, the design of the curricula in Catholic schools and universities, and the overall approach to the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.¹²¹

Crucially, as also testified to by his Senecan discussion of cruelty, Aquinas operated in his rich philosophical system a relaxed synthesis of Christian belief and pagan philosophy, Aristotelianism in primis, whereby the cautious appreciation of laughter and comedy that was typical of the Stagirite gained even more acceptance in Aquinas’ interpretation of his legacy.¹²² In the earlier decades of that momentous century, this change of attitude engendered as well “the Franciscan vision” of the Christian life, as this was powerfully embodied and fruitfully promoted by one of the most famous mystics of that age, “St. Francis of Assisi”, whom Morreall regarded as the climax of “the comic spirit” in pious medieval Christendom.¹²³ Laughter among brethren, comic self-denial, and

119 See Le Goff (1997, 50) and, in addition, Moretti (2001). 120 The medieval disconnection between relaxed common behaviours and austere Christian doctrine has been replicated many times since the Middle Ages, e. g., among 20th-century Canadian Mennonites. See, e. g., the humorous stories about “Koop enn Bua” by Arnold Dyck (1985 – 1990). 121 Baruchello (2019a), 228. We ‘recycle’ this passage because of its useful synthesis and apologise for our vanity. 122 See Roszak (2013). Concerning Aquinas’ key influences, Henberg (1990, 127) highlighted Aristotle’s Islamic commentators and Islamic culture, integrated “by a sense that Christian love ought to extend even to the damned”. 123 Morreall (1999), 117– 118. Le Goff (2004) also authored an important biography of Saint Francis.

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joyful acceptance of God’s will across the entire Creation, human mortality included, became part and parcel of Francis’ lived exemplar, influential evangelisation, and gentle regula franciscana, all of which are correspondingly acknowledged by historians, hagiographers, scholars of religion, and theologians.¹²⁴ Such late-medieval relaxation and kinder comic spirit may have been applauded by Morreall today, but they were too much to stomach for many devout medieval and early modern Christians. These believers, as a matter of fact, wished to stay closer to what they thought to be the original teachings of the Bible and, especially, Jesus’ own virtuous paradigm which, as said, is scripturally agelastic (i. e., not laughing), if not implicitly misogelastic (i. e., against laughing).¹²⁵ Solemn dourness, careful avoidance of temptations, mortification of the flesh, utter humility to the point of self-loathing, rejection of worldly joys, and other variously dire forms of Christian spirituality went on unabated, as a result.¹²⁶ These forbidding forms of Christian belief and ascetic practice emphasised strict morals of the soul and even stricter penalties of the body for each person’s sinful weaknesses and failures.¹²⁷ Punitive whippings of monks and nuns, not to mention the Europe-wide popularity of the sect of the flagellants, were certainly proof of the continued rejection of too eager a Christian acceptance of this-worldly merriments.¹²⁸ The tragic spirit of early-medieval Christendom was hard to kill, de-

124 See Le Goff (2004), Golozubov (2015), and Eco’s (1980, 87, 137– 140, and 481 – 482) fictional dialogue. 125 The celebrated Jewish sense of humour would seem to be a recent phenomenon, attributable chiefly to the Yiddish-speaking communities of modern Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, some scholars claim that the pre-Christian oral tradition lying behind the Talmud, which was put in written form between the 2nd and the 6th century AD, has something to do with humour, for it tackles many “strange questions, impossible scenarios, and legalistic brainteasers” (Hershey Friedman 2004, subtitle; see also Ovadia 1998). 126 See, e. g., Morreall (1999). Because of this misogelastic streak in Protestant countries, Gardner (2020, 151) could argue that the Anglophone scholarship on “humour and religion” of the past 50 years conflates the concepts of ‘religious’ and ‘serious’. 127 Occasionally, the punishments could turn into “a pleasure, giving rise to hallucinations, sexual ecstasy and masochistic love of God… Nuns used the whip on the buttocks of the monks; and in turn the monks flagellated them. It was indeed a merry and a libidinous game” (Scott 1996, 95 – 96). This game of flagellation persisted in Protestant Europe as a sexual practice in brothels and homosexual circles to the point of being called commonly “the English vice” in both Victorian times and throughout the first half of the 20th century (see, e. g., Scott 1996, 156). 128 See Anonymous (1924) and Cooper (1910). The anonymous History of Flagellation (1924, 113 – 115) reported of “a convent of the Benedictine Order”, where “the jollity of the friars”, who were too prone to feasting and bantering joyfully together, received “a lusty discipline”; notorious for “the regularity of the disciplines” and “flagellations” were also the “celebrated fathers of St. Lazare, in Paris” and “the Reverend Father Jesuits”.

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spite the novel acceptance of humour coming from esteemed theologians, such as Aquinas, or from worshipped mystics, such as Saint Francis.¹²⁹ 1.2.3.3 Surly Reformations This tragic spirit seemed markedly intense in the northern regions of late-medieval Christendom where it found its most forceful expression in the so-called “Reformation” which, as recorded by European chroniclers from all Christian denominations, led to wave upon wave of violent insurrection, remorseless iconoclasm and outright warfare.¹³⁰ Albeit some of today’s reformed churches have their roots in 12th-century ‘heretical’ movements, e. g., the Valdensians, most of them developed during the 15th and early-16th century.¹³¹ Writing about these matters, the staunchly atheistic Nietzsche observed that Martin Luther’s quintessentially “German” reformation was, inter alia, a vehement attack against the Church of Rome’s eventual, perhaps contradictory, yet sweeping reception of bodily existence, earthly life, music and the figurative arts, the commercial and financial spirit, secular power, ancient pagan philosophies, and plain joie de vivre during “the great early flowering of the modern spirit, the Italian Renaissance”.¹³²

129 See Chesterton (1956) and (1987), whose chap. 5 recalls Francis’ self-chosen moniker as “jongleur de Dieu” (It. “giullare di Dio”), i. e., “God’s jester”, the Western version of the Eastern “fools in Christ” (see next note). 130 We write “so-called” because, from humour’s standpoint, Protestantism was a conservative enterprise which operated an ante-litteram “counter-reformation” against the ease of Aquinas and Saint Francis. Ironically, the so-called “orthodox” Churches were the most open to humour and laughter, notably via their longstanding and clear admission of such dimensions of human experience as valid pedagogical and pastoral tools and via the mystical tradition of the “fools in Christ” (aka “idiots for Christ”; see, e. g., Dumas 2020). We focus however on the Catholic and Protestant confessions because they are central for one of our key sources, i. e., John Morreall. 131 Hillebrand (1996) offered the most detailed map of the many self-proclaimed “reformers” of the age. In the midst of those fateful decades of European history, Thomas More (1973, book 4, 550) wrote worryingly of the reformers’ overzealous condemnation of human sin inside the Church established by Jesus Christ, who had himself seen fit to elect “Saint Paul … a ‘chosen vessel’”, in spite of this man’s earlier record of “persecute[ing] and punish[ing] so cruelly the Christian people … rail[ing] and blasphem[ing] the name of Christ, and his doctrines, and miracles, and all that he taught and did”. Unlike the merciful God whom they worshipped, pious reformed British Christians such as Tyndale could not find within their hearts the charity to extend the same “grace and forgiveness” to their faulty siblings in Christ (More 1973, book 4, 550). Tragically, both More and Tyndale fell victims of the cruel religious intolerance fostered all over Europe by the schisms that the former vainly resisted and the latter vocally promoted. 132 As stated in Bluhm (1950), 1053. Nietzsche’s critique was part of his rejection of the German propensity for seriousness and abstraction in lieu of the southern-European acceptance of levity

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Commonplace humour, for the outraged and zealous Christian reformers of the age, could still be used to attack vigorously, vitriolically, and, at times, venomously, the corrupt Roman Pope, his transnational ‘army’ of cardinals and clergymen, and the world’s assumedly dangerous loyal Catholics, in the way the Biblical God was said to laugh pitilessly at the doomed enemies of the true Christian creed.¹³³ However, commonplace humour could not be invited and embraced by such reformers in as confident and as comfortable a manner as the Aristotelian Aquinas had done or as histrionic a style of which the jester-like Francis of Assisi had been capable.¹³⁴ Huguenots were not hugely naughty, whether historically or theologically; or, at least, they tried not to have too much fun in the here and now.¹³⁵ Jean Calvin’s 16th-century “civil law for Geneva” and its stern application instantiated most distressingly this Protestant return to or insistence upon forbidding sternness within Christianity: “In two years 58 persons were condemned to death for infractions of the Ecclesiastical Ordinances; 34 women were burned at the stake for sorcery, 400 people were punished for laughing during the sermon or for dancing.”¹³⁶ As to Britain’s complex historical experience with the Calvinist Reform, i. e., Puritanism, it is probably the most contentious episode in Protestant Christianity’s attempt to regain what was believed to be the quintessentially aus-

and the body. Nietzsche’s prologue in Zarathustra shows the prophet of atheistic amor fati rejecting the grim advice of a disheartened old “saint” (i. e., Christianity), who embodies “the spirit of gravity” to be overcome by the former’s new godless creed (Amir, forthcoming). That the Christian belief could be lived and loved in a cheerful, life-accepting manner, per the Franciscan ideal emphasised by Morreall (1999), Nietzsche did never truly consider, probably. 133 Mockery worked in reverse too. The Latinist More employed “invectives, lampoons, and scholastic parody to denigrate Lutherans and their heretical doctrines. He considered laughter an appropriate response to heresy, and his vituperative humor provided a rhetorical punishment of derision as an alternative to the horrifying physical punishment of execution proscribed for heretics” (E. Simon 2012, 8). Luther, instead, who suffered from severe constipation, preferred scatological jokes, which constituted the bulk of his scornful repertoire (Gritsch 2012). 134 “[S]ome Puritans were involved in theatre and used plays to spread the Puritan faith” (Andreutti 2016, 4). See also Stelling (2020) for two case-studies of Reformation comedy mixing Puritanical themes and comic levity. 135 The etymology of this 16th-century term denoting the French Calvinists is uncertain. 136 Gerlach (1966), 6. Morreall (1999, 129) regarded Calvinism as the epitome of the “sects embracing Platonic dualism and the doctrine of Original Sin [and going] in tragic directions” rather than comic ones, such “as the Franciscan vision”. Albeit formally allowed as of the 13th century, witchburning escalated in the age of Luther and Calvin and was most pronounced among Protestants (see, e. g., Kors and Peters 2001 and Miesel 2001).

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tere inner core of Jesus’ wisdom—a wisdom that was claimed to have to be safeguarded against internal as well as external enemies.¹³⁷ Foes were everywhere, apparently, for such keen, committed, and worried Christian reformers. Purity, albeit praised and predicated about themselves, was no balm against the Puritans’ preoccupations. As Thomas Cromwell showed in the early days of the English schism, even meek monks and cloister-bound nuns could be seen as a ‘Papist’ threat, who were to be dealt with by dissolving their orders, demolishing their decorated shrines, and seizing their lands and properties.¹³⁸ A worthy descendent, Oliver Cromwell’s later life and in/famous exploits exhibited how Puritans were always prepared for war—against Catholics, unquestionably, but also against other ‘reformed’ or ‘reforming’ Protestants with whom they disagreed.¹³⁹ Such wars could be fought for the sake of temporal power and/or of spiritual salvation.¹⁴⁰ And wars are a deadly, serious, unsmiling business, especially for those who suffer grave consequences when defeated, such as defrocking, despoliation, imprisonment, expulsion, and/or execution.¹⁴¹ In the early 20th century, Shestov argued that the most pious persons can be the cruellest ones: Inexperienced and ingenuous people see in righteousness merely a burden which lofty people have assumed out of respect for law or for some other high and inexplicable reason. But a righteous man has not only duties but rights… No cruelty matters in him, so long as he does not infringe the statutes. Nay, he will ascribe his cruelty as a merit to himself, since he acts out of no personal considerations, but in the name of sacred justice.¹⁴²

The Minsk-born, Jewish-American liberal philosopher, Morris Raphael Cohen, echoed Shestov’s words, around 30 years later, in an essay entitled “The Dark Side of Religion”:

137 See, e. g., Basu (2007) on the Puritans’ campaigns against the merrier and politically more radical Levellers. 138 Oliver’s great, great-granduncle, Thomas, had championed and coordinated with great zeal the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, whose favour he later lost, along with the head (see, e. g., MacCulloch 2018). 139 Cromwell seemed particularly inimical to the egalitarian and democratic Levellers (see, e. g., Brailsford 1961). 140 Tristram Hunt (2001, title) defined Oliver Cromwell “Britain’s Very Own Taliban”. 141 See, e. g., George (1984) on the Puritans’ religious use and understanding of warfare. 142 Shestov (1920), part 2, par. 11. The same considerations apply to women, in another ironically bleak equality.

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Cruelty is a much more integral part of religion than most people nowadays realize. The Mosaic law commands the Israelites, whenever attacking a city, to kill all the males, and all females who have known men… The essential cruelty of religious morality shows itself in the peculiar fervor with which Protestant Puritans hate to see anyone enjoy himself on Sunday. Our “Blue Sunday” legislation is directed against the most innocent kinds of enjoyment— against open-air games like baseball, concerts, or theatrical plays. And while there may be some serious social considerations in favor of liquor prohibition, there is little doubt that an element of sadism, a hatred of seeing others enjoying beer or wine, is one of the motives which actuate religious fanatics. For that is in the great historic tradition of the Protestant Church.¹⁴³

With such a complex history behind it, “Puritan” cannot but sound like some sort of nightmare, if not even a swearword, in the erudite philosophical defence of the comic view of life promoted by Morreall, who wrote: Christian condemnations of laughter … were also found outside monasticism, most notably in the Puritans, who wrote tracts against comedy and closed the theaters in England when they came to power under Cromwell in the mid-17th century. One of these tracts, by William Prynne, condemned laughter as incompatible with the sobriety of good Christians, who should not be “immoderately tickled with mere lascivious vanities, or … lash out in excessive cachinnations in the public view of dissolute graceless persons”.¹⁴⁴

This streak of Protestant severity meant also that all kinds of exacting chastisement, this- and otherworldly, could turn out to be appropriate to those who should prove inept to control themselves and, sadly, abandon their minds and their bodies to the follies of laughter or to the temptations of mundane amusements, such as banquets, operas, and dancing.¹⁴⁵ Even the Puritan “principal Magistrates, including the Select-men”, no matter how accustomed to calling themselves “the Saints”, ought not to escape the “dreadful cat-o’-nine-tails”, should they be found guilty of partaking in “elegant dinner[s]” where “bowls and bottles [are] drained … and Scripture texts g[i]ve place to double-entendres and wanton songs … gaiety, [and …] merriment”.¹⁴⁶ Unsurprisingly, a noticeable “fear of laughter” became commonplace in both the low- and the high cultures of those countries that embraced violent anti-Catholic forms of Calvinism and Puritanism during the Renaissance, e. g., “Restoration

143 144 145 146

As cited in Kaufman (1961), 288 – 289. Morreall (2008), 217. See, e. g., Wagner (1997), chps 2 and 3,. on the Puritans’ campaigns against dancing. Anonymous (1924), 102 – 103.

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prose fiction” in Britain.¹⁴⁷ Coherently with this largely agelastic, or perchance misogelastic, background, a long- and well-established Christian tradition could, and still can, be called upon in the West, in order to justify bleak lines of theological thought and correspondingly bleak social practices.¹⁴⁸ In the 20th century, US “supporters of the use of corporal punishment” in primary and secondary schools are claimed to have grounded “the rationale for the use of corporal punishment [in]to early biblical scriptures”.¹⁴⁹ Reportedly, they were all of “Puritan or Calvinist” inspiration.¹⁵⁰

1.2.4 Bolsheviks Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me? —George Orwell¹⁵¹

The quest for austere purity, and the attendant use of grievous means of discipline for despicable impurity, can also be secular concerns, noticeably in times of revolutionary change. Severe, damning piety has worn many masks.¹⁵² The Puritans’ 147 Figueroa-Dorrego (2018), 113. This legacy might explain jokes’ low status in Holland (see Kuipers 2006). 148 The medieval recovery of laughter has also persisted in Christianity—among Protestants too. In the 19th century, the “Perfectionists of Oneida” specialised in mock-ads, printed in their regular newspaper “the Circular”, that were “not without a sense of humor” (Nordhoff 1965, 266). In the 20th, the Irish-born novelist and Anglican theologian C.S. Lewis (2016, letter 11, 22) distinguished four types of laughter: joyful (e. g., ecstatic contemplation of Creation); playful (e. g., good friends’ joviality); indecent (e. g., a “cruel man … represent[ing his cruelty] as a practical joke”); and flippant (e. g., cynical derision of important matters). It is obvious which two are sinful types. 149 Illinois State Board of Education (1983), 15. 150 Illinois State Board of Education (1983), 15. This Protestant cruelty might also reflect local cultural elements: “The Calvinist colour, mixing with each separate national colour, made in each case a different blend or tint. The Scotch had been restless, rebellious, fond of mystery, valiant, and sometimes cruel” (Chesterton 1975, 107). 151 Orwell (1949), 332. See also the considerations on nominal “power” developed in Chapters 3 and 4 of Part 1 and Chapter 3 in the present book. 152 There appears to be a deep-rooted psychological propensity linking moral(ising) purity with the emotion of disgust (see Horberg et al. 2009). The distinction between ‘morality’ and ‘moralism’ is, however, a complex one, which reflects a person’s axiology and judgement, whether explicit or implicit. Ordinarily, “moralism” possesses pejorative connotations that the term “morality” does not share, even when their aims or contents are identical.

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Great Rebellion, leading to the 1649 beheading of the Catholic King Charles I, was only one such mask—first to appear on the grandest political scene in modern Europe and insurrectionally influential in its violent attainment of a successful regicide. Yet its perceived ‘extremism’ or ‘radicalism’ could and often can be blamed on religious zeal and confessional intolerance, notably by those who disapprove of either or both. Ultimately, this gory episode may have been just another token of old-fashioned religious fanaticism, as abundantly exemplified by the interconfessional wars of Montaigne’s own day.¹⁵³ In the Age of Enlightenment, however, we had the example of the philosophically inspired and ‘rationally’ deistic Terror.¹⁵⁴ This was unleashed by the progressive, egalitarian and revolutionary Jacobins, headed by Robespierre and Saint-Just, and supported by the Marquis de Sade himself.¹⁵⁵ Their consciously and aptly named “Terror” led to the 1793 beheading of the Catholic King Louis XVI, aka citizen Louis Capet.¹⁵⁶ Subsequently, the Jacobins’ fatal feat, as well as their hopes of immense social renewal and much-awaited social justice, were echoed in the collapsing Russian Empire by the Marxist—hence ideally ‘scientific’ and proudly atheistic—Great October Socialist Revolution which, under Lenin’s guidance, led to the 1918 execution of the Orthodox Tsar Nicholas II, aka Saint Nicholas the PassionBearer, and of his whole family.¹⁵⁷ Under all these in/famous and rather grisly historical circumstances, an ardent desire to destroy impure elements of the social body was manifest and paramount in the aims and actions of the revolutionaries and so was their messianic aspiration to bring about a transformed, pristine, new collective order.¹⁵⁸ In other words, to install Heaven on Earth.¹⁵⁹

153 We tackle in detail Montaigne’ conception of cruelty and its historical context in H&C1. 154 “Terrorism” is probably the Jacobins’ most enduring lexical legacy (see, e. g., De Armey 2020, last chapter). 155 We tackle in detail Sade’s conception of cruelty and its historical context in H&C1. 156 We emphasise intentionally the religious background of the institutions that met revolutionary opposition, for this opposition acquired a religious tone of its own, whether Christian or antiChristian (as argued in Walzer 1965). 157 We understand “Marxism” to mean a form of ‘socialism’ aiming at establishing State-, partyand/or council-run communism, i. e., an economic order in which private property is marginalised (as historically exemplified in the many forms of so-called “real socialism” that were experimented with in 20th-century Europe, Africa, and Asia). 158 Occasionally, revolutions can be rather peaceful. See, e. g., Bernburg (2016) on Iceland’s one in 2008 – 2009. 159 See Walzer (1965). Benjamin (1999, 638 – 639) noted briefly that Sade’s “cruelty” echoes in Fourier’s “utopia”.

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1.2.4.1 Unquiet Leftists The Nobel-laureate Bertrand Arthur William Russell observed closely this quest for purity and wrote about it.¹⁶⁰ Russell was a British Earl, a celebrated logician, outspoken atheist, and prolific essayist gifted with that rare sharp wit which only the best quipsters indubitably possess.¹⁶¹ Crucially, he was also an activist for the Labour Party and, in this capacity, Russell visited Russia during the Civil War of 1918 – 1921.¹⁶² In those days, Russell was sympathetic to the Bolsheviks’ “legend and heroic attempt” at establishing “Communism” that he believed, in due course, to be “necessary to the world” as a whole, in order to progress beyond the “oppressive and cruel … régime … of capitalism”.¹⁶³ Today, such a claim is likely to sound somewhat radical to the ears of many Anglophone intellectuals.¹⁶⁴ Yet, for many progressive cultured men and women of Russell’s generation, the lived experiences of World War I had proved capitalism to be nothing but life-destructive on a massive scale, also and above all in Europe, i. e., not in some distant colony, such as Britain’s Cape of Good Hope, where the first modern concentration camps and chemical warfare were experimented with.¹⁶⁵ Not to mention the Belgian King Leopold’s privately owned Congo Free State, which was a notorious and veritable theatre of for-profit cruelties, to the point that they ushered the coinage of the now-standard legal expression “crimes against humanity”.¹⁶⁶

160 I.e., Russell (1920). 161 See, e. g., Morreall (2020). Blackwell (2011) argued that Russell’s humour applies even to his studies in logic. 162 See Monk (1996), 572 – 586. 163 Russell (1920), 6 – 7 and 136. In times closer to us, an interviewee in Macleod (2020, 10) asked, quite innocently: “If people need to work jobs really to what extent are they free?” 164 In our experience, Latin-American and African intellectuals are more comfortable with anticapitalist views, which, from a life-grounded perspective, makes a fair amount of sense, given capitalism’s historic role in bringing about, inter alia, “extreme poverty” on a global scale (Sullivan and Hickel 2023, title et passim). Pace the facile and pervasive liberal mantras of endless “growth” and alleged “development”, studies such as this one corroborate the notion that a massive loss of life accompanied the worldwide affirmation of capitalism as of the 16th century and, from a bioeco-systemic one, it still does (see, e. g., McMurtry 1999 and 2013). 165 See, e. g., Van Heyningen (2009) and Salem, Ternay Jr. and Smart (2019). 166 The term “crimes against humanity” was coined or popularised by the Baptist minister and African-American historian George Washington Williams with reference to the atrocities witnessed in the King’s Congolese domains, which were a profitable private business-holding, lasting from 1885 to 1908 (Hochschild 1999, 96). Without having to look at “Congo” or “Putumayo”, Chesterton (1919b, 179) deems the British rule of Ireland to be a comparable case, insofar as “our capitalists were not guilty of direct cruelty, but of an attitude careless and even callous”.

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At the same time, Russell was opposed to the Bolsheviks’ specific brand of communist socialism, their strategic use of homicidal violence and, most interestingly, the perplexing fact that “Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it is also a religion … combin[ing] the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam.”¹⁶⁷ These considerations did not form out of thin air. During his trip to Russia, Russell met with three of the most important Bolshevik leaders, i. e., Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Maxim Gorky.¹⁶⁸ Reflecting on the exchanges that he had with them, as well as his own impressions of the revolutionists qua living and breathing men, Russell highlighted in his notes: (1) the monastic lifestyle of Lenin (about whom Russell adds: “He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim”);¹⁶⁹ (2) “the fanatical faith by which the pure Marxians are upheld”;¹⁷⁰ and (3) the inherent enmity of the Russian revolutionary “atmosphere” to (3a) “art” and, as can be inferred from its analogous nature, (3b) commonplace humour, insofar as these phenomena are both “anarchic and resistant to organization”.¹⁷¹ Commenting on the then-popular propaganda

167 Russell (1920), 5 and 8. 168 Nés Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Lev Davidovich Bronstein, and Alexei Maximovich Peshkov. Stalin does not appear among them, perhaps aptly. As Getty and Naumov (1999, 11) argued, Stalin was the main driver of “the self-destruction of the Bolsheviks” and the reduction of the revolutionary Soviet republics into a totalitarian State. As Merleau-Ponty (1964a, 265; emphasis added) wrote: “[H]ow has October 1917 been able to end up in the cruelly hierarchical society whose features are gradually becoming clear before our eyes? In Lenin, Trotsky, and a fortiori Marx, there is not a word which is not sane, which does not still speak today to men of all lands, which does not help us understand what is going on in our own. And after so much lucidity, intelligence, and sacrifice—the ten million deported Soviet citizens, the stupidity of censorship, the panic of justifications.” 169 Russell (1920), 36 – 37. 170 Russell (1920), 43. Pillorying such a secular faith, Castoriadis (2017, 301) wrote that “it would be ridiculous for us, if we call ourselves revolutionaries or whatever, whenever a problem comes up to go to Marx to see if there is a place in which one can find the answer. This is such a ridiculous contradiction in terms. You want to change the world, and you have to find an answer in Marx. It is absolutely incredible. It’s a sort of theoretical suicide.” 171 Russell (1920), 43. An aesthetic and politico-intellectual enmity to “the tendencies that were incomprehensible and strange to the people, such as cubism, futurism, etc.” lasted throughout Soviet history, finding its justification in Lenin’s claim that “I cannot take expressionism, cubism and other ‘isms’ as high expressions of the artistic genius. I don’t understand them and they give me no joy” (as translated and cited in Nosov, Ganelin, and Likhacëv 1980, vol. 2, 366). Analogously, in communist Cambodia, “[a]n extremely rigid sexual order was upheld by the laws of the gun and the axe. Children were punished for laughing and joking during work” (van Ree 1988, 253). In a book on the genocidal regime of the Cambodian Khmer rouge named after their leader, Short (2004, 423 and

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play called Zarevo, Russell observed: “the only comic relief was provided by the Tsarist police, who made one appearance towards the end, got up like comic military characters in a musical comedy—just as, in mediæval miracle plays, the comic character was Satan”.¹⁷² For all their terrible consequences, revolutionary changes have been sought again and again in human history, precisely because of the “appalling cruelties” preceding those attempts and their own share of cruelties.¹⁷³ As Russell noted on this point, working men and women put their lives at risk only when the crushing servitude to which they are subjected becomes truly intolerable: “The exhaustion and misery caused by unsuccessful war were necessary to the success of the Bolsheviks; a prosperous population will not embark by such methods upon a fundamental economic reconstruction.”¹⁷⁴ As Marx and Engels had also implied in their 1848 Communist Manifesto, the chances for revolution become all the greater whenever proletarians have got nothing to lose but their chains.¹⁷⁵ 1.2.4.2 Unexpected Bedfellows Russell’s reasoned critique of Bolshevism did not intend to provide any excuse whatsoever for the “intolerance and lack of liberty” of the prior Tsarist regime and/or capitalism at large.¹⁷⁶ Nor did it provide any for the specific capitalists, 253) acknowledged how “[i]n some regions of the country laughing and singing were forbidden”, but claims this enmity to good humour to reflect the older misogelastic spirit of Buddhism. Parallel considerations apply to the humanities, aka liberal arts, which any large-scale top-down organisations find undesirable (see Nussbaum 2010). 172 Russell (1920), 55. The miracle plays to which he refers are pre-Reformation farces, which further corroborate the underlying acknowledgment of the ground shared by officially secular revolutionary ideologies and older religious millenarism. As regards Bolshevism, direct scathing humour against political enemies was used aplenty, however, especially in the decisive first decade of revolutionary power in Russia, e. g., “the satirical ‘windows’ by ROSTA (Russia’s telegraph agency), propaganda posters by painters such as V. Deni, D. Moor, M. Cermnykh, recovering verses by the poets Majakovskij and Bednyj” (Nosov, Ganelin, and Likhacëv 1980, vol. 2, 365). 173 Russell (1920), 160. 174 Russell (1920), 22 – 23. 175 Marx and Engels (1967), last paragraph of the last chapter, ending with: “Working men of all countries, unite!” 176 Russell (1920), 21. The relationship between capitalist “imperialism”, colonial warfare, and World War I is mentioned also in Hannah Arendt’s (1985) classic study on The Origins of Totalitarianism, in which the demise of Tsarist Russia, the Leninist revolution, and the advent of Soviet Stalinism were scrutinised, alongside the parallel development of Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. Cast in rather abstract terms, the recognition of this precise historico-economic aetiology was confirmed in recent times by Arnason (2020), 17– 29.

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both Russian and foreign, who profited from said regime over many generations, frequently fostering warfare and its attendant carnages.¹⁷⁷ As bloody and atrocious as these could be, wars were yet another means of making money, in line with the historical and logical priorities of liberal governments and capitalism.¹⁷⁸ The freedom and the new society that the Bolsheviks tried so violently to inaugurate, supported by millions of future Soviet citizens, were perfectly understandable to Russell. The same can be said of many other Western observers. Even the Catholic and conservative Chesterton could understand and sympathise with the reasons of the Russian revolutionaries of the early 20th century who, in his view, were responding cruelly to worse, prolonged cruelties: The cruelty of ages and of political cynicism or necessity has done much to burden the race of which Gorky writes; but time has left them one thing which it has not left to the people in Poplar or West Ham. It has left them, apparently, the clear and childlike power of seeing the cruelty which encompasses them. Gorky is a tramp, a man of the people, and also a critic, and a bitter one. In the West poor men, when they become articulate in literature, are always sentimentalists and nearly always optimists.¹⁷⁹

This line of reasoning applies to Roderick Ninian Smart too, i. e., the Caledonian father of 20th-century religious studies in Britain and a critic of the effectively atheistic worldview that many influential thinkers of his day propagated, Russell included.¹⁸⁰ As Smart elucidated, cruel rebellion is the quasi-inevitable offspring of cruel parents: The oppressed themselves typically respond with hatred, which motivates attempts to assert rights, or to take revenge on the oppressor… Moreover, the trajectories of cruelty are long, since cruelties are remembered at the mother’s knee, in the marrow of the family and clan, in the very bones of the community. It is hard to forgive. Armenians still recall the terrible Turkish massacre; Irish memories run long and deep; the Holocaust is burned deep into Jewish memory; why, schoolboys still remember in Scotland the massacre of Glencoe—can a Macdonald boy decently play with a Campbell?… And the iron of the slave’s shackles still rust away and stain the souls of their black descendants. It is a memory of cruelty and—worse— humiliation.¹⁸¹

177 War profiteering is far from being a thing of the past. See, e. g., Moosa (2019). 178 See, again, Moosa (2019). 179 Chesterton (2015), 8. 180 See, e. g., Wiebe (2001) on Smart’s accomplishments. 181 Smart (1981), chap. 7, par. 6. Suffered cruelty may lead to self-destructive impulses among the victimised, as noted, e. g., by Adler (1955, 264), who was also fully aware, however, of the other-directed cruelties that could arise thereof too (see, e. g., Adler 1952, 225 – 226). Provocative cruelty can elicit responsive cruelty in different directions, depending on the concurring aetiological factors. Outside the laboratory’s controlled experiments, circumstances are crucial. In parallel, perpetrators

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In Hallie’s terms, the cruelty of bloody revolutions is thus part of a terrible yet trite historical logic of responsive cruelty. ¹⁸² Nonetheless, according to Russell, even if and when justified, no revolution can continue forever.¹⁸³ This is especially true if the revolution’s aetiologically crucial socio-material preconditions are resolved or substantially diminished, i. e., hunger, violent oppression, and utmost economic insecurity.¹⁸⁴ Russell argued that, when they are being spent in ways and conditions that are “contrary to instinct”, people’s lives cannot go on like that for a very long stretch of time.¹⁸⁵ And when it comes to the prolonged struggle started in Russia for the sake of recasting society ex novo, Russell concluded: “if the Bolsheviks ultimately fall, it will be for the reason for which the Puritans fell: because there comes a point at which men feel that amusement and ease are worth more than all other goods put together”.¹⁸⁶ Pace the Bolsheviks’ committed and even admirable search for purity, the human need for, and general preference accorded to, good humour, are bound to have the last laugh, according to Russell.¹⁸⁷

too require adequate care and re-education, as discussed by Maritain (1943, 103) with regard to his generation’s German youth, who had been trained in “systematic cruelty”. 182 His views are tackled in detail in H&C1, though a shorter account is available in Chapter 3 of Part 1. As to which cruelty is worse, it is a matter of contention. Writing on the “cruelty and anger” of the revolutionary Haitian Jacobins, James (1962, 88 – 89) stated: “The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression. For the one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary passion soon appeased.” These political processes of cruel provocation and cruel response may have or be rooted in psychological equivalents. As the British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein (1948, 212) wrote: “From the early identification with the mother in which the anal-sadistic level so largely preponderates, the little girl derives jealousy and hatred and forms a cruel super-ego after the maternal imago.” (Incidentally, Klein too has been called the “mother of psychoanalysis”.) 183 Russell (1920) was targeting the idea of ‘permanent revolution’ championed by Trotsky. 184 As Hayek (1944) lamented, individual freedom is often willingly sacrificed by people to get economic security. LVOA can easily explain why (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 185 Russell (1920), 30. Pareto too thought that “the post-revolutionary phase”, even if “healthy … naturally and spontaneously supported by the masses … and firm and unstoppable in its action”, will “transform slowly – or decay”, for “the ‘foxes’ replace the ‘lions’ … [and] everyday issues” become more and more relevant, “while less and less interest remains in the distant future and its grand aims” (as cited and discussed in Giovannini 2017, 191). 186 Russell (1920), 30. 187 Laughter and humour might have had an even harder time under Stalin’s regime, as discussed in Lauchlan (2010). Still, as addressed in Chapter 2, bleak social times can make dark humour pop up, if not prosper.

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1.2.5 Businesspeople Russell’s objection to the Bolsheviks’ indifference to the vibrant social agency that inherently resists top-down organisation, such as the creative and playful field of the arts, was no excuse either. Harsh enmity to the intractability of commonplace humour has been known in liberal, bourgeois, capitalist countries too, and at all levels of the steep social ladder.¹⁸⁸ 1.2.5.1 Prolusions Before proceeding to a discussion of the applications of cruelty against humorous conduct in liberal societies, we believe it wise to soothe any possible Cold-War-inherited and/or knee-jerk unease that our probably Western and, equally blameless, Anglophone readers may experience when exposed to our linguistic choices.¹⁸⁹ Let us clarify that we have just written: (1) “bourgeois” because this adjective was used by Marx and Engels; and (2) “capitalist” because it was chosen explicitly by Russell himself, as we have just seen. We are not spouting dangerous ‘pinko’ propaganda for its own sake, as far as we are aware of, or in order to further the end of liberty and/or of civilised life, were

188 This type of enmity has also targeted the arts, e. g., the Nazis’ destruction of so-called “degenerate art”, or today’s dearth of public funds for the arts and humanities. Favouring top-down control and predictability over bottom-up autonomy and creativity, “narrow-minded politicians and business people” try regularly “to reduce education in schools and universities to simple instruction in management without guidance from cultures of the world, as expressed in art and literature, knowledge of languages, history and philosophy” (Kemp 2012, 119). Unlike the hard sciences and their applied offshoots (e. g., chemical engineering), the humanities do not ‘explain away’ and reduce the human being to uniform natural laws within a single hermeneutical framework, but focus on that which is quintessentially human (e. g., higher creative processes, moral awareness) and the manifold variety of human experience, individual as well as collective (e. g., past historical motives and aims, fictional dramatic and comedic scenarios). Moreover, unlike the so-called “mechanical arts”, the humanities aim at emancipating people from ingrained natural and social habits, hence revealing the rationale for their denomination qua “liberal arts” (see, e. g., Skúlason 2015, chaps. 4 – 6). This denomination is so common as to be used without critical reflection in both ordinary conversation and institutional documents. Yet, its socio-cultural and ethico-political implications are immense: if the liberal arts are not taught, the art of liberty gets lost (and, with it, any democratic rule). 189 Further considerations on the immediate affective force of certain terms are offered in Chapter 3 and H&C2.

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we ever capable of such an influence on world’s affairs.¹⁹⁰ As to today’s routine linguistic alternatives, i. e., the qualifiers “market” and “free-market” (aka “free market”), which are a major feature of the dominant liberal jargon, we intend to pay due heed here to some repeated and considered warnings about their election.¹⁹¹ Such warnings were proffered by a noted Harvard economist, a well-published humourist, and the one-time president of the American Economic Association, John Kenneth Galbraith.¹⁹² Moreover, as seen in Chapter 3 of Part 1, “cruelty” proper was among his declared socio-political and moral concerns.¹⁹³ 1.2.5.2 Galbraith The extensive, prolonged and careful reflections on socio-economic matters offered by the “ironic, sardonic, … engaging … vibrant and highly spirited” ‘Ken’ Galbraith pointed recurrently and most expressively to the many cruel abuses arising within the liberal scheme of things in its historical emanations.¹⁹⁴

190 We also wish to test the Anglophone reader’s internalised tendency to self-censorship, which is far from rare in today’s academe. Ours being also an application of philosophical humour à la Shaftesbury (see Chapter 2 of Part 1). 191 Once again, we must alert the reader to the semantic divergence of the adjective “liberal” in Europe and North America. 192 See, e. g., Baer (1984), commenting on Galbraith’s unique blend of economics and humour, and Galbraith (1975) for his own self-aware take on this peculiar blend, i. e., A Contemporary Guide to Economics, Peace and Laughter. 193 Galbraith was born in 1908 and enrolled in the 1920s into the B.Sc. programme of agricultural economics held at the small yet venerable Ontario Agricultural College (part of the University of Guelph since 1964). In 1934, he joined Harvard University in a full-time teaching capacity, and he continued studying and writing about economics, politics, art and history until 2006, i. e., the year of his death. To this day, he remains the second best-selling economist in the world after Marx (without ever writing a textbook or having people obliged to read him) and enjoys fame as an original eclectic economist whose “pragmatic approach” aims “not [to] socialism”, but “smarter capitalism” (Foroohar 2019, pars. 1 and 3). This conclusion has been reached by numerous scholars, e. g., Dunn and Pressman (2005), Waligorski (2006), and Laperche and Uzunidis (2005), whose edited book includes Galbraith’s son James, who is also a noted economist in his own right and a continuator of his father’s campaigns. 194 Bernhut and Galbraith (2006), par. 2. Locke’s 1697 Report of the Board of Trade offered no more humane a picture and, long before Malthus, blamed the poor’s poverty on the poor’s “debauchery”, which leads them to have far too many children (Bourne 1876, vol. 2, 378). Victimising victims does not need to be done humorously. In comparison to Locke’s self-styled ‘modern’ approach, the oft-neglected book one of More’s (1750) 1516 satirical Utopia, which acknowledged the devastating socio-economic consequences of booting out England’s farming communities in order to replace them with export-oriented woolly sheep, is sophisticated economic sociology.

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(1)

In abstracto, the great many, mathematically sophisticated, academically respected, pedagogically incessant, and politically convenient interpretations of the liberal economic order have always affirmed—and go on affirming in our day and age—that “liberalism” is based upon much-desirable “market” and “free-market” institutions, unerringly and unflinchingly.¹⁹⁵ (2) In concreto, when confronting the factual reality of liberalism, Galbraith’s nearly 80 years of keen investigation, along with numerous parallel corroborations, have cumulatively contributed to the demonstration that (2a) this order and, at a more basic level, (2b) its chief human actors, are: (2bα) astoundingly bad at keeping these purportedly desirable institutions in situ;¹⁹⁶ (2bβ) if not even at wanting them truly to be so in the first place.¹⁹⁷ Witnessing this patent mismatch in the politically tense 1970s, Galbraith quipped: “It is almost as though those engaged in collective bargaining and corporate pricemaking were out to discredit the very best economic scholarship. One wonders why men should be so cruel.”¹⁹⁸

195 See, e. g., Rhonheimer (2012) for a recent potent affirmation of the market principle in spite of the 2008 crisis. 196 The relatively little-known yet influential Germanophone school of ordoliberalism—whose noted 20th-century champions were Walter Eucken, Alexander Rüstow, and Alfred Müller-Armack—argued that powerful State institutions must be operant in order for liberalism to unfold effectively and preserve its liberties, whether in order to counter the advent and clout of large corporate ‘winners’, or to inculcate into the population the intellectual abilities and spiritual attitudes required for this economic order to function (see, e. g., Utz 1994, pars. 3.1 and 7.3.2). 197 We do not have to salute Galbraith as a forerunner of behavioural economics or praise him as a “radical” heterodox maverick, as done, e. g., by Kesting (2010). Galbraith’s great predecessors in institutionalist economics, Thorstein Veblen and, above all, the so-called “Great Scotch” himself, i. e., Adam Smith, had already commented on such phenomena. The latter, in his Wealth of Nations, admitted repeatedly that the principal economic agents in the liberal order are also those who seek most eagerly its transformation into a system of exploitative monopoly, whilst recognising as well that the separation between ownership and management, which is taken for granted inside “jointstock companies” (aka “corporations”), is a recipe for disaster: on the one hand, the owners no longer follow the day-to-day operations of the enterprise; on the other hand, the managers are in charge of their own pay and, to boot, with other people’s money (see, e. g., Smith 1904, chap. 1, part 3, art. 1, subsection entitled “Of the Public Works and Institutions which are necessary for facilitating particular Branches of Commerce”). 198 Galbraith (1975), 77.

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The fabled market institutions of our textbooks and the real people of the world do not see eye-to-eye.¹⁹⁹ “History”, wrote Castoriadis, “is a cruel goddess”.²⁰⁰ Indeed, while he was busy launching the young discipline of scientific sociology, even the most famous Italian liberal economist of all times, Vilfredo Pareto, affirmed, in a surprising anticipation of Karl Polanyi’s 1940s insights on the same contentious matters, that the “liberal principles” themselves “harbour something which is distasteful to existing human nature”.²⁰¹ In keeping with Pareto’s eventual realisation, Castoriadis’ quip and, above all, with the conclusions that Galbraith reached in his last major publication—i. e., the wryly—entitled 2004 book The Economics of Innocent Fraud—the terms “market” and “free-market” should thus be seen, in modern-day specialist prose: (1) not only as two lexical alternatives for “bourgeois” and/or “capitalist”; but also (2) as two routine qualifiers hiding disingenuously, if not deviously and dishonestly, the crucial fact of concentrated economic and socio-political power inside the liberal order.²⁰²

199 The 20th-century Italian economist and philosopher Piero Mini (1974, 23) claimed this mismatch to be rooted in the axiomatic-deductive Cartesian epistemology of orthodox economics which operates by producing the most complex mathematical theorems upon the basis of the most simplistic and most unrealistic assumptions about humankind: “Descartes, the man who aspired to put human knowledge on a secure and firm basis, actually succeeded in encouraging the most unrestrained flights of the imagination.” As a result, orthodox economists have historically condemned themselves to be unhinged from empirical reality and, were it not for their convenient role as high priests and legitimisers of capitalism, to be useless: “Following the Cartesian method, economics was able to proceed through the social universe with lightning speed. But it also absorbed the weaknesses and contradictions of Cartesianism, the most important of which was its aspiration to explain the whole of reality without even looking at it. Paradoxically, Descartes’ rationalism became the irrationalism of ‘cast my eyes away that I may see better’” (Mini 1974, 59). Incredibly complex, orthodox economics might well be an over-intelligent insult to the intelligence of all those scholars who aim at investigating actual economic reality. A cruel irony. 200 Castoriadis (2018), 373. 201 As translated and cited in Mornati (2020), 81. Decades later, the Austrian Nobel-prize laureate liberal economist, Friedrich A. Hayek (1987), argued that market economies can come into being if and only if people learn to live in ways running counter to their primordial sympathetic instincts and profoundest emotional dispositions, which would steer them away from individualistic self-interest (see also Gamble 2018, chap. 2). As our friend and fellow philosopher Garrett Barden stated during a conversation about liberalism: “it took millennia to make an individual”. Whether such a form of life can persist for a long time or indefinitely is, however, doubtful, as Russell’s (1920, 30) eerie comments about societies operating “contrary to instinct” inexorably alert us. 202 See Bernhut and Galbraith (2006), par. 2 and Galbraith (2004), 7– 14 (chap. 1). See also Häring and Douglas (2012), whose assessment, if correct, explains the attacks that Galbraith received from many colleagues throughout his career, especially but not exclusively from the right of the political spectrum (for an instance of a leftist attack, see Krugman 1996, which is a scathing review of Gal-

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Galbraith discussed the issue of such a concentrated power in many diverse settings of tangible manifestation, spanning across the decades as well as the world’s countries and/or economic macro-regions.²⁰³ Whenever addressing the incontrovertible datum of concentrated power, the pecuniary, cultural, interpersonal, political, and legal clout of liberal societies’ leading interest groups is vividly and invariably depicted, e. g., “those who … run … the big corporate bureaucracies” of the 21st century.²⁰⁴ This socially pronounced clout is shown, again and again, to be that crucial aetiological quid making it possible for the wealthy, and especially for the privileged modern elites involved in the day-to-day management the world’s largest businesses, to steer the allegedly “free” and nominally “competitive” liberal game in their exclusive, emphatic, and/or egregious favour.²⁰⁵ Additionally, this ongoing process of self-aggrandisement by those who, from the standpoint of real life-needs, have already much more than enough, is also shown to have been sought after intensively, incessantly, and ingeniously, even if there have ensued with dramatic regularity, “[h]uman suffering and political instability … extreme danger … social disorder … desperation … war … inadequacy of … the living standard … [and] healthcare … poverty and … indifferen[ce] as to the

braith 1996). Galbraith’s example qua institutionalist economist à la Veblen, success qua public intellectual and public servant in the most powerful country of the 20th century, and piercing critiques of the empirical irrelevance of pure economics signalled mercilessly and aptly how the huge intellectual investment made by generations of self-proclaimed “scientific” economists had been, to a disheartening extent, bogus. In this, Galbraith’s case resembles Rorty’s, insofar as the latter became the target of much irked ostracism within Anglophone academe for arguing that the subtleties of analytic philosophy were largely irrelevant vis-à-vis philosophy’s chief concern (i. e., how to live), when not theoretically misguided, per the enduring sceptical aporias caused by their inherent representationalism (see Gutting 2020). 203 Including bound copies of public lectures, edited collections and anthologies, Galbraith published almost 60 books, plus countless shorter works. As regards the issue of concentrated economic power, particularly relevant are: (1) in a theoretical perspective, Galbraith (1952), (1983) and (2007); and (2), in a historical perspective, Galbraith (1975), (1994) and (1997). In all of this serious research, Galbraith never shied away from using humour. 204 Bernhut and Galbraith (2006), par. 5. Veblen’s sardonic style and his preoccupation with socalled “vested interests” exercised a long-lasting influence on Galbraith (see, e. g., Parker 2005, 37– 39 et passim). For a substantial and additional empirical corroboration of their main critical point, see Vitali, Glattfelder, and Battiston (2011). 205 Galbraith (2004) and (2007) were particularly emphatic in highlighting the shift in power within mature capitalism from ownership to management, arguing investors’ general meetings to be, by and large, ceremonial. A student of Galbraith’s work, Castoriadis (2015, 79) concluded as well that “Contemporary Liberalism” is “hypocritical” in its claims about “free trade” and “market process”, when there is a “pseudomarket” only, ruled by “monopolistic and oligopolistic powers” and leading regularly to “an exorbitant difference in political powers”.

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suffering, the hunger, medical disasters, [and] living disasters of other human beings”.²⁰⁶ In short, in spite of much avoidable cruelty.²⁰⁷ 1.2.5.3 Panglossianism As Galbraith also observed on many occasions, with the gleeful pleasure felt by the person shouting “the emperor has no clothes!”, only a convenient and superstitious belief in the all-resolving ‘invisible hand’ of the nominally assumed “free market” can hide such glaring contradictions as well as the systemic origin of so many dramatic spill-overs, e. g., lack of proper housing, crumbling public infrastructures, environmental degradation, multi-generational carcinogenic pollution by au-courant for-profit chemical conglomerates, etc.²⁰⁸ In other words, the fault for all that can go wrong and/or that has gone wrong in the liberal order cannot but lie elsewhere, because the most basic assumptions of the liberal mindset make it impossible for its adherents to acknowledge the grim reality of liberal things.²⁰⁹ Guilt may and must be ascribed, for there are patent crimes aplenty screaming for recognition, redressing, and retaliation. But this ascription has been performed most selectively by the liberals, as Beccaria’s logically puzzling treatment of the crime of theft had already instantiated in the 18th century.²¹⁰ However contrite and well-meaning, the liberal’s maxima culpa is never mea. ²¹¹ Habitually, within

206 Bernhut and Galbraith (2006), pars. 28 – 30. See Galbraith (2004, 74) on “war” as “the decisive human failure”. 207 Our readers are likely to be steeped in the liberal imaginary of today’s nations, where GNPand GDP-measured ‘growth’ and the plethora of traded consumer ‘goods’ are taken as being good at face value. Therefore, we may have to state explicitly that many of the ordinary cruelties of the productive apparatus of contemporary consumer societies are made even crueller, from a moral point of view, by their inherent evitability. As Veblen (2001, 68) observed longer than a century ago, much of the capitalist production is directed at the satisfaction of demand that is not based on need, but on acquired wants which the producers themselves nurture by means of “wasteful” forms of “salesmanship” inducing cravings for equally “wasteful … superfluities and spurious goods” that are manufactured and sold through an even more “wasteful” system of “dislocation, sabotage and duplication”. 208 As Ying (2006) argued, Galbraith was far too empirically and historically informed to buy into the convenient hypostasis of Adam Smith’s famous metaphor, which he never believed to be the “spiritual force” tacitly presumed by the allegedly ‘scientific’ orthodox economists of the modern era (Galbraith 1983, 112). 209 Chronic self-deceivers behave in the same manner, finding scapegoats and/or excuses for all of their mistakes. 210 See H&C1 and Chapter 3 of Part 1 . 211 As to the iron-clad and circular self-exculpatory lines of liberal reasoning vis-à-vis any and every counterexample and/or counterargument, we dealt with them elsewhere (i. e., Baruchello 2018a, 223 – 245).

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the concrete liberal order, all the recurring economic failures and attendant social and personal sufferings are blamed by liberals on someone or something else but the very socio-economic order producing them in an almost cyclical and/or cumulative manner. Thus, the ‘real’ culprits are always said to be “external” to the order itself, e. g., excessive regulation, imperfect deregulation, exogenous shocks, random tsunamis, masters-of-the-universe turned surprisingly into pirates, unexpected and/or unpredictable crops of ‘crony’ capitalists, etc.²¹² Insofar as the guilt for the ‘sin’ at issue is regularly ascribed to someone or something but the liberal order and liberal agents themselves, the prescribed penance is typically more of the same liberal line of conduct that preceded the sin and, in all probability, facilitated it or even caused it outright.²¹³ Free-market sycophants and model-builders display on a grand scale, and in a socio-economically and environmentally destructive way, the mechanical fixity of behaviour that, under individual and less life-threatening circumstances, Bergson would assess as quintessentially comical.²¹⁴ Einstein, for his part, would probably regard it as a form of “insanity”, i. e., “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.²¹⁵ A canonical expert on matters of sin, guilt, penance and, in addition, the occasional miraculous occurrence and diabolical perseverance in error (or possession), the latest Pope of the Catholic Church wittily stated in this regard: The marketplace, by itself, cannot resolve every problem, however much we are asked to believe this dogma of neoliberal faith. Whatever the challenge, this impoverished and repetitive school of thought always offers the same recipes. Neoliberalism simply reproduces itself by

212 In much of his oeuvre, Galbraith (2004, 40 – 45), commented repeatedly on the prejudicial liberal habit of blaming all ills on public authorities, even when the culprits were, fairly and squarely, to be found in the private sector, which controls de facto much of the public machinery as an extension of its own corporate bureaucracy. 213 The somewhat tragicomic blindness of orthodox economists to their own institutional role in misrepresenting reality and thereby bringing about major catastrophes across the world is only one of the reasons why many commentators have been arguing for taking high-level decision-making about economic matters away from the alleged “experts”. Quite a cruel irony, in point of fact. On these tragicomic matters see, e. g., Keen (2001), Chang (2010), Häring and Douglas (2012), Schlefer (2012), Earle, Moran, and Ward-Perkins (2016), and Orrell (2017). 214 See Bergson (1959), our detailed discussion of his work in H&C1, and Chapter 2 of Part 1. Also, this comicality famously characterises Voltaire’s (1918) overoptimistic Dr Pangloss, whence “Panglossianism” was derived. 215 As cited in Lomas (2008), 69.

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resorting to the magic theories of “spillover” or “trickle” – without using the name – as the only solution to societal problems.²¹⁶

The markets can do no wrong, according to its faithful adherents, whatever damning evidence there may be indicting them and/or their greedy heralds, some of whom are occasionally singled out and publicly chastised as so-called “rotten apples”, i. e., as though the liberal tree that keeps bearing them were itself utterly, demonstrably, and supernaturally immune from any pathological rot.²¹⁷ Ab ovo, the liberal sycophants’ notion of the presumed free markets is such that, should any significant problem arise thereof, they would be deemed, in all probability, “externalities” of one kind or another, e. g., pollution, which has accompanied capitalist industrial ‘development’ since its very birth in 18th-century Britain. And should any such problem affect them and their equally alleged ‘efficiency’, they would be deemed, in all probability, “external” shocks or independent aetiological factors, e. g., verbally loathed “excessive” self-interest or “greed”, which capitalism selects for de facto and enshrines de jure in the guise of legitimate profit motives, shareholder value, perpetual growth, etc.²¹⁸ ‘Internally’, though, these aprioristic markets are spotless, rational, and efficient. That is why the models that are based on such assumptions regularly misrepresent and mis-forecast actual economic reality. Their immaculate conception is also their original sin.²¹⁹ Confronted with such a farcical spectacle, which had not changed in the course of almost a century of keen study and observations about the liberal order, Galbraith jibed in the 2000s: 216 Francis (2020), par. 168, where he added: “There is little appreciation of the fact that the alleged ‘spillover’ does not resolve the inequality that gives rise to new forms of violence threatening the fabric of society.” We find it telling that a Pope of the Church of Rome should criticise so vocally the so-called “free market” and its devotees, whether in the nominally “liberal” or “neoliberal” variety, and in an encyclical letter. This being is a binding official statement on matters of Christian doctrine that is issued by the Holy See very few times per Papacy. Moreover, some readers may not realise that the Church of Rome is a longstanding politically conservative institution that had already developed in the Middle Ages one of the most sophisticated theoretical defences of private property and just commerce in Western culture, grounding business legitimacy in life-enabling criteria cast in the time-honoured rationalistic language of Natural Law theory, i. e., on jurisprudential and philosophical grounds rather than religious and dogmatic grounds (see Baruchello 2019a). 217 Galbraith (1994) and (1997) stressed the regular ex post scapegoating of token speculators, especially those who lost the money of influential clients. For a recent telling example, i. e., Bernie Madoff, see Arvedlund (2009). 218 See, e. g., Abere and Akinobobola (2020, 1) on “unpredictable change in an exogenous factor affect[ing] endogenous economic variables”. 219 This is the sort of paradoxical quips for which Galbraith was famous. Perhaps he even uttered this one.

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So it is of the market system we teach the young. It is of this, as I’ve said, that sophisticated political leaders, compatible journalists and many scholars speak. No individual or firm is thus dominant. No economic power is evoked. There is nothing here from Marx and Engels. There is only the impersonal market, a not wholly innocent fraud. […] Another name for the system does come persuasively to the eye and ear: “the Corporate System.” None can doubt that the modern corporation is a dominant force in the present economy… Nonetheless, allusions to it are used with caution or not at all. Sensitive friends and beneficiaries of the system do not wish to assign definitive authority to the corporation. Better the benign reference to the market ²²⁰

It is in this thick, wide, and deep-reaching web of common verbal and conceptual hypocrisy that, in essence, lie the first and most blatant tokens of “innocent fraud” about which Galbraith wrote in his sharp, concise, and humorous intellectual testament.²²¹ 1.2.5.4 West After many decades of keen scientific research, Galbraith was still busy parading to the world one of the most peculiar paradoxes of our age: the adherents to the most aprioristic, hence inherently bogus, social science, i. e., orthodox economists, are also the best-paid and most listened-to advisors to governments in day-to-day practice, if not key ministers and ministerial bureaucrats themselves.²²² As generally amusing as Galbraith’s piercing prose may be, and as deeply ironic as his favourite game of witty denouement inevitably happens to be too, the socio-histor-

220 Galbraith (2004), 13 – 14. A classic Continental liberal, von Mises (2012, 67) tellingly pitted private charity against “the mad logic of the welfare state”, which he criticised via an often-heard slippery-slope fallacy that Hayek and Thatcher made later clichéd in British politics: “since the government produces nothing that is valuable in terms of social appraisement, it can only supply welfare to some by siphoning off the resources and destroying the economic arrangements that support the welfare of others. In attempting to repair the politically unpopular destruction of its earlier policies, it is driven to further isolated acts of destruction until it arrives, with cruel and ultimate irony, at the policy for the systematic destruction of society and human welfare, that is, socialism.” 221 The proper “definition” of “fraud”, as employed in his 2004 book, consists in “things that we believe to our own advantage rather than to the truth” (Bernhut and Galbraith 2006, par. 7). As to this book being Galbraith’s intellectual testament, we should recall that he died, at a ripe old age, about two years after its publication. 222 Häring and Douglas (2012) presented one of the most thorough exposés of the astounding intellectual dishonesty afflicting the ways in which standard economics is taught, conducted, selfgratifyingly paraded, and yet selectively and self-servingly applied in the world. It making for a cruelly disheartening read.

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ical reality that he depicted is institutionally cruel to the utmost, in the ‘Hallian’ sense of the term.²²³ This ‘normal’ reality is cruel, decidedly, at the bottom of the capitalist social ladder, i. e., the fields, ships, mines, quarries, workshops, factories and cubicles where “the wealth of nations” has been brought forth, sometimes for centuries, also by bending backs (e. g., the Indian indenture system) and by brandishing arms (e. g., the Opium Wars).²²⁴ In all such lowly, ordinary places of productive employment, mischievous laughter and mutinous flippancy by the socio-economically subordinate have never been counselled and, above all, gone rewarded.²²⁵ Adam’s toil is meant to induce sweat, not mirth.²²⁶ In Western political economy, the ‘grandfather’ of development economics, Antonio Genovesi, related to this ancient Biblical injunction the following fundamental principle of his modern discipline: “Toil is the capital of all persons, all families, and every State.”²²⁷ Sweat, not silliness, is therefore more appropriate for all those peo-

223 We are not suggesting that other economic orders have not been or may not be cruel. However, we concentrate on the failures of the liberal order because: (1) Our present world is a liberal world with liberal ills, especially as regards the basic institutions of the economic sphere (e. g., private property, the profit motive, interest-bearing credit, wage relations); and (2), as seen in Chapter 3 of Part 1, there have been prominent proponents of liberalism arguing that no other order is (2a) so inimical to cruelty as the liberal one (e. g., Rorty), or (2b) so beneficial as the liberal one, warts and all (e. g., Adam Smith). See also H&C1. 224 See, respectively, Kumar (2017) and Beeching (1975). 225 According to Adam Smith (1904, book 1, chap. 8, par. 36), the “race” of working men and women are no less than “they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the People”, even if they receive only a fraction of the wealth that they so produce. It was only in “that original state of things, which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock” that “the whole produce of labour belongs to the labourer”, who “has neither landlord nor master to share with him” under pain of penalty (Smith 1904, book 1, chap. 8, par. 2). 226 We are referring to Adam’s fate after being banished from Eden, according to the Bible’s book of Genesis. 227 Genovesi (1765), 197; see 192 on the Biblical sources. Some colleagues may prefer translating the Italian term “fatica” as the English “labour”, but the latter term has lost, obstetrics aside, the sweaty, bloody, aching, and crippling connotations that the former term implied and still implies. It must be added, however, that Genovesi (1765, chap. 13) was not blind to the plight of those people who were idle and lived off others’ charity because of physical or mental infirmity, young or old age, lack of education, poor governance, military background, and structural unemployment. Nor was he unaware of the importance of sympathetic feelings, mutual trust, and general benevolence for human interactions, including in the economic sphere. Anticipating both Schopenhauer’s and Leopardi’s pessimism, Genovesi (1765, 62; emphasis added) argued as well that “[t]oil feels like pain; but pleasure is always the child of pain”. From this perspective, then, in an unseen twist of cruel irony, some mirth may ensue from toil and sweat, at least as a temporary means of relief (more is said here on this topic in Chapters 2 and 3).

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ple who toil away with scythes, sails, spades, and/or all similarly symbolic and yet also very real tools of dreary, heavy labour. In Western culture, another oft-cited piece of Biblical wisdom has been nothing but inflexible on this joyless point: “The mouth of the just bringeth forth wisdom: but the froward tongue shall be cut out.”²²⁸ Direction, duty, discipline, conformity, meekness, obedience, and predictability are all commonly assumed, almost unthinkingly, as indispensable prerequisites for a well-functioning economic order such as the capitalist one, the full historical unfolding of which has required, up until now: (1) colonial conquest and dominion on a planetary scale (e. g., the Spaniards’ occupation of the Americas and the aforementioned privately-owned Congo of King Leopold);²²⁹ (2) mass subjugation of foreign Indigenous peoples and domestic rural populations (ditto);²³⁰ (3) trade monopolies (e. g., the Danish trading companies and the English East India company);²³¹ (4) mafia-like extortion, exclusion, exploitation, endangering, and/or elimination of weaker parties (e. g., the mythicised case of the Hanseatic League in northern Europe);²³² (5) commercial diktats, financial dependency, fiscal disparity, and economic dumping, sometimes under the banner of nominal “free trade” (e. g., the Imperial Preference in Britain’s future Commonwealth);²³³ (6) the prepotent affirmation of entirely new forms of social coexistence, individual self-perception and productive coordination in all countries on Earth (e. g., today’s so-called “globalisation”);²³⁴

228 Proverbs 10:31. 229 See, e. g., A. Smith (1904), book 4, chap. 7, part 2, par. 7. 230 The parallel fate of rural and Indigenous cultures under capitalism is a recurrent theme in K. Polanyi (2001). 231 See, e. g., Feldbæk (1986) and Erikson (2014). Pace the 18th- and 19th-century liberal tirades against so-called “mercantilism”, no laissez-faire transnational commercial network could have emerged without the prior forcible imposition of Western modes of production, trade, consumption, legislation, value-calculation, and self-conception. 232 See, e. g., Kümper (2020). 233 See, e. g., Trivedi (2007). 234 See: McMurtry (1998, 1999, 2002, 2012 and 2013); Roldán, Brauerb, and Rohbeck (2018), sec. 3; and the indicting Perrault (1998). Without attempting to comprehend, with keen intellectual candour and historiographic objectivity, the painful experiences of the world’s nations while becoming and/or being part of the liberal economic order, it is impossible to make sense of the repeated search for painful revolution-born alternatives, including the Russian ones of 1905 – 1991. Addition-

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(7) the direct, fast-paced, life-disabling, physical, chemical, and biological transformation of entire ecosystems on all continents but Antarctica (which is changing nonetheless because of the resulting environmental disruptions);²³⁵ (8) the annihilation of countless species in all animal and vegetal phyla, with devastating biological and ecological implications (e. g., the disappearance of apex predators and pollinators).²³⁶ The last two items on this somewhat perplexing list are no contemporary or recent concern, nor are they a wild exaggeration with regard to the observable trends and tendencies inherent to the worldwide onslaught performed by the liberal economic order in its history.²³⁷ No matter how many “humorous or satirical” online threads and memes about the Swedish green activist Greta Thunberg there may be today, the institutional cruelty to which her global campaigns keep alerting us all is no laughing matter.²³⁸ Back in the mid-19th century, none less than John Stuart Mill—one of the greatest champions of liberalism in both British politics and Western economics—had already expressed major worries about the pace, extent, and likely environmental outcomes of its seemingly unstoppable planetary encroachment: There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and

ally, liberalism itself owes part of its success to revolutions (e. g., in the US and France) as well as terrorism (e. g., the Genoese champion of “liberal internationalism”, Giuseppe Mazzini and his global network of insurrectional “Freemason-like secret societ[ies]”; Rosenblatt 2018, 96). 235 See, e. g., McCarthy et al. (2019). 236 See, e. g., Goulson (2019). 237 Plumptre et al. (2021, 1) calculated that about 3 % of our planet comprises “ecologically intact communities”. 238 Dave, Ndulue, and Schwartz-Henderson (2020), 7. See also Huijbens (2021), chaps. 4 and 6 – 7.

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scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.²³⁹

What is more, the axiologically sketchy achievements of the now-commonplace ‘neo-liberal’ economic order and attendant “cruelty or commercial rapacity”, as Chesterton uncharitably baptised it in his own merely ‘liberal’ times, have hitherto been counting as significant, even necessary, civilisational steps.²⁴⁰ In a widespread and generally unchallenged whiggish account of liberal history and institutions, the sufferings of whole nations keep being interpreted by countless experts and noted authorities (e. g., the World Bank) as inevitable stages in an overall transition towards a presumedly praiseworthy and uncritically endorsed “economic development” of societies, some of which have, rather oddly, disappeared in the process—or are at risk of disappearing once and for all in our day and age.²⁴¹ And their life-supporting eco-systemic basis too, as noted.²⁴²

239 Mill (1920), book 4, chap. 6, sec. 2, par. 4. Given both the inherent significance and the large scholarly indifference vis-à-vis this rarely cited passage in Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, we report it hereby in full, even if it is unusually long. The discerning reader should be able to grasp our rationale. As to Smith’s status in the liberal camp, see, e. g., Donner (1991). As to the relationship between pristine natural landscapes and health that Mill highlighted, it has been corroborated in psychology and philosophy (see, e. g., Menatti and Casado da Rocha 2016). About the future, Zhang (2019, 499) wrote that, as long as business practices “still remain part of the capitalist system” as it is today, then they cannot but “continue to contribute to the same exploitation of natural resources”. Analogous concerns are expressed in Edelheim, Joppe, and Flaherty (2022), who made use of LVOA as the theoretical pivot for their work (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 240 Chesterton (1931, essay 15, pars. 4 – 5) used these terms in an essay about sexual immorality, yet at a point where he distinguished between “virtue” and “vice” at large, i. e., the conceptual axes of “fundamental morality”. As to the many continuities and reiterations between the classical liberal age and the neoliberal one, they have been studied amply (see, e. g., Flandreau and Zumer 2004). They were also captured artistically, immediately after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, by the Genoese poet and songwriter Fabrizio De André in his 1990 album Le nuvole, songs ## 2 (“Ottocento” [1800s]) and 4 (“La domenica delle salme” [On Corpses Sunday]). 241 Pace claims of ‘value neutrality’, “liberalism” has “its own broad conception of the good”, for which it is more than willing to make ‘sacrifices’ (Williams and Young 1994, 100). See, e. g., Stephens et al. (2006, 2023) on contemporary Indigenous societies that are still being decimated for the sake of alleged “development”: “European colonialism is at the heart of the creation of current reality for Indigenous peoples in many regions. Europeans appropriated land, created the stereotypes of tribal peoples, and in many cases, systematically eradicated large communities through wars and disease. To an extent, this pattern continues, not only through European descendants, but also through other dominant population groups within countries.”

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1.2.5.4.1 Going Around in Circles [U]bi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. —Tacitus²⁴³

Future prospects are even direr than Mill feared. The very foundations for continued human existence have kept being compromised. ²⁴⁴ It is said that when Rome was afire, the sadistic emperor Nero watched it burn and, mesmerised by the sorry spectacle, plucked the strings of his lyre and sang. The late British actor and writer Peter Ustinov famously played the half-crazed Nero in the 1951 historic drama Quo Vadis, mixing farcical and threatening elements in the character’s personality, i. e., humour and cruelty. Nowadays, whilst the planet keeps overheating, profit-driven businesses organise tourist parties to visit the world’s melting glaciers and thinning ice sheets, thus contributing further to the overheating itself, which in turn causes the melting via, e. g., transportation-related pollution.²⁴⁵ (Can anyone play the lyre, at least?) Some kind of insanity is afoot. And it may have been around for quite some time. Reflecting on the worldwide historical affirmation of the West’s liberal economies and its concomitant circus of market-based cruelties, the Italian economist and philosopher Piero Mini wrote caustically in the 1970s: That nineteenth-century economic practice was based on classical theory proves the correctness of that theory as much as imperialistic adventures prove the correctness of the racial theories on which they were based. And the record of economic policies, for whatever it is worth, is not as good as the imperialist record. Periodic crises have continued to plague capitalism, crises which economists, despite their aspirations, have been no more successful in forecasting and controlling than anybody else.²⁴⁶

Reading “1970s” and “19th-century” might give the impression that Mini’s line of criticism is old and, in all probability, obsolete. Yet, just to name a few representative experts, well-established economists such as the already-cited Canadianborn Galbraith, the American Krugman, the Australian Quiggin, and the Danish

242 Restoring the crumbling life support systems of human civilisation is neither a left- nor a right-wing political preference, but a central precondition for any life and, a fortiori, any political and economic activity. Liberal approaches, however, have been making things worse, not better, under this perspective, for they have been geared squarely towards money-making qua paramount aim, not comprehensive life-enablement (see, e. g., McMurtry 1999 and 2013). 243 “When/where they make a desert, they call it peace”, Tacitus (1900), chap. 30, par. 6. 244 See McMurtry (1998), (1999), (2002), (2011), and (2013). 245 We use here an example from our present-day Icelandic business reality. 246 Mini (1974), 67.

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Jespersen, have repeatedly suggested that the situation, in the course of the 21st century, went pretty much back to square one, if it did not get worse altogether.²⁴⁷ Socio-economic liberal ideas and ideals that had started becoming outmoded in the late 19th century and, by the early 1970s, were considered empirically disqualified, especially after the combined disasters of the eponymous year 1929 and the ensuing world-war-unleashing Great Depression, managed to resurface and reassert themselves with a vengeance, arguably in the face of that tumultuous decade’s unique problems, e. g., the so-called “oil shocks” and the Vietnam War.²⁴⁸ What followed in the next three decades was, inter alia, a “radical and comprehensive course of liberalization” (hence the common descriptor “neoliberal”) in countries such as “Thatcher’s Britain, New Zealand … [Pinochet’s] Chile [and, later,] Iceland”, all of which ended up dismantling the regulatory apparatus that had been so painfully developed after the aforementioned tragic experiences of the 20th century—and thereby setting the stage for an eventual and cruelly farcical reiteration of 1929, i. e., the international financial collapse of 2008, plus the Great Recession unfolding from it.²⁴⁹ From a historical perspective, it is rather difficult to determine whether we are really ‘out’ of the post-2008 slump or not.²⁵⁰ This difficulty being the case, at least, insofar as we consider unnerving long-lasting systemic signals such as: (1) the continued large-scale monetary interventions by the world’s central banks over the past 15 years;²⁵¹ (2) the marked resurgence of protectionism (e. g., under Donald Trump in the US or in the general responses to the recent Covid-19 pandemic); or (3) the conspicuous ‘swing’ to the far right of the political spectrum on the international scene, i. e., the decisive ideological factor that the late British histor-

247 See, respectively, Galbraith (2004), Krugman (2009), Quiggin (2010), and Jespersen (2016a and b). 248 One of the present book’s authors was born in that decade. Perhaps, his birth should be added to its tumults. 249 Gissurarson (2004), par. 2. Hannes H. Gissurarson was the maître à penser of the governing elite that promoted and implemented this course of action in Iceland, about which we have written in more detail in Arnarsson (2010) and Baruchello (2018b). 250 The ensuing observations are brief, broad, and basic. Our views on the crisis were presented in greater detail in other essays and books of ours, e. g., Arnarsson (2010) and Baruchello (2017b), (2018a), and (2018b). 251 See, e. g., the repeated waves of so-called “quantitative easing” between 2008 and 2020.

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ian Eric Hobsbawm, for one, highlighted with regard to the post-1929 period in his famous account of the 20th century, i. e., The Age of Extremes. ²⁵² Looking back, we can say that ‘neo’-liberalism effectively rehashed ‘classical’ liberalism, if not improved on it, as openly intended and actively pursued by its most celebrated promoters.²⁵³ One of them was, incidentally, the long-time Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, who regarded himself as a proud devotee of “Adam … Smith’s prescriptions of letting markets prevail with minimal governmental interference” and still claimed publicly in 2005—a mere three years before the eventual collapse—that the neo/liberals’ “deliberate economic policy”, combined with “innovations in information technology”, had made their elected neo/liberal order remarkably “flexible” and “resilient”.²⁵⁴ Somewhat unluckily in hindsight, and rather surprisingly for a man who was supposed to be in the know like no one else in the upper echelons of American high finance, Greenspan singled out “the development of financial products, such as asset-backed securities, collateral loan obligations, and credit default swaps”, as the crucial “innovative” steps forward “that facilitate the dispersion of risk” and “the development of a far more flexible, efficient, and hence resilient financial system than the one that existed just a quarter-century ago”—not to mention in Wall Street’s epoch-making annus horribilis, 1929.²⁵⁵ We all know what happened in 2008.²⁵⁶ And we all should know as well how only massive State intervention in the economic sphere allowed the crisis not to become even worse in its bio-social and politico-economic effects.²⁵⁷ Ironically, the daring Vichian, Hegelian, and Marxist idea of historical cycles can be said to have been extended then and there to orthodox economists and their respectable textbook worldviews, hence not just to common businesses and capitalist economies alone, such that “the forecasting of [the cycle’s] course

252 Hobsbawm (1994), chaps. 3 – 5. We wrote “historical” in the previous sentence above because, from a strict ‘economic’ perspective, the slump can be said to be over. Historical assessments, though, try to gauge deeper and broader trends. 253 In our approach, LVOA envisions which improvements have been good and which bad (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 254 Greenspan (2005), pars. 2 – 4 and 19. This speech is significant because it contains Greenspan’s own concise outline of modern economic history, at least as regards the capitalist regimes and, in particular, the US. 255 Greenspan (2005), pars. 17– 19. 256 If any reader does not belong to said “all”, s/he may want to read Baruchello (2018a) and (2018b). 257 LVOA provides the implicit value coordinates to speak of “better” and “worse” effects (see Chapter 1 of Part 1).

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and the explanation of its irregularities had become a modest profession in which reason, divination and elements of witchcraft had been combined in a manner not elsewhere seen save in the primitive religions”.²⁵⁸ This sardonic instance of clever jeering by ‘Ken’ Galbraith is not a mere humorous aside. Neither is its quintessential cruelty—however oblique, polite, and/ or understated may read the terms in which it was wittily formulated and expressed. There is something inherently comical in the ideological and institutional cycles of the liberal order. Indeed, this ludicrous element resonates even in the order’s equally and necessarily recurrent critiques, which the cited names of Marx, Mill, Mini, and McMurtry exemplify, among others, in this very book. The same is true of countless circularities at large. Rotating is, after all, the typical motion of numerous children’s games, folk dances, and popular amusements, e. g., many a funfair’s rides, merry-go-rounds, or carousels. Likewise, circular repetition, or a loop, is a familiar comedic trope, whether verbal or visual, e. g., Benny Hill’s distinctive silly characters, standard rib-tickling motifs, and time-tested slapstick routines, including running around aimlessly in, once again, a circle.²⁵⁹ At the same time, the circle is also the structure of many a cruel torture and several modes of execution.²⁶⁰ Not unlike the different phases of a business or speculative cycle, circularity may then be the fountainhead of fun, at least for some participants, but it can also cost someone’s head.²⁶¹ Emblematically, while barrel-rolling competitions are still held worldwide as a form of public entertainment (e. g., in Barton-upon-Trent, England, and in Bardstown, Kentucky), the Roman consul Marcus Atilius Regulus is said to have been rolled downhill inside a spiked barrel, so as to make sure that he died a very nasty death—while the spectators laughed at him as he came crashing down. Perhaps, under the ‘right’ condi-

258 Galbraith (2007), 3 – 4. The intricacies of the three thinkers’ modes of cyclicality are not addressed here. 259 Considering how much criticism Benny Hill has received over the past two decades in the Anglophone academic world because of his politically incorrect gags, it was interesting during our researches to come across a contemporary Portuguese high school teacher mentioning without any embarrassment the former’s name as an important source for the appreciation of “humour” proper in the latter’s youth (Silva Correia 2022, 14). 260 Canetti (1966, 183) claimed that the even the sheer “revolving movement” suggested by “the Swastika” has “something cruel about [it]”: “it recalls the limbs of the criminals who used to be broken on the wheel”. 261 About the widespread medieval and Renaissance torture of the wheel, the French historian Antoine Follain (2022, 4, footnote) noted: “The only death penalty that is lengthened on purpose is the wheel. The condemned is the face turned towards the Creator. The agony must last a long time. The convict must expiate for his fault.”

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tions, today’s YouTube and Vimeo watchers would find his execution quite entertaining.²⁶² In any case, we do not have to be as radical as Mini was.²⁶³ Nor do we have to be as sadistic as the ancient Carthaginians were claimed to be by the Roman historians who told us about the unfortunate consul’s whirling demise. Sticking to Galbraith’s level of humorous denouement may be enough. Given the topic of our volume, it is sufficient here to highlight how stock liberal discourses about “economic development” are, if anything else, a daunting case of unintended irony which is, far too frequently, tragicomically lost on standard textbooks of economics and business studies, free-market sycophants, and much academic scholarship.²⁶⁴ Therefore, as students of both humour and cruelty, we are duty-bound to alert our readers to it in an emphatic manner.²⁶⁵

262 The consul’s death around 246 BC is legendary, in both the good and bad senses of the term. We do not need to address and resolve the historiographic and philological aspects of the matter in this book, fortunately enough. 263 An environmentalist philosopher and Continental polymath, McMurtry and Castoriadis may respectively come across as far too ‘radical’ and ‘eccentric’ for the average contemporary Anglophone economist or business pundit. The same can be said, perhaps, of Mini himself. However, scant critical voices have been present within official English-speaking economics and for quite a long time. See, e. g., the Club of Rome’s 1972 report Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) and the works by the late and influential Herman Daly (see Czech 2022 and Heinberg 2022). However, these critical voices have regularly been drowned in the murky waters of orthodoxy, which conceives solely of “homo economicus” rather than “homo ecologicus” (Gutiérrez 2022, title et passim). Besides, being radical may not be a bad thing per se, insofar as the word’s etymology indicates how one is going to the ‘roots’ of the problem. Yet that may well be the course of action that the conservative mind abhors the most. As exemplified by the ‘father’ of modern British conservatism, Edmund Burke (1890, 95), the proper ‘botanical’ course of action is to protect the mighty “oak” that present society inherited from its predecessors. 264 This irony was not lost on Galbraith (2007, 216 – 222, 245 – 251, 462 – 472, et passim) who, in the 1950s and 1960s, questioned already the a-critical identification of “well-being” and “civilisation” with “economic growth”. Indeed, according to Lovelock (2009), capitalism’s process of eco-systemic devastation has already moved past the point of no return. As to the present authors’ works, they have been denouncing the Earth’s environmental collapse since Baruchello (2001). 265 This is no Pindaric flight or a strange detour. Not to acknowledge the ongoing climate crisis and its socio-economic root-cause would be a parody of scholarship, especially insofar as we are making the reader aware of today’s main institutional cruelty, which runs so deep that the most obvious solution to the crisis, i. e., rationing to life-need, is never discussed by the alleged experts in economics and business studies.

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1.2.5.4.2 Rocking Boats With respect to the Western philosophers’ periodic and relatively mild caveats about the risky improprieties of humour, they too have kept revealing an overarching socially selective and/or economically conservative disposition.²⁶⁶ Refinement and self-control have been far more common qua dignified and urgent themes for philosophical inspection than the pursuit of, say, orgiastic licence, uncompromised spontaneity, and/or unashamed divertissement.²⁶⁷ Such a distinct disposition, deep down, still aims today at: (1) controlling humour within businesses and organisations in order not to harm economic efficiency, i. e., profitability;²⁶⁸ and at (2) incepting into the collective imaginary the uncomplicated yet paramount socio-political notion whereby the boat ought not to be rocked, lest we all sink.²⁶⁹ Pace dynamic liberal labels and fashionable business catchphrases such as “disruption”, “creative destruction”, or “pluralism”, the liberal economic order requires a very high level of life-disabling stability at certain levels (e. g., strict topdown management of the workforce, predictable consumer behaviour by way of operant conditioning), whilst generating life-disabling instability at others (e. g., en-

266 Bergson’s (1959) stress on the punitive role of humour was most explicit, in this sense, as later confirmed by Parsons (1991, title, 205 et passim emphasis added), who listed “humor as a tensionrelease” among “the most fundamental [control] mechanisms” within the overall “social system” that he studied. The same logic, overall, was observed by Astapova (2021) in the nature and functions of most commonplace humour in post-communist Belarus. After reading her book, bold claims of humour’s socio-politically game-changing potential, such as those of Chattoo and Feldman (2020), come across as naïve and hyperbolic, if not even as entirely misguided. 267 The same can be said of the social sciences too. As to self-control, we discussed in H&C2 how we are capable of some control over our instinctive drives while, at the same time, these drives, when bottled up, create complexes, neuroses, perversions, and even psychoses. Life’s cruelty resides also in this conflict (see also Chapter 3). 268 The efficiency-driven conservative role of humour in today’s businesses is confirmed, among others, by Butler (2015). Humour too, like any other aspect of the workforce’s behaviour, can and must be managed for profits to keep flowing. The same logic applies to the corporate use of “humour” in its relationships with all other “stakeholders” too, not just the workforce, as naïvely yet instructively revealed in Molina Gayà’s thesis (2021, 2). 269 Davies (1998), chap. 4, made an excellent case for affirming that, as capitalism expanded in the 19th and 20th century, so did the repertoire of jokes about its most committed heralds. The parallel paths so identified suggest, in essence, that humour became all the more necessary in order to cope with the increased pressures and regimentation demanded by capitalism, while at the same time contributing to their further entrenchment, given that capitalism kept expanding and tightening its grip. Humour, as transgressive as it may be, is politically blunt.

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vironmentally and financially).²⁷⁰ Dark, cold, and bitter, an unmatched, potent, and veritably cruel irony runs deep within liberal history, praxes, and principles, in at least four ways.²⁷¹ (1) Revolutionary disruption à la Lenin and Gorky, or even minor labour unrest, have always been deemed anathema by liberals, despite such lines of conduct being inherently and pragmatically consistent with the paramount liberal value of “individual self-interest”.²⁷² (2) Anathema have also been the abolition of the extant proprietary and managerial business hierarchies in favour of, say, workers’ “co-responsibility”, selfownership, and/or self-management (e. g., Europe’s 20th-century socialist and Catholic cooperatives).²⁷³ As Bertrand Russell wrote, “capitalism” imposes a “monarchical organization” in the whole “economic sphere”.²⁷⁴ (3) Trade unions and political parties of various types (e. g., socialist, separatist, communist, fascist) have, on more than one occasion, been banned categorically in the history of numerous liberal States.²⁷⁵ In parallel, hefty sections

270 See, e. g., McMurtry (1999) and (2013) on liberalism’s liberticidal and ecocidal for-profit double movement. As regards consumer behaviour, let us just note how “branding” hints ipso dicto at slavery, i. e., liberty’s opposite. 271 Many more inner contradictions can be identified, including those made famous by the Marxist tradition, which predicts the fall of capitalism because of its inherent contrary drives (see, e. g., Glyn 1990). The cruel irony at play is tragic in a technical sense: we are aware of the contradictions of liberalism, whose sycophants, instead, are not. 272 Utz (1994), par. 7.1.5. A devout Thomist, Utz (1994) offered a much more nuanced notion of selfinterest. 273 Utz (1994), par. 7.8.6. An atheist promoter of shopfloor democracy, Castoriadis (2015, 41; emphasis in the original), wrote: “emancipation implies profound changes in the world of production, in work life. This implies that those who produce decide about everything that is decidable by them in the domain of production and that they might be able to transform production methods in order to exit from what, as a matter of fact, has been called alienation in work. Without that, the rest rapidly becomes a mockery and can lead only to the reconstitution of some kind of social division.” Cooperativism is still being advocated in Islamic nations (see Siswanto et al. 2023). 274 Russell (2009), 475, adding: “Much of what is to be said against militarism in the State is also to be said against capitalism in the economic sphere.” Tellingly, in the 1990s, the former president of Germany’s Central Bank, Hans Tietmeyer, candidly stated: that “financial markets” will become the “gendarmes” of the nations: “Politicians should understand that from now on they are under the control of financial markets” (as cited in Galeano 2001, 151 – 152). 275 Fascist parties and organisations were banned in liberal countries only because of World War II. Until then, several eminent liberals did salute fascism as a praiseworthy bulwark against communism, e. g., von Mises (1978, 51): “It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.”

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of the world’s populations have been prevented from taking part in the allegedly “democratic” life of institutions that liberal constitutions are typically said to enshrine by their prideful defenders.²⁷⁶ (4) Alternative democratic-socialist (e. g., Allende’s Chile), communist (e. g., the USSR), theocratic (e. g., today’s Iran), autocratic (e. g., Ghaddafi’s Libya), or newly independent liberal countries (e. g., Lumumba’s Congo) that were or have been ‘guilty’ of rejecting, reorganising, and/or redistributing private property and/or international competition to consequential degrees, were and/or have been subjected to cruel reprisals and repercussions by nominally “liberal” hence “pluralist” countries. These chastisements and consequences having included, thus far: electoral meddling, prolonged blockades, military invasions (aka “peacekeeping operations”), economic sanctions, covert actions, political assassinations, and financial warfare.²⁷⁷ As inherently praiseworthy as it may be, the Western commitment to democratic “pluralism” has been shown to be, to a significant level, a slogan, i. e., a piece of bombastic, perhaps ludicrous, yet recurring liberal self-promotion.²⁷⁸ In essence, an ideological buoy for specific interest groups to stay afloat in the stormy seas of historical change.²⁷⁹ Or, as Castoriadis proffered while goading his readers into a thoroughly critical mode: “a gross farce intended for imbeciles”.²⁸⁰ Imbecilic or not, cruel humour comes also in these forms, i. e. qua Galbraith’s “innocent frauds”, which centre upon the incongruous duality between socio-economic rhetoric and socio-economic reality.²⁸¹ This being, moreover, yet another ex276 The poor, women, former and/or current slaves, ethnic minorities, the youth, colonial subjects, and/or Indigenous populations are all valid examples of such prolonged exclusions, as any historico-constitutional survey of, say, Germany, the US, Italy, Brazil or Australia can easily and glaringly show (see, e. g., Hobsbawm 1994). 277 See, e. g., McMurtry (1998), (1999), (2002), and (2013). The case of Congo is particularly telling because, 40 years later, the government of constitutionally liberal-democratic Belgium apologised officially (“Belgium” 2002). 278 Rhetorically, the value of pluralism can be reduced to a mere electoral technicality in order to avoid criticism. 279 See, e. g., McMurtry (1999), (2002), (2011), (2012), and (2013) on who gains from it in terms of money, political clout, and socio-cultural pre-eminence. See also Castoriadis (1997a), (2003), and (2005). 280 Castoriadis (1997a), 410. Hillman (2015) did not sound any kinder when stating: “[mainstream] economics is an insane faith”, which “justifies what we do”, even if it means destroying “the very bases” of human life. 281 See, e. g., the many contradictions that are gleefully revealed in Marazzi (2002), the noted Swiss economist. The anthropologist Bruno Etienne (2007, 237) spoke of “ironies” with regard to today’s rhetorical link between “Islam and Violence”—the title of his article and key theme of

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ample of the surprising mismatch between ideality and reality that Bergson, among others, identified as a vital root of comicality, if not the principal one.²⁸² As the great Frenchman contended, the characteristic rigidity of a mechanism is what makes certain people and situations ludicrous in our eyes, insofar as the flexibility that is being called for by the real circumstances is replaced with the obduracy of—as in the case at hand—an unyielding and unrealistic ideological schema that neither reflects these specific circumstances theoretically nor matches them practically.²⁸³ Mechanical metaphors were Bergson’s favourite rhetorical figures.²⁸⁴ Maritime allegories, instead, have been informing our research from the very incipit.²⁸⁵ They are most appropriate here too, insofar as the liberal economic order is often described and implicitly legitimised as a rising tide that lifts all boats together. This metaphor is commonly attributed to the former US President and Galbraith’s close friend, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who got it in turn from his speechwriter Ted Sorensen, who had himself ‘borrowed’ it from the official slogan of the New England Council, i. e., the local chamber of commerce.²⁸⁶ This watery metaphor implies as well that all these boats, for the tide to be able to lift them together, must remain still or still enough.²⁸⁷ In other words, not rocking the boat persists as a core instruction—also, if not especially, vis-àvis commonplace humour. This instruction stands, at the very least, until and unless we are given special leeway to do so.²⁸⁸ Hence, unless an officially authorised and/or widely accepted carnival of sorts has been instituted in each pertinent social milieu.²⁸⁹

the last third of the present chapter—which he deems to result, in a relevant part, from the cruel experiences of colonial exploitation and armed decolonisation in most Middle East, i. e., from complex facets of liberal history and attendant for-profit colonial pursuits. 282 The duality at play works with respect to both the liberals’ hypocrisies and their critics’ wisecracks. 283 See H&C1 and Chapter 2 in Part 1. 284 See H&C1. 285 See the depiction of our intellectual exploration as seafaring, fishing, and diving (H&C1, chap. 1). 286 Sorensen (2008), 227. 287 We used here “allegory” and “metaphor” as synonyms, although they are two distinct rhetorical figures. 288 This conservative principle is not uniquely a liberal one, but it is this economic order that we are writing about. 289 See, e. g., Billig (2005) and Bouissac (2015). The latter’s 40-year study judged clowning to rely almost entirely on comic tropes of rule-violation and rule-reassertion that invariably reinforce the status quo.

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1.2.5.5 East These authorised and/or widely accepted carnivals are, like most other aspects in working people’s lives, yet another part of that which is attentively managed by their social and/or work superiors.²⁹⁰ Representatively, in a fin-de-siècle garment factory in Sri Lanka, an apposite “New Year festival” was held annually, which involved a “laughing contest (presided over by management, this is a contest for the funniest and most authentic-sounding laugh)”.²⁹¹ The 1995 edition of this contest “included a performance by a worker named Mallini, who stated before her performance: ‘Pardon me, I have come here to laugh. They do not allow me to laugh during work, so now I have come here to laugh in front of everybody. Just yesterday they scolded me for laughing.’”²⁹² Exceptional circumstances being absent, all kinds of social inferiors have long known that they should better keep their mouths shut or their hands busy rather than, say, lampooning their superiors, one another, and/or wasting precious time in supposedly ‘idle’ jollity and ‘frivolous’ pranks.²⁹³ These inferiors, among others, have included: (1) ancient and modern slaves;²⁹⁴ (2) convict and indentured labourers;²⁹⁵ (3) rural, domestic and industrial serfs;²⁹⁶

290 Eco (1983, 253) argued that carnivals are an instance of “the comical”, which reasserts the rule by turning it momentarily upside-down; as such, they are the opposite of “the humorous”, which criticises the rule by apparently complying with it. Deleuze’s characterisation of ‘masochism’ and its being a form of “humour” were thus restated. 291 Lynch (1999), 22, note 7. 292 Lynch (1999), 22, note 7. 293 To be tolerated, such behaviours must be shown to be conducive to higher profitability. 294 Many countries, including Uruguay and Paraguay, ratified the 1926 International Slavery Convention only in the 21st century, i. e., long after modern industry had been established worldwide (see Eltis 2016, vol. 4). 295 Key to the economic development of the Americas, peonage and indentured labour lasted well into the 20th century (Eltis 2016, vol. 4). In the US, convict leasing was banned in all its forms by F.D. Roosevelt in 1941, but it returned in a new guise at the end of the same century as a result of mass incarceration (see Christie 2017). In Latin America, indentured labour remained endemic well into the mid-20th century (see, e. g., Del Rocío Bello-Urrego 2020). Ironically—and perplexingly—finance scholars Morrison and Wilhelm Jr. (2007, 43) would have indentured labour reintroduced today in order not to “undermine an agent’s property rights over his own person”. 296 In the 1860s, Russia and Romania were the last European nations to abolish serfdom (O’Rourke 2016). Serfs, convict labour, and the forced employment of “paupers, vagrants and soldiers’ wives” were crucial to Russia’s capitalist beginnings in the 18th century (Nosov, Ganelin, and Likhacëv, 1980, vol. 1, 183).

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(4) conscripted and volunteering soldiers;²⁹⁷ (5) kidnapped and free sailors;²⁹⁸ and (6) common workers aka “employees”.²⁹⁹ Making workers numb, acquiescent and fearful has been regularly preferred by both business management and business ownership to merrier alternatives, such as letting the employees play silly, enjoy one another’s humour freely, be spontaneous and creative in the workplace, or turn their occupational environment into a joyful and mirthful setting for personal growth and satisfaction.³⁰⁰ In spite of the omnipresent liberal “discourses of freedom”, the liberal economic order has regularly demanded strict, widespread, and thorough regimentation of both societies and individuals, mentally as well as physically, even if the ensuing situation may be reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s classic comedy, Modern Times. ³⁰¹

297 Peasants and working-class men have made up the bulk of all armies, and the soldiers’ treatment has been as harsh as that of the workers on fields and in factories (see chaps. 7 and 15 of G. Scott 1996). As a former professional soldier confessed in Italy: “Fear. The soldier must be afraid of his superiors. He may not laugh at them. He may not get outraged when he witnesses horrors or injustices that turn his stomach inside out. He may not speak or even think, for his superiors alone have the right to do so and do it in his place” (Anonymous 2009, 8). 298 G. Scott (1996) devoted a whole chapter to floggings in the navy and the army; Cooper (1910) devoted three chapters, plus two on floggings in the Russia Empire at large, which include however ample references to the navy and the army. 299 The “factory discipline” of the industrial revolution was based on the expertise for mental and physical conditioning developed inside prisons and in the army. Convict labour was pivotal for Europe’s early industry, as famously discussed by Foucault (1975) and by Melossi and Pavarini (1977). The qualitative continuity between slave and servile labour, on the one hand, and modern industrial wage labour, on the other, is not hyperbolic. On the contrary, it was attested repeatedly by distinguished observers. See, e. g.: US President A. Lincoln (1932, 18 – 20); Pope Leo XIII (1891, par. 3); the Russian novelist Lev N. Tolstoy (1900, chap. 8); and Chesterton (1922, 299 – 300). Holland-based social scientist Conrad Lashley (2018b, 1 and 8) wrote recently about “neo-slavery” in today’s “hospitality” service industry, especially wherever the influence of “neo-liberalism” has been the most pronounced (see also Lashley 2018a). Long before him, the French historian Paul Mantoux (1935, 75 et passim) had spoken repeatedly of “cruelty” and “servitude” in the early British industries. 300 In an interesting twist, Castoriadis (2018, 103) recalled how pranks can be used by factory “workers” to “test each other. Sometimes a whole day will be spent plaguing a worker; for example, putting bluing on his machine, stopping his machine continually, upsetting his tool box, hiding his tools, etc… This is to determine if the worker will squeal to the boss and also to determine if he has a sense of humor and is a good guy.” 301 Ringer (2015), 26.

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In the liberal economic order, the growth that matters is expressed in pecuniary gains and GDP rates, not as personal maturation and/or cheerfulness.³⁰² The freedom that unfolds along assembly lines and most cubicles is that of prices, sales, and purchases, not that of the potentially imaginative, hence potentially disruptive, living individuals who are key to the production of the tradable and traded goods.³⁰³ As an anonymous female factory hand described her working conditions in a relatively recent member of the World Trade Organisation, i. e., the People’s Republic of China: “Every day I perform the same movement between four- and five thousand times.”³⁰⁴ In line with this systemic regimentation of the workers’ behaviours, the individuals disobeying orders and/or failing to abstain from playfulness have been chastised again and again, sometimes in inventively cruel ways. For instance, Scott recalled “an enterprising Virginian” who had “the big idea whereby it was possible to ‘whip’ or beat a negro into insensibility without leaving any traces of the owner’s handiwork. To this end, he devised a thin wooden ‘paddle’ punctured all over its flat surface with small holes.”³⁰⁵ In the fin-de-siècle garment factory in Sri Lanka where the employee called Mallini enjoyed a management-held opportunity to laugh, “[a] worker caught laughing or talking when not on break” on any other day but the one on which the New Year laughing contest is organised,

302 We assume the reader to be able to grasp the paramount importance of maturity and joy. 303 The Jungian analyst Buccola (2019, 51 – 52; emphasis added) condemned as pathogenic the business-driven “aggressive” and “immoral” ethos of self-affirming competition and its inhumane “rigidity”, which our societies should replace with “soft” social praxes, such as “sentimentalism, love of music, of the arts, [and] humour”. 304 Partito comunista internazionale (2015), part 1, par. 1. This source pits a declaredly communist organisation against an officially communist country that has been ‘liberalising’ since the 1970s (see, e. g., Hobsbawm 1994). In yet another cruel irony of human history, contemporary China’s (PRC) official sources claim to be “adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of the times” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2022, par. 20; emphasis added). Concomitantly, mainstream Western media keep reporting about the dreadful factory-life conditions that endure in the PRC, as though liberal Britain’s proverbial Satanic mills were still in existence (see, e. g., “Inside the Shein Machine” 2022). While the finance, fields and factories of many a Western nation are certainly capable of contradicting these liberal countries’ formal commitment to human rights, the ongoing Chinese variations on the dismal theme of Dickensian England make a potent and patent parody of any “guiding Marxist document” that the country’s government happens to issue (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2022, par. 10). Whatever “Marxism” may truly mean, one thing is certain: it has never been a doctrine sponsoring the continuation of the exploitative liberal economic practices at which Marx and Engels (1967) had once directed their vocal attacks. 305 G. Scott (1996), 68 – 69.

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“will receive a warning, but might eventually be sent home for two weeks without pay”.³⁰⁶ 1.2.5.6 The Banality of Cruelty No particularly sinister, misogelastic, or perversely malicious motive must necessarily be at work in for-profit businesses such as Mallini’s Ceylonese factory or, for that matter, in today’s large public administrations operating under a liberal economic order.³⁰⁷ Simply, business-life-as-usual can easily make all involved parties, and especially the managers, morally blind, and the evil for which they are co-responsible, routinised, inconspicuous, and banal—à la Eichmann, as a present-day Danish business ethicist denounced.³⁰⁸ Such being the result of combined influences arising from: (1) Taken-for-granted, time-honoured, yet dehumanising business praxes;³⁰⁹ and (2) the exhaustive institutionalisation of the same praxes, primarily by means of (2a) fitting laws and regulations, but also (2b) by repeated cultural/scientific sanctioning at all kinds of levels. As succinctly stated by the great Russian writer and anarchist thinker Leo Tolstoy: modern “political economy” and “jurisprudence” are in place, like the religions of old, so as “to prove that what now exists, is what ought to be”. ³¹⁰ Later, Walter Lippmann echoed him by noting how “the ‘frictions’ and ‘disturbances’” recognised by “classical economics” are the “cruel injustices, misery, defeat, and frustration” suffered by “the victims” of the concrete application of their “theoretical system”.³¹¹ Run-of-the-mill phrases such as “cruel business”, the “cruel world (of business)” and “it’s a cruel world out there” still serve, in daily conversations, these

306 Lynch (1999), 20. 307 See, e. g., Utz (1994), pars. 3 and 5.2.2 – 5.2.6, and Rendtorff (2004) on large bureaucracies. 308 The implied reference being Arendt’s (1998) 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, whence Rendtorff (2020) derives its key categories. This ilk of banal cruelty can emerge in all large bureaucracies (see, e. g., Bhatia 2020). 309 The plethora of beastly similes and grisly metaphors of the capitalist world are an oft-unseen indication of the dehumanisation demanded by its unrestricted functioning: “rat races”, “dog-eatdog”, or “cutthroat competition”, “bear” and “bull” markets, “worms” to be squashed, “vulture funds”, private-equity “locusts”, etc. An analogous role is played by terms borrowed from the natural sciences, which implicitly deny the human freedom and responsibility behind economic events: “overheating”, “chain reactions”, “tsunamis”, “shockwaves”, etc. 310 Tolstoy (1900), chap. 12, par. 2. 311 Lippmann (2005), 208.

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sanctioning purposes.³¹² In the academic and allegedly “scientific” context, instead, these purposes take effect under a flood of repeated, mantra-like, time-honoured, ad hoc, ethico-economic and/or socio-biological categories of interpretation and explanation.³¹³ These exculpatory concepts having included, among others: ‘civilisation’, ‘progress’, ‘law-abidingness’, ‘fiduciary duty’, ‘unintended consequences’, ‘spill-overs’, ‘competition’, ‘necessity’, ‘inevitability’, and ‘toughness’.³¹⁴ The underlying logic is, however, rather dry. As McMurtry wrote in 2021: In the ruling value syntax of contemporary global society, the subject is money capital whose verb is seeking to become more without upper limit, and all modifiers are money-demand or its equivalents: with competing money capital subjects and the human and natural resources they purchase, exchange and dispose of always used to become more money capital. Rationality in this onto-axiological grammar is regulatively presupposed as (i) self-maximizing strategies in (ii) conditions of scarcity or conflict over (iii) desired payoffs at (iv) minimum costs for the self to (v) win/gain more.³¹⁵

At some critical juncture in the prosaic life of a business enterprise, the paramount profit imperative is bound to clash with one or more basic moral duties of the business agents, wherever these agents may be placed in the pertinent functional hierarchy.³¹⁶ The same imperative may even clash with the already minimal legal obligations of the same agents and translate, sooner or later, into a host of personal and/or institutional failures: (1) irresponsibility;³¹⁷ (2) immorality;³¹⁸ 312 These two examples are ours, not Hallie’s, who does not address “externalities” either, at least nominally. 313 The subjection of much modern science to business interests or the ‘rationality’ of the researchers qua self-interested agents can cast vast clouds of epistemic and much moral doubt on the “social legitimacy” that can be obtained via studies produced in disciplines pursued “by those with the greatest incentive to remain blind to the danger[s]”, for which they can actually supply convenient “rationalizations” instead (Freese 2020, 98 f.). 314 See Utz (1994, par. 3) and Bek-Thomsen et al. (2017). Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” was taken by many 20th-century economists as a deus ex machina explaining and legitimising the liberal order. Yet Smith’s own original assessment is much more qualified and circumspect (see, e. g., Kennedy 2009). 315 McMurtry (2021), par. 2. 316 See, e. g., Lantos (2010). 317 A subtler and common type of immorality, this term grasps more intuitively our penchant for shirking personal and/or institutional duties by way of self-exculpatory strategies, e. g., “this is not the real me”, “this is not personal; it’s only business”, “everybody does it”, “it’s not illegal”, “I was young”, “my superiors expect it of me”, etc. 318 See Rendtorff (2020), and, e. g., Wisler (2018), which offered a case-specific example.

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law-breaking;³¹⁹ and/or patently recognised “cruelty” of the brutal, callous type, whether direct or indirect.³²⁰

While reflecting on the fabulous fortunes accumulated by the so-called “robber barons” and “financial moguls” of his day, Chesterton mordantly wrote: We have no need to elaborate arguments for breaking the law. The capitalists have broken the law. We have no need of further moralities. They have broken their own morality. It is as if you were to run down the street shouting, “Communism! Communism! Share! Share!” after a man who had run away with your watch… [T]ell everybody that there is, by the common standard, frank fraud and cruelty pushed to their fierce extreme.³²¹

Equally humorous, Leacock was no kinder observer of the murky logic inherent to modern liberalism. While comparing the horrors of the Dark Ages and those of ours, he cracked: Not that the people of the Middle Ages were worse, or very much worse, than we are. But they were much more callous to human physical suffering. We stand appalled at their cruel punishments, their dungeons, the savage brutality of their law. But they, if they could know us, would stand appalled at what they would think our crooked mentality, our universal cheating, —in a word, at what we call “business”. The honorable knight, or the pious abbot, or even the plain yeoman of the Middle Ages would regard us as a pack of unreliable crooks.³²²

Praising the “mediæval age in Europe”, and without any hint of humour, the Indian philosopher and Nobel-prize winner Rabindranath Tagore argued that the “cruel war” ravaging the Old Continent since 1914 was the outcome of “the West … systematically petrifying her moral nature in order to lay a solid foundation for her gigantic abstractions of efficiency. She has all along been starving the

319 See, e. g., Markowitz (2000) and the notorious criminal case of a physician who was found guilty of both “serious professional misconduct” and “financial dishonesty” (Wilmhurst 2002, 1234). 320 See, e. g., Maerz (2020, 137) on “corporate cruelty” proper. Sadistic cruelty can also occur in the business world, whether harmful or beneficial to the profits at stake (see, e. g., Góis, Franco de Lima, and Mendes De Luca 2020). 321 Chesterton (2000 – 2012), essay 12, par. 3. Chesterton had no qualms vis-à-vis rejecting the primacy given by liberals to private property and the profit motive. As sternly qualified in his elected Catholic tradition, both institutions have been repeatedly sidelined and/or openly condemned in the history of Christianity, e. g., by the Apostles (see Acts 2:44 and 4:32), St. Ambrose, St. Francis, the Anabaptists, the Shakers, etc. (see, e. g., Nordhoff 1965). 322 Leacock (1934), 16.

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life of the personal man into that of the professional”.³²³ Inevitably, a civilization based upon the spirit of “competition … breeds cruelty and makes the atmosphere thick with lies and deception”.³²⁴ And as the World War II veteran Hallie observed in his own later reflections about institutional cruelty, the recurrent clash between profit-seeking and human moral imperatives morphs conveniently into the overintelligent “rationalization” and/or “legitimation” of all such dismal, disturbing, recurrent—indeed, even expected—life-disabling occurrences.³²⁵ 1.2.5.7 Castoriadis Concerning this perplexing academic and scientific process of pseudo-rational exoneration in the face of institutionalised cruelties, Castoriadis had something humorous to say.³²⁶ A Graeco-French, World War II Trotskyist partisan, OECD economist, Freudian psychoanalyst, and creative metaphysician and political philosopher, Castoriadis poked outright fun, in many of his works, at the liberal economists’ and business adherents’ ruling paradigm of intelligent conduct in human and social agency.³²⁷ For instance, he did so in a caustic, cautionary 1997 essay, which is entitled “The ‘Rationality’ of Capitalism”: This economic man is a man who is uniquely and perfectly calculatory. His behavior is that of a computer maximizing/minimizing at every instant the outcomes of his actions. One could easily elicit some laughter from the reader by bringing out the strict consequences of this fiction: for example, that he himself, each morning after he wakes up but before he gets out of bed, inspects without knowing it the several billion possibilities offered to him to maximize the pleasantness or minimize the unpleasantness of his day that is now beginning, weights

323 Tagore (1918), 33. 324 Tagore (1918), 117. 325 The difference between “rationalization” and “legitimation” being, according to Hallie (1971a, 251 – 254; emphasis added), that the former is “only partially successful” in “smoothing over a tension … (or cognitive strain) between good and evil”, whereas the latter “is perfect justification and thus a far more effective mask”, such that “almost any harm-doing” can be done in the name of “Law and order”; e. g., putting “victimized” people into “a grave, a concentration camp, or a cotton field” for the “noble and pure” goals of “mak[ing] a steady profit” and fulfilling any attendant virtues, such as “orderliness” and “duty”, or “practical considerations of ‘business as usual’”. 326 For a concise introduction to Castoriadis’ thought and milieu, see Psarras and Karidas (2019). 327 Writing in the Parisian milieu of the second half of the 20th century, Castoriadis’ critique can be added to those by Bataille and Derrida who, according to Enkelmann (2013, 456), also tackled “cruelties rendered categorically inaccessible and taboo to the circulation of rationality because they have systematically been shifted from their original sphere, into the area of the irrational and the jurisdiction of morality”, and aimed themselves “to find the real limits of economy, its beginning and its end, and to find rationality in places where it will shipwreck or has already shipwrecked, the catastrophe being covered up with a camouflage of economical rationality”.

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their various combinations, and then sets his foot on the ground, always ready, moreover, to revise the conclusions of his calculation in light of every new piece of information he receives.³²⁸

Such an inane yet textbook logic speaks relentlessly of amply “obvious” and assumedly “rational” profit-seeking behaviours that only an irrational agent would ipso dicto fail to pursue.³²⁹ Real humankind is thus erased from view ab initio. There is no noticeable room left for sacrifice, duty, honour, capriciousness, moderation, blind habit, cordiality, cooperation, generosity, stupidity, pride, indifference, laziness, loftiness, lust, self-hatred, piety, piousness, daydreaming, frugality, resentment, fear, compulsion, prudence, misanthropy, paranoia, self-sufficiency, envy, prodigality, and the millions other uneconomic as well as anti-economic motives, whether rational or irrational, that real people exhibit in their lives.³³⁰ In its effectively adamant money-centred monotony, this presumed logic explains also why: (1) On a big scale, “the monetary preferences of financial institutions” frequently “triumph over the constitutional rights of the citizens” and damage—in an egregious exemplification of Hallie’s institutionalised cruelty—“the supreme social projects of education and health”, as seen, e. g., in post-2008 Greece.³³¹ These “supreme social projects” being, by the way, no enlightened charity or well-meaning policy preference that State authorities, central bankers, and/or unelected institutional creditors—many of whom are often foreign citizens vis-à-vis the nation whose public goods and services are being gutted—may withhold at

328 Castoriadis (2005), 100. Pursuing blindly the alleged rationality of collectivism can produce parallel evil effects. As Hayek (1944, 111) wrote, under grim conditions, “cruelty may become a duty” (e. g., killing kulaks). 329 Much of this relentless profit-seeking is today a totally life-disconnected automated process, performed by computers programmed to behave precisely like the abstract “appetitive machine” presupposed by liberal political economy and, later, classical and neoclassical economics, i. e., that peculiar “homo economicus” that so very little resembles the genuine article: homo sapiens (Fairfield 2000, 61 – 67). Tellingly, in the 18th century, both A. Smith (1790) and Rousseau (1997) acknowledged that numerous Indigenous populations resisted most violently the ‘profitable’ Western encroachment across the globe and these people would rather die than live like them. 330 We assume our readers to have come across such a plurality of uneconomic and anti-economic motives in their dealings with other people and with themselves. Scientifically, Pareto (1935) tried to reduce these uneconomic and anti-economic motives to about 45 subclasses of fundamental socio-psychological drivers or “residues”. Artistically, Dostoyevsky depicted in his novels countless varieties of inner forces leading people to act against their own patent economic interests, publicly held beliefs, and better rational judgement (see also H&C2). 331 De Paz González, Bernal Ballestreros, and Murillo Ortiz (2019), 175 – 176. See also Baruchello (2017a), 143 – 151 and Varoufakis (2017).

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will.³³² Legally speaking, they are fundamental rights of the individual and of communities across the globe, as emphatically mandated at the highest level of planetary representation, i. e., via the United Nations’ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966b).³³³ (2) On a small scale, the same inane yet textbook logic of amply ‘obvious’ and assumedly ‘rational’ relentless profit-seeking brings us back to the Chinese factory of the anonymous—and truly Chaplinesque—East-Asian worker, whom we mentioned in the previous pages.³³⁴ Her case returns to the forefront because this worker—i. e., this living person who happens to work in such a for-profit factory —embodies, almost grotesquely, the grinding and dehumanising toil of the enduring Fordist production methods of the modern age, in which the economic rationality satirised by Castoriadis is actually taken to be the only conceivable form of plausible rationality.³³⁵ In a matter-of-fact yet devastatingly evocative tone, the article containing the Asian worker’s interview reported as follows: On average, a wage worker in the factories of this company …, one of the main producers of consumer electronics [in contemporary China] performs between 18- and 20,000 of these [numbing] physical movements per shift. Every day, the worker must perform them in a crammed, narrow space, isolated from the other workers. Control and surveillance are relentless and asphyxiating, laughing and talking are forbidden, and in any case, it is mandatory to

332 Albeit not tackling “cruelty” proper, Beato (2021, 72) highlighted another form of institutional agency affecting post-crisis Greece in a similar life-disabling way, i. e., “the structural violence that occurs when public funds are diverted to military rather than social spending”. See also the academically better-established McMurtry (1989) on the thoroughly life-disabling nature of military spending. 333 Pace the notion that human rights are a Western conspiracy: “of 192 member states of the UN, 160 are parties to the ICESCR and a further six have signed it. The state parties include states from all different geographical, legal, economic, cultural, and religious traditions at all levels of development, indicating shared recognition of the importance of economic, social, and cultural rights. Emblematically, after decades of negotiation, the Optional Protocol (OP-ICESCR, 2008) was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2008… When opened for signature in September 2009, twenty-nine states immediately signed the protocol… Since then and at the time of writing, a further four states have signed and two states have ratified it” (Baruchello and Johnstone 2011, 102). 334 See, e. g., Hatherley (2016) on Chaplin and Fordism. 335 As Doughty (2017, 1) remarked, sardonically: “Henry Ford [is] the only American praised in Hitler’s Mein Kampf.” Ernst Jünger addressed an even more chilling case of human reduction to “automata”, i. e., soldiers in the modern mechanised wars waged by industrial States (as translated and cited in Costea and Amiridis 2017, 479).

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attain the daily production objectives, lest workers be obliged to keep going until the objectives are attained, but without any overtime compensation.³³⁶

As two contemporary philosophers of education observed: “in this perverse context”, the fundamental ethical and constitutional principle of “human dignity” gets utterly lost, for everything that matters “begins and ends with the economic relevance of man being used to the maximum as a human resource; a resource alongside other natural resources”.³³⁷ In a cruel irony of today’s mainstream economics—and of its constant reverberations onto general culture and common parlance—living human beings that could be legitimately described as “persons”, “creators”, “souls”, “spiritual existences”, “ethical agents” or, a tad more inventively, “conscious imaginators”, are tritely and incessantly being described as “consumers”, “employees”, “producers”, “employers”, or, at best, “job creators”. Homo sapiens is thus verbally reduced to a mere factor of production, which could not even begin to have place in the absence of all such tacitly presupposed and largely free-ridden dimensions of human existence and self-expression, whether conceivably ‘rational’ or not.³³⁸ (3) Before Castoriadis and the Asian Tigers (or Dragons), the generally moderate Leacock had himself satirised “the science of Political Economy” of “Adam Smith … John Stuart Mill” and “Nassau William Senior”, who had turned into a “dogmatic and self certain” set of “laws and … guiding policy” the inhumane praxes of “[p]rivate enterprise, extended unchecked and free” requiring, ironically, “the enslavement of the weak by the strong”, e. g., the “slavery of the cotton mills of Lancashire of a hundred years ago”, the pervasive “crush[ing] competition”, and “children at work as full time workers at ten years of age”.³³⁹

336 Partito comunista internazionale (2015), part 1, par. 1: strict rules and managerial controls extend to the “shared dormitory” where workers are expected to “go and ‘rest’”, even if “it is forbidden to wash one’s own clothes, to use a hairdryer, returning past 11pm and, if any infringement occurs, a punishment is in order”. Since the time of Den Xiaoping, communist China has exemplified how a liberal economic order can exist without a concomitant liberal political order. Contra all facile equations, “free markets” and “democracy” are mutually separate and separable realities, not a “two-way street”, as stated by former US President Bill Clinton (1996, 36) or argued by Hayek (1944, 100), who posited a false dichotomy between “a competitive society” with “cruelly high price[s]” and a society pursuing “social welfare” by governmental intervention in the economy. 337 Dědečková and Charlesworth (2022), 107; emphasis in the original. 338 Dědečková and Charlesworth (2022) imply this reduction to be cultural-conceptual and sociopractical. Hence, it is not a matter of sheer selective scientific categorisations, but of establishing a much broader mode of thinking. 339 Leacock (1945), 18 – 39.

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Aware of such historical horrors, the 20th-century Austrian neo/liberal thinker and philosopher of science, Karl Popper, conceded: I am very ready to agree that some of the slums and other architectural developments, especially in Marx’s time, were terrible, and that they were no doubt typical of that “mode of production”, to use Marxist jargon, which Marx called “Capitalism”. And I agree that the conditions under which workers had to work were even more terrible. And I agree that in many places, working conditions are still badly in need of improvement.³⁴⁰

Some of these horrors have not vanished from Earth yet. While discussing the enduring exploitative realities of 21st-century “slavery and human trafficking”, Bramon and Leslie wrote: “Many modern slaveholders, however, do not enslave individuals as an exercise of cruelty or to solely exert pain onto another human being; their motive is often to enslave others to make a monetary profit.”³⁴¹ Irrespective of their legal categorisation as criminals, then, modern slaveholders are, au fond, ‘rational’ agents, at least according to the philosophical anthropology assumed by standard neo/liberal theories (aka “orthodox” economics), which have a long history of brutalising those very human proles [progeny], whence the word “proletarian” arose.³⁴² (4) In the liberal economies of the world, strict factory discipline, prohibitions to laugh, and attendant cruel chastisements have been most habitual with respect to the younger subordinates, who must yet acquire the full and proper persuasion and forma mentis. ³⁴³ Making the victims willing participants into the system of “[i]nstitutional victimization” is crucial, as Hallie discussed.³⁴⁴ While “personal cruelties” are unconvincing to their victims who “always defend [their] right to freedom”, “group-to-group” ones can accomplish this feat by “train[ing their victims] from the cradle” to “think and feel” that they should be “bowing” to “the in-

340 Popper (1987), 23. 341 Bramon and Leslie (2012), 114 and 117. 342 See Harper (2001 – 2021). Curiously enough, these liberal economic theories began developing at a time when a large-scale international slave trade was booming on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean. How to reconcile this cruelly exploitative and most profitable global practice with Adam Smith’s idyllic small-town “self-interest[ed]” commercial exchanges involving “the butcher, the brewer, or the baker” is yet another cruel irony affecting liberal history and ideology (Brown 2010, 28). Galbraith’s (2004) “innocent fraud” comes to mind in this regard. 343 Insofar as our readers are likely to be, like this book’s authors, children of the liberal order, emphases and examples must be given aplenty to let this order’s cruelty surface in its horror, culpability, and institutionalisation. 344 Hallie (1971a), 257.

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stitution”.³⁴⁵ This conditioning too is mandated for the ultimate and prevailing sake of optimal, profit-bearing output.³⁴⁶ (4a) Not only have several generations of child labourers been forcefully and efficiently coerced into spending “long hours in unsanitary factories, workshops, and homes”, whether this has happened in 19th-century England, 20th-century Colombia, or today’s China.³⁴⁷ (4b) Also, “[t]heir work” has been “tedious or degrading and … paid less than older workers”.³⁴⁸ (4c) And crucially—at least vis-à-vis the two foci of our research—these “children [have] suffered physical abuse” on a regular basis too.³⁴⁹ “Employers [have] whipped, hit, kicked, slapped, and thrashed their child employees” in both Dickensian factories and modern-day Asian sweatshops, insofar as “corporal punishment increase[s] the productivity of child labor”.³⁵⁰ (4d) Consistently with the enduring penchant for aprioristic, mathematical renditions of human affairs in economics and the social sciences, a contemporary Asian-American political scientist, Michael Suk-Young Chwe, produced an abstract model explaining why it is “rational” to inflict pain “upon people who are poor in the sense of having bad alternatives”, such as children from poor families.³⁵¹ Although he did not personally favour this line of conduct, his discipline’s methodology allows for such noticeably cruel means to count as ‘rational’ at a conceptual level.³⁵² Proverbially, sparing the rod spoils the child. Economically, sparing the

345 Hallie (1971a), 255 – 257. 346 Possibly still drunk on the collapse of communist Europe, a liberal economist, Gregory Clark (1994, 128), argued that 19th-century factory “discipline succeeded mainly by increasing work effort. Workers effectively hired capitalists to make them work harder. They lacked the self-control to achieve higher earnings on their own.” This is how institutional cruelty is rationalised and justified, in line with Hallie (1971a). Let’s call it “class masochism”. 347 See, e. g., Nardinelli (1982), 283, Farmsworth-Alvear (1997), and Chan and Xiaoyang (2003). While listing the “barbarous cruelties” of earlier times and prior economic orders, Cipolla (2005, 46) notes that “[w]ith the development of the factory system, the children were employed … the whole year around” rather than seasonally. 348 Nardinelli (1982), 283. 349 Nardinelli (1982), 283. 350 Nardinelli (1982), 283. Child labour has not vanished from the West (see, e. g., Giroux 2012, chaps. 4 – 5). 351 See Chwe (1990), 1109. As Howard Friedman (2020, chap. 5) showed, it can even be ‘rational’ to let workers die if it costs too much to keep them alive, i. e., if their survival eats into the profits. 352 LVOA and the Thomist tradition exemplified by Utz (1994) offer much ‘thicker’ notions of rationality (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). Today’s standard economic reason, for its part, reminds us of the “barbarism of reflection” that Vico (1948, par. 1106) believed to characterise all decrepit civilisations which, by having progressed so far from their cruel founders’ “barbarism of sense” and

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child spoils the profits.³⁵³ This being the case, at least, insofar as ‘irrational’ and ‘unscientific’ morality is thought of as passé and the much-loathed “red tape” of the law is not… unfurled.³⁵⁴ (5) Those who live to an old age, whether ripe or not, run analogous risks. Having grey hair, or none at all, does not mean being off the hook. Quite the opposite. (5a) True to his liberal principles and calculating economic logic, Pareto himself realised that the economic rationality of capitalism would justify eliminating unproductive individuals, such as the elderly, disabled, and chronically infirm.³⁵⁵ At the same time, Pareto deemed a “rational ethics” based on objective facts not to be available, while the “rational” profit-motive reigned supreme and alone in economics.³⁵⁶ Unable to solve this dilemma, Pareto stated simply that caring for the well-being of such vulnerable individuals was one of society’s “sacred duties”, thus prompting moral and legal obligations into the public sphere like a deus ex machina—or a far less divine hare out of a magician’s hat.³⁵⁷ (5b) Analogous principles and logic have therefore caused analogous theoretical and financial difficulties in justifying the non-elimination of ‘unproductive’ pensioners in today’s neo/liberal day and age, e. g., when “[t]he basic choice all along with Covid-19 has been: Do we let the old die, or do we take a big hit economically?”³⁵⁸

the later mythical creativity whence “piety, faith, and … justice” arose, are now incapable of the bodily immediacy and imaginative empathy that, say, would prevent a person from using and abusing children as mere means to a profitable end, i. e., ‘rationally’ in the ‘thin’ economic sense at issue. 353 The enduring pecuniary efficiency of child labour is tackled in Chatterjee and Ray (2019). 354 See also Silvestri and Walraevens (2022) on a recent attempt by the American economists Smith and Wilson (2019)—i. e., so-called “humanomics”—aimed at rediscovering Adam Smith’s philosophical approach, mixing it with empirical research and bringing mainstream economics closer to actual human behaviour, hence offering a more acceptable depiction of economic rationality and, basically, increasing the discipline’s shaky trustworthiness. Incredibly, “humanomics” operates as though the likes of Veblen, Castoriadis, or Galbraith had never existed, i. e., modern ‘masters’ within that “other canon” of economic thinking which the Norwegian economist Erik S. Reinert (2006, 6) traced back to the Renaissance and counterposed to the later orthodox one. 355 See Mornati (2018), 158. 356 Mornati (2018), 208. 357 Mornati (2018), 158 358 Dyer (2020), par. 1. An additional cruel irony of this dilemma being the fact that most pundits kept talking of the “economy” and its attendant aspects as though there could exist only the neo/ liberal socio-economic order that has kept failing since at least 1929, caused enormous life-disablements, and made our species’ survival unlikely.

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1.2.5.8 Detrusions The cruel rewards of mirth and levity are not confined to the working men, women, and children (and animals) of the capitalist system.³⁵⁹ At the top of the social ladder, where the wealth of nations is enjoyed lavishly and the liberals’ much-praised freedoms can be fully experienced by individuals devoid of nagging economic insecurity, commonplace humour can elicit responsive cruelty too.³⁶⁰ As farcical as it may sound, the wealthy and the powerful can get themselves a few beatings and cruel abuses for their jests, even when no resentful bottom-up upheaval looms on the horizon.³⁶¹ Being more than used to mishandling at leisure their social inferiors, the privileged members of the wealthy elites can sometimes instruct the same kind of painful lesson onto cheeky individuals belonging to their same fortunate social circles.³⁶² Even the most distinguished individuals may have to be lowered in station and/or self-esteem, both painfully and exemplarily, if their joshing or mocking conduct is judged by their peers to have stepped past the accepted and/or acceptable boundaries of social propriety.³⁶³ The anonymous author of the 1924 History of Flagellation, for example, recalls the shocking scandal involving “the Marchioness of Tresnel, who, on account of her birth, considered herself to be greatly superior to the … Lady of Liancourt”, who, “on the other hand, was said to have written a copy of verses against the Marchioness”, whose rage was thus unleashed by having

359 Following Utz (1994), we have been using here “order” and “system” as synonyms. 360 As Castoriadis (2013, 58) noted, with his usual sarcasm: “our system of production is contestable because it is forced upon us while grinding down laboring people for forty or more hours per week, after which it is ridiculous to believe that they will have a Sunday of political activity”: therefore, “it is antidemocratic” too. 361 As Chesterton (1919a, chap. 15, par. 5) ironised: “The English lower classes do not fear the English upper classes in the least; nobody could. They simply and freely and sentimentally worship them. The strength of the aristocracy is not in the aristocracy at all; it is in the slums… The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.” The enormous success of TV shows and films such as Downton Abbey (2010 – 2015 and 2019 – 2022) or the mass mourning for the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 suggest that little may have changed in the UK under this respect since Chesterton’s day. 362 G. Scott (1996, chap. 8) recalled many famous members of the elite who were caned and/or flogged because of, inter alia, childish pranks and juvenile mischievousness, e. g., Frederick the Great, King George III’s sons, Madame de Maintenon, and Voltaire. 363 Significantly, in Britain, “peers” means not only ‘those who have the same rank’, but also ‘aristocrats’.

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her rival seized by a gang of sturdy servants and given “a flagellation” worthy of a prison convict.³⁶⁴ In another instance, on 16 May 1717, none less than Voltaire was arrested and sentenced to undergo a one-year stint at the Bastille because his “satirical attack on politics and religion [had] infuriated the government” of France.³⁶⁵ Even so, “Voltaire’s time in prison failed to dry up his satirical pen. In 1726, he was forced to flee to England… In 1734 … he was forced to flee again… In 1750, he moved to Berlin on the invitation of Frederick II of Prussia and later settled in Switzerland.”³⁶⁶

1.3 Censoring Comedy Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto. —Terence³⁶⁷

Voltaire’s unsavoury experiences shed light on a sensitive socio-political and legaltheoretical context in which nominal allegations of “cruelty” and manifestations of “humour”, “true” as well as commonplace, have frequently collided: censoring comedy.³⁶⁸ The censorship of this form of humour is nothing but a big game of tug-of-war, played across society, and comprising two internally diverse ‘teams’: (1) At one end of the rope, randomly distributed, are to be found silly farceurs, foolish pranksters, anarchic personalities, coarse buffoons, inveterate mockers, modern jesters, punning critics, witty journalists, creative writers, corrosive cartoonists, comic auteurs, biting satirists, unholy parodists, snickering rebels, and argute comediennes of various races, sizes, and classes.³⁶⁹ (2) At the opposite end of the rope lie, in no particular order, offended individuals and outraged collectives, fuming social activists, instinctive dogmatists, irate progressive campaigners, rabid egalitarians, unforgiving elitists, stern religious leaders, stiff moral authorities, prudent political parties, concerned consumers’ associations, quarrelsome trade unionists, cunning lobbyists, con-

364 Anonymous (1924), 105 – 106. This episode took place during the reign of Louis XIV. 365 Onion et al. (2020), par 2. 366 Onion et al. (2020), par 3. 367 “I am human and I deem nothing human alien to me” Terence (n.d.a.), line 77. See Augoustakis and Traill (2013) on the Roman playwright of the 2nd century BC, especially chaps. 2 and 4. As to his motto, it is clear from the history of censorship and censoriousness that comedians may not tackle all that is human as they see fit. 368 Censoring comedy is ancient history; see, e. g., Stambusky (1977). 369 As seen in H&C2, these are also the unaware social masters of humour’s institutional cruelty.

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sumed PR experts, corporate lawyers, compliant legislators, severe judges, special governmental officials, and specially appointed censors and civil servants.³⁷⁰ The former team comprises people who, for work, pleasure, inner compulsion, spiritual need, and/or vocation, poke fun at cultural significations, societal institutions, instituted associations, and, a fortiori, other people, including members of the latter group. The latter team comprises people who, for the same motives, try to set boundaries to that at which fun is being, has been, or might be poked, pushing for punishments when, on occasion, the set boundaries are deemed to have been crossed in too brazen and/or too damaging a manner.³⁷¹

1.3.1 East This slogan of the separation of religion and politics and the demand that Islamic scholars not intervene in social and political affairs have been formulated and propagated by the imperialists; it is only the irreligious who repeat them. —Imam Khomeini³⁷²

At the time of our writing these lines, in Myanmar, five actors of the theatre ensemble called “Peacock Generation” were still sitting in prison after being condemned to a one-year sentence by a State court in Yangon.³⁷³ Their crime had been “to poke fun at the country’s powerful military, singing and chanting to raucous music in front of delighted audiences”.³⁷⁴ The Peacock Generation’s performance was not unusual, but rather an obvious instance of time-honoured “‘thangyat’, a traditional ensemble show that blends poetry and dancing and has been

370 By singling out the specially appointed censors, we indicate that our use of the verb “to censor” is broad. It includes censoriousness, i. e., it applies to any open condemnation of humour, rather than to the sole governmental or judiciary restrictions of free speech. As to the term “comedy”, we keep using it here in a broad sense too, hence embracing that which is comical, ludicrous, etc., though occurring in the public sphere and in some artistically codified manner (e. g., plays, storytelling, novels, films, pantomimes, joke telling). 371 See D. Jones (2001) for a comprehensive history of censorship. 372 Khomeini (1981), 38. 373 Carroll and Diamond (2019), par. 1. The performers are Zeyar Lwin, Paing Ye Thu, Kay Khine Tun, Paing Phyo Min, and Zaw Lin Tun. Recalling their names might help to reflect on their fate as living persons. 374 Carroll and Diamond (2019), par. 2.

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used to mock the country’s leaders since the 19th century”.³⁷⁵ In particular, “a performer in a soldier’s uniform moved solemnly around the stage to an old patriotic song about the military. Then the music suddenly stopped and a jingle for Mytel, a phone operator part-owned by the military, blared through the speakers while the soldier broke into a dance”.³⁷⁶ The gag circulated widely on social media and, evidently, enraged the country’s authorities, especially “the generals … who … were unable to see the funny side and decided to prosecute them”.³⁷⁷ In this specific case, the Burmese army’s Lieutenant Colonel Than Tun Myint was “the plaintiff who pressed charges against the performers”, as he stated to the media that “[t]he [comedians] should have respected others’ rights”.³⁷⁸ Clearly, the local court of justice found these rights to have been breached, insofar as a guilty judgement was passed “under Section 505a of the penal code. The law bans statements that might induce military officers to ‘disregard or fail’ in their duties and carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison.”³⁷⁹ Farther west, the cartoonist Mahmoud Shokraye received 25 lashes in 2012 for a satirical cartoon of Ahmad Lofti Ashtiani, an Iranian politician, whom the artist depicted “in full soccer gear for the long-running Nameye Amir magazine in response to news stories about Ashtiani and other Iranian politicians interfering with the country’s sports”.³⁸⁰ Preceding by some years the Burmese legal case of the Peacock Generation, Shokraye’s lawful flogging had raised issues of violation of “freedom of expression” and “free speech”, which have been regularly identified as some of the major human-rights issues afflicting Iran.³⁸¹ Despite its multi-party parliamentary elections and immense cultural heritage, the Persian theocracy is not perceived worldwide as a beacon of unrestrained pluralism, artistic ebullience, and tolerant liberality.³⁸² If anything, these sentences in

375 Carroll and Diamond (2019), par. 3. 376 Carroll and Diamond (2019), par. 4. 377 Carroll and Diamond (2019), par. 5. 378 Carroll and Diamond (2019), pars. 10 – 11. Four of the five performers received in 2020 additional prison time for defamation (Amnesty International 2020). 379 Nandar (2019), par. 5. Meanwhile, in nearby Cambodia, music and dancing are being used to help the Khmer Rouge’s victims to recover from their traumas, including forced marriages (Shapiro-Phim 2020). 380 McMillan (2012), par. 2. 381 See, e. g., Human Rights Watch (2019). Albeit nominally distinct, “freedom of expression” and “free speech” are one and the same right. 382 See Human Rights Watch (2019). The Middle East offers a sketchy picture vis-à-vis censorship, whatever humour may live on (see, e. g., Branca, De Poli, and Zanelli 2011). There, the Egyptians, not the Persians, have a reputation for levity (see Dozio 2021). The charismatic founder of the Is-

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Iran and Myanmar have been vocally criticised by national as well as international organisations (e. g., Amnesty International).³⁸³ And expressively, as an assault on precisely such overriding and widely recognised human rights.³⁸⁴ To the north of Iran, Mehmonsho Sharifov recalled the older, “strong censorship regime” of the Soviet times in Tajikistan, where the novel by Hum’a Ordinaev, “Guzashti Aiyom (The Passing of the Days)[,] was banned from publication and Ordinaev himself suffered” since a controversial comic passage in his work was judged to be “contradict[ing] communist logic and ideals”.³⁸⁵ To be exact, “Odinaev describes the situation in which the secretary of the communist party of one district (raicom) was drunk, and having fallen to the ground, a dog comes to lick his hands and face”.³⁸⁶ In an unintended echo of Russell’s older reflections, Sharifov claimed that “the dogmatism and blind faith of communists in their own ‘righteousness’” were the springboard for the communists’ dogmatic and blind intolerance, which the great satirical writer Mikhail Bulgakov is widely recognised to have japed aplenty already in the early days of Soviet rule.³⁸⁷ In the successive decades, as Sharifov stated, “the religious leaders of Tajikistan” and its “religious intellectuals” became the sole challengers of Soviet censorship and, “during the period of conflict and collapse of the socialist system”, it was they “who took the initiative to make a new beginning”, walking a difficult line between the “pressure from two extreme positions, Islamist and communist”.³⁸⁸

lamic Republic of Iran, the Imam Khomeini (1981, 214) was never fond of the notion of human rights: “All these declarations they make, supposedly in favor of human rights, have no reality; they are designed to deceive. They draw up some pleasant-looking, high-sounding declaration with thirty articles relating to human rights and then neglect to enact a single one of them! … it is the opium of the masses… [W]hat crimes Britain has committed in India, Pakistan, and its other colonies?” 383 Amnesty International (2019). Stuart Rees (2020, 8) singled out both countries, alongside “the US, Russia, Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia” and “Indonesia”, as nations “indulg[ing] in human rights abuses”. 384 McMillan (2012), and Carroll and Diamond (2019). As we write these lines, a military coup is taking place in Myanmar, despite massive local protests and vocal international condemnations. 385 Sharifov (2006 – 2007), 321. We were unable to find out how exactly Ordinaev suffered. 386 Sharifov (2006 – 2007), 321. 387 Sharifov (2006 – 2007), 321 – 322. Under Stalin, Bulgakov was still allowed to write, but his most controversial plays were not staged, and his most daring stories and novels not published (see, e. g., Curtis 1991). 388 Sharifov (2006 – 2007), 323 – 325. It should be noted that, despite the “Renaissance” praised by Sharifov (2006 – 2007, 324), today’s “human rights record” of Tajikistan was deemed “abysmal” by Human Rights Watch (2019).

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In 2006, a tragic destiny awaited the popular Shia Muslim comedian Walid Hassan, who was shot by his kidnappers in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, which was in the process of being transformed into an exemplary liberal country, at least according to the leaders of the Western occupation forces deployed there as of 2003.³⁸⁹ The precise circumstances of his kidnapping and execution-style murder remain mysterious, but it cannot be ignored how Hassan had made a name for himself and, possibly, many enemies too by lampooning mercilessly on national TV “the conduct of the government, the [US-led] coalition forces [and] the insurgents” by means of “a blend of sketch comedy and dark humour”.³⁹⁰ Six years after Hassan’s death, in Somalia, an unnervingly similar crime took place. On that occasion, a band of gunmen assassinated one of the country’s most popular radio and TV comedians, Abdi Jeylani Malaq Marshale, who was known for his parodies of Islamic fundamentalists and of prominent members of the transitional federal government.³⁹¹ It is believed that adherents of the Al-Shabaab militias are responsible for his killing, since Marshale had already been the target of explicit death threats from Al-Shabaab in 2011, forcing him to flee and hide in northern Somaliland for some time.³⁹² One year later, another Somali comedian, poet, and veteran radio broadcaster, Warsame Shir Awale, met the same fate as his former colleague.³⁹³ This time, Awale’s repeated on-air mockery of the Al-Shabaab militias was censured by way of two men shooting him dead in the streets of Mogadishu.³⁹⁴

1.3.2 West Eu quero amar, amar perdidamente! Amar só por amar: Aqui… além… Mais Este e Aquele, o Outro e toda a gente…

389 Kraidy and Khalil (2018), 28. 390 Kraidy and Khalil (2018), 28. 391 D. Smith (2012). “Islamic fundamentalist”, “radical Muslim”, “Jihadist”, and “Islamist” are synonyms. 392 D. Smith (2012). Al-Shabaab’s responsibility has not been proven in a court of law, yet. 393 “Somali comic” (2012). 394 “Somali comic” (2012). Once again, Al-Shabaab’s guilt has not been proven by the judiciary. Also, while we revise these lines, the newly re-established Taliban government of Afghanistan admitted responsibility in the execution of comedian Khasha Zwan (né Nazar Mohammad), who was guilty of mocking the “Qur’anic students” who, after 20 years of Western military involvement, are again in power (“Taliban Accepts” 2021).

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Amar! Amar! E não amar ninguém! —Florbela Espanca³⁹⁵

Prima facie, in the liberal nations of the West, comedians, cartoonists, and comic writers are considerably freer to express their views than their colleagues in many parts of Asia and Africa—to say nothing of more stately and refined literati such as satirical essayists or witty poets. There are two blatant corroborations of this comparative point about East and West. (1) The sheer variety and number of TV and radio comedy shows, comic acts, funny magazines, film parodies, newspaper caricatures, internet lampoons, and satirical plays circulating in the West make these artists’ public standing very different from the one faced by their Eastern and Southern counterparts. Definitely, their standing seems much safer than, say, that of Western environmental activists and whistle-blowers.³⁹⁶ Unlike comedians, comics, or clowns, members of these two trouble-making categories can still suffer terribly severe judicial reprimands in the West, and other frightening retributions too, for their public courage and/or foolhardiness.³⁹⁷ (2) Freedom of speech has been enshrined in Western constitutions for a very long time.³⁹⁸ That Western comedians or cartoonists may enjoy conspicuous liberty for creative self-expression should only be normal, if not even a shiny badge of honour for the liberal poleis to which they supposedly belong.³⁹⁹ Then again, insofar as some of these freer Western artists interpret their job as “pissing people off”, “push[ing] boundaries”, and “requir[ing] risks”, the backlash that they can face in actuality is, sometimes, quite severe, irrespectively of the constitutional liberties that they happen to enjoy on paper, or of the incessant yet

395 “I want to love, to love à corps perdu / To love just to love: Here… There… / Plus This One and That One, the Other One and Everyone / To love! To love! And to love no one!” As cited in Camões et al. (2022), 122. 396 Critical voices from the Global South have recently argued that the ongoing brutal treatment suffered by Australian whistle-blower Julian Assange proves that the West’s ritual claims of inherent moral superiority and “freedom of the press” are nothing but empty rhetoric: “the mask has been fully ripped off – in what Assange showed them doing, and what they have done to him because of that. We now have three casualties: Assange, Western systems, and also the Western image of itself previously projected on the world” (Serumaga 2020, 5). 397 See, e. g., Miethe (2019) on the dangers of whistleblowing in the corporate world. 398 See, e. g., Barendt (2005) for an overview of legal protections of people’s freedom of speech. 399 Given the poor record of known civilisations, we deem liberalism’s stress on free speech to be praiseworthy.

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sometimes merely self-celebratory Western mantras of “freedom of expression”, “free press”, “free speech”, “artistic freedom”, “academic freedom”, etc.⁴⁰⁰ Stupidly self-important, miserably misguided, gluttonously greedy, fervently fanatical, and/ or driven by some deeper force or hidden daemon that they cannot even recognise or begin to explain to themselves, Western comedians have been arguably willing to undergo authentic ordeals for their art’s sake, i. e., hardships and challenges that many other people would happily avoid.⁴⁰¹ As there are individuals who cannot keep themselves from making jokes that will end up embarrassing them or causing them trouble, so there are individuals who are ostensibly willing to become comedians in spite of the significant obstacles and many fierce objections that they will inevitably encounter.⁴⁰² As a result, the realm of comedy has frequently been a cruelly tragic one. A contemporary US comedian, Dina Hashem, acknowledged this fact as follows: Writing and telling jokes is, simply put, not for the faint of heart. Death threats are only a small slice of the shit pie that comedians must eat if they want to call show business their business. Being booed and heckled while performing, acquiring stalkers, not getting the bookings they hope to get, heavy competition and living in small apartments with multiple roommates for long stretches of time are just a few common plights of today’s comedian – it’s no wonder so many struggle with mental illness and often even die early.⁴⁰³

In addition, contrary social opinion and constraining business objectives may be able to play in the West a role that is analogous—hence not identical—to the one played by dogmatic censors and prickly politicians in other parts of the planet.⁴⁰⁴ As John Stuart Mill had already argued in On Liberty, constitutionally free in-

400 The first expression is by comedian Dina Ashem, as cited in the title of Delfino (2019). The other two come from Alexander (2019), pars. 6 and 7. As to the Western mantras, see Fish (1994), who acknowledged and justified many of the limitations of free speech under liberalism, which is however the sole political doctrine in Western history to have made ‘free speech’ a central tenet. Whether substantive or not, this fact alone is significant. 401 The significance of unconscious drives cannot be overestimated in these cases, hence we wrote “arguably willing”, for the extent and import of the conscious will in these matters is unclear. See also H&C1 and H&C2. 402 Ditto. 403 As cited in Delfino (2019), par. 10. We inferred Hashem to be Delfino’s source. 404 We must add the power of marketing and advertising to the mix, for they are part of the tyrannical social opinion that Mill (2001, 9) denounced. In his day, this power was in its infancy, yet palpable enough as to be noted already by Dostoyevsky (1997, 45 – 47), who reported on the overwhelming psychological pressures to conform and spend that he experienced while visiting Paris in 1862.

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dividuals can be subjected not only to “the tyranny of the magistrate”, but also and above all to the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways [and therefore …] compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.⁴⁰⁵

For example, in today’s racially and sexually conscious US, poking fun on a podcast at coloured and gay people caused the comedian Shane Gillis to lose his newly acquired job.⁴⁰⁶ In 2019, he was fired without any lengthy judicial grounds or extensive prior legal procedure, and in spite of his well-known earlier record of risqué jokes, arguably rude choice of lexicon, politically incorrect utterances, and possibly obscene, if not obnoxious, social commentaries.⁴⁰⁷ 1.3.2.1 Puritanism If pornography is part of your sexuality, then you have no right to your sexuality. —Catharine A. MacKinnon⁴⁰⁸

405 Mill (2001), 9. Long before Mill, the young Étienne de la Boétie (1942), a French judge and a dear friend of Montaigne, had already commented on the willingness of most persons to conform themselves eagerly to the tyrannical social and legal norms issued by a supreme public authority capable of granting them a modicum of material and spiritual security, frequent amusements, and ample opportunity to tyrannise in turn their own social inferiors. Unequal societies cultivate voluntary servitude rather than involuntary, violently imposed servitude. 406 Alexander (2019). By “coloured” we mean all the non-white minorities that suffered oppression in American history, hence also the Chinese who were targeted by Gillis’ comedic antics. 407 We do not address the legal side of the issue. Nor are we interested in accusing further or trying to defend Gillis’ attempts at being ‘edgy’. What matters in this context is to recognise social opinion’s censoring capacity via broad tacit interiorisation despite the common liberal talk about “free speech”, which we test implicitly in the following subsections by referring to specific sexual praxes. It is these phenomena’s capacity for engendering tension that is central here. Therefore, we must keep looking at the borderline domain where this tension occurs; hence, not at its resolution, which would adhere in any case to LVOA’s criteria, if actually good (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 408 As cited by the “sex-positive … performer of burlesque” and “feminist” Montgomery (2013, 2, 8, and 22). Also, Montgomery’s work is representative of recent research conducted by young and/or incipient scholars (e. g., graduate theses) to whom we refer especially to illustrate contemporary sexualities, including internet-based ones, with which we are not personally familiar and/or about which little has been published by better-established Western academics. Erotic ebullience, after all, is normally a game for young men and young women, apart from exceptional cases such as Berlusconi, Colette, or Zsa Zsa Gabor.

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Matters of sexual orientation, roles, practices, depictions and/or preferences seem to be particularly touchy, despite the liberal nations’ official separation and formal independence from religious authorities.⁴⁰⁹ This is most visible, as far as the West is concerned, in that great country where the political currency of nominal “freedom” and the legacy of historical Puritanism are both alive and kicking. We mean, of course, the USA.⁴¹⁰ (1a) A sworn enemy of “sexist stereotypes” and “misogyny”, the iconic American philosopher and feminist writer Susan Sontag defended nonetheless the “the demonic side of sexual fantasy” and accused many “gauchis[t … f ]eminists” of her day of “surrender[ing] to callow notions of art and thought and the encouragement of a genuinely repressive moralism”.⁴¹¹ (1b) Writing in the 1990s, another noted US feminist thinker and activist, Ellen Willis, dropped the terms “Victorianism”, “neo-Victorian”, and “erotophobia” while discussing the many “academics and activists” of her country aiming not only at “restricting racist speech”, but also and above all at “exploring ways to overcome the American judiciary’s frustrating resistance to narrowing First Amendment rights” with regard to the sexual sphere, “pornography” in primis. ⁴¹² (1c) Willis’ stance was echoed in recent years by Laura Kipnis, who argued “that the most supposedly radical factions” within the US feminist camp “have been closet conservatives, dedicated to recycling the most conventional versions of feminine virtue and delicacy”, in keeping with well-tested “puritanical versions of feminism”, e. g., “[t]he so-called radical feminists of the 1980s … aligning themselves with Christian conservatives to fight the demon pornography” and the “first-wave feminists [who] joined with prohibitionists to fight the demon rum”.⁴¹³ (1d) Reviewing decades of scholarly debates and, above all, recent empirical research, two contemporary social scientists, Athanasia Daskalopoulou and Maria Carolina Zanette, felt legitimised in asserting, patently and trenchant409 As stated in Part 1, whenever discussing sexually explicit materials, we presume their restriction to adults. 410 Given this country’s role as the West’s cultural hegemon, its life and struggles frequently affect many other nations. As the saying goes: “When American sneezes, the world catches a cold.” 411 Boyers, Bernstein, and Sontag (2015 – 2016), 247 and 256. 412 Willis (1994), 4 – 8, where she mocked MacKinnon (1993) for showing “a kind of lunatic edge— does she dream, like the authorities in 1984, of abolishing the orgasm?”. The cruel irony at play, though, may run even deeper than Willis (1994) suggested. From a psychodynamic perspective, the more insistent is the imposition of rigid ethical norms upon the psyche, the more powerfully there will emerge concrete sexual perversions (Khan, 1979). 413 Kipnis (2017), 19.

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ly, that the “[a]nti-porn feminis[ts]” who “argued that pornography is women’s exploitation and oppression and suggested that consuming violent pornography normalises sexual aggressiveness towards women (e. g., rape) … have been empirically disproven”.⁴¹⁴ (1e) The normalisation at issue, after all, has a long history of substantive falsification behind it. In the 1986 US, for one, the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, which was in the grip of Ronald Reagan’s conservative forces, ended up retrieving a “spectacularly tenuous chain of causation” linking pornography to various kinds of social ills, and without being able to produce any support for “the causal link between pornography and violence against women”.⁴¹⁵ As a consequence, it “receive[d] the expected criticism of civil libertarians”, while “the press was generally critical of its findings” and, apropos for our present inquiry, “satirists celebrated its release”.⁴¹⁶ (2a) At the same time, however, Daskalopoulou and Zanette recognised that these factually “disproven” stances and satirised socio-cultural forces “still influence much of the debate surrounding pornography”, which has meanwhile become, ironically, “an important emerging practice for women’s explorations of their sexual desire, and overall understanding of their sexuality”.⁴¹⁷ 414 Daskalopoulou and Zanette (2020), 970 – 971; emphasis added. See also J. Scott (1988), Weinberg (2010), Ferrero Camoletto and Todesco (2019), and Behrendt (2020). As to questioning the commonly assumed “male gaze”, see, e. g., Snow (1989) and Diogo de Sousa (2020, 305 – 306), who reflected on the booming “popularity of [the fictional character] Miku among female illustrators and cosplayers, and the growing number of Vocaloid producers … who are also women, [which] makes it hard to explain away her phenomenon with the … male gaze”. Perhaps, something deeper, more a- or polymorphous, and possibly less binary, is at play in the murky libidinal sphere, whence both Japanese and Western erotica arise. (More on this point is said later.) Besides, in line with M. Polanyi (1962c), deeper than any “male gaze” or “queer eye”, there is eventually a personal viewpoint (see Chapter 4 of Part 1). 415 J. Scott (1988), 1151. 416 J. Scott (1988), 1145. 417 Daskalopoulou and Zanette (2020), 970 – 971. As acknowledged by several cited sources, the ‘sex-negative’ feminist tradition of, say, MacKinnon (1993) and Dworkin (1981), has largely become commonplace and common-sense, also in the Western countries and academic contexts where the present authors have lived and worked (see also Rubinson 2000). Therefore, we do not deem it necessary to elaborate further on it. Besides, the controversies within the feminist camp are only a subsidiary issue in the present inquiry about humour and cruelty. Rather, we assume our readers to be so versed in this well-established socio-cultural vocabulary as to be able to follow the critical points made by the quoted ‘sex-positive’ feminists, e. g., Willis (1994) and Kipnis (2017), who are far less well-known and, as a result, should be of interest to the readers that do not have any significant expertise in, e. g., gender studies and feminism. This selective approach, for one, was already applied in the previous section with regard to economics, inasmuch as we focussed on heterodox sources rather than textbook orthodoxy, which is likely to be familiar to most readers. For another,

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(2b) Detecting an analogous tension among, if not between, socio-scientific researchers and academic theorists, two contemporary Italian sociologists, Raffaella Ferrero Camoletto and Lorenzo Todesco, wrote that “a resurging antiporn feminist wave” looms high over the horizon, once again.⁴¹⁸ (2c) In Belgium, the ethicist Marc Behrendt spoke of a seeping “reversal of paradigm, from sexual liberty and freedom to fantasize, to a contemporary form of sexual prohibition or puritanism”, which seems to ignore or brush aside any contrary evidence that may have been accumulated in medicine, psychiatry, and the social sciences.⁴¹⁹ In light of these recent studies and claims, a curious and perchance cruel irony would seem to be transpiring, especially as regards the emancipatory aspirations of Western liberalism, not least in its feminist offshoots. Individual rights and freedoms that prior generations of activists and academics had fought for and, eventually, gained, have become the chosen critical target of a different cohort of activists and academics, who perceive cruelty and oppression where their predecessors saw authenticity and self-determination.⁴²⁰ Inevitably, novel so-called “culture wars” of one kind or another get started. And they rarely seem to finish—just like other metaphorical yet materially crueller wars, e. g., the war on “drugs” or that on “terror”.⁴²¹

the same readers should equally be able to grasp a specific cruel irony surfacing from within this context. As sardonically highlighted by Antoniou (2012), nominally “radical” ‘sex-negative’ feminists such as MacKinnon and Dworkin received conspicuous public and institutional attention for many years, not least amongst the right-wing circles and political activists of whom the two influential feminists became effective allies, whereas the ‘sex-positive’ counterpart did not (see also Willis 1994 and McElroy 2001). 418 Ferrero Camoletto and Todesco (2019), 130. The enduring of strong beliefs in the face of massive falsifying evidence is not a new phenomenon. Superstitions about the good- or ill-luck associated with certain numbers abound, even if plenty of contrary evidence exists, both in collective cultures and in individual lives. When sufficiently cathected, a cherished belief can withstand the onslaught of empirical falsification with great ease. 419 Behrendt (2020), 173. See also Evans (2021) tackling analogous prejudices in her study of sex robots. 420 Joking on the cyclicity of Puritanism, McElroy (1997, par. 37) wrote of “old whine in new battles”. 421 Even the now-commonplace bellicose idea of ‘sex wars’ contains itself much comic potential which, to our knowledge, the extant academic literature never exploits (e. g., how are these cruel wars fought? By putting condoms on top of cannons? Fencing with dildoes? Or shagging enemies into exhaustion?). Perhaps, as Kipnis (1998 and 2006) suggested, the middle- and upper-class sociocultural background of liberal academia entails implicit standards of decorum preventing such a comicality from being recognised and/or made use of, in yet another exemplification of the pro-

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The Canadian feminist and anarcho-libertarian thinker Wendy McElroy described this peculiar and puzzling trend from her own staunchly individualistic vantage point: The feminism of the 1960s produced a sexual revolution, and an explosion of choices for women resulted. The feminism of the 1990s has created an orthodoxy, which presents women as victims of patriarchy who must be protected from making wrong choices. Feminism has gone from sexual liberation to sexual correctness, from the politics of equality to the politics of revenge … sexual correctness is destroying the freedom of women to choose.⁴²²

Comedy itself, if deemed “sexist” or worse, can then be attacked most vociferously as “liberticidal” or “oppressive”, whilst older cohorts of activists and intellectuals might have even saluted it as “liberating” and “revolutionary”.⁴²³ What is more, when creatively reconceptualised, ‘harm’ and ‘danger’ can arguably be retrieved in most, if not all, relevant socio-cultural and socio-culturally dependent medical phenomena by some keen critical minds, despite the assumed contrary evidence painstakingly accrued by others over the decades.⁴²⁴ All of these minds, additionally, being recognised experts in their field of inquiry.⁴²⁵ Life’s cruelty exists also under the guise of such peculiar intellectual reversals, which university creatures like us, the authors of this book, can witness at close range, study carefully, and be endlessly perplexed by—though with a dash of humour too.⁴²⁶

longed quest for humour’s supposed ‘refinement’ championed by Lord Shaftesbury in Protestant Britain (see Chapter 2), as well as of the tacit component of cognitive agency studied by M. Polanyi (see Chapter 4 of Part 1). 422 McElroy (2001), 3. See also Chapter 3. Reading “1960s” and “1990s” may sound like old news. However, as many recent studies indicate, some old controversies have just returned—or have never been resolved. 423 More on daring comedy and humour follows later in this chapter. 424 See, e. g., Twenge, Sherman, and Wells (2017) on declining sexual activity among American adults. 425 See, e. g., de Alarcón et al. (2019) trying to support the notion of “porn addiction”, which Ley (2012, title, 33, et passim) argued to be nothing but a “myth”, just like “sex addiction”. The cruel irony at play here is not negligible. Either healthy persons are being unduly medicalised and cruelly caused to feel bad about themselves and their sexuality, or unhealthy persons are being unduly left scot-free and their psychopathological conditions untreated. This is the deeper clinical thorn caused by an inevitable feature of all forms of scientific and scholarly study: the core theoretical beliefs that we possess determine which “process of selecting facts for our attention” exists and, a fortiori, which phenomena we examine (M. Polanyi 1962c, 310). See also H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1. 426 Curiously, this condition of intellectual uncertainty is symbolised in the West by the cruelly tortured soul of Faust. In the East, instead, it is commonly represented by the silent, serene, and smiling sage.

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When so many intelligent and informed people fail repeatedly to find any conclusive agreement and frequently contradict one another at every turn, there gains ground the notion that there may be far too many incongruent tacit details at play in the debated phenomena for a single, specific, and well-defined conception to be reached by all or by most with relative ease, i. e., such that it would be both rationally compelling and empirically comprehensive.⁴²⁷ Instead of producing unequivocal knowledge and enduring certainties, the world’s highest educational institutions seem to engage in cycles of self-critical reassessment on all such matters, and thereby make the Polanyian call for personal responsibility discussed in Chapter 4 of Part 1 all the more significant.⁴²⁸ It is actually very hard to pass any trenchant statement, also because some of these cycles may last for decades or even centuries.⁴²⁹ In addition, they can go through the most diverse iterations, like variations on a musical theme or an architectural motif.⁴³⁰ Consequently, while we acknowledge in this chapter several

427 E. g., compare the trenchant statements by Dworkin on “fucking” (3.2.4 of Part 1) and MacKinnon on “pornography” (this subsection), and the very different conclusions reached by McElroy (1997, par. 1) after conducting numerous interviews with sex workers: “Pornography benefits women, both personally and politically” (see also McElroy 1995; obviously, she is referring to adults, whom she believes capable of free agency). 428 See also H&C1 and, as regards our interpretation of personal responsibility, Chapter 1 of Part 1, Underneath such ironic reversals might lie each new generation’s desire to change the status quo, driven by the hope that the future will be better and/or the boredom that the established present elicits in those who are used to it. Pareto (1935) would probably identify such motives as “residues” of the first class. Whether to fully agree with him or not and conduct oneself accordingly is, though, another personal decision à la M. Polanyi. 429 Think, e. g., of Aristotle’s formal cause being reinvented as categories of the understanding, archetypes, logical forms, mental schemata, etc., or of Aristotle’s final cause being reinvented as springs of action, functions, instincts, unconscious drives, economic self-interest, gene-centred evolution, push- and pull motivations, etc. As noted with regard to cycles in economic ideas and ideals, there is also something comical in these reiterations. 430 E. g., the famous Jewish-American linguist and anarcho-syndicalist thinker Noam Chomsky (2020) stated in an interview that his distinction between linguistic “competence” and “performance” reiterates Aristotle’s ancient distinction between “possessing” and “using” knowledge. In any case, the cyclical character of so many debated notions makes us sceptical with regard to the common socio-scientific assumption whereby the latest studies must be better than the older ones. While we are more than willing to concede the general validity of this assumption in the formal and natural sciences, we are far from certain that it holds in, say, sociology, economics, or psychology, especially at the level of the key ideas and deeper intuitions that can be excavated in past researches. Important insights may actually be lurking in very old sources, even if they have been ignored for decades because they were, simply, not recent. See, e. g., the “rediscover[y]” of John Maynard Keynes after the repeated failures of the neoliberal “non-system” of our century (Carabelli and Cedrini 2010, 315 – 316). In brief, judging the quality of a study and/or

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different views that have emerged in the unfolding of these cycles, we also leave it to each reader to come to any well-defined and definitive conclusion about them. If so many, erudite, and gifted people who devoted their careers and/or lives to the study of “feminism” and/or “liberalism” proper have not been able to come to an agreed-upon set of well-grounded determinations among themselves, it would be absurd to think that we can achieve this goal in a volume about two very different concepts, i. e., ‘humour’ and ‘cruelty’.⁴³¹ Highlighting the relations between our titular notions as they keep emerging out of the humorous cruelties and the cruel humour characterising the liberal poleis is more than adequate a result for the present inquiry, the main aims of which are, as explained in Chapter 1 of Part 1, spurring reflection and fostering deeper understanding, principally with regard to the Western socio-cultural order.⁴³² Besides, pursuing a little further the inner tensions and unnerving contradictions on sexual matters characterising nominally “free” and “liberal” societies can help us explore, and hopefully grasp to some extent, the underpinning psychosocial forces animating them.⁴³³ As we are going to discuss, these generally concealed and probably connate forces could be pretty much the same as those animating humorous conduct itself, not least that of the openly cruel kind, as well as its cruel repression.⁴³⁴

contents thereof by looking at the publication year is like judging a book by its cover or, even more hastily, by the publisher’s logo on the spine. (This last point applies to the current evaluation system of academic research in Iceland, where publishers are ‘ranked’ and publications rated accordingly.) 431 LVOA warranted our passing judgement on the economic domain, for life’s very bases are at issue (see also Chapter 1 of Part 1). Without life, the values and controversies splitting liberals, moderates, conservatives, etc. would not even exist. Nothing would be possible. Not even mutual disagreement, stern intolerance, or cruel hatred. 432 Once again, we must remind the reader of the deep lesson in epistemic humility that our study of humour and cruelty has taught us. The definitional uncertainties surrounding common-sense concepts such as these (hence also ‘pornography’, ‘erotica’, ‘obscenity’, ‘vulgarity’, etc.) and the immense plethora of tacit presuppositions whereby different individual scholars and scientists approach them (i. e., SD à la M. Polanyi, as explained in Chapter 4 of Part 1), are too big a barrier for us to overcome in this volume. Attempting to sort the controversy at issue would require at least another tome devoted entirely to it, if not three or four such tomes. 433 Given their amorphous and chthonic character, these forces are more easily implied and intuited than defined. 434 See Chapter 3. We used “connate” in the sense of ‘innate’ and ‘primeval’, as well as sharing a common origin or root. Once again, let us remind the reader that no offence whatsoever is meant by our tackling debated issues. As explained in Chapter 1 of Part 1 and in H&C2, and as the reader can gather from the rest of this book, the facts that such issues are debated and capable of causing

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1.3.2.2 Literalism Lately I’ve been thinking that future generations will look back on the recent upheavals in sexual culture on American campuses and see officially sanctioned hysteria. They’ll wonder how supposedly rational people could have succumbed so easily to collective paranoia, just as we look back on previous such outbreaks (Salem, McCarthyism, the Satanic ritual abuse preschool trials of the 1980s) with condescension and bemusement. They’ll wonder how the federal government got into the moral panic business, tossing constitutional rights out of the window. —Laura Kipnis⁴³⁵

From a genuinely psychodynamic perspective, the peculiar blindness of some experts to empirical data and/or ethico-existential claims about sexual matters—pornography in particular—that some other experts decry, is not too hard a phenomenon to grasp. As Sontag wrote: [P]ornography is rudely accurate about important realities of desire. That voluptuousness does mean surrender, and that sexual surrender pursued imaginatively enough, experienced immoderately enough, does erode pride of individuality and mocks the notion that the will could ever be free… And what tells us about the inhuman, as it were, character of intense pleasure is still being slighted by the humanist ‘revisionist’ Freudianism that most feminists feel comfortable with, which minimizes the intractable powers of unconscious and irrational feeling.⁴³⁶

Well-versed in the works of Freud, Jung and Bataille, Sontag claimed that “[t]he violence of the [pornographic] imagination … cannot be confined within the optimistic and rationalist perceptions of mainstream feminism… [This] fierce, disruptive, and antinomian” imagination does not “discriminate against women … necessarily” and,

offence are important for our study of the relationship between humour and cruelty, for they open ‘windows’ on relevant underlying psychosocial forces. 435 Kipnis (2017), 1. Whether or not the State authorities should be meddling into or guided by people’s moods and feelings, it is an issue that has concerned many liberals. Long before Kipnis’ (2017) feminist writings, Pareto (1935, par. 1805) stated: “the art of governing lies in manipulating residues, not in trying to change them”. 436 Boyers, Bernstein, and Sontag (2015 – 2016), 256. The baffling intractability of libido as per Freud’s conception of it has also been acknowledged in more recent times by the American philosopher Robert Trimbull (2018, 531): “pleasure … form[s] a key site both where power operates and where it reaches its limit”, hence establishing “the condition of possibility of resistance to those prevailing regimes and technologies of power that, we will have learned from Foucault, not only shape our present but actively produce us as bodies and subjects of power”.

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in addition, is free to “discriminate against men, as in Monique Wittig’s celebrations of unfettered sexual energy”.⁴³⁷ 1.3.2.2.1 The Broad Context Whichever side of the argument one may favour, it is pretty evident that nothing less than outright human libido is at play here, i. e., the fundamental controlling energy that can be retrieved in both intra- and inter-personal psychic reality.⁴³⁸ In all likelihood, this dynamic and fearsome psychic basis is what makes sexual matters in general, and pornography in particular, so controversial—and despite the latter’s being time-honoured, ubiquitous, polymorphous, and, in Western societies, legislated upon and legally permissible, i. e., not unlike music, drama, dancing, rhetoric, or carpentry (“not unlike” indicating an analogy, i. e., neither an equivalence nor an identity).⁴³⁹ Hillman himself, after attending for decades to numerous clinical cases of male and female suffering, concluded that the root-cause thereof which he could regularly diagnose was his nation’s socio-cultural conflation of “sexuality” with “violence” and/or “obscenity”.⁴⁴⁰ That is to say, potent and pervasive informal mechanisms of sexual repression cutting across the population in the name of moral, social, and/or political virtue. And whenever and wherever an “ideology condemning” sex as “violent” or “obscene” is found to be present, persistent, and prevalent, one can also retrieve, unerringly and invariably, clinical heaps of “pathological sexual fantasies”.⁴⁴¹ The stricter the instinctual repression is, the more asphyxiating its attached strings become. In this respect, Hillman’s views were reminiscent of numerous earlier ones, i. e., as espoused by thinkers drawing inspiration from Nietzsche and, above all,

437 Boyers, Bernstein, and Sontag (2015 – 2016), 256. See Shaktini (2005) on Wittig’s radical lesbian theories. 438 Jung (1989, 386; emphases removed) enlarged Freud’s picture: “the gods [are] made manifest in spirituality and in sexuality”. See also Jung (2009), 352. 439 See, e. g., Amy Richlin’s (1992) collection of feminist essays on ancient Greek and Roman pornography. 440 Hillman (1995b), 53. More on this mechanism is stated here in Chapter 3. See also Reich (1953, 31 and 101; emphasis added), who claimed “cruelty” proper to be among the “well-known signs of genital frustration” and to be ritually signified by the Jewish “rule of circumcision”, which is an indication of the belief that “the genitals a[re] the source of the evil”, at least within this particular culture. While not all genital frustration is the result of socio-cultural repression (e. g., a person may have no luck in or lack the organs needed for satisfactory intercourse in a sex-positive society), there is no such repression that does not genitally frustrate. 441 Hillman (1995b), 52 – 57 and 64 – 65.

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Freud.⁴⁴² We can mention, for one, the 20th-century Jewish-German philosopher and sociologist of Frankfurt-School fame, Max Horkheimer, who, while investigating the psychic roots of conservatism, emphasised how, when no creative and selfrealising avenue is granted to people’s “mimetic instinct”, “[t]heir reaction to pressure” is going to be “an implacable desire to persecute” everyone and everything that does not ‘fit’ within “the status quo”.⁴⁴³ Inexorably, “outcasts”, “eccentric[s]”, “heretics”, and all alleged sources of ‘deviance’ or ‘scandal’ are to be targeted with the utmost cruelty, hence allowing the persecutors “to indulge in their imperious mimetic impulses, their need of expression”, yet without openly contradicting the ‘sacred’ principles of their static, if not stale, Weltanschauung. ⁴⁴⁴ Characteristically, then, “the prudish censors of pornography … abandon themselves to tabooed urges with hatred and contempt”.⁴⁴⁵ 1.3.2.2.2 The Basic Criterion On top of this psychodynamic line of thinking, Hillman added the original observation that “the basic issue of pornography … is literalism, the single-mindedness which reads images unimaginatively, and is thereby threatened by them, and is driven to control all images”.⁴⁴⁶ In his view, so powerful and so profound is this sense of threat, that literalists are willing to pursue the control of stirring images at all costs—and at any cost.⁴⁴⁷ The apparent public rationale of this affective private demand has thus been variously cast as right- as well as left-wing slogans and ideals.⁴⁴⁸ Well-meaning ‘sisters’ have come forth as pious nuns as well as puritanical feminists, all of whom have pursued their noble goals even if it meant to: (1) “oppress individual women” by casting “billions of particular female persons” into “a class concept”;⁴⁴⁹ 442 See Chapter 3 of Part 1. 443 Horkheimer (1947), 116. This instinct being the innate propensity of the child to associate and emulate. 444 Horkheimer (1947), 116 – 117. 445 Horkheimer (1947), 116. See also Chapter 3 in this book on psychosocial taboos. 446 Hillman (1995b), 64; emphasis added. As we write these lines, a troubled individual attacked Leonardo’s Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris. Images’ affective potency and the literalist’s inability to separate his/her own reactions to an image from the image itself are also exemplified by such iconoclastic gestures, which have occurred numerous times inside Western museums and churches. For some people, cruelly stirring images are ubiquitous. 447 As discussed in sections 1.3.1, 1.3.2.15, and 1.4, the cost can be counted in snuffed human lives. 448 See also Willis (1994) and (2012). 449 Hillman (1995b), 56. Tagore (1918, 42) argued that the very process of theoretical “abstraction” from the flesh-and-blood persons that we are and meet, even if well-meaning and intelligent, “deadens the moral sense of the individual” and “often leads to cruelty”. It is a cruel irony, but

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(2) deprive them of their psychologically “natural” and healthy “right to fantasize”;⁴⁵⁰ (3) equate all of their “sexual relations” with “violations”; (4) “psychopathologize all sex”; (5) “deprive” these living “individual women” of direct and/or vicarious avenues for “joy” (e. g., “bondage, fisting, fellatio”, whether practised or fantasised about); (6) “foreclos[e]” their constitutionally granted “liberty” to engage in the “pursuit of happiness” qua “actress[es], strip artist[s], writer[s], photographer[s]”; and (7) reduce the “power” that they and their ‘sisters’ can have over the “entranced” male, who encounters and explores his own female side via the erotic contemplation of “the naked Other”.⁴⁵¹ caring too much for classes, groups, genders, and/or abstract categories of people can disregard and damage actual persons who are both else and much more than tokens of statistical generalisations, mathematical averages, or taxonomical groupings. Any self-reflexive scholar should never forget this point. As Jung (1958, 9) wrote: “The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way.” For example, this is what happens when actual persons are no longer perceived as such but, rather, as lists of more or less superficially observable and bureaucratically standardisable attributes, e. g., their skin pigmentation, income, declared sexual orientation, nationality, age, declared political leanings, etc. On this point, the Belgian feminist philosopher, poet, and psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray (1994, 39 – 40), while discussing with some members of the Italian Communist Party the “cruel but true” urgency for women’s engagement in the public sphere, warned her audience not “to blend into or lose themselves in a collective ‘we’ or ‘they’”. See also Chapter 3. 450 Hillman (1995b), 56. 451 Hillman (1995b), 56 (analogous points can apply to men). Touching on a similar process of cross-gender identification, P. Galbraith (2011, 118, notes 30 – 31) recalled studies indicating “that the history of erotic manga has been not about men’s pleasures, but rather depictions of female pleasure, and it is natural that men would eventually want to be on the receiving end”, as well as “a similar dynamic among male fans of horror films, who at times identify with emotional females rather than their monstrous attackers” (see also Klar 2013). Hillman (1995b) was clearly suggesting that this process is at play in pornography and erotica at large. Fantasies are not easily pigeon-holed and reducible to clear-cut determinations, including those about ‘genders’ and attendant ‘roles’. If anything, however cruel they may be, wholly imaginary erotic fantasies (e. g., comics) are possibly one of the few areas in people’s lives where all such confining biosocio-cultural and personal constructions can be suspended without fear of causing discernible harm to anyone real (see, e. g., Lunacek 2016). Nevertheless, censorship has extended to this imaginary field too (see, e. g., Allison 1996). As argued by Hillman (1995b), the literalist mind wants to control all stirring images—henceforth, also when such images depict a fantasyland populated by tentacled monsters and exhibiting “parodist potential” and “comical narrative[s]” (Klar 2013, 121 – 122). When taken seriously, laughing matters are no longer laughable for those who take them to be so (this point was belaboured in H&C2 but is worth recalling here with some emphasis).

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By addressing the issues of censorial literalism and comprehensive sexual repression, Hillman was also pointing towards the potent psychic fountainhead of “iconoclasm” which endures, perhaps notoriously, in Sunni Islam’s strict literalism, but can find secular manifestations too, notably qua enmity to stirring images across all sorts of modern media.⁴⁵² Anita Phillips, for one, recalled in her feminist writings about masochism the little-known fact that, “in the seventies, avant-garde male film-makers avoided images of women altogether for fear of the accusation of scopophilia”.⁴⁵³ In the same decade, one of Italy’s most celebrated writers of the 20th century, Dino Buzzati, lamented: “[D]espite the well-known ‘explosion’ of sex [in culture and business], there rules still an odd prudishness, so that it is enough for a woman to appear undressed to cause people to talk of pornography.”⁴⁵⁴ Even in the midst of ever-growing Western smut and a series of frequently celebrated “sexual revolutions” instigated by Freud and the Freudians, a pervasive Puritanical streak endured nonetheless.⁴⁵⁵ This surviving streak has then aimed at preventing sexual imagery from circulating, if not even from being created and/or conceived of in the first place.⁴⁵⁶ According to Hillman’s account, this literalist at-

452 Hillman (1991), 63. Provocatively, Hillman (1996, chap. 10) associated the monomaniacal and unimaginative inflexibility of literalism with the demonic itself, which he exemplified by way of a detailed account of Adolf Hitler’s psychological profile and of few, shorter, powerful descriptions of several serial killers’ horrible crimes and troubling reflections about themselves. 453 Phillips (1998), 94. In her scathing criticism of MacKinnon’s censorial “identity politics”, Willis (1994, 10) mentioned en passant “a female professor’s insistence that a Goya nude be removed from her classroom wall and a complaint against a male professor who displayed a desktop photo of his wife in a bikini”, i. e., stirring images. 454 As cited in Lunardi (2015), 5. As to said “explosion”, Adorno (1994, 164) wrote: “Scandal stories, mostly fictitious, particularly of sexual excesses and atrocities are constantly told; the indignation at filth and cruelty is but a very thin, purposely transparent rationalization of the pleasure these stories convey to the listener.” 455 We are not suggesting that religious minds are always and/or necessarily literalist. Quite the opposite. Some are—sometimes in notoriously cruel ways. Others are not—sometimes in the most intellectually sophisticated ways. Thus, in the midst of medieval Christendom, Dante Alighieri (1903, 64) developed a theory of hermeneutical plurality whereby a text could be read literally, allegorically, morally, and anagogically (from the Greek term for “ascent” or “upwards”) aka “spiritually”. He created his own Comedy upon the basis of this theory of polysemy. 456 Whether sexual or not, all images stir the soul, albeit to various degrees. Harvard art and media professor David Joselit (2007) observed in a study of US television that entertaining images qua percept (i. e., ‘seeing’ them) constitutes per se a common and instinctive form of sensuous pleasure. This being, after all, the etymology of “scopophilia”, i. e., the ‘pleasure of seeing’, which visual media have been fostering since time immemorial, e. g., cave paintings of animals, people, handprints and, as emphasised by Maritsas (2016), statuettes, statues, monoliths, and architectural features recalling in variously patent ways human sexual organs and erogenous zones.

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titude has remained self-assured in interpretation, severe in condemnation, steadfast in self-promotion, and cruelly superficial and/or sanctimonious in many scholars’ and activists’ considered observation and critical valuation.⁴⁵⁷ As Phillips’ cited case of male self-censorship indicates, this streak did win some brawls and fistfights, though not all of them.⁴⁵⁸ 1.3.2.3 Fisting There is no general or univocal hermeneutics, only a tradition with different tendencies, which play out across a range of paradigms. —Tomas Pernecky⁴⁵⁹

Under the pressure of contrary social opinion, self-censorship can run deep, even if the official institutions are not exactly aligned with social opinion and/or some of its most influential heralds. Institutions have their own inertia. In the end, however, they are bound to reflect more and more the general Zeitgeist or, at least, the stated desiderata of the most effective activists, shrewdest lobbyists, and/or bestconnected campaigners.⁴⁶⁰ 1.3.2.3.1 Peculiar Fetishes Going back to the seemingly extreme kinks mentioned by Hillman, the gender studies expert and court solicitor Zahra Zsuzsanna Stardust recently complained about Australia’s criminal laws, which she found restrictive of “queer intimacies and non-normative sexual practices”, e. g., “fisting”.⁴⁶¹ Similar complaints were

457 See, e. g., the critical valuations offered by the cited ‘sex-positive’ feminists in the preceding few pages or by the cited queer theorists in those that follow. Each reader is free to decide whom to side with, if this is the sort of game that s/he wishes to play and, above all, if s/he thinks that s/he knows enough to pass judgement on these controversies. Once again, we alert our readers to M. Polanyi’s (1962c) theory of personal responsibility (Chapter 4 of Part 1). 458 Interestingly for a volume like ours which, as seen in Chapter 4 of Part 1, accepts linguistic polysemy and contents itself with family resemblances, Hillman (1999, chap. 6, par. 4; emphasis added) identified also a “mental Puritanism that strives to keep terms separated by clean definitions, uncontaminated with suggestive implications”, i. e., literalism qua methodological purity or trenchant semantics. Eerily, Hillman (1964, 15, note 3) compared it to the intentionally numbing “Newspeak” described in Orwell’s (1949) dystopian novel 1984. 459 Pernecky (2016), 102. His methodological considerations can be extended to moral and political domains too. 460 See Gulliver et al. (2022) on the psychological ties between affected majorities and effective minorities. 461 Stardust (2014), 258. See also Stardust (2019).

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also expressed with regard to the banning of pornography displaying such penetrative practices in the UK. As Robyn Long wrote in a study of “crip/queer alterity”: “In the UK, the ban on producing erotic material which includes fisting, facesitting, and penetration by objects that could be used for violence … not only limits depictions of various pleasures but importantly the kinds of bodies and sex acts deemed appropriate for erotic consumption.”⁴⁶² Tackling this controversial matter, a contemporary UK-based Portuguese expert in art, media and visual culture has recently argued that the kinks that some people find obscene and right to criminalise are actually a source of fulfilment and even pride for some other people: [F]isting scenes often also depict fistees as trained hypermasculine sexual athletes that have developed superhuman— or supermanly— muscular skills that allow them to be penetrated by all kinds of large objects and bodily appendages. Furthermore, those skills are also something to brag about, with both professional and amateur fistees often taking to social media platforms like Twitter to show off their skills by posting videos of their latest achievements or sporting a dark red hanky in the right back pocket of their jeans to display to others their ability to take in two fists simultaneously.⁴⁶³

To those who wish to look and have the emotional detachment that may be needed not to be shocked or overwhelmed, the world of flesh-and-bone men and women appears to be a very big and variegate place, with all sorts of different individuals wishing to pursue all kinds of psychologically appealing and, possibly, liberating sexual activities which some other individuals would eagerly try to prohibit in the name of higher values, deeper concerns, and worthier goals.⁴⁶⁴ Some of these activities, as seen, may be physically demanding, to the point of being deemed demeaning, deviant, derelict, and/or demented by some observers. Other activities, as also seen, can certainly cause the literalist mind to rage out in an uproar.⁴⁶⁵ Some of these activities, moreover, are so unusual or peculiar that they can be easily targeted by comics and comedians for the sake of a good laugh, and in good

462 Long (2018), 78 and 86. 463 Florêncio (2020), 17. These extreme sexual practices among gay people belong to the so-called “pig” tradition. 464 Whether liberation occurs or not and is beneficial or not are empirical issues to be assessed in each distinct case by responsible persons. LVOA, in all likelihood, can assist in making these determinations but cannot predict in advance the results, given the personal component of the associated felt being (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 465 We cannot be sure that all readers would find fisting a shocking kink. In point of fact, not-sosubtle references to it can be found in the popular media too, e. g., the 2021 Netflix horror series Brand New Cherry Flavor.

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or in bad taste.⁴⁶⁶ Whether risible or not, when all these personal preferences and divergent orientations are taken together and reflected upon, they do seem to suggest the absence of a central human ‘nature’ or ‘essence’ that can lead each and every individual in the same direction and dictate with clarity what actual men and women are supposed to be like, ought to do in and with their lives, and must be ‘true’ to in order to have a chance at self-realisation, not least when it comes to conducting their sexual urges in one way or another.⁴⁶⁷ 1.3.2.3.2 Philosophical Peculiarities As puzzling as it sounds, the intentionally shocking videos and lewd social-media posts mentioned above may have to be added to the “books and buildings, paintings and songs” celebrated by Rorty as “artifacts provid[ing] glimpses of alternative ways of being human”, and thereby “drop[ping] a presupposition common to religion and philosophy—that redemption must come from one’s relation to something that is not just one more human creation”.⁴⁶⁸ Or, taking the bully by the horny, this crucial “something” could be argued to be so under- or indetermined as to allow for all kinds of interpretations of and experimentations with that which may actually mean to be a human being.⁴⁶⁹ That is to say, that special creature which would eventually be up to each person to construe under her own responsibility, also in the sexual sphere.⁴⁷⁰ All these artifacts echo as well that modern, perchance humorous, Western “literature” that started establishing itself as the “rival to [Western] philosophy when people like Cervantes and Shakespeare began to suspect that human beings were, and ought to be, so diverse that there is no point in pretending that they all carry a single truth deep in their bosoms”.⁴⁷¹ Qua self-declared champion of so466 Woody Allen’s 1972 movie Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask and a BDSM-inspired scene in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 Pulp Fiction come to mind. See also Crowther (2021). 467 See, e. g., Ogien (2003), (2005), (2007), and (2008), i. e., probably the most extensive Francophone theoretical defence of anti-paternalistic liberalism, moral minimalism, and individual freedom in the 21st-century. 468 Rorty (2001), 7. The closing scene of the Coen brothers’ 2001 dark comedy The Man Who Wasn’t There offers a bittersweet rendition of this realisation—a surprisingly nuanced approach for a black-and-white story. 469 The sentence above contains a joke. 470 More on the indeterminacy of the fundamental onto-logical ground of being/meaning follows here in Chapter 3. However, let us note that siding responsibly with Rorty or, as responsibly, rejecting his liberal-ironic subjectivism are, in the end, personal determinations in a Polanyian sense (see H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1). 471 Rorty (2001), 7.

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called “liberal irony”, Rorty noted: “Santayana pointed to this seismic cultural shift in his essay ‘The absence of religion in Shakespeare’. That essay might equally well have called ‘The absence of either religion or philosophy in Shakespeare’ or simply ‘The absence of truth in Shakespeare.’”⁴⁷² Modernity itself, in this Rortyan perspective, could then be said to be starting in the West when so-called “high culture” began rejecting the long-lived religious and philosophical “premise” according to which “there is a set of beliefs which is both susceptible of rational justification and such as to take rightful precedence over every other consideration in determining what to do with one’s life”.⁴⁷³ Nowadays, no matter how absurd or abject the end result may look like to some observers, ‘low culture’ too appears to be following this Rortyan liberal-ironic path, which abandoned a classic and characteristic paradigm of human essence in favour of a creative and chaotic plurality of human existences.⁴⁷⁴ 1.3.2.4 Liberalism Respecting more means interpreting less. —Flavio Baroncelli⁴⁷⁵

Liberals have exhibited divergent attitudes on how to combine individual freedom with sexual desire, in a further demonstration of the plethora of subcamps that the West’s leading ideology has been establishing throughout its history. Von Mises, back in his day, would have spoken, bluntly and callously, of “perverts” tout court, hence presuming clinical categories of interpretations for unorthodox erotic longings and unconventional libidinous endeavours.⁴⁷⁶ Albeit insensitive in his prose and general attitude, von Mises’ approach does point towards an enduring problem with regard to uncommon sexual preferences. Are

472 Rorty (2001), 7. 473 Rorty (2001), 8. Rorty’s self-styled “ironic” and “liberal” stance is pluralistic and anti-metaphysical to the extreme, but is not a free-for-all, unlike Sade’s or Nietzsche’s (see H&C1 and Chapter 3 of Part 1). Obtorto collo, he too acknowledged in his mature works a fundamental phenomenon distinguishing that which is permissible in a civilised society and that which is not, i. e., painful lifedisablement (see Baruchello 2002). 474 Where exactly ‘high’ and ‘low’ start and end, and why, are thorny aesthetic issues that we do not tackle here. 475 Baroncelli (2006), 69 – 76, where he encapsulates a lifetime of reflection as a leftist liberal: rather than “classifying” humankind by means of apt “categories” and “catalogues”, we should better approach it as a mass of “living persons”, who, for the greatest part, are busy trying to lead their existences in relative peace. 476 Von Mises (1998), 586.

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they to be considered pathological, hence calling for medical attention, or yet-tobe-recognised legitimate forms of love, eroticism, and/or sexuality? 1.3.2.4.1 Boundaries Where to draw the line, if any such line is to be drawn, is a thorny matter indeed, for it determines the recognised spaces for personal freedom in the sexual sphere, which is of crucial importance for people’s wellbeing and, perhaps, happiness.⁴⁷⁷ As John Kekes was keenly aware of, there is no such thing as a liberal free lunch.⁴⁷⁸ Once we open the door to sexual diversity, for one, we must be ready to face a veritable flood of polymorphous, possibly deviant, and, for some people, disgusting and/or deranged behaviours.⁴⁷⁹ Human sexual libido is as boundless and as restless as the seas.⁴⁸⁰ Are we to help or indulge “[o]bjectofiles” who “report enduring emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to specific inanimate concrete objects such as trains, bridges, cars, as well as abstract objects such as words”?⁴⁸¹ And what about those owners of sexbots that become so attached to their electronic partners as to stage unofficial weddings?⁴⁸² Shall we humour these men, like we would do with a woman who proudly stated on the website of “a next-generation women’s media company” that “I’m happy on my own!! I don’t need a man to keep me satisfied”, for “sex toys” are much better “than real dick”?⁴⁸³ On the one hand, however intentionally bombastic and regrettably non-scholarly, this defiant claim is still a vocal statement of female independence by an actual individual possessing her distinctive sexual subjectivity. It is her life; hence her experience, her truth, her voice, and her choice. On the other hand, it is also a plausible signal of self-seclusion and rejection of potentially fulfilling relationships with flesh-and-blood human beings of the opposite sex—the sort of clinical issue that is regularly raised about so-called “sex-” and “porn addicts”, whether they

477 We write “perhaps” because happiness is not to be taken for granted, whether as an obvious or attainable goal. 478 See Chapter 3 of Part 1 and H&C2. 479 See also Willis (2012). 480 We do not tackle here the animal varieties of sexual libido and/or whether they differ from the human ones. 481 Gatzia and Arnaud (2022), 2117. 482 See Behrendt (2020), 187. 483 Nors (2018), pars. 5 – 6. On occasion, more sophisticated defences of the same attitude were developed in the 20th century by advocates of female masturbation such as Shere Hite and Betty Dodson (see Tooley 2022, 143).

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truly exist or not.⁴⁸⁴ The border separating self-sufficiency from self-seclusion is not a clear one.⁴⁸⁵ What about those avid creators and/or consumers of Japanese anime, manga or hentai comics, cartoons, and videogames, “desiring purely fictional characters”, not least seemingly “‘underage’ characters” at times: do they merely exhibit “a different way of approaching reality and a ‘queer’ orientation (before distinct subject positions)”, or should there be “a violent reaction to [their] desiring outside socially accepted forms”?⁴⁸⁶ Ought their discarnate comics, cartoons and videogames to be thrown into purifying flames, even if there is therein no real living being that is actually getting harmed?⁴⁸⁷ These people’s passion for drawn, animated, and/or computer-generated characters can arguably be, moreover, a quick affair, a hobby, a prolonged personal interest, the main cause of a double life, but also the love of one’s life.⁴⁸⁸ Are then the male and female creators and purchasers of these peculiar paper and electronic images a bunch of “perverts”, as von Mises would heartlessly state, or are they actually a new cohort of legitimately desiring and loving persons, i. e., the so-called “fictosexuals”?⁴⁸⁹ Should they be granted the same liberty in sexual matters as any other citizen and left to pursue their path to possible jouissance unopposed, uncriticised, uncured? ⁴⁹⁰ However odd or even disturbing in their sexual proclivities, these individuals might not be sick persons. Or they might be ‘sick’, yet analogously to the way in which gays and lesbians still were during much of the 20th century, even in nominally “liberal” nations. And to make things more complicated, some scholars reported that pornography involving cartoons and computer-generated characters may actually be a pathway for some people to resolve some, if not all, of the moral issues surrounding the much-debated domain of pornography, not least

484 See our brief discussion of Ley (2012) in Chapter 4 of Part 1. 485 We base this consideration on scholarly exchanges that we have had with practicing psychotherapists. 486 P. Galbraith (2011), 108 – 109. See also Klar’s (2013, 123 – 124) appraisal of some of the most controversial forms of hentai as allowing for “multiple and fluid identifications”, especially with “the pleasure-filled victim”. 487 The question may seem grossly hyperbolic, yet De Beauvoir (1966) herself put it vis-à-vis Sade’s pornography. For her too, this asking was a rhetorical move. Still, it evoked a long history of real book-burning and iconoclasm which is far from over. 488 See, e. g., Dooley and Ueno (2022) on a man marrying a fictional character. 489 Dooley and Ueno (2022), par. 10. See also Karhulahti and Välisalo (2021). 490 Classically trained minds might notice an echo of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.

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as regards sexually eager yet ethically concerned feminists.⁴⁹¹ As a self-styled “feminist” woman asserted in a recent study by Patricia J. Macleod: I think actually becoming a feminist sort of ruined porn for me a lot. I used to watch it more than I do now, and then I started going on my feminist journey and I … was reading stuff that put me in the frame of mind of porn and feminism don’t go together… that was some of the kind of rhetoric I was reading… I think now I’m just like, yeah, feminism ruined so many things for me [laughs]… It’s only relatively recently that I’ve started to explore hentai a bit, just because I kind of felt like, oh maybe this can solve my ethical quandaries about what I watch and what I don’t watch.⁴⁹²

To allow or not to allow. To tolerate or not to tolerate. To cure or not to cure. Those are the questions. And they are big, complex, thorny questions. They are the liberal’s conundrums par excellence. Who should decide what and for whom? When? And on what bases?⁴⁹³ Liberty, and not just licence, might be in the balance. And so are each individual’s arguable chances for a more or less ephemeral, important, and/or dignified pursuit of happiness, whether ultimately attainable or not.⁴⁹⁴ Let us not forget how, in yet another display of its paradoxical character, cruelty is capable of wearing the mask of genuine concern for another’s well-being, security, and prosperity. As Hallie and Kekes emphasised in their philosophical works, much evil can occur in the name and even for the sake of nothing but the good itself.⁴⁹⁵ For his part, the noted German social psychologist and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm observed: “While the benevolent sadist wants his object to

491 We keep using “moral” and “ethical” as synonyms. 492 Macleod (2020), 14. See also Aoyama and Hartley (2010, especially part 3) for a gender-specific history of women’s production and consumption of anime and manga in Japan, where the pornographic declination of this genre produced “cracks” inside the “patriarchal” system, according to the Spanish gender-studies student Belén García Villena (2012, 2 – 8), who tellingly commented on the not-so-veiled criticism that she received from “many female and male friends” for writing a degree thesis about a “taboo” topic such as “porn”, especially in its specific “hentai” variety, which some friends, as she wrote, “pretended not to know”. In our century too, even among the presumedly ‘emancipated’ and ‘secular’ youth, erotica can still cause discomfort and be met with censoriousness. 493 Our own bases are to be found in LVOA, yet not all dilemmas vanish thanks to it (see Chapter 1 of Part 1 and Chapter 3 in the present book). 494 As concluded in H&C2, the human condition seems irreparably marred with cruel. 495 See H&C1, H&C2, and Chapter 3 of Part 1.

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be rich, powerful, successful, there is one thing he tries to prevent with all his power: that his object become free and independent and thus cease to be his.”⁴⁹⁶ 1.3.2.4.2 Bombardments The relationship between pornography and liberalism might run even deeper than many among us are likely to expect. Scotland’s leading media expert of our century, Brian McNair, argued that the much-loathed pornographic industry is really part of a politically, economically, culturally, psychologically, and socially positive cycle of liberation that makes Western societies so much more humane and progressive than, say, contemporary communist China, dictatorial Myanmar, or Islamic Iran. Essentially, as he intimated in his studies on “the positive sex-political changes of the last four decades”, this industry’s “sub-cultural transgression provokes critical commentary and analysis” which, in turn, (1) “leads to mainstream commentary and analysis, as well as celebration, pastiche [and] parody” in broader socio-cultural contexts that are then (2) capable of “produc[ing] resolution/tolerance/acceptance” by the larger population, and (3) eventual “incorporation of transgression requiring”, once more, (4) “sub-cultural transgression”, thus causing the cycle to start anew.⁴⁹⁷ Building upon the research and the advocacy of noted ‘sex-positive’ feminists “such as Laura Kipnis and Nadine Strossen in the United States, and Catharine Lumby in Australia”, plus “Clarissa Smith, Feona Attwood, Susanna Paasonen [and] Lauren Rosewarne”, McNair commended pornography’s significant influence against “illiberal” forces, especially as regards the following five issues.⁴⁹⁸ (1) “[T]he evolution of communication technologies and media industries.”⁴⁹⁹

496 Fromm (1967), 114. To be fair, “/her”, “s/”, “/her” and “/hers” should be added to the pronouns in the quote. 497 McNair (2013), 8 – 9, emphases added. All three aesthetic domains are related to commonplace humour, especially the third (see Tran-Gervat 2014 and Dentith 2000). See also Paasonen, Nikunen, and Saarenmaa (2007). 498 McNair (2013), xi and 10. Some of these names recur in the present volume. See also Willis (1994, 18) on the analogous notion whereby “[d]emands for more freedom, no matter who makes them, upset the cultural status quo and even disrupt the solidarity of dominant groups”. 499 McNair (2013), 10. Early printing and publishing industries also form part of this picture, i. e., the erotic literature circulated between the 16th and 19th centuries (L. Hunt 1993).

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(2) “[T]he articulation and making visible of hitherto marginalised or suppressed sexual identities.”⁵⁰⁰ (3) “[E]ducat[ing] its users about the mechanics of sex.”⁵⁰¹ (4) “[P]rovid[ing] a safe outlet for sexual desires which for various reasons it may not be possible to satisfy within a real relationship; which can therefore help keep couples together, and enable sexual release for people who can’t or don’t want to have real partners.”⁵⁰² (5) “[I]nspir[ing]” novel trends in “art and culture, much of it made by women, gay men, and artists identifying with other minority sexual orientations.”⁵⁰³ Critically cognizant of the 20th- and 21st-century Western military involvements in, and prolonged battles with the radical Islamists of, Africa (e. g., Somalia) and the Middle East (e. g., Iraq), McNair humorously suggested that the US and its allies should “[d]rop porn, not bombs” so as to emancipate and ameliorate those societies without resorting to cruel violence and actual bloodshed.⁵⁰⁴

500 McNair (2013), 10. See, e. g., Pezzuto and Comella (2020, 152) on the “emerging field” of “trans pornography”, or Antoniou’s (2012) short yet sharp defence of pornography vis-à-vis the promotion of gays and lesbians’ rights within broader society. See also O’Pray (1984, 36; emphases added) for a Canada-based earlier instance of this line of ‘sex-positive’ criticism, stressing how, “[i]ronically, the feminists’ own arguments against offensive representation in films and advertising have been taken up by the supporters of the [new Video Recordings] Act, which may be used against … [g]ays and feminists” at some later point “in these increasingly illiberal times”, and that the alleged left-wing prophets of “political and cultural radicalism” may “have … rediscovered … sexual moralism” and its standard condemnation of “the imagery of sexual excess and ‘perversion’”. 501 McNair (2013), 10. See, e. g., Charest and Kleinplatz (2021) on young Canadians’ learning about sex from pornography, both straight and LGBTQ. 502 McNair (2013), 10. See Behrendt (2020), who, inter alia, made an analogous case for the use of sexbots, especially as regards vulnerable individuals that cannot have intimate relationships with other people (e. g., gravely handicapped persons, the elderly, social outcasts). Zara, Veggi, and Farrington (2021) discussed instead the rationale for their possible use vis-à-vis known sex offenders. 503 McNair (2013), 10. See, e. g., Ellapen (2021) on South Africa’s queer art scene and Ramos Sarment and Baltar (2021) on Latin America’s so-called “post-porn” art. 504 McNair (2013), 146 f. The late and prolific Bulgarian-born polyglot and polymath Kostantinos (Costas) Maritsas (2016) stepped farther by looking backwards. He argued that ancient pornographic imagery was a sign of the transformation of human males from fighting and raping hunters into civilised beings capable of agriculture, mythopoesis, architecture, art, and, above all, effective symbolic interaction between men and women with regard to sexual intercourse. In line with the Darwinist principles characterising his approach, our species kept going, even if the primeval, cruel, psychological pressures leading to sexual arousal had largely disappeared, e. g., the spectacle of death, excitement of the chase, fear of physical assault, or sight of blood. As he wrote: “The purpose of pornography is to remind women of their duty to reproduce [by] making [up] an imaginative reality” (Maritsas 2016, 3). However peculiar such a “duty” may sound to our ears, stepping

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1.3.2.5 Libertarianism No one gets upset if you present women as ‘brains’ or as spiritual beings. If I concentrated on a woman’s sense of humor to the exclusion of her other characteristics, is this degrading? Why is it degrading to focus on her sexuality? —Wendy McElroy⁵⁰⁵

A self-proclaimed “liberal” and “progressive”, McNair was clearly and squarely set against “the Dworkin-MacKinnon anti-porn campaigns of the 1980s” and “the post2004 resurgence of that movement”, which “united sections of the feminist movement with moral conservative forces”, even when, as he wrote, “there is no evidence other than anecdotal that cultural sexualisation or pornographication, has damaged or is damaging women and other groups”.⁵⁰⁶ Willis, a few years before him, had also argued that “[s]exual libertarianism is a logical extension of the feminist and gay liberationist demand for the right to self-definition”, which encompasses numerous “varieties of desire—particularly ‘deviant’, which is to say dissident, desire”.⁵⁰⁷ 1.3.2.5.1 Rifts Pornography, as controversial as it may be, has been identified, repeatedly yet perhaps surprisingly to some readers, as one such line of meaningful employment and/or existentially rewarding self-definition in today’s Western societies, even when the constrictions inherent to capitalism itself are taken into account.⁵⁰⁸ Pat-

from cruel fact to crude fiction might mean nonetheless achieving real ‘progress’ (see also Chapter 3 and Leacock’s 1935, 11). 505 McElroy (1997), par. 22. See also McElroy (1995) and (2001). 506 McNair (2013), 4 and 85. See also Fraiman (1995). The ‘sex-negative’ camp’s allegedly cavalier disregard for empirical data is a common theme in the ‘sex-positive’ camp’s criticism of the former (see, e. g., Willis 1994, 7, and McNair 2013, 68 and 79 – 90, who therefore devoted an entire chapter to presenting an “argument from evidence”). Also, members of the latter camp can be attacked or scoffed because of their gender, thus replicating, perhaps unwittingly, the gender discrimination that is typically claimed to be fought against (see, e. g., McNair 2013, xi). 507 Willis (2012), 21 – 22. 508 See, e. g., N. Hartley (2018), A. Jones (2018), and McElroy (1995), (1997), and (2001). Pecuniary aims and worries, which are central in the capitalist order, might even become secondary or insignificant in others. Should there be enough men and/or women who enjoy mixing lustful activities with exhibitionism, Alan Soble (1986) inferred that, in a perfectly accomplished communist utopia, there would still exist pornography qua joyful form of artistic, hedonistic, embodied, and/or, basically, human self-expression. Indeed, albeit only imperfectly communist, modern Russia’s revolutionary decade incited a “sexual revolution” that, like much else that belonged to the turbulent yet creative Bolshevik age, dissipated under Stalin’s iron-fist rule, which proved eager to restore traditional family structures, pre-revolutionary gender roles, and prudish sexual conduct

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ently, as several master-quotes in the present volume have also indicated, the feminist ‘family’ has been most cacophonous in this regard, as well as in many others pertaining to the sexual sphere.⁵⁰⁹ (1) On the one hand, as Willis wrote, there have been “sexual radicals” like herself, “who saw sexual liberalism as deeply flawed by sexism but nonetheless a source of crucial gains for women”.⁵¹⁰ (2) On the other hand, there have been “feminists who dismissed the sexual revolution as monolithically sexist and shared many of the attitudes of conservative moralists” that were usually affiliated with Christian confessional groups in America.⁵¹¹ Among the latter, Willis singled out, once more, “Andrea Dworkin”, who, in the former’s view, “scoffs at the distinction women are ‘commanded’ to make between pornographic fantasy and real life”, “defines male sexuality as pornography as rape” [sic], and “leaves no room for mutual heterosexual desire, let alone love”.⁵¹² Sardonically, Willis described Dworkin’s now-classic 1981 tome, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, as “a booklength sermon, preached with a rhetorical flourish and a singleminded intensity that meet somewhere between poetry and rant”, hence depicting “the battle of the sexes [a]s a Manichean clash between ab-

among millions of Soviet citizens (Carleton 2005, title et passim). The Marxist Freudian Reich (1953, 95) also remarked on this matter. 509 The cruelly exploitative side of sex work was acknowledged and addressed in H&C2. In this volume, then, we allow ourselves to look at the world of sex work from a different perspective, which would be dishonest to ignore simply because it contradicts our immediate moral intuitions. See, e. g., the Aboriginal scholar Corrinne T. Sullivan (2018), (2021), and (2022), challenging the trope of Indigenous sex workers in Australia as sheer passive victims. Her results too informed our cautious stance vis-à-vis the split feminist world and epistemic humility. In any case, as explained in Chapter 1 of Part 1, LVOA provides us with our ultimate evaluative criteria. 510 Willis (2012), 20 – 21. As her writings suggest, the conceptual separation between ‘liberal’ and ‘libertarian’ is not clear-cut. 511 Willis (2012), 20. Suggestively, the subtitle of Dworkin’s (1976, title page; emphasis added) book, whence the trenchant quote about the inherent cruelty of masculine sexuality satirised by Baroncelli (1996, 36; see also Chapter 1 and section 3.2.4 of Part 1) originated (i. e., Dworkin 1976, 108), reads as follows: “prophecies and discourses on sexual politics”. 512 Willis (2012), 17– 18. See also the original source for this essay, i. e., Willis (1981), which, if correct in the rebuttal of Dworkin (1981), would then indicate that dogmatism can don secular insignia too, i. e., not just the confessional ones that are typical of Shia clerics (see Chapter 3) or Catholic inquisitors (see H&C2). Support for Willis’ (1981) criticism was later provided by the US law professor and civil liberties activist Nadine Strossen (1993 and, above all, 1995, 13 and 17), whereby she signalled a veritable “sex panic” splitting the American feminist camp into “pornophobic feminists” and, in keeping with the implied Greek, “pornophiliac” ones.

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solute power and absolute powerlessness, absolute villains and absolute victims”, while also effectively refusing to engage in any nuanced rational debate, insofar as Dworkin stated openly and disparagingly that “[m]ale culture thrives on argument and prides itself on distinctions”.⁵¹³ As concerns finding a reconciliation or a middle ground within this sorely torn feminist ‘family’, it may not be possible.⁵¹⁴ As Willis laconically remarked: “the two sides are so far apart they have nothing more to say to each other”.⁵¹⁵ Talking to each other would imply, for one, being able to entertain the opposite party’s point of view with a modicum of intellectual candour and interpretative charitability, even if just for argument’s sake.⁵¹⁶ Yet, this ability is exactly that which literalist

513 Willis (1981), pars. 7 and 11. The last statement, in the original, is actually followed by an argument that, in the author’s intentions, is probably meant to show how Dworkin (1981, 127) could outwit the “male culture” at issue. If so, such a misinterpretation would further point towards the clashing camps’ likely cathexes. Also, we refer the reader to LVOA as regards trying to determine any good or bad line of action (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 514 We do not tackle here the issue of whether a mis/conception of power à la Foucault is the rootcause of the ‘sex-negative’ feminists’ single-minded characterisation of male-female romantic or erotic relationships as a sort of straightforward and inexorable battle for dominance (see, e. g., Willis 1994, 10 – 11). While it is likely that many such battles have occurred, whether via open violence or indirect manipulation, we would contend that there have also existed at least as many male-female relations based on other relevant factors, e. g., mutual affinity, attraction, affect, affection, aptitude, transaction, shared need, survival, and cooperation. The history of numerous egalitarian and emancipatory movements bear ample witness to the last item in the list. Thus, the reduction of the field of romantic or erotic life to outright gender-wide competition seems as oversimplistic as the orthodox economists’ textbook reduction of the field of motivation to homo economicus’ presumed self-maximising ‘rationality’. 515 Willis (2012), 20. In both theory and practice, plenty of intermediate stances are probably possible, e. g., the so-called “ethical pornography” that young and/or budding scholars investigated in recent years (see, e. g., Borràs Isnardo and Álvarez Giner 2018, Coetsier 2020, Ergen 2018, Forrest 2013, Korfmacher 2020, and Ojala 2019), in addition to more seasoned intellectuals (see, e. g., K. Scott 2016 and Tillman and Wells 2022), also in connection with potential and actual therapeutic uses of sexually explicit materials (see, e. g., Hanek 2015, Patrinou 2017, Kirby 2021, and Boonin 2022, chaps. 26 – 28). In most of the literature, though, there transpires a largely polarised public and academic debate, driven by prima-facie a-priori ethico-aesthetic paradigms and/or categories of thought (e. g., ‘obscenity’, ‘subversion’, ‘subjectivity’) as well as sweeping historico-cultural concepts (e. g., ‘patriarchy’, ‘individualism’, ‘hegemony’), rather than careful empirical research and case-specific a-posteriori assessments (even a student can spot this trend: Macleod 2018). A fortiori, gross shouting matches ensue because little matching ground is shared ab ovo. It is not a conversation to be held, but a confrontation to be won. See also Chapter 1 of Part 1. 516 Emma Jane (2022, 561 f; emphases added) offered an interesting reflection on how some “humor” might even facilitate a more moderate debate among the different feminist factions whose “tensions”, as she put in her abstract, “are often subterranean, tacit, and difficult to conclusively prove”, even if their effects are hurtfully tangible.

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minds, according to Hillman, are incapable of instantiating.⁵¹⁷ At some point—and a pretty early one in the case at issue—dialogue stops. 1.3.2.5.2 Restrictions This stop comes to pass because the dialogue hits the rock-hard plateau of a person’s fundamental presuppositions which may and/or cannot be doubted, lest one’s own ideological stance and/or identity is/are imperilled, and alternative views, pluralistic compromise, and/or cautious scepticism gain ground.⁵¹⁸ Instead, one raises both the voice and the stakes because, as Bertrand Russell once wrote about his own deepest moral feelings, a person’s fundamental “ethos … emotional universe … [and] all that [one] value[s] in human experience and human achievement” appear to be under threat.⁵¹⁹ (There was probably more than just a grain of

517 Behrendt (2020, 172) observed an even deeper source of instability challenging the literalist mind, i. e., the inner plurality of the living individual, who should not be interpreted as being just one ‘thing’, one fixed set of desires, one ‘type’ of sexual and/or spiritual person: “[P]eople shouldn’t be envisaged as monolithic blocks of unchanging ideas, values or emotions. Johns have unquestionably the capacity of being loving and caring fathers and husbands, consumers of porn can promptly oscillate from crude onanism to wholehearted compassion for the other, sadomasochists enjoy rough sex (to speak euphemistically) but also more vanilla or traditional intercourse.” Elias Canetti’s (1999, 63) mother could be loving as well as nothing short of “cruel”, as he wrote in his memoirs. 518 As noted in Chapters 1 and 4 of Part 1, M. Polanyi (1962c) argued that such a plateau is present in everyone’s belief-system, whether a person has endorsed it with a conscious, responsible, fiduciary embrace, or because habituation, cathexis, pressing need, and/or acculturation have internalised it to such a point as to make it impossible for her to entertain alternative viewpoints. This too is a realisation advising epistemic humility. 519 Russell (2016), par. 3. This being a 1962 letter sent to Sir Oswald Mosley, former leader of the British Union of Fascists, whose “cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and … sadistic persecution” Russell (2016, par. 1) rejected with “every ounce of [his] energy” (and rightfully so, we would add, in light of LVOA; see Chapter 1 of Part 1). Therefore, “nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between [them]” (Russell 2016, par. 2). The yet-to-come “ironic liberal” Rorty (1989 and 2001) was thus implicitly vindicated by the witty socialist Lord Russell (2016) in taking the ethnocentric intuitions of a person qua ultimate ground for human morality, i. e., the person’s “ethos” and “emotional universe”. Ethics, under this perspective, would appear to rest upon each person’s most deeply internalised axiological traditions and strongest moral feelings, i. e., neither upon reason (e. g., Kant 1956) nor upon a divinely inspired ‘heart’ (e. g., Pascal 1993 and Jung 2009). Given, however, the sizeable heterogeneity of ethical stances and im/moral praxes that have been available in Western culture since time immemorial, it is then not at all surprising that people can still disagree today with one another on all kinds of important issues, and with all of their heart. Cutting beneath this heterogeneity is a crucial reason why, in our view, LVOA makes a more reliable axio-logical basis for ethical discernment then any of the cited moral stances (see Chapter 1 of Part 1).

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truth in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 1928 quip: “I suspect B.R. of being a sentimentalist disguised as a sceptic.”)⁵²⁰ Significantly, Hillman observed how, instead of advocating the proper supervision and the material improvement of the extant trade—along the lines of what had already been done, exemplarily, in “the garment industry” with regard to “immigrant seamstresses in sweatshops or … children” working in “the dark satanic mills of Dickensian England”—today’s “puritanical Victorianism” has been invoking outright “censorship”, even if, per se, “[p]ornography is not a worse case of the exploitation and abuse of children, of bodies, of women or of physical cruelties”, which can be effectively neutralised by enforcing well-established “statutes against assault and involuntary servitude … protect[ing] minors and those in dependent positions”.⁵²¹ Self-styled advocates of liberty, progressivism and emancipation calling for censorship are certainly an odd and cruelly ironic phenomenon, to which we should pair another, as evoked this time by the contemporary British libertarian ethicist Danny Frederick, upon the basis of prior historical experiences: “suppression of pornography would lead to an extensive black market controlled by organised criminals with serious adverse consequences for all engaged”.⁵²² As also Sontag wrote, while touching on Lord Shaftesbury’s cultured advocacy of “tolerance” in his day’s religiously and politically torn British society: “stern repressive measures are likely to aggravate disorder rather than cure it, turning a nuisance into a disaster”.⁵²³ The picture is extremely problematic, to say the least. For one, there are clearly dissenting and utterly divergent pictures of one and the same reality that are being offered in the public arena. For another, the affective charge of the debated issues may explain, psychologically, the uncompromising and even acerbic stances of many a participant in the same arena, who can then certainly rationalise or, as

520 Holmes and Laski (1953), 1109. “B.R.” meaning “Bertrand Russell”. Holmes is still remembered today as a champion of American progressivism. For one, on the issue of censorship, he famously asserted: “I think we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country” (Abrams v. United States 1919, 630). 521 Hillman (1995b), 52 – 57 and 63 – 65. The marriage of anti-sexual stances and self-proclaimed progressivism is found by Levet (as translated and cited in Behrendt 2020, 182) “at the heart of gender theory, [wherein] lies an asceticism, a puritanism, determined to clip off the wings of heterosexual desire”. If true, it would be a cruel irony. 522 Frederick (2011), 94. 523 Sontag (1978), 79 – 80. See V. Jones (1922) for a ‘snapshot’ of the English satires reflecting Shaftesbury’s world.

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Pareto would write, “derive” post hoc said charge into various culturally complex and intellectually intricate manners, including scholarly ones.⁵²⁴ All such ingenuity notwithstanding, though, even milder forms of sexually charged artistic expression have tellingly been targeted by censoring, illiberal, ‘literalist’, or ‘Victorian’ minds, which are not confined to the US alone.⁵²⁵ Human sexual libido flows everywhere, after all.⁵²⁶ Thus, Spain’s female actor Paz Vega, whose global fame was kickstarted by the 2001 erotic drama Lucía y el sexo, commented 20 years later that “in the age of the politically correct… We are less courageous. We must watch every word we utter… Remain confined within limits… Yet art, in each of its disciplines, should shake the tree, by definition, and go beyond the limits. I think that, today, Lucía y el sexo could not be made.”⁵²⁷ 1.3.2.6 Scandals What part is public, what part is private, how far do you go with this or with that? … What difference does it really make? We are all scandals. —James Hillman⁵²⁸

As admirable or as misguided as they may be in their hardcore commitment, Hillman’s targeted literalists neglect the fact that the message results also from the way in which they are interpreting the medium, i. e., in their own personal way, whether responsibly or not.⁵²⁹ Or else, psychologically, such literalists could be said not to be able to distinguish sharply between

524 Pareto (1935). See Carroll (1973) on the dis/analogies between Freud’s thought and Pareto’s. See also McNair (2013, xi and 160 – 161 endnotes 1 – 2) on how acerbic and unscholarly the criticisms of disliked arguments can be. 525 Insofar as “the repressed always return”, Hillman (1995b, 38 and 64) observed how sexual neuroses and psychoses proliferate; hence, all aspects of social life get tainted with “pink madness” (e. g., in “ads and vacations”). 526 In several respects, Freud’s sexual theory of libido was anticipated by Schopenhauer (1909), who claimed to have grasped by way of intuition the basic metaphysical energy of the universe, aka Wille zum Leben [Will to Live], which tricks individual animals, humans included, into sensing that, by copulating, they will be happy. While happiness remains elusive and, in certain cases, sex means individual deaths (e. g., among some species of spiders and the praying mantis), species are perpetuated (see also H&C1 and Chapter 3 of Part 1). 527 As interviewed by Cappelli (2021), par. 9. “[E]ach of its disciplines” includes comedy. 528 Hillman (2010), 16. 529 See our account in H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1 of M. Polanyi (1962c) and the complexity of the interplay among possible facts, the language games referring to them, and each person’s take on such references. It is in a specifically Polanyian sense, in fact, that we write “personal” and “responsibly” in the sentence above.

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(1) the actual intersubjective means of representation and (2) their subjective yet apparently manifest signification of these means, i. e., their conceptual-cathectic investment in the representation, which they are extremely likely to interpret in a mentally and affectively categorical manner, e. g., as nothing if not blasphemy, idolatry, heresy, obscenity, vulgarity, scandal, oppression or filth.⁵³⁰ Despite the countless semantic, pragmatic, and conceptual uncertainties surrounding us at every turn, as also exemplified by the present investigation of humour and cruelty, many human beings are still capable of displaying trenchantly “univocal hermeneutics” or, more exactly, “hermeneutic realism”, especially whenever, ironically, considerable disagreement and conspicuous intricacy are actually the case.⁵³¹ Accordingly, shouting matches ensue, rather than cool-headed dialogues, cooperative investigations, or dispassionate conversations.⁵³² Condemning rhetoric replaces cold reasoning; aggressive name-calling overshadows all nuances; fears trample over facts; and insults trump insights.⁵³³ Funnily enough, genuinely univocal or quasi-univocal hermeneutics are often common in areas where controversy is limited and even-tempered, e. g., the constituent terms and interpretative function of certain logical systems or those of specific mathematical systems.⁵³⁴ Cruelly enough, univocal or quasi-univocal hermeneutics can also be established by the intolerant and effective silencing of dis-

530 We write “extremely likely” because exceptions might occasionally occur. We do not know for sure. For instance, some individuals seem perfectly capable of temporary tolerant aloofness, which however fails to last, thus producing, in the end, intolerant animosity instead. Others, instead, might even make such claims in a personal way, à la M. Polanyi (see Chapter 4 of Part 1). Also, “cathectic” and, relatedly, “cathexis”, mean for us something that is powerfully affective for a given living person, not a clinical condition or pathology. 531 Pernecky (2016), 102. The very term “hermeneutics” implicitly highlights an important notion challenging all forms of literalism: the same known ‘facts’ need interpreted and, alas, they can be interpreted differently, i. e., in the plural. 532 Baroncelli (1996, 46 – 47) mocked the idea that some lexicon is to be thought of as ‘original’, ‘perpetual’, or metaphysically ‘true’, suggesting instead that the deepest root of the resistance to the changes championed by non-offensive speech and political correctness is a matter of attachment to words and attendant language games, i. e., cathexis. Also, “shouting matches” have been claimed to characterise “online debates” which, like much internet-based communication, are steeped in “just plain cruel rhetoric and tactics” (Jane 2022, 575 – 576; emphasis added). 533 See, e. g., McNair (2013), xi, 53 – 73, and 160 – 161 endnotes 1 – 2. 534 See, e. g., Jonas (2019).

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senting voices. When all heretical throats have been successfully slashed, garrotted, broken, or burnt, the sound of orthodoxy is the only one that can be heard. 1.3.2.6.1 Saints This intolerant approach too, historically, has often been the case—spread over a vast spectrum of diverse yet apt psychological and/or physical forms of violence, e. g., tacit discriminatory hiring practices, overt social shunning, smear campaigns, occasional beatings, forced exile, and outright torture or public execution. Certain laws may be harsh, in fact, but they have to be implemented exactly as they have been written, insofar as a truly single-minded interpretation of human affairs leaves no room for doubt or ambiguity. Emblematically, the revered ‘father’ of modern Iran wrote: In the time of the Prophet, laws were not merely expounded and promulgated; they were also implemented. The Messenger of God was an executor of the law. For example, he implemented the penal provisions of Islam: he cut off the hand of the thief and administered lashings and stonings. The successor to the Prophet must do the same; his task is not legislation, but the implementation of the divine laws that the Prophet has promulgated.⁵³⁵

However controversial, debatable, risible, or scandalous some of his more audacious claims may be, Hillman’s point on literalism is undoubtedly correct in at least one logical respect. Whenever literalism is engaged in a scholarly debate or a political campaign, it presupposes that one interpretation alone must win and be permitted, for only one interpretation is thought of as being truly ‘true’, i. e., the literal one, literally.⁵³⁶ Such hermeneutical closures are visible and most dangerous at high-level decision-making, e. g., alleged experts in economics and/or the social sciences who are sometimes incapable of removing their conceptual blinkers and seeing reality for what it is like or, at least, what it might also be like.⁵³⁷ Or they can be found among governing politicians that are driven by their apparent and adamant patri-

535 Khomeini (1981), 37. See also Chapter 3 in this book and our presentation of al-Jibaly’s (2005) recommendations of capital punishment for particularly grave sexual offences under the kind of Islamic law that he favoured. 536 We are thus reminded of Lecky’s (1890) wisdom about lack of imagination being the mother of intolerance (see H&C1 and Chapter 3 of Part 1). If one cannot conceive of him-/herself as being possibly wrong, not even hypothetically, s/he will be unlikely to give much credit to the opponent’s values, arguments, goals, and presuppositions. As to the double repetition in the sentence above, it is intentional. 537 See our discussion of this topic in the first half of this chapter and the attendant scholarly references.

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otic duties, which may sometimes extend to condoning cruel persecutions, police violence, or even warfare.⁵³⁸ Less threateningly, these hermeneutical closures can also transpire in prosaic domains, such as when a person perceives as ‘strange’, ‘weird’, ‘creepy’, ‘suspicious’, ‘mad’, and/or ‘disturbing’ that someone else may go about a given daily business in a way that is simply not the one for which the former individual habitually opts, e. g., choosing a specific means of transportation instead of another or greeting strangers in the street instead of ignoring them. In yet another cruel irony that we must signal here, the social norms, traditions, and customs regularly studied by anthropologists and sociologists qua obvious facts and facets of human life can easily become as many cages, obstacles, and leashes whereby people’s lives lose their uniqueness and individuality.⁵³⁹ Humour is bound to suffer most awfully in literalist contexts, which leave little or no room for expressing, highlighting, and toying with indeterminate and equivocal phenomena such as bisociation, ambivalence, contrast, duality, etc. This being true, at least, as regards the debate’s or campaign’s crucial item or issue, which admits, or must and can admit, one possible reading and one alone, according to the literalist mind.⁵⁴⁰ Zealous promotion is seldom an obvious ally of zany probing, especially when scandalous or unsettling topics may be at issue. As the Scottish Presbyterian minister and humour scholar, James A. Simpson, noted: Whereas those with a sense of humour readily acknowledge that they “know in part and see only puzzling reflections in a mirror”, those without a sense of humour are often convinced that they see clearly and know absolutely. They cannot tolerate any suggestion that they may not be right. Lacking the perspective which humour can bring, many militants and crusaders take themselves too seriously. They fail to see the absurdity of many of their pretensions, and their delusions of fame and grandeur. Their strong political, feminist, nationalist or religious convictions, translate themselves into intolerance and aggression, quarrels and confrontation.⁵⁴¹

538 See Galbraith (2004, 73 – 74) on warfare as the morally worst thing that humankind is capable of for profit’s sake. 539 More on this point follows in Chapter 3, though its most thorough treatment was in H&C2. 540 Literalists can make jokes like anyone else, in all likelihood, but probably not on so heavily cathected an object as the one for which they are unwilling to entertain in full honesty the possibility of alternative interpretations. 541 Simpson (1998), 42. A former moderator of the Church of Scotland, i. e., a ‘Presbyterian Pope’, Simpson (1998, 28 and 51) was aware of the dogmatic excesses of “the extreme Calvinists” and “John Calvin” himself, who “was not known for his exuberance and wit”. Maybe, for reformism to win, one needs “a very serious folly, incapable of self-irony”, such as the one shown by the heralds of “politically correct language” (Baroncelli 1996, 58).

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And as also Hillman observed in the disciplinary domain of psychology: “Irony, humor, and compassion … bespeak an awareness of the multiplicity of meanings and fates and the multiplicity of intentions embodied by any subject at any moment.”⁵⁴² Plurality does not mix well with purity.⁵⁴³ Saintliness, typically, sets store by singleness.⁵⁴⁴ 1.3.2.6.2 Sinners Whether or not ironically and humorously too, it is remarkable how even the much-lauded virtue of compassion can create the most ethically puzzling, psychologically paradoxical and, perhaps, epistemically and axiologically complex conundrums about human comportments.⁵⁴⁵ Scandals, as Hillman’s opening quote reminded us of, might well be people living out their lives. We can come up with numerous such possibilities.⁵⁴⁶ The magnanimous creditor who forgives the debts of the most irresponsible debtor. The remorseful comedian who quits his job for he has finally realised that no joke is without a victim. The caring gigolo who honestly concerns himself with letting his aging female clients feel youthful and desired. The undiscerning motivator who inspires self-trust and dedication in all persons, no matter what ends they may be pursuing. The pious Orthodox confessor who forgives the sins of a contrite State officer that is responsible for the former’s persecution. The understanding employee who sincerely worries about the mental health of an abusive boss that is patently unable to change his bullying behaviour. The animistic butcher who prays for the souls of all the animals that he dispatches on a daily basis. The accepting husband who forgives his long-time wife’s escapades, for he genuinely wants her to be happy. The corporate Robin Hood who steals his wealthy clients’ money to aid the penniless needy. The charitable stripper who rejoices in the Christian awareness of giving thrills to weirdoes and misfits that would otherwise stand no chance for any sexual elation. The loving nun who chastises sternly her pupils, even if it pains her, for she knows that neglecting their upbringing would be even more excruciating. The ecumenical scholar who is accused of all kinds of extremisms because no political, moral or aesthetic stance falls outside 542 Hillman (1985), 53. 543 Emblematically, McElroy (2001, 17) noted: “Individualist feminists aimed, not at social purity, but at the freedom to use their own bodies as they saw fit.” 544 See, e. g., Fieschi Adorno (1858), i. e., Saint Catherine of Genoa, whom we mentioned in Chapter 3 of Part 1. 545 See H&C1 for a detailed account of “empathy” proper, which is the gateway to “compassion” in today’s psychology. 546 They are fewer than 22, this time.

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his unbiased purview. The frank mystic who has encountered our merciful God and is therefore taken for mad when she tells others about it. The paranoid crusader who attacks with the greatest rectitude and courage his many innocent victims. The well-oiled performer who sacrifices her liver so that her heart is poured into each and every note that she sings. The sympathetic soldier who grants suicidal clemency to an enemy combatant that, being as fearful and as armed as the former, will then repay him by the cruellest means.⁵⁴⁷ Scientists of all stripes like neat simplifications and equations-friendly consistency. Philosophers, cultural theorists and psychologists are no exception either, more often than not. Yet, humankind and the reality of their lived universe could be far more complicated than any abstract theory or convenient socio-scientific classificatory schema can ever grasp. At least, this is what Hillman concluded after many years of practice as a psychotherapist. 1.3.2.6.3 Sages Adding possible scorn to plausible injury, numerous or even all of the far-fromrare outrages, vocally deplored scandals, and deeply felt offenses denounced by so many dignified persons and serious pundits may be terribly misplaced under humorous circumstances. As the Russian anthropologist Alexander Kozintsev indirectly confirmed in our century, literalism might actually be always in error with respect to humorous matters, for it mistakes something fictional (i. e., the representation or signifier) for something factual (i. e., the represented or signified): What is the difference between a comic image and a serious one? In the first place, the comic image has no independent meaning – it only parasitizes the serious image and temporarily supersedes it. This, indeed, is its only raison d’être. A purely comic image is vacuous and primitive, its possible artistic merits notwithstanding. Its connection with the object (real or imaginary) is purely formal. It is not an image of the object but a parody of this image.⁵⁴⁸

547 We base these abstract examples on actual people that crossed our path, artistic creations (e. g., Dostoyevsky’s novels and Steven Spielberg’s 1998 war drama Saving Private Ryan), wellknown prayers (i. e., “Our Father, Who art in Heaven”), two 1990s interviews that we were unable to retrace (i. e., with the blue-movie actors Moana Pozzi and Rocco Siffredi), and very many expert sources that are duly listed in the hefty closing bibliography. Albeit hypostatised, these examples are meant to spur the reader’s imagination and let him/her reconsider common assumptions about compassion and, more generally, people’s motives (see also Hallie 1985c, 42). As addressed in Chapter 3 of Part 1, being able to see the world through somebody else’s eyes is key to becoming compassionate hence capable of toleration. 548 Kozintsev (2010), 43. We discussed in detail his challenge to the standard conceptions of humour in H&C2. Here, though, it is worth noticing how his reflections implicitly echo Hillman’s (1995b) critique of literalism.

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Those who take offense at humorous remarks, then, could be said to be failing under several respects: (1) epistemically (for they take seriously that which is said in jest, or as true that which is false, if not even devoid of any truth-value); (2) morally (for they fail in exercising, say, their patience, critical discernment, aloofness, ataraxia, sense of relevance, or even sense of humour); (3) hermeneutically (for they admit of one interpretation only, when the item at issue is inherently ambivalent, if not even intrinsically meaningless); and (4) socially (for they bring themselves down to the silly level of the jokester).⁵⁴⁹ Kozintsev’s approach, if creatively extended beyond “humour” proper alone, may even suggest that no adequately intelligent and self-reflexive person should be truly disturbed by ludicrous fictions at large, which could be said to include prima-facie mocking and insulting expressions that, in all probability, have no positive grounding whatsoever in concrete reality.⁵⁵⁰ Why should we shudder or get angry if someone utters: “boche”, “wop”, “gator bait”, “bogtrotter”, “scalawag”, “chinaman”, “fruitcake”, “toyboy”, “honky”, “sissy”, “soy boy”, “trophy wife”, “prick”, “gammon”, “snowflake”, “himbo”, “mama’s boy”, “knacker”, “dick”, “gubba”, “moron”, “cracker”, “fuzzy-wuzzy”, “nerd”, “tart”, or “gook”? Not to mention “your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries”?⁵⁵¹ It is enough to sense the ridiculousness and palpably non-factual character of the older, anachronistic taunts to begin realising that their current analogues may well be as ridiculous, and as non-factual, i. e., empirically empty, objectively ‘parasitic’, and actually descriptive of nothing inherently bad but, at best, the utterer’s evil intentions, if and when present.⁵⁵² As also implied by Chesterton’s notion of “negative cruelty”, i. e., the kind of cruelty that must be exercised by verbal

549 As discussed in H&C2, empirical studies of all kinds indicate that most people perceive verbal attacks as cruel. Whether it is unfortunate or not, few people seem capable of turning malicious verborum ferocia directed at them into mere flatus vocis that they can ignore. Albeit empirically toothless, Kozintsev’s (2010) approach is nonetheless philosophically interesting, not least in connection with ancient notions of wise imperturbability and aloofness. 550 We stepped past Kozintsev’s (2010, 163) stance, which preserved a distinction between, on the one hand, “humour” and “laughter”, which are both rooted in humankind’s primeval and universal condition qua social animals, and, on the other hand, “irony” and “satire”, which are both later creations of local cultures and languages establishing group boundaries and hierarchies. Our account in H&C2 did not stress this aspect of his thought. 551 As shouted by a French soldier at King Arthur and his men in Monty Python’s 1975 comedy The Holy Grail. 552 As discussed in H&C2, the utterer and the recipient of a cruel joke often operate on very different assumptions. Offence is often the child of divergent premises.

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means because nothing more hurtful or effectively “positive” can be utilised by the verbal assailant, there appears to be a hollow feature or some sort of a vacuum within this “negative” type of malicious communicative agency.⁵⁵³ This nonbeing is something that may be worth thinking about, however briefly—while also not dismissing Chesterton’s use of “cruelty” proper in this context. Chesterton’s short musings on these two types of “cruelty” proper should remind us of the fact that if any of these terms of ridicule can ‘bite’, ‘cut’, ‘sting’, or ‘punch’, it is also, if not chiefly, because we let it/them do so to us.⁵⁵⁴ While the initiator of any act of derision has his/her own possible or even probable culpability to respond for, it is also true that we are offended, in lived reality, if and when we take offense. Yet in the same reality, we might or could not do so. How we, the targets of an offensive slur, react to someone else’s aggressive speech act is precisely the potentially empowering gap, emptiness, or void, that exists between that act’s locutionary content and the same act’s illocutionary and perlocutionary forces.⁵⁵⁵ Put another way, this peculiar vacant space is also the potential set of sociolinguistic and noetic-affective circumstances under which the expected laughingstock can cause the perlocutionary force to be deflected and the illocutionary force to be humiliated.⁵⁵⁶ Abandoned in this gap, emptiness, or void, taunts and slurs become dead words. And as the Romans used to say: Mortui non mordent. ⁵⁵⁷ A little bit of cool thinking about semantics by the target, then, might counter or even nullify the verbal assailant’s uncool pragmatics.⁵⁵⁸ And at a possibly lower level of intended aggressiveness, if not of perceived one, this peculiar vacant space can turn out to be that crucial space of officially protected free speech where comedians are allowed to perform their antics, cartoonists draw their caricatures, and common people ‘give’ and ‘take’ one another’s jokes.⁵⁵⁹

553 Chesterton (1919a), chap. 15, par. 12; emphasis added. 554 We are reminded of the rhetorical triangle: each and every communicative act has an initiator, a message, and a recipient. Each and every corner matters in generating the end result (see H&C1). Things are very different, though, if the taunts are accompanied by the threat of tangible harm, e. g., physical or financial (see also Willis 1994, 16 – 17). Then, the acts of ridicule are no longer a noisy and nasty salvo, but the cock of a pistol. 555 See J. Austin (1962), 99 – 101 on these standard notions in Anglophone philosophy of language. 556 In our childhood, our mothers taught us to ignore those who mocked us. It is easier said than done. Still, this maternal piece of advice, which has ancient philosophical roots, must be mentioned, for it is part of the picture. 557 “The dead don’t bite.” They’re dead. 558 As we noted in H&C2, much ancient philosophical wisdom aimed at teaching us not to be pained by actions and events (e. g., Stoicism). As also noted therein, all empirical studies indicate that most people are not sages, yet. 559 See, e. g., Downs and Surprenant (2018), especially chap. 13.

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1.3.2.7 Subtlety A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what we cannot see. —François de La Rochefoucauld⁵⁶⁰

Whether we follow the suggested implications of Kozintsev’s reasonings all the way or not, the hypothesis that Hillman and Paz Vega present us with remains nonetheless a troubling one, as far as personal liberty is concerned, not least with regard to the individual’s free speech and self-expression.⁵⁶¹ Western nations do not seem to require lashes, canings, and stonings. By working at a lower yet unremitting level of pragmatic intensity, social opinion and business concerns, which both exist at the same level of general and informal mass persuasion, might be capable of dominating and/or fashioning the social imaginary of the West without having to resort to overt acts of formal censorship and/or institutionally backed physical oppression.⁵⁶² Eccentricity and heterodoxy would thus be chastised without the overt explicitness or hostility characterising officially illiberal nations.⁵⁶³ Ironically, the alleged dissenters could even be condemned in the name of virtue, refinement, democracy, equality, justice, and/or liberty itself.⁵⁶⁴ 1.3.2.7.1 Victorians Censoring and censorious social sanction needs very little to be unleashed. It can be vented onto a person as soon as she fails to wash regularly or to choose adequate topics for conversation at dinner parties. Fashion, restaurants, and pop stars will do. Donatism, termites, and tracheotomies will not do.⁵⁶⁵ Comfortable and comfort-

560 Rochefoucauld (1871), maxim #265. 561 As the noted UK film-maker Mike Leigh (as interviewed in Williams and Leigh 2021, par. 14) stated: “I am … irritated by box-ticking on political correctness. I’m concerned about young filmmakers. They have a hell of a bloody time, being told what they can and can’t do, that they ought to have different kinds of people working with them, different subject matters. Nobody disagrees about diversity. But when it becomes prescriptive, that’s dangerous.” Naturally, personal liberty may not be the main focus of a great many people, whose paramount goals in life can be class interests, adherence to a given creed, neurotic self-denial, habitual consistency, and much else. 562 Fear of potential racial slurs was so intense after the cruel homicide of George Floyd in 2020 in the US that the BBC decided to remove Fawlty Towers’ famous 1975 episode “The Germans” from one of its streaming platforms so as to avoid causing any hypothetical offense and any subsequent costly litigation (“Fawlty Towers” 2020). 563 E. g., present-day Saudi Arabia, McCarthyite US, Stalinist USSR, 19th-century Papal States, Puritan Britain. The reader may know further examples. 564 The citizens of, say, former Yugoslavia had repeated experience of such cruel ironies. 565 In all probability, the reader finds the second set of three topics ludicrous. Ipso facto, his/her reaction indicates how ingrained are the common standards of propriety in his/her mind. Perhaps

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ing, conformism can lure in people by the millions, while laying into those who fail to get duly seduced.⁵⁶⁶ Mill himself, who spent much of his life under Queen Victoria, was openly fearful of the liberticidal potential of “prevailing opinion and feeling”, which contradicts most patently: (1) the presumed spirit of tolerance (aka “toleration”) characterising liberalism qua political ideology, (2) its constitutive prudential and pluralistic scepticism (outside the economic sphere, as was noted), and (3) liberalism’s presumed axiological, cultural, political, and legal primacy of individual freedom and uncoerced self-expression over societal control of mentally competent adults’ lifestyles and life-choices (i. e., even when such a control may be well-meaning or, perchance, eventually constructive).⁵⁶⁷ The liberal test of tolerance comes when facing something that, albeit not patently harmful, we nevertheless find wrong, obnoxious, offensive, questionable and/or in poor taste.⁵⁶⁸ It does not take much effort to tolerate that which we find right, pleasant, courteous, unproblematic and/or tasteful.⁵⁶⁹ Pluralism is plural when it comprises strident views and opposing stances.⁵⁷⁰ It is the sort of personal

liberty is granted in today’s Western nations because most of their inhabitants will tend to make a minimal and/or predictable use of it. 566 Variously conceived of as ‘herd mentality’, ‘conventional wisdom’, etc., Mill’s (2001) enduring life-enabling contribution to Western civilisation has consisted also, if not above all, in keeping alive the flame of critical thinking in the face of such forms of sweeping and complacent agreement, which has been far from rare in history. 567 Mill (2001), 9. LVOA may grasp in principle whether and when such a control is constructive (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). Also, as indicated, we regard “tolerance” and “toleration” to be synonyms. 568 See also Chomsky (1980) and (1981), in which he defended the right to free expression of a notorious French academic and Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson. 569 That which one finds wrong, obnoxious, offensive, questionable and/or in poor taste may also and nevertheless be true. Not even expert agreement is a flawless guide. For one, when John Addington Symonds (2004 [1896]) wrote his seminal defence of gay rights, most Western scholars and scientists regarded homosexuality as ungodly, immoral, unhealthy, deranged, and/or criminal. And most of their colleagues from the previous 15 centuries would have agreed with them. For another, recent years have seen a renewed interest in the ancient and seemingly superstitious notion of panpsychism, particularly as a result of some curious developments in quantum physics (see, e. g., Brüntrup and Jaskolla 2017). The cruel irony of our fundamental contingency transpires here too, if one has enough imagination to engage in a bit of speculation. 570 Albeit cognisant of prior positive historical experiences, compassionate religious injunctions and enlightened ancient philosophies, the West’s liberal tradition of toleration emerged from Christendom’s prolonged internecine bloodbaths, as witnessed, e. g., by Montaigne, Hobbes, Locke, and Voltaire (see Chapter 3 of Part 1 and H&C1).

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core value that led Voltaire’s 20th-century biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall to write that the former’s “attitude” towards Helvetius and the Enlightenment thinkers with whom Voltaire bitterly disagreed could be summarised as follows: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”⁵⁷¹ On the whole, Mill was not grossly mistaken in being so fearful.⁵⁷² About two centuries of liberal history have certainly shown, if anything else, that the individual’s constitutional liberties and even the much-cherished institution of ‘innocentuntil-proven-guilty’ cannot stop smear campaigns, social undermining, character assassinations, shaming, passive aggression, blacklisting, finger-pointing, witchhunts, harsh moralising, guilt tripping, and many other forms of bias, dogmatism, intolerance, rejection, and/or exclusion that silent majorities or effective vocal minorities successfully cultivate qua prevalent public sensitivity and/or perceived reality, which advertisers and marketing experts can then embrace, exploit, expand, and/or entrench via their far-reaching for-profit echo chambers.⁵⁷³ 1.3.2.7.2 Villagers If, today, we truly live in “the global village” predicted by Marshall McLuhan in the 20th century, the cruel pettiness and stifling narrow-mindedness of isolated village mentality is able to reach global proportions. This being the case especially when sensitive areas or ‘sore spots’ are touched on and irritated, irrespective of how lightly and/or how humorously the touching at issue may have been pursued in the mind or heart of the unlucky and/or inattentive jokester.⁵⁷⁴ Matters of sexuality, gender identity, family structure, cultural taboos, and religious belief, as repeatedly noted in this volume, are obvious examples of such areas and spots.⁵⁷⁵ In this sort of village, it does not really matter what a person has done or not done, what the official position of the lawful institutions may be like, and/or 571 Tallentyre (1906), 199 (Hall wrote under the pseudonym “S.G. Tallentyre”). Funnily enough, this famous motto is now commonly believed to have been uttered by Voltaire himself. Who knows? Perhaps he did. 572 Hence, we too should be fearful today, were Hillman (1995a, 27) correct in stating that “[m]uch of the basic furniture standing around in our minds was set there by Victorians between the 1830s and 1890s”. 573 If true, then Mill (2001) identified an intermediate sphere between Rorty’s “public” and “private” ones that we tackled in Chapter 3 of Part 1, i. e., yet another context where cruelty can occur, especially Chesterton’s “negative” type. 574 See, e. g., how poorly received were in the Anglophone press Lars Von Trier’s 2011 humorous remarks about his German-hence-Nazi-hence-Hitler’s-sympathising roots that Lundquist and Dyrbye (2022, introduction) discussed as a standard example of characteristically Danish self-irony, i. e., yet another ‘national’ kind of humour. 575 McLuhan and Powers (1989), title et passim.

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whether or not anybody has got genuine and definitive proof of anything. Perception is paramount. Partisanship is paramount. Caution is cowardice or, worse, complicity. For as long as the moral panic or the cultural trend may happen to last, it is much safer for the individual to err on the side of censure rather than carefulness, even if it may sometimes mean slaughtering the innocent on the altar of, say, dominant moods, changed prejudice, enthusiasm, and/or unbridled emotions.⁵⁷⁶ Social reputations can be rapidly and rabidly sacrificed too. Gossip may become gospel. Whispers turn into whips. Slander into life-sentences. Defamation into social death. In this kind of atmosphere, vox populi is indeed vox dei, though not the charitable God depicted by much Christian lore. Judgement is neither easily nor commonly suspended.⁵⁷⁷ Nor is it left in the hands of the sole all-seeing and allknowing Almighty. Under the dictates of “prevailing opinion and feeling”, judgementalism becomes de rigueur, hence forcing people to take sides, whether loudly, sotto voce, or inaudibly and indirectly.⁵⁷⁸ Not to mention those people who, as described by the 20th-century Bulgarian-born Nobel-prize laureate Jewish writer, Elias Canetti, give wholeheartedly, enthusiastically, eagerly, and most unsubtly, into the “cruel pleasure” of “pronouncing an unfavourable verdict”, i. e., as though they were really “saying something objective”, such as “[s/he is] ‘a bad [wo/] man’”.⁵⁷⁹ 1.3.2.8 Tyranny From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; “I will be true to the wife,

576 As intimated by Behrendt (2020), Hillman (1995b and 2004), Kipnis (2017), Ogien (2005), and Strossen (1993 and 1995), the cultural trend can be the moral panic itself. The distinction between the two is not always sharp. 577 See, e. g., Kipnis (2017, 221 – 239) discussing what she terms a “witch trial” on a contemporary US campus. 578 See Pirandello (1994) for a heart-breaking portrayal of social exclusion in turn-of-the-century Sicily, where a woman was singled out unjustly for sexual misconduct, humiliated by her closest relatives, and jeered at by her fellow citizens during a religious procession. Mixing cruelty and humour, this theme returned 100 years later in Giuseppe Tornatore’s 2000 comedy-drama Malèna, also based upon a case of village mentality in Sicily, which has been a frequent target for scathing comic commentary in Italian cinema (see, e. g., Pietro Germi’s 1961 comedy Divorce, Italian Style, which won that year’s Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay). 579 Canetti (1966), 296. His testimony is also a reason why we opted for cautious epistemic humility in our works. See also Judges (1995).

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I’ll concentrate more on my work”, And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb? —W.H. Auden⁵⁸⁰

Should our readers be so kind as to tolerate an entirely anecdotal reflection on these delicate matters, and on the subtler forms of judgementalism in particular, we ourselves, the authors of this volume, have repeatedly observed in our career a marked incidence of excusatio non petita among male US colleagues referring to Woody Allen’s comedies at academic conferences and/or talks about the concept of ‘humour’.⁵⁸¹ While many such male colleagues would self-describe as “liberal”, they clearly did not feel at liberty to name and/or address Allen’s artistry without

580 Auden (1939), 7th stanza. 581 The Medieval Latin proverb to which we are referring reads, in its entirety: “excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta”, i. e., “unsolicited excuse, manifest accusation”. We do not intend to participate in the ‘for’ and ‘against’ debate on Woody Allen’s notorious allegations. Merely, we must try to summarise here, most concisely, those aspects of the matter that are relevant to the Millian theme of social opinion’s illiberal powers. In the 1990s, the noted US comedian was accused of sexual misconduct towards his 7-year-old adopted daughter Dylan and, as a result, lawful investigations were conducted. Neither a trial nor a conviction ensued. While the victim of any possible violence has a prima facie claim to believability and special protection, so does the accused party have the right to defend him-/herself and his/her reputation. That is why there exist complex investigative processes at several institutional levels of the liberal order. However, despite the conclusions reached by the formal apparatus of his liberal country, Allen has never managed to really clear his name. Apparently, once a person is accused of a most cruel crime, this complex formal apparatus cannot stop Western countries’ public opinion from condemning her nonetheless. At the same time, given the inherent limitations of the formal apparatus itself, which typically errs on the side of presumed innocence rather than that of culpability, these countries’ civil societies must be watchful not to neglect unheard and/or unseen victims of unpunished crimes. The tension resulting from these opposing aims and priorities is, among other things, a cruel irony. Furthermore, given that what is at stake in the specific instance is either a horrible case of parental molestation of a child or a dreadful case of parental manipulation of a child—for Allen’s then-wife Mia Farrow has been accused in turn of brainwashing the young Dylan into fabricating the accusations—the irony at play could hardly be crueller. While we cannot sort this case once and for all, for we do not know what happened, we can certainly flag up this very sorry mixture of cruelty and humour arising from within the liberal context and, in particular, the academic field of philosophy of humour and its practitioners, who are exposed to their societies’ atmosphere like everybody else. In our tragicomic world, the most well-meaning people can sometimes participate in perpetrating cruelties while trying to prevent them (see, e. g., Barry 2022, 511, on cases of so-called “doxing” gone terribly wrong and Gruber 2020 on feminist activism and mass incarceration).

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apologising beforehand.⁵⁸² (God only knows how many others must have simply avoided making any reference to Allen’s work.) Thus and then, we were eerily reminded of some rather grim claims proffered by a 20th-century German-American Jewish philosopher, Leo Strauss, when writing about the “mildest … cruel type” of “persecution” that can exist in the public sphere, i. e., “social ostracism”, which Strauss believed to have been widespread in “comparatively liberal periods” of Western history, not least his own lifetime.⁵⁸³ Diffuse, polymorphic and pervasive, society’s “prevailing opinion and feeling” can lord over people’s lives like medieval kings and modern despots, though without armies or police forces at their disposal. Repute, acceptability, employability, and survival itself can be facilitated, limited, or even annihilated by a variety of different corps of invisible gendarmes and untouchable officers. Not that these informal regiments need or want to do so all the time. Tyrants can be mild. Occasionally, they can even prove enlightened.⁵⁸⁴ (Albeit always within reason.)⁵⁸⁵ Yet, qua tyrants, they go on tyrannising their subjects. They cannot help it. For all its glorious buzz about “freedom”, “the rule of law”, and/or “individualism”, the history of liberalism may then have one more cruel irony in store for us.⁵⁸⁶ 1.2.8.1 Denunciations Insofar as they are expected to operate on the ‘edge’ between that which is and is not socially acceptable and experiment within a communicative-affective precinct that is allegedly and conceivably ‘freer’ and/or ‘wilder’ than most ordinary ones, Western comedians can be very sensitive to the presence of such a shadowy tyranny—whether in potentia, in fieri, or in acto. Such a sensitivity is so keenly developed and vibrantly operant among them because this tyranny’s possible encroach582 It is Allen’s name, not his humour, that carries this social ‘stain’, which somehow smears those uttering it. 583 Strauss (1988), 32 – 33. Pundits are outspoken about Allen’s being “ostracized” in the US (Kohn 2021, par. 1). Strauss emigrated to the US in 1932 and had completed a PhD under Ernst Cassirer, whom we tackled in H&C1. 584 See, e. g., Freiherr von Aretin (1974). Social opinion may well pressure people into better behaviours, yet at the cost of their individual freedom, which is what liberal institutions assume officially as their paramount value. 585 See the opening quote by Chesterton (1916) in 3.2.5 of Part 1. 586 Analytically precise and aloof, McMurtry (1997) offered a chilling account of the alleged “freedoms” of the liberal order in theory and of its generally unrecognised liberticidal effects in practice. On a different level, attributing primacy to the individual in the mass societies of the liberal West is, perhaps, its deepest tragicomic incongruity. In the 6th century AD, Boethius (1999, book 3) had already remarked on the overall insignificance of even the most famous persons, who will never be known to all and forever. Today’s individual faces 8 billion ‘others’.

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ment can effectively mutilate and/or destroy the personal and social liberties upon which the comedians’ very art relies. Instructively, upon acceptance of the 2019 Mark Twain Prize, Dave Chappelle stated: We [comedians] watch you [pundits] fight, but when we’re together we talk it out. I know comics that are very racist, and I watch them on stage and everyone’s laughing, and I’m like, “um, that mothafucka means that shit”. Don’t get mad at ‘em. Don’t hate ‘em. We go upstairs and have a beer. Sometimes I even appreciate the artistry that they paint their racist opinions with. Man, it’s not that serious. The First Amendment is first for a reason. The Second Amendment is just in case the first one doesn’t work out.⁵⁸⁷

Western comedians are not alone, however, in considering this type of social threat to individual liberty to be real, restrictive and risky. While discussing Alexis de Tocqueville’s canonical study of 19th-century American democracy, the contemporary US political scientist Donald J. Maletz spoke bluntly of “a ‘soft tyranny’ over the mind” that “the majority” within a person’s community can exercise, almost delicately, yet relentlessly.⁵⁸⁸ Analogously, while writing about the poor’s self-damaging notions of commonsense in 20th-century liberal Britain, Chesterton stated that there may well exist a “tyranny of bad journalism”, whereby “[k]nowledge is now a monopoly, and comes through to the citizens in thin and selected streams, exactly as bread might come through to a besieged city”.⁵⁸⁹ Turkeys have been loving Christmas for a very long time, at least in the UK, and the corporate media have had a crucial and cunning role in cultivating this peculiar volucrine affection.⁵⁹⁰ That’s Chesterton’s message, in a nutshell.⁵⁹¹ Because of their elusive, selective, and pervasive nature, the polycentric forces of social opinion and business concerns might even be more effective in the West than all the appointed censors and angered politicians are in the East: “As Michel

587 As cited in Ralkovski (2021), xxiv. The prize “recognizes individuals who have had an impact on American society in ways similar to the distinguished 19th-century novelist and essayist Samuel Clemens, best known as Mark Twain. As a social commentator, satirist, and creator of characters, Clemens was a fearless observer of society, who startled many while delighting and informing many more with his uncompromising perspective on social injustice and personal folly” (“The Kennedy Center” 2023, par. 1). 588 Maletz (2002), 741. Majorities depend on contexts. Therefore, a tyrannical majority may exist in a given office, parish, neighbourhood, or profession that, in the nation or broader human community, would be a small minority. 589 Chesterton (2000 – 2012), essay 26, par. 6. 590 The association between “Christmas” and “turkeys” presumes some knowledge of British Christian traditions. 591 We believe his point to be still relevant today.

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Foucault has shown, power is not always coercive. It has to be more subtle to remain strong.”⁵⁹² Shaping society’s informal communicative praxes might therefore be a discreet, delicate, dispersed, yet also dramatic, decisive, and damning step in selecting out the undesirables, nonconformists, dissenters, and all sorts of despicable and/or just ‘wrong’ voices: “It is in discourse”, as Foucault stated, “that power and knowledge are joined together”.⁵⁹³ 1.2.8.2 Detections On a similar line of thinking, ‘Ken’ Galbraith emphasised, with regard to the liberal world, that “[i]n the modern community”, the most quotidian forms of “power” are (1) neither “condign” (i. e., penalty- and/or terror-based) (2) nor “compensatory” (i. e., pecuniary and/or reward-based), (3) but “conditioned”, e. g., “win[ning] submission by persuasion – by cultivating belief … acuity, charm, seeming honesty, humor, solemnity, and much more”.⁵⁹⁴ One decade later, he was echoed by Hillman, who argued that contemporary “power” qua “control”, i. e., the Jungian opposite of life-enabling inter-personal “love”, tends “not appear nakedly as such”, i. e., qua iron chains or bloody weapons, “but wears … disguises”, such as “prestige, influence, fame … exhibitionism, ambition, reputation … obstinacy … leadership … focused immersion into itself … persuasion, charisma … decision … the ability to instil fear… tyranny [qua …] singleness of mind… [or] habitual consciousness … the ability to … veto [choices, and …] purism”, i. e., pressing calls for “spiritual purity”, which, in his judgement, achieves “the uttermost extreme of subordination”.⁵⁹⁵ This awesome, dynamic and multipolar “subtle power” is also manifested— perhaps most suggestively for humour scholars like ourselves or stand-up comedians like Chappelle—in the ability to change in definitive ways the permissible targets, acceptable formulae, admissible settings, and/or plausible themes for comic agency.⁵⁹⁶ That is, this subtle power can reveal its vast reach via its ability to

592 Rendtorff (2010), 43. 593 Foucault (1978), 100. See also Noelle-Neumann (1991) on how outliers are informally reduced to passivity and silence. 594 Galbraith (1983), 2 and 40; emphasis added. 595 Hillman (1995a), ii–iv, 2 – 4, 50, 146, 157, 185 – 191, and 199; emphasis in the original. 596 Hillman (1995a), 204. See, e. g., Boskin (1986) on the disappearance of Sambo, signalling a real power shift (see also Ayer’s thoughts on this matter, as discussed in H&C2). As Gramsci (1977, vol. 1, 75 – 76, Q1, par. 65) would argue, “common sense” can be changed, also by humour and within humour, and certain “commonplaces” condemned to the condition of spent “folklore”. There is power

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cause people to simply stop making certain types of jokes, if not even neglect the possibility itself of making certain types of jokes.⁵⁹⁷ No censorship can be more efficient, in fact, than the one acting bloodlessly qua voluntary self-censorship.⁵⁹⁸ In Freudian terms, the person’s super-ego scores thereby a genuine triumph, for the ego’s potential rebelliousness is potently confined to a smaller area of possible humorous self-assertion, the further confinement of which is bound to engender a novel heap of attendant neuroses and psychoses.⁵⁹⁹ The utmost and final point of this process is the fusion between the super-ego and the ego. ⁶⁰⁰ When singing in unison, prohibitions feel like inhibitions, and heteronomy becomes indistinguishable from autonomous conduct. Common sense is then conscience.⁶⁰¹

inside and across all social classes, including the subordinate ones, who are not to be thought of as mere passive victims. If there were no such power, then no bottom-up revolutionary strategy could ever be dreamt of and, above all, actualised. We cannot discuss this matter in any detail here, but we should make the reader aware of this Gramscian notion, which ties into the reflections on “power” proper developed in Chapter 4 of Part 1. As to the aims and accomplishments of any such strategy, LVOA can help establish, in a principled way, whether they are good or bad (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 597 Doubting that “the work of professors may help at all, in the long run”, Baroncelli (2001, 23) stated, with his characteristic humour, that marked indications of ruling ideologies and powerful cultural currents can be detected at a “lower level”, e. g., “everyday conversations, newspapers, TV interviews, tics, manias, commonplaces”. Therefore, we peppered our three volumes with a representative variety of not-so-professorial sources, including degree theses, which serve also as valuable signals of current trends among the youth and within academia. 598 See, e. g., Detert and Edmondson (2011, 461) on “self-censorship” on the workplace. 599 As seen in Chapters 2 and 3 of Part 1, Freud and the Freudians believe any form of socialisation to lead to mental issues. However, socialisation itself can be more or less repressive, and so can the depth of each person’s intrapsychic self-pressuring, which eerily mirrors the vertical hierarchies of the external, interpersonal reality: “In totalitarian states, humorists have often been the first to go underground” (Simpson 1998, 25; emphasis added). 600 This fusion can be regarded as an instance of Berlant’s (2010, title et passim) psychoanalysisbased notion of “cruel optimism”, which implies, inter alia, that a person can aim eagerly and efficiently at a self-given goal that is approved by society and yet works against that person’s genuine flourishing, whether because of the goal’s very nature or of the attendant aiming process that gets played out. Insofar as the super-ego or, in Jungian terms, the persona becomes so predominant, the sacrificed id or the subordinate personalities or complexes (e. g., the shadow) will fight back and afflict the individual with all kinds of psychopathologies (see also Chapter 3). In parallel, Huxley (2006) depicted a well-functioning civilisation that cultivates most proficiently the aptly selected constructive and cooperative qualities of its various genetically engineered social groups, while either suppressing chemically their least desirable ones or expelling the few occasional unmanageable outliers. The result being a dehumanised Brave New World, in which even the seemingly happy persons were addicted to psychiatric drugs. 601 Perhaps this is what happened to Immanuel Kant himself, whose concrete examples of violation of the abstract categorical imperative presumedly grasped by pure practical reason regularly

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1.3.2.9 Blunt Comedy Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs. —Robert Peel⁶⁰²

Religion, as we discussed in this chapter, has sometimes been able to lead people into such feats of profound self-censorship, especially among the devout believers who, physically uncoerced, opted for a life of intense worship, active service, and/ or quiet contemplation.⁶⁰³ Pistols and prisons are generally unneeded, under such circumstances. Pulpits and processions can actually suffice and go a very long way, if conditioned power is the crux of the matter.⁶⁰⁴ As to self-censorship in the comic arts, a contemporary British columnist and literary critic, Nicholas Lezard, concluded that the Western comedians’ constitutional liberties mirror in reality the same comedians’ irrelevance qua critical voices of the socio-economic order that they inhabit—these comedians “having sold out to the twin forces of power and money”.⁶⁰⁵ At first sight, Lezard’s critique can seem unfair, exaggerated, and/or conceited.⁶⁰⁶ Is not the cited Dave Chappelle a living counterargument, for one? Are there not scores of ‘edgy’ and ‘daring’ comedians? On top of that, Western comedians have generally been neither chaste monks nor faithful nuns.⁶⁰⁷ And for their part, prophets and priests, albeit fre-

reflect, as noted before, the conservative common conventions of his day, e. g., his stern condemnation of masturbation (see Hund 2011, Kerstein 2008, and Denis 1999; more on the last point is said here in Chapter 3). We do not imply that Kant was conservative tout court. Simply, we point out that he too was a man of his time, pace the socio-historically decontextualised approach to his thought that can be found in so much scholarship about him. We do not address the issue of whether inhibitions may have a different, deeper origin, e. g., the collective unconscious. 602 As quoted in Committee on the Judiciary (1997), 375. 603 Throughout Christendom’s Middle Ages, religious establishments enforced stricter codes than common people, whose misconduct could be forgiven, per the Gospels’ teachings, e. g., Luke 6:37 and Matthew 18:21 – 22. 604 At a deeper level, “conditioned power” reminds of the limited relevance of academic scholarship vis-à-vis persuading and guiding large swaths of the populace, who are bound to find it far too complex to be convincing. 605 Lezard (2000), 90, who is constructively vague as to which forms of “power” proper his considerations may apply. 606 Intriguingly, Strauss (1988) attributed conscious self-censorship to the totality of ancient philosophers. In any case, precisely because of the subtlety and common-sense character of this power, we must provide many examples and Aristotelian endoxa in order for its determination to be, at the very least, plausible and worthy of attention. 607 Yet, unchaste monks and libidinous nuns have been the fodder of much Western comedy.

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quently caricatured or lampooned, have only rarely excelled in the art of humour.⁶⁰⁸ As far as Mill was concerned and as the opening quote of section 1.3.2 illustrates, the astounding power of so-called “public opinion” over constitutionally free individuals is existent, enormous, and ever-threatening.⁶⁰⁹ Intentionally or not, Foucault’s, Galbraith’s, and Hillman’s quoted remarks point all in the same direction. Within modern liberal societies, the media and the marketing experts, our neighbours, employers, colleagues, suppliers, customers, associates, relatives, spouses, children, and friends can exercise, collectively, a systematic, uninterrupted, unrelenting, and psychologically deep-reaching policing of our agency, feelings, proclivities, thoughts, and innermost drives that no government could even begin dreaming of. God’s keen supervision and stern judgements may not be indispensable. Even large sums of money may be secondary. Alone and inconspicuous, prosaic common sense could well prove itself to be, in the end, one of the most effective weapons against the constitutionally free individual’s possibility of actual deviation from the anticipated modes of personal conduct within a nominally “liberal” society that, in principle, should emphasise individual freedom. This subtle and pluriform mental encroachment might even extend to those rare carnivalesque subdomains where people are supposedly allowed to reduce the degree of psychic self-restraint which any civilised community inevitably requires. Ironically, under such circumstances, humour itself could come to be utilised in order to control those who seem less amenable to the hegemonic influence of said “common sense”.⁶¹⁰ 1.3.2.10 Conformism [A]dvertising … is defended interestingly by the contention that it ‘gives the consumer what he wants’. If he did not approve, he would not respond. A man who comes to a full stop because he is hit over the head with an axe proves similarly by his response that it was what he was yearning for. —John Kenneth Galbraith⁶¹¹

608 Notable exceptions have existed, of course, e. g., Saint Thomas More, Saint Philip Neri, and Rev. Richard Coles. 609 See, e. g., Lunacek (2016, 884), who claimed that PC-induced self-censorship occurs even among male creators of playful erotic comics: thus, a female Italian artist’s “tales can afford to be a bit less PC and a bit less structured than those done by her male compatriots precisely because they are executed by a woman”. See also Baum (2001). 610 As seen in H&C1 and Chapter 2 of Part 1, Bergson believed humour to play a pivotal role in securing social conformity. 611 Galbraith (1967), 344.

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In all liberal societies, there does exist a widespread common sense which envisages and, at least superficially, reinforces and legitimises the most usual lines of behaviour that can be observed among their inhabitants—and even predicted of them, as though they were celestial bodies studied by astronomers.⁶¹² Back in the 18th and 19th century, some of the greatest liberal thinkers were both crystalclear and adamant in presuming a philosophical anthropology that, while speaking of “freedom” or “liberty” in theory, denied it in fact. Exemplarily, Bentham wrote: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do… In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while.”⁶¹³ Castoriadis himself, a libertarian socialist, remarked about today’s Western demoi: Capitalism finally seems to have succeeded in fabricating the type of individual that ‘corresponds’ to it: perpetually distracted, zapping from one ‘pleasure [jouissance]’ to another, without memory or project, ready to respond to every solicitation of an economic machine that is increasingly destroying the planet’s biosphere in order to produce illusions called commodities.⁶¹⁴

Castoriadis’ ‘snapshot’ is, as often in his writings, sarcastic and intentionally simplistic. Nevertheless, if it is also a sufficiently accurate depiction of much humdrum Western conduct in our day and age, the deep and broad socio-anthropological re-engineering of incalculable people’s psychic lives that Castoriadis’ barbed vignette implies must have been happening, ironically, in a fairly gentle way.⁶¹⁵ “Inanity” or “The Big Sleep”, as Castoriadis dubbed the docile yet ecocidal behavioural

612 Analogous forms of thought- and conduct-policing can occur in a cascade of sub-contexts within society, which is rife with small fiefdoms and power hubs. 613 Bentham (2000), chap. 1, par. 1. Needless to say, this dismal conception of the human being attracted criticism from the very beginning. Carlyle (1850, 268) mocked it as an expression of modernity’s “Pig Philosophy”, which is incapable of anything heroic or sublime, and argued that “Benthamee utility” was nothing more than “virtue by Profit and Loss” (2008 – 2012, 65, lecture 2, par. 48). Not to mention Mill’s (2001, 7 and 25) description of it as “a doctrine worthy only of swine”, i. e., not of the human being as a “progressive” creature whose “improvement is perpetually going on”, well beyond animal pleasures and pains. 614 Castoriadis (1997a), 415. See also Wallace and Huxley (1958) and J. Friedman (2019) on mental manipulation. 615 Given the economic and ecological patterns of our world, we believe Castoriadis’ views to be largely correct.

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norm of “70 percent of the population” in nations ruled by paradigmatic “millionaires”, has established itself in peaceable ways.⁶¹⁶ In other words, the West may have been cruelly stupefied without overt cruelty, pace Orwell’s iconic dystopian depiction of an omnipotent totalitarian State which he dreaded, or perchance expected, to materialise in his not-too-distant future, i. e., our recent past.⁶¹⁷ Neither freezing gulags nor prodigious acts of State violence have been needed for Castoriadis’ “zapping” consumer to become the new norm.⁶¹⁸ Or, at least, neither cruel instrument has been needed for quite some time.⁶¹⁹ 1.3.2.11 Expertise As civilization subsides into its own waste deposits, it doesn’t matter whether you are feminine or masculine or any composite of them. We all dissolve together. —James Hillman⁶²⁰

Yet again, the end result of the extensive, fluid and protean socio-anthropological re-engineering process that, supposedly at least, has been at work in the making of the modern world and, in particular, our liberal West, might be something different. As Laura Kipnis wrote, it could be nothing short of a “cultural revolution” embracing countless aspects of human life and bringing about the most diverse adjustments in our existence, both good and bad.⁶²¹ Castoriadis’ sardonic snapshot may not be the sole conceivable description of the complex transformation that has been afoot since at least Mill’s eponymously Victorian times.⁶²²

616 Castoriadis (2003), xxxvii and 222. 617 We refer to Orwell’s (1949) 1984 and its bleak predictions for that year. 618 Among many other observers, the famous Russian satirist and philosopher Alexander Zinoviev (as reported in Lock, Maiolo, and Zinoviev, n.d.a., answer #29) acknowledged this trend as well: “the masters of Western world force upon the whole mankind an ideology that is not spiritual, that is not an ideology of higher spiritual values, but rather a materialistic ideology of egoistic values and practical activity. The latter helped the West to win the struggle against the Communist block… [This i]deological pragmatism, practical and economical, came from America. Also the Pope referred to it.” 619 Historically, inclusion into the liberal fold may have followed colonial conquest or defeat in war. 620 Hillman (1996), 37. 621 Kipnis (2018), pars. 6 – 12. LVOA can help distinguish, at least in principle, between such good and bad (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 622 Each reader may reflect on and decide about whether Castoriadis’ scathing image is sufficiently valid or not. We do not aim at resolving the matter here, for we focus on the unresolved aspects of the matter. If interested in our political views, see, e. g., Baruchello (2018a) and (2018b).

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Many contrasting views exist, as a matter of fact and as exemplified in the previous subsections. It is a feast of incongruities, at times. Common sense itself, when studied closely, does appear to be containing multiple and even contradictory elements, which are sometimes reflected in the very dualities that are studied by humour scholars and, above all, in those that get exploited by jokesters and comedians—whether effectively or not, in good as well as in bad taste, and/or with better or worse consequences for the artists themselves, who apparently take a sort of perverse pleasure in operating close to the tacit and hazy edge of social acceptability.⁶²³ For all the vociferous and heated debates that have been surrounding the ‘scandalous’ sexual sphere in the West since at least Sade’s or Freud’s times, “the public stocks of political correctness” have not yet won the day entirely and/or enjoyed a totally free hand to inflict “puritanical … cruelties” on those persons whom the self-declared judges of morals, mores and manners would deplore as despicably “lustful” men and/ or hopelessly ‘duped’ women.⁶²⁴ Or, as McElroy would probably dub them, the public stocks of “sexual correctness”, which was certainly triumphant, for a while, in 17th-century Britain and some of its colonies.⁶²⁵ Indeed, at the close of the last century, albeit frowned-upon in many a refined circle and symptomatically confined to dodgy neighbourhoods or the anonymous cybersphere, the much-loathed industry of pornography earned a revenue, in the US alone, that “[wa]s larger than the annual revenue accrued by either the N.F.L., the N.B.A. or Major League Baseball”.⁶²⁶ 1.3.2.11.1 Suggestions It is reasonable to gather that highly dissimilar trends are likely to have been unfolding, when not merging and/or sub-/merging, in the long re-shaping of the

623 See also Chapters 2 and 4 of Part 1, and H&C2. 624 Hillman (1995b), 63 – 65. His clinical experience suggests, however, that some Puritanical cruelty did occur, especially at the micro level where most lives are spent. 625 McElroy (2001), title et passim. 626 Rich (2001), par. 4. The debates continue at all levels, not least in Muslim countries (see Chapter 3). Also, bringing together the hereby-debated issues of liberal economics, world ecology, and sex work, Galbraith (and Salinger 1979, 11) observed: “A busy shop selling dirty pictures does more for the GNP than the absence of air pollution.” And he noted, with an even ampler dose of his characteristic wit: “A woman of the street, since she charges for her affection, contributes to Gross National Product, at least in principle. A lovely and loving mistress does not” (Galbraith and Salinger 1979, 10 – 11).

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West’s controlling yet heterogenous social opinion.⁶²⁷ On any given topic, the political left is still more than capable of sounding cacophonic, and so is the political right. Therefore, we think it safe to state that a major world culture such as ours is probably a big, intrinsically miscellaneous, often bafflingly complicated, and even internally conflicted ‘beast’ that we can grasp only partially and contingently, whenever we strive to look at it with a candid and keen eye.⁶²⁸ And to make things even more intricate, because of the different hermeneutical angles that can be entertained and of the unconscious projections that the many consequent interpretations may produce in turn, that which some intelligent and educated scholars blame loudly and promptly as “cultural harm”, others are ready to embrace as redeeming and/or empowering ‘progress’ within the same culture, if not even within the same political or academic ‘tribe’.⁶²⁹ Tyrants, perhaps, come in assorted bunches. But there is more. Sweeping claims and attendant theories of this kind, however insightful or enlightening, are probably bound to remain inherently contentious, largely speculative, and empirically intractable, even—if not especially—when arising from some well-established academic setting in the humanities or social sciences.⁶³⁰ The positivist Pareto would have trenchantly dismissed all such sophisticated claims and theories as “derivatives” based upon “derivations”, i. e., complex hypothetical constructs erected upon conveniently rationalised “residues”, e. g., sentiments, desires, yearns, longings, craves, instincts, etc. Only the formal and natural sciences, plus select empirical ‘bits’ of the social ones, could aspire to producing genuine, i. e., objective, scientific knowledge, in his view.⁶³¹ We do not want to be as scientistic and dismissive as Pareto was.⁶³² Nor do we aim at promoting unbarred scepticism and causing all rational and reasonable debates to vanish into a night in which all cows are black.⁶³³ At the same time, though, we should be honest about the methodological limitations inherent to

627 Far too often, especially when peering backwards, cultures are grasped as coherent wholes, which they are not, as also shown by the many views reported in our books. 628 We write “strive” because looking is no guarantee of seeing, and seeing is no guarantee of understanding. 629 McGlynn and Rackley as cited and contradicted in Cowen (2016), 510. See also Macleod (2018). 630 The dilemmas arising from our oft-unacknowledged ignorance return in Chapter 3. See also H&C2. 631 This is the main theme of Pareto (1935); hence, no paragraphs are specified here for these recurring terms. 632 Crucially, qua ‘Polanyian’ thinkers, we are not positivists like Pareto (see H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1). 633 LVOA, for one, prevents this sceptical drift (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). See also Baruchello (2018a) and (2018b).

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many, if not all, of our most cherished disciplines.⁶³⁴ The professionals working within the humanities and social sciences do have limits as to the degree and nature of intellectual certitude that they can strive to credibly attain.⁶³⁵ And when they happen to forget that their disciplines have such frustrating yet significant limits, these professionals can easily become embarrassing wannabe gurus or, as Jung wrote wryly about himself, dubious “prophet[s]”.⁶³⁶ In all likelihood, as Baroncelli advised with reference to the acrimonious debates about “the ‘politically correct’” that were already sweeping across the West’s university campuses in the 1990s, “it would be preferable to be less full of certainties”, which are glaringly revealed whenever someone acts upon the tacit presumption of possessing, say, “the infallible capacity to distinguish always and perfectly between victim and perpetrator”, or “to dictate the list of the people who deserve toleration”, i. e., as though “the individual as such” should not deserve it, for “that is merely a bourgeois invention”.⁶³⁷ 1.3.2.11.2 Separations In yet another cruel irony of our world, on almost anything that really matters at the ethico-political and existential levels—and on secondary matters too, more often than not—vocal disagreements, partisan divisions, and rabid polarisations keep occurring with the greatest ease, the most intense ferocity and, as was noted vis-à-vis economic ideas and ideals, a somewhat comical tendency towards cyclical recurrence.⁶³⁸ Not even humongous silent majorities can win once and, especially, for all. Millions or even billions of human beings would seem to implicitly require, accept, enjoy, promote, and validate so-called “trash TV”, silly TikTok videos, inane glossy magazines, online pornography, violent blockbuster movies, gory vid634 As Mornati (2018) and (2020) argued, Pareto’s (1935) own methodological self-awareness implied limitations of its own, for the formal and hard sciences cannot warrant any ethical or political creed or future-driven proposal. 635 This point was stressed also in H&C1 and H&C2, further entrenching our epistemic humility. 636 Jung (2009), 233, whose inspirer was Nietzsche’s own prophetic Zarathustra (see Domenici 2019). 637 Baroncelli (1996), 29, 43, and 47. A leftist and a liberal, Baroncelli (1996, 30) never lost sight of the principles of “modernity, equality, individualism and universalism” established by “the French Revolution”. See also Willis (1994). 638 We presume our readers to have witnessed or even engaged in pointless arguments which, like humour itself, are probably a way to vent out repressed aggressiveness and/or other pentup instinctual energy, rather than apt means to truly settle a dispute on theoretical or practical subjects. If they have not, we consider these readers strangely lucky. Should they be part of the academic community, they are probably very few.

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eogames, and many other mass-mediatic entertainments, including comedic ones, that make ample and obvious use of those stirring images that the literalist mind cannot tolerate.⁶³⁹ These masses’ largely coherent behaviours aside, when not precisely because of them, there endure religious authorities and academic experts that, as we have seen in the preceding subsections, continue to send out dire warnings about the ongoing loss of moral fibre among the citizenry, growing corruption of their presumed way of life, cruel prolongation of hidden exploitative noeticaffective praxes, and/or citizenry’s mounting subjection to a sophisticated system of “brainwashing”, “conditioning”, “control”, “manipulation”, “coercion”, “oppression” and/or “biopower”.⁶⁴⁰ Such a cunning and duplicitous system is often claimed to lead these unprepared, unenlightened, unreflecting, unselective, and unwitty masses “to internalize instructions for managing their bodies/selves in order to optimize their health and happiness, increase their productivity, and strengthen society”, i. e., to conduct themselves like acquiescent pawns in the sly hands of remote and inscrutable all-powerful elites that alone know what is actually going on.⁶⁴¹ With the notable exception of the religious authorities and academic experts themselves, however. These assumedly well-meaning and better-informed minoritarian groups, who are in some astounding way utterly impervious to the elites’ otherwise amazing and ubiquitous means of socio-mental ‘discipline’, are not one with the vast flocks of alleged sheep that they wish to supervise—for the herd’s own good, naturally; or, at least, of a sizeable section thereof.⁶⁴² Shepherds are superior to, hence also meaningfully separate from, the sheep to which the former tend or wish to tend. In this volume, we have certainly encountered several examples of such admirable fountains of pastoral care, starting with the 18th-century heralds of ‘refinement’ vis-à-vis “humour” proper.⁶⁴³

639 Some of these examples are tackled further in Chapter 3. 640 The exact terminology varies with each disciplinary fad, but the basic idea stays pretty much the same: all but the talking sage have been duped. 641 Rose and Novas (2005), 432. Mutatis mutandis, all such claims of brainwashing, biopower, et similia are rhetorical variations on the standard Marxist theme of ideology, Platonic-Aristotelian demagoguery, and even-older Biblical idolatry. In brief, the uneducated masses are believed to become that which they worship to the benefit of the few who control the worship, e. g., greedy capitalists, crafty haranguers or heretical clerics—none of whom would ever describe themselves this way, of course. 642 LVOA can help envision whether and when the good at issue is so for the sheep, whose specific circumstances must be assessed with care (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). Icelandic farmers taught us that no two sheep are ever identical. 643 See H&C1 and Chapter 2 in Part 1.

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Successive and contemporary equivalents have also been far from scarce. None less than Ken Galbraith believed that the following curious “paradox” was at work in advanced industrial societies: “The economy, for its success, requires organized public bamboozlement. At the same time, it nurtures a growing class [of educated people] which feels itself superior to such bamboozlement and deplores it as intellectually corrupt.”⁶⁴⁴ Unbamboozled, the members of this perceptive and knowledgeable class can then spend decades, if not longer, disagreeing on what exactly the bamboozlement consists in.⁶⁴⁵ 1.3.2.11.3 Shadows Religious authorities and academic experts are frequently separated not only from the masses that they would very much like to reform and guide for their own good, but also from one another. Just compare, for example, McNair’s and Willis’ stances on human sexuality with MacKinnon’s and Dworkin’s, or those of Kozintsev on “humour” proper with Jean Harvey’s.⁶⁴⁶ Despite the many serious cruelties that the members of this exceptional educated class may vibrantly discuss, a comical element lingers on within their never-ending mutual confrontations and almost infinite internal divergences.⁶⁴⁷ On the left of the political spectrum, the self-proclaimed “radical” thinks that his/her present ‘culture’ is profoundly and pervasively ‘bourgeois’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘politically correct’, and/or ‘liberticidal’; yet s/he is magically immune from this culture’s immense influence and ferociously tight grip. On the right of the political spectrum, the self-proclaimed “conservative” laments that his/her original “culture” has been tragically lost to the equally deep-, wide-, and far-reaching forces of “cultural Marxism”, “relativism”, “political correctness”, or the devil itself; and yet, s/he too is as mysteriously free from his/her extant culture’s immense influence and ferociously tight grip.⁶⁴⁸

644 Galbraith (2007), 361. 645 As also noted in Chapter 3 of Part 1 and discussed in much more detail in H&C1, Rorty (1989) was keenly aware of the irreducible plurality of possible worldviews. To some extent, we are hereby corroborating his views. 646 See also H&C2. 647 The juxtaposition that follows above is intentionally simplistic, for it aims at fleshing out the comical element. 648 We have often heard at several conferences and symposia Britain’s leading Polanyi specialist, Dr. R.T. Allen, joke about the “all-minus-one” phenomenon in Western intellectual life. Somehow, all are victims of some mind-warping force but the one writing about it. Also, we wrote “itself” because Lucifer was supposedly an angel, i. e., a pre-sexual being, neither male nor female.

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Perhaps, this polyhedric plurality of possible perspectives, however painful, pathetic, puzzling, or paradoxical it may be perceived to be at first glance, has its particular, perchance peculiar, if not positively persuasive, raison d’être. And that raison would be the irreducible personal quid of all forms of knowledge that Polanyi identified and discussed in the 20th century.⁶⁴⁹ Tellingly, however personally committed any of us may be to some worthy ethico-political cause and/or sensible set of existential beliefs, a modicum of candid reflection can easily show that alternative viewpoints are always possible, even if we may find them personally implausible and/or unpalatable.⁶⁵⁰ All of us may even agree on the dismal notion that what we see day in day out on the cave’s walls are nothing but shadows, for we have been trapped since birth inside a corrupting, confusing, critically ill and/or cruelly imperfect society.⁶⁵¹ At the same time, Plato’s classic allegory notwithstanding, it may also be the case that the puppeteers toiling away behind our shoulders fight among themselves, make mistakes, improvise creatively (like jazz musicians or the buffoons in the Commedia dell’Arte), try their very best, and/or work at cross purposes.⁶⁵² Perhaps the puppeteers hold different university degrees and, in their shadow-games, are each intent on fostering specific theories, theses, themes, tendencies, and traditions.⁶⁵³ We, the authors of this volume, do not know for sure what or which is the actual case, at least as regards the hereby-tackled issues that keep the liberal and feminist camps so bitterly divided within themselves.⁶⁵⁴ Rather, as students of humour and cruelty, we must and cannot fail to remark upon the amazing variety of discordant intellectual views and expertly thought-through scholarly positions that

649 See H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1. 650 Let us recall once more how “personal” is not the same as ‘subjective’ (see H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1). What we mean, then, is different and, on certain points, alternative conceptions of objective reality (see M. Polanyi 1962c). 651 We assume our readers to be familiar with Plato’s myth of the cave in book 7 of his Republic. We toy with it here for the sake of spurring the reader’s imagination and thinking. It is not a technical account of it. 652 Traditionally, liberals have been tolerant of the widest array of beliefs and conducts, unless causing harm. While we presume it here and now, we have no guarantee that our future societies will cherish this liberal attitude. 653 Understanding the sentence above requires a modicum of humour. 654 We do have reasoned views on many matters, but not all and not all equally. See, e. g., Baruchello (2019b).

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exist, as reflected by the jarring dissonance of learned sources that have been included in this volume and, to a various degree, presented to the reader.⁶⁵⁵ In many of the possible viewpoints and, above all, in all of the preceding quoted ‘snapshots’, intangible psychosocial forces would still be at play, however, which aim at moulding the mind most extensively, yet without having to maltreat the body most ungraciously.⁶⁵⁶ Puppeteers are neither policemen nor thugs. As Baroncelli candidly wrote about himself and his sincere hopes with regard to the effective promotion of “non-offensive language” in both academia and Western societies at large: “The present author is absolutely opposed to the use of force, legal or else, to change everyday language.”⁶⁵⁷ Walter Lippman, in short, would continue to beat Lavrentiy Beria and with no blood being spilled in the contest between them.⁶⁵⁸ And that is enlightening enough a result for the present line of inquiry, not least with regard to the titular notion of cruelty.⁶⁵⁹ 1.3.2.11.4 Squabbles It may also be of help to mention again Laura Kipnis, who, in 2018, discussed the case of a man sacked for an uncouth and soon-deleted rape joke on his private Facebook wall that had caused much online uproar.⁶⁶⁰ As she wrote, “a[n] … unstated rule” of today’s Western societies, in which women have power aplenty … is that men need to prove and re-prove that they understand that rape is bad, and take it seriously, not unlike signing a loyalty oath to demonstrate you’re not a communist. Failure to keep re-proving it implicates you in crimes against women… [T] here’s nothing inadvertent about inadvertent offense… Corollary: a clear soul will be required to remain employed… If so, what’s being demanded is a rather large-scale cultural and psychological overhaul – perhaps of the entirety of mental life. ⁶⁶¹

655 In the face of such uncertainties, a conscious and cautious fiduciary embrace of a guiding perspective becomes all the more important, in line with M. Polanyi’s (1962c) approach (see H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1). 656 Whether the end result is increased civility, it is something that, again, LVOA can help us judge, at least in reasoned principle. 657 Baroncelli (1996), 65 – 66. Like most academics, he would have not thought of himself as such a puppeteer. 658 We expect our readers to be familiar with these two historical figures and understand what they personify here. 659 See Chapter 1 of Part 1. 660 This is the same case that was mentioned in the opening lines of the present chapter. 661 Kipnis (2018), pars. 8 – 18; emphasis added; who also quips: “w[om]e[n] can wreck a guy’s career with a tweet!” Western women’s empowerment becomes apparent whenever comparisons with the rest of the world are made. The Nordic countries, in particular, lead the way (see, e. g.,

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Observing the complex and ambiguous character of contemporary Western mentalities and institutions, Kipnis stressed the very positive role of the “cultural and institutional power” accrued by women’s movements, whose activists managed to implant “new values” in old societies.⁶⁶² At the same time, Kipnis noted that, while “vestigial patriarchal elements are being weeded out”, the liberal economic logic remains largely unchallenged, meaning that “the new boss” is and will be, vis-àvis her employees, pretty much “same as the old boss”.⁶⁶³ Indeed, back in the decisive decades of the creation of the West’s consumer society that Castoriadis went later on to ridicule so scathingly, the Marxist thinkers Horkheimer and Adorno would have sounded even more dismal on such matters: “What is decisive today is no longer puritanism, although it still asserts itself in the form of women’s organizations, but the necessity inherent in the system not to leave the customer alone, not for a moment to allow him any suspicion that resistance is possible.”⁶⁶⁴ From the libertarian-socialist standpoint that Castoriadis promoted and the Marxist one whence the two famous ‘Frankfurters’ developed their own views, focussing upon the issue of gender equality detached from that of capitalism can quickly become yet another tool to let the workers be internally divided and, a fortiori, kept conveniently distracted from pursuing their true class interests.⁶⁶⁵ These workers may therefore be allowed, or even encouraged, to squabble at will or ad nauseam about thorny themes and trembling terms such as “man” and “woman”, “subjectivity” and “objectification”, “equality” and “emancipation”, or “patriarchy” and “privilege”, while their bosses, whether male or female, keep making a killing.⁶⁶⁶ Possibly, it is all part of the cunning manipulation of the masses of which

OECD 2018). It is true that public debates may not yet reflect this positive reality, but as Veblen (1923, 5) noted about received views and dominant mentalities: “As always, the language employed and the principles acted on lag behind the facts”. Albeit commendable, since power is what is at stake, there can increase the chances for women’s evil-doing or letting inequality be in their favour. In Sweden, discrimination against men is thus becoming an academically debated issue (see, e. g., Ahmed, Granberg, and Khanna 2021). This cruelly ironic development corroborating Kekes’ (1997) considerations about liberal empowerment, i. e., the more power a person and/or a group acquire, the more they can do—harm included. LVOA can help reflect upon which uses of power are good and which bad (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 662 Kipnis (2018), pars. 6 – 12. 663 Kipnis (2018), pars. 6 – 12. 664 Horkheimer and Adorno (1989), 141. 665 By “Frankfurters” we implicitly referred not to sausages, but the noted school of thought to which Horkheimer and Adorno belonged. Humour comes also in these ways. 666 As to Eastern societies, it is cruelly ironic to read how successful patriarchal Islamism has been in appealing to women worldwide: “For example, the [Islamic State’s] infamous all-female

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a presumed powerful elite is capable.⁶⁶⁷ If so, however, then we, the authors of this volume, would not be able to assess it, for we are not part of such an elite.⁶⁶⁸ From a psychological perspective, these squabbles, like other aggressive confrontations observable in people’s daily interactions as well as in academic debates, may equally be an opportunity to displace or project and thereby vent out repressed frustration, resentment, rage, dread, anxiety and/or shame.⁶⁶⁹ As argued by the Bulgarian-born Julia Kristeva, who is probably the most famous contemporary psychotherapist and feminist thinker in the Francophone world: “That women have assumed commercial, industrial, and cultural power has not changed the nature of this power”, which has been regularly protected and—even when they are led by the psychic drive of “jouissance” towards seeking the creation of a “countersociety” or “utopia”—potently replicated by “designating a guilty party that shields the[se women] from criticism, whether it be the foreigner, money, another religion, or the other sex”, i. e., “reverse sexism”.⁶⁷⁰ Cruel intolerance, if Kipnis’ and Kristeva’s analyses are correct, would then find yet another puzzling and paradoxical manifestation. All the while, no real dent in society’s overall governing power structure is probably being made by the alleged reformers and revolutionaries.⁶⁷¹

morality police, al-Khansaa Brigade … founded by a Tunisian woman named Umm Rayan” (Quek and Huzaifah Bin Othman Alkaff 2019, 3; see also Peresin and Cerrone 2015). And to make this cruel irony even more strident, we should note how many brave men and women are publicly protesting against Iran’s governing ayatollahs while we write these lines. 667 There still exists left-wing feminism aimed at “pos[ing] a threat to heteropatriarchal capitalism” (Jane 2022, 579). Yet, like all Western revolutionary movements, it seems confined, at best, to “imagining collectivist futures” rather than bringing them about, unlike the Bolsheviks met by Bertrand Russell 100 years ago (Jane 2022, 580). 668 Or maybe we are part of the elite, but do not want to reveal our true colours. It is all a great conspiracy. You are being duped here and now. Perhaps. 669 Benjamin (1999, 332 – 333) suggested that Baudelaire’s “snobbism … satanism” and polemical rejection of the modern “world sinking into rigor mortis” were a result of “his own impotence”, which caused the French poet to exhibit “the cheerless humor of the rebel”, or what the French would call “la rogne” (i. e., scabies, etymologically). 670 Kristeva (1997), 360 – 361. 671 Armed with his customary abrasive sarcasm, Pareto (1935, par. 1356) hinted already at this possibility in the early 20th century, while discussing “[t]he cult of woman” in ancient as well as modern societies. Whether or not he was incorrect, it is not an issue that can be addressed in our volume. Rather, we are required to notice the ironic continuity between his cavalier approach to feminism and the conclusions reached by a committed and influential feminist thinker such as Kristeva (1997). Somewhat appropriately for a multi-volume project about humour and cruelty, scholarship produces sometimes the oddest, most unexpected bedfellows.

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1.3.2.12 Fascism One wonders what sort of epistemological privilege should grant the members of a given culture the uncanny ability of understanding one another perfectly. It’s curious. Because of Freud—and not just because of him alone—Western culture now takes for granted that the individual is perfectly opaque to him-/herself. However, as soon as anthropological knowledge exasperates the autonomy and untranslatability of different cultures, it also gets tacitly postulated, almost as a compensation, that all those who were born inside the same lair are mutually transparent. Or better, all those who happen to have a single common characteristic. It doesn’t take much for something to become a ‘culture’ inside a PC milieu. —Flavio Baroncelli⁶⁷²

Back in the days of international revolutionary communism, Russell had already quipped: “Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.”⁶⁷³ (We assume the same to be true of women as well.) And “education” is, maybe more than anything else, precisely that which Mill’s dreaded “tyranny” by “prevailing opinion and feeling” keeps im-/pressing onto each individual since the day of their birth, i. e., onto the “mental life” that Kipnis alerted her readers to in her cited editorial.⁶⁷⁴ Teachers and professors are not the protagonists here; nor are they the main culprits. On balance, schooling is only a fragment in a person’s life-long Bildung. ⁶⁷⁵ As the famous 20th-century Italian Marxist, Catholic, and homosexual activist and artist, Pier Paolo Pasolini, had observed in the 1970s, it is through “the new communication and information media (television in primis, notably)” that cultural identities and people’s very “soul” are effectively “scratched … pierced, violated” and, perhaps, “a new fascism” is established, the aim of which, as he

672 Baroncelli (1996), 26 – 27, in which he commented on those well-meaning yet misguided PC leftists replicating the right-wingers’ socio-epistemic and ethico-political reduction of real persons to mere tokens of abstract groups or “cultures”. While championing “non-offending” language, Baroncelli (1996, 57 and 88) could not keep himself from poking fun at some of political correctness’ most perplexing declinations: “You can always count on PC’s idiocy. But you can’t spend your life criticising the most idiotic among your adversaries.” 673 Russell (2009), 270. 674 Ironically, a thorough behaviourist approach would dispense with trying to gauge what goes on in such a life. 675 The advertisers’ motto, “from the cradle to the grave”, lets out ipso dicto these processes, but so do any intended cultural hegemony à la Gramsci or any emulation of TV-based, largely unintended, lifestyle models (Popper 1994). That such widespread mentalities are then all and everything that a culture consists in, it is somewhat doubtful.

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wrote, “is the brutally totalitarian reorganisation and homogenisation of the world”.⁶⁷⁶ Once again, Pasolini may have been hyperbolic or overly pessimistic.⁶⁷⁷ He too, like Castoriadis, may have offered one clever ‘snapshot’ among many. In any case, we cannot deny that, when people’s personal and professional reputation, career prospects, wallet’s fatness or—the starkest bottom-line—daily bread come also into the balance and are at risk of being jeopardised by unfavourable social opinion, the pressures to conform may simply become unstoppable.⁶⁷⁸ Hence, albeit humanely understandable, the effects of these pressures might well end up corroborating Lezard’s contemptuous accusations of critical irrelevance levelled against today’s Western comedians.⁶⁷⁹ As we read in the opening paragraphs of the present section, Hashem herself admitted that her fellow comedians’ willingness to gulp down unsavoury slices of “shit pie” is motivated by their desire to be allowed to participate in and gain commercially from the so-called “show business” of comedy, however cruel this business may be.⁶⁸⁰ Fearing for their economic security and, in the end, for their wellbeing, who would not bow before visible and/or invisible masters that, as Kipnis and Pasolini suggested, are certainly desirous and maybe even capable of overhauling people’s psychic make-up?⁶⁸¹ Confronted with the definite and very palpable risk that no truly critical comedy should ever see the light of day, worried and bitter apprehensions had already been voiced by a number of progressive and revolutionary belle-époque cabaret artists who vented rage—as much as outrage—at many Western colleagues,

676 Pasolini (2008), 24 – 25 and 50. Humour and, especially, cruelty are important elements in Pasolini’s works, especially his films. 677 Each reader is free to decide whether Pasolini was so or not. Honestly, we cannot pass a stark judgement. Still, should we take McMurtry (1984) or Eco (1995) as the expert or ‘classic’ definitions of “fascism”, Pasolini’s claim would have to be rejected. At the same time, we cannot ignore either how, at the time of writing, a political party of fascist derivation won the 2022 national elections in Pasolini’s country. 678 Awareness, depth, and kinds of peer pressure can vary, but their effectiveness is shown by people’s conduct. 679 See e. g., Webber (2018). Tiso (2011) retrieved this conservative disposition even in Eco’s leftwing work. 680 A corollary of this admission is that the controversies comedians delve into are not about truly pivotal issues. 681 As McMurtry (1999) argued, only two canonical modern Western philosophers accepted prolonged economic insecurity for the combined sake of frank intellectual liberty and scorching social criticism: Rousseau and Marx.

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whom the former found guilty of ‘selling out’ to the bourgeoisie.⁶⁸² Among these critics, emblematically, was the science-fiction and comic author Paul Scheerbart, better known under the pseudonyms “Kuno Küfer” and “Bruno Küfer”.⁶⁸³ Ominously, he was the author of a 1910 satirical piece entitled Das Lachen ist verboten, i. e., laughter is forbidden.⁶⁸⁴ 1.3.2.13 Fashionism Consumer sovereignty by making questions about too many automobiles, too few houses, an élitist and undemocratic interference with consumer choice, excludes questions about the power of the automobile industry to impose its preferences on the public. This, in effect, is the result of existing economic theory. It gives high moral and scientific sanction to social indifference. —John Kenneth Galbraith⁶⁸⁵

About 100 years later, a well-established Italian novelist, comic chansonnier, and engagé left-wing songwriter, Francesco Guccini, lamented the emergence of a “dictatorship of political correctness” within allegedly liberal societies.⁶⁸⁶ Perhaps, as the interview with Paz Vega suggested, today’s Western nations no longer appreciate or allow artistic creativity and comedic experimentation to boldly push the boundaries of what is generally accepted.⁶⁸⁷ In addition, as indicated by Laura Kipnis, the self-styled leftists of these nations may even claim such an oblique form of censorship to be, somehow, a proud trademark of liberal wisdom, if not progressivism itself. ⁶⁸⁸ Revealingly, prudence and self-restraint have become de rigueur 682 See Fambrini and Muzzi (2006). Ironically, the same claim has been made about the social sciences qua socio-economically integrated academic disciplines, psychology in primis (see, e. g., Fozooni 2020). Albeit polemical, this claim is not without grounds. It suffices to read the recent 865-page book by Hennig-Thurau and Houston (2019), who both accept unflinchingly the corporate business model as the natural place of residence of modern art, comedy included, despite past and present cohorts of artists aiming at the demolition of such a place (e. g., Gorky’s novels, Brecht’s plays, Rivera’s murals, Bong Joon-ho’s films, Manu Chao’s popular music, etc.). 683 See, e. g., Kohnle (1994). 684 As discussed in Fambrini and Muzzi (2006), 101 – 102. 685 Galbraith (1991), 356. 686 As cited in Laffranchi (2021). As to Guccini’s comic work, his 1973 record Opera buffa is probably his most significant achievement in the comedic field. 687 Let’s see whether a split infinitive can push such boundaries too. 688 See also Paglia (2017). As repeatedly noted, many voices have lamented PC’s influence. In the UK, Duffy et al. (2021, 3) concluded that “the public are clear that political correctness has gone too far”, according to their own survey. Ironically, such lamentations have been heard from both the Right and the Left, thus implicitly revealing how political correctness is not a simple means of liberation tout court, but an effective remodulation of power distribution within society’s mental and

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in comic matters, not least among those who earn a living thereof. As the contemporary African-American comedian and filmmaker, Chris Rock, tellingly jibed on this point: “You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.”⁶⁸⁹ 1.3.2.13.1 Three Cases Considering the previous statements, it would not seem outlandish to hypothesise that conformist narrow-mindedness may be capable of arising from the Left as well as the Right. Each camp, then, would contain not only its own myriad views and contradictory frictions, but also its authorities and apostates, mainstreamers and mavericks, diehards and doves. Ironies, as a result, would also abound. And some of them could be quite cruel.⁶⁹⁰ In this connection, while discussing the growingly heavy-handed professional ostracism suffered by the leftist British author of the Harry Potter saga, J.K. Rowling, who had recklessly “stated that a person’s sex is an objective biological given, as confirmed by the bodily structure itself”, the Italian liberal philosopher Michele Marsonet caustically dubbed today’s “political correctness” a form of left-wing “inverted bigotry” courting corporate-enforced “censorship” (e. g., by “mainstream media”) and intimating “an Orwellian ‘thought police’ that aims at preventing the diffusion of books and films that are ‘not correct’”, e. g., “Disney’s classic cartoons such as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty”.⁶⁹¹ lexical domain. It is less cruel than a beating by the police, but also far less innocent than a sheer reminder of proper etiquette or what may constitutes a “gaffe” (Baroncelli 1996, title et passim). Being contested, the socio-linguistic domain is, inevitably, charged with numerous dualities that jokesters of all stripes can exploit in order to be ‘edgy’, although risking reprisal from either seriously committed contestant. 689 Gomez (2017), par. 18. Like many US comedians, Chris Rock ceased performing on university campuses, where educated people find always ways to take offence . 690 Interestingly, in today’s Italian, “fascist” and “Stalinist” are both used to indicate intolerant stances. As to telling the Left from the Right in politics, we implicitly rely upon McMurtry (1979), which is conceptually in line with LVOA (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). Yet, alternative assessments are available. Each reader can adopt one, if s/he wants to, under his/her own personal responsibility, and the same applies to determining whether, how and why claiming that the Left is more, less or as bigoted than/as the Right. On our part, we do not address this matter here, and refer our readers to Baruchello (2018a and 2018b), where our political views were discussed in reasoned detail. 691 Marsonet (2023), pars. 2 – 14. Once again, incidentally, the control of images comes into play. Marsonet’s remarks are also an important reminder of the fact that corporate interests can combine with alleged leftism, insofar as the latter no longer preaches communism and revolution. Please note that no transphobia whatsoever is implied by our mentioning a philosopher’s considerations on this publicly debated matter. Rather, the reader is reminded of LVOA’s fundamental criteria of good and bad, as introduced and briefly explained in Chapter 1 of Part 1.

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Given the powerful affective or libidinal ingredients of these socio-cultural dynamics, such perplexing and somewhat preposterous drifts may well be cruelly inevitable, no matter how cultivated or ‘refined’ we have become and whether we inhabit primarily a left-wing or a right-wing milieu.⁶⁹² Character can still beat culture. Group identity can carry more weight than intellectual integrity. Pathos, in turn, can defy logos. ⁶⁹³ Pursuing a terribly precious ideal can take precedence over pondering its tacitly presupposed ideology. And the thrust of ingrained habit, after a while, can overcome any line of reasonable reflection, candid conversation, diplomatic disagreement, and/or subtly sceptical self-examination—especially, though not exclusively, if any such flouting of habit should also imperil one’s way to monetary reward.⁶⁹⁴ Eloquently, a present-day historian of architecture in Guccini’s homeland, Raffaele Giovannelli, affirmed that, over the past 100 years, the Western intelligentsia’s habit of “celebrating novelty … and rationality without limit … transformed Western art into a ludicrous farce, at which we are forbidden to laugh, since laughing at it would be an unforgivable attack against culture and progress”.⁶⁹⁵ Back in his day, Chesterton had mused on how the then-novel female “fashion” of “plucking out of the eyebrow” would “have been instantly classed with the cruel disfigurements imposed by masculine jealousy, as in the Oriental wives who are made to black their teeth after marriage[,] had it not been adopted as hedonism” by British women themselves.⁶⁹⁶ Yet, as is the case with all the fashions whereby the masses try to emulate “those select circles where such things presumably start”, the new aesthetic trend is nothing but “an unconscious expression … of a tendency to turn people into patterns”, spreading across society like “a type of tyranny and slavery and stiff”, such that “women can be wholly natural by con-

692 Since common sense requires some beliefs to be common, intolerance might ensue from their mere prevalence. 693 These two terms are understood here in their standard rhetorical sense, i. e., as appeals to, respectively, emotion and reason. 694 See also Kolirin (2023, par. 5) on the bowdlerisation of Roald Dahl’s works; again, purportedly leftist concerns for “inclusion, diversity, equality and accessibility” neatly enmesh with liberalism’s standard profit motive. 695 Giovannelli (2014), 73. 696 Chesterton (1933), chap. 40, par. 8. This book contains some of Chesterton’s most perceptive essays about the many cruelties of his day (i. e., “Negative Morality”, “On the Simplicity of Asia”, and “On Industrialism”). As to humour, instead, the posthumous 1950 volume entitled The Common Man comprises brief yet argute reflections on comedy and farce (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “A Tale of Two Cities”), parody and the burlesque (“The Pantomime”), irony (“The Strange Talk of Two Victorians”, “The End of the Moderns”), and light-heartedness and laughter (“The Frivolous Man”, “Laughter”). As to “humour” proper, we have been quoting him generously.

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structing masks of grease-paint, or prove their freedom by strictly following the mode”.⁶⁹⁷ 1.3.2.13.2 Three Paragraphs Following all of the chronologically separate, thematically specific, partially deviating and yet, to a noticeable extent, conceptually overlapping insights and experiences about laughable matters gathered under subsection 1.3.2, we are led to conclude that social opinion and business concerns can be interpreted, reasonably and credibly, as generally unseen tools for steering implicitly, rather than dictating explicitly, socio-personal agency at most levels and to great extents—though probably not coherently, consistently, and comprehensively.⁶⁹⁸ As Pasolini and Kipnis hinted at, social opinion and business concerns might even attempt or, perhaps, be able to plunge to plutonic psychological depths, which are intractable from an empirical scientific perspective and likely to hide hosts of motivational complexities and problematic pluralities of their own.⁶⁹⁹ In an increasingly secular world, social opinion and business concerns may thus be the last gods that we are left with—or entitled to. Theirs, then, and perhaps theirs alone, are the power and skill for making and re-making all sorts of intellectual trends and tendencies, in all kinds of social spheres, which include comedy and the arts, but also commonplace humour, consumer preferences, managerial methods, business fads, academic disciplines, and specialistic fields.⁷⁰⁰ What is humorous and what is not would be merely one of the many outcomes of a larger, elusive, internally diverse socio-cultural process and, concomitantly, capillary-

697 Chesterton (1933), chap. 40, pars. 1 and 8 – 10. We ignore whether Chesterton read Veblen. 698 As regards the power of business concerns in forming people’s consciousness through pervasive marketing and advertising, Veblen (1931) and Galbraith (1958) wrote about it critically and caustically in the early days of, respectively, radio and television broadcasting. It should be added that humour has been used to defend standard business practices, particularly by the rhetorically apt liberal economist Deirdre (née Donald) McCloskey (1998). 699 Mass hysteria on so-called “black Fridays” is a prosaic demonstration of how powerful this grip can be. Moreover, it indicates as well how being “hysteric[al]” or the victim of “anger … irrationality” and “fury” are no prerogative of a specific gender, as many trite sexist “stereotypes” have often proclaimed (Jane 2022, 568). 700 See Özveren (2012) on Veblen’s key obstacles to universities’ potential for originality: the (1) power of extant habits of thought; (2) effort spent in ritual displays of wealth and status; (3) thorough enslavement to short-term business goals; and (4) regular prevalence of institutional competition over institutional cooperation.

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like power-apparatus reaching, ideally if not in practice, all the cells of the body politic.⁷⁰¹ This process and its attendant apparatus being such that, even when contradictory or confusing, predominant public views and well-entrenched economic desiderata should generally prevail, i. e. not unaffected individual freedom and untrammelled self-expression—even in the carnivalesque realms of comedy and comic matters.⁷⁰² Flashy billboards, mass-media paradigms, reiterated vocal condemnations, publicly paraded signs of distinction, and commonly expected behaviours, according to this line of assessment, would appear to reach much farther and dig much deeper than fascists’ boots and ferocious beatings.⁷⁰³ A conspicuous measure of effective control, even if painfully chaotic or puzzlingly inconsistent for the living individual, may therefore be obtained by means of sheer cunning and continual peer-pressure, perchance making use of socially corrective Bergsonian humour too, rather than black-shirted bestial cruelty.⁷⁰⁴

701 This cultural process, whether well- or ill-meaning and/or fated, is hegemonic in spirit. As indirectly confirmed by “Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University”, upon the death of UK’s 99-year-old Prince Philip: “When he says things about Chinese people’s eyes and chucking spears, it’s very ugly and would not be tolerated anywhere else nor from anyone else” (as cited in Picheta 2021, pars. 10 – 11; emphases added). Funnily, the old aristocrat had himself wittily described his peculiar “expertise in ‘dontopedalogy’ – the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it’” (as cited in Picheta 2021, par. 30). As Gramsci (1977, vol. 1, 76, Q1, par. 65) argued, revolutionary progress requires modifying the culture’s structures of presupposition and uncritical belief, hence establishing new ones in their place, consistently with the ongoing historical process of “sedimentation” of scientific and philosophical technicalities into people’s “common sense”, which then fossilises further into sheer “folklore”. It is a fight for cultural power. Ironically, though, as long as many factions keep fighting, there will endure some plurality, if not pluralism. The same cannot be said of a society in which one faction triumphs over all others and aims at eradicating all losers (see, e. g., the Bolsheviks and Islamists discussed in this chapter, and the many instances of fascism tackled in our three volumes). In reasoned principle, LVOA can help assess and distinguish among the different scenarios (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 702 Two French sociologists, Boltanski and Thévenot (1991, chap. 10), argued that the “industrial regime” and the “market regime” select out the creations of the “inspired world” (e. g., arts, revolutionary politics, critical thought) and the views of the “world of opinion” (e. g., success, respectability, fame) resisting attempts at “compromise”. Whether it is so and/or how much are issues that our readers may reflect upon and determine. 703 Prusa (2016, par. 6) argued that the transgressions fictionally embodied by Western and Japanese tragic heroes have an ultimately conservative socio-political function, which allows for the “therapeutic” discharge of negative “psychosocial pressures” among the populace, while also letting the “mainstream media … maximise profit”, i. e., fulfil the paramount liberal principle of allegedly ‘rational’ economic conduct, whether individual or corporate. 704 See H&C1 and Chapter 2 of Part 1.

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1.3.2.14 Blunt Force Back in the bad old days when there was presumed intolerance, people had to be silenced by mob lynching or guns. Not such uncivilised behaviour anymore. We can take revenge in a nonviolent civilised way by filing FIRs and slapping defamation cases. That is a massive upgrade. —Gyaneshwar Dayal⁷⁰⁵

Coercion does not belong exclusively to the likes of Mussolini or Franco, however. Sometimes, even the constitutionally ‘free’ citizens of liberal nations must be reminded of the coercive power of the State by the sound of dangling handcuffs and pounding mallets. No matter how sophisticated and subtle, soft power and bamboozlement do not work all the way, all the time, and on all people equally. Or they may even cause unforeseen ‘deviances’ and ‘undesirable’ outcomes of their own.⁷⁰⁶ Then, prevalent social opinion and business concerns can spill over into the explicit legal sphere, so as to qualify both formally and officially, and more or less conspicuously delimit, people’s constitutional right of free speech—occasionally also on the theatre stage, behind a TV camera, or in a university’s conference room.⁷⁰⁷ This spill-over is generally exemplified by binding legal norms and regulations about a great variety of public expressions, whether in spoken, written, filmed, portrayed, or disbursed form, as well as by the public offices and officials that are expected to monitor and/or enforce them.⁷⁰⁸ Their typical targets have included, thus far: (1) hate speech (e. g., indictments for Islamophobia, bigotry and anti-Semitism), (2) political communication (e. g., denying the Armenian or the Romani genocide), (3) sexual explicitness (e. g., banning softcore and/or hardcore pornography), (4) financial expenditure (e. g., capping donations to political campaigns) and (5) commercial expression (e. g., proscribing cigarette- and alcohol advertisements).⁷⁰⁹

705 Dayal (2021), par. 1. The reader may wish to ponder on the title of the Indian film-maker’s editorial: “Freedom of Speech Is a Joke”. See also Perera and Pathak (2022) on the tensions surrounding comedy in South Asia. 706 Galbraith’s (2007, 361) educated “class” criticising conformism being one such example. 707 Although generally granted more leeway, artists themselves are not entirely free in their selfexpression, not even in the cybersphere (see, e. g., Pagani, Whaley, and Czerwinski 2022). 708 See, e. g., Bromell and Shanks (2021) on the Classification Office’s reaction to the 2019 Christchurch massacre in New Zealand. 709 See, e. g., Cram (2006). There may be good reasons for such limitations which, in ultimate analysis, have to do with assessments of comprehensive and compossible life-enablement/disablement, i. e., not with freedom per se. See also Chapter 1 of Part 1.

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Legal patents, copyright limitations, non-disclosure clauses, and privacy provisions should also be added to this tall pile of existing demarcations of free speech, the unmitigated application of which can be damaging to people’s privacy and business ventures.⁷¹⁰ To the same stack should probably belong also the threats, and implementations thereof, concerning all those feats of costly litigation, immediate sacking, and/or professional segregation directed at the few Socratic intellectuals who, whether heroically or imprudently, dared peering into genuinely controversial issues.⁷¹¹ For example, we can name three such thinkers. (1) The leftist-liberal Jewish-American political scientist Norman Finkelstein, who has been writing for many years about the geostrategic roots of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, i. e., one of the most divisive issues in international relations and world politics, especially in North America and, of course, the Middle East.⁷¹² (2) The already-cited Canadian philosopher John McMurtry, who had been trying to debate the geopolitical ab/uses of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US from the very start, not least with regard to the sizeable profits to be made by the private corporations involved in the so-called “war on terror”.⁷¹³ (3) The classic-liberal US philosopher Peter Boghossian, who became the target of considerable professional enmity after satirising and, au fond, delegitimising a significant part of contemporary research in the Anglophone humanities and social sciences by means of fake, jargon-filled, preposterous articles, which were then accepted for publication as genuine scholarship by actual academic journals.⁷¹⁴ The cantankerous positivist Pareto may have had a point, after all.⁷¹⁵

710 See, e. g., Berlin v. EC Publications (1964) and Volokh (2000). 711 Almost tautologically, the crueller is the social response, the more likely Socratic is the investigation being responded to. Socrates himself was condemned to death by Athens’ courts of law. Thus, in today’s world, deadly no-vax campaigners and their pandemic streak of so-called “Covidiots” are at no risk of imprisonment, whereas US whistle-blower Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning spent seven years in prison (see, e. g., Maxwell 2019). 712 See Sheinerman and Limestahl (2019). We remarked already on this divisive and cruel conflict in H&C1. 713 See Hughes (2020) and Chapter 1 of Part 1. See also Chomsky (2003), Vidal (2002), and Galbraith (2004) on the political clout of these corporations and the never-ending character of the metaphorical wars that they lobby for. 714 In his letter of resignation from Portland State University, we read: “Students … are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues… This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly. [I]lliberalism … has now swallowed the academy”, which “can enforce … conformity … through

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1.3.2.15 Death The Jews would seem to have a better right than any to rob and kill us. Though there are a hundred instances of toleration in the Old Testament, there are also some instances and laws of severity. God has at times commanded them to kill idolaters, and reserve only the marriageable girls. Now they regard us as idolaters, and, although we tolerate them to-day, it is possible that, if they became masters, they would suffer only our girls to live. They would, at least, be absolutely compelled to slay all the Turks, because the Turks occupy the lands of the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorrhæans, Jersensæans, Hevæans, Aracæans, Cinæans, Hamatæans, and Samaritans. All these peoples were anathematised, and their country, which was more than seventy-five miles long, was given to the Jews in several consecutive covenants. They ought to regain their possessions, which the Mohammedans have usurped for the last thousand years. If the Jews were now to reason in this way, it is clear that the only reply we should make would be to put them in the galleys. These are almost the only cases in which intolerance seems reasonable. —Voltaire⁷¹⁶

Jokes aside, free speech is an open field with plenty of furrows to cultivate and pathways to explore, but it is also scattered with muddy ditches and barb-wired fences, if not even with dangerous dykes, dark hidden holes, dicey ridges, and deadly landmines.⁷¹⁷ Ironically, as we reported, there may actually be self-prothreat of … investigations” (Boghossian 2021, pars. 6 – 15). As also Paglia wondered: “How is it possible that today’s academic left has supported rather than protested campus speech codes as well as the grotesque surveillance and overregulation of student life?” (as cited in Dudro 2018, par. 10). 715 We are referring to Pareto’s uncompromising methodological considerations, often cast in a sarcastic and dismissive tone, as briefly mentioned in 1.3.2.11. Also, this is a point in our volume where our academic reader is clearly being tested on his/her own self-irony and critical reflexivity. Relatedly, let us note how the all-consuming interests and chocking passions of some individuals may be unknown to others. Someone’s most potent inner drives and beliefs may be absent and/ or seem absurd to another person. Where an individual experiences enthusiasm or elation, another encounters ennui and estrangement. As Jung (1960 – 1990, vol. 6) argued, this well-established situation, which challenges the far-too-easy universalisations made by countless philosophers and social scientists, is one the obvious yet frequently neglected consequences of the different extant psychological types (aka “temperaments” or “traits”; subtler technical distinctions being irrelevant here, given the level of communicative generality at which we operate). Too often, in fact, we still hear the appealing yet simplistic talk of “human nature” (e. g., the orthodox economists’ homo economicus) and forget that both history and direct personal experience tell a more nuanced tale. Coordinates that can credibly apply to us all, then, will have to be abstract, e. g., those of LVOA (see Chapter 1 of Part 1, McMurtry 2011, and Baruchello 2018a and 2018b). 716 Voltaire (1912), 74 – 75. Several ironic twists are built in the quote above, which touches on as many themes that are discussed in the present chapter, including section 1.4. It thus works as both summary and introduction. 717 Assessing propaganda in fine detail, whether political or business-dictated (e. g., Veblen’s “salesmanship”, Galbraith’s “management of demand”), would add another important dimension to the study of the immense power of social opinion and business interests, but also exceed the

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claimed “liberals” trying eagerly to add further ditches and taller fences to the extant ones, even if it means letting the State intervene into, and interfere with, adult individuals’ lives, aims and agreements.⁷¹⁸ Besides, when jokes are no longer aside, lethal repercussions continue to be relevant.⁷¹⁹ Added to the lot of perplexing phenomena pertaining to the established field and standing forms of free speech, jokes too can shed a modicum of light on the cruelties that commonplace humour may have caused and/or accompanied.⁷²⁰ Sadly enough, in this case too, modern history can provide a substantial wealth of examples for us to ponder. Let us mention three examples here. (1) In the days of Queen Victoria, England’s darling stage-actor and music-comedy star, William “Breezy Bill” Terriss, was stabbed to death in the streets of London by a disgruntled colleague whom Terriss had repeatedly gibed to his face both in private and in public.⁷²¹ (2) On the other side of the pond, we can recall Francis Boggs, a pioneer of America’s cinematic comedy, whose flamboyant personality and unstoppable hilarity caught the eye of a disturbed caretaker, Frank Minnimatsu, who shot him dead in 1911.⁷²² (3) A Jewish star of German cabaret, Max M. Ehrlich, was interned by the Nazis in Westerbork, where he valiantly formed an all-prisoner theatre troupe before being moved to Auschwitz, where SS officers forced him to entertain them by telling jokes at gunpoint.⁷²³ In the end, Ehrlich was killed in the camp’s infamous gas chambers.⁷²⁴ (These being, inter alia, corporate-backed machines of

limits of the present discussion, which is long enough. As to landmines, see also H&C2’s cartoon by Soulcié, who captured artistically the cruel humour of humour itself. 718 On our part, by relying upon LVOA qua evaluative framework, we do not aim at building fences or even sitting on them. Rather, we aim at digging underneath them (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 719 Being successful can make comedians rich, which attracts murderous robbers. See, e. g., James Edmonson Sr., aka Professor Backwards, killed in 1976, Dick Kallman in 1980, Jay R. Smith in 2002, and Robert Lees in 2004 (International Movie Database [IMDb], 1990 – 2020). 720 As all readers trained in the social sciences are aware, disentangling causation and correlation is not easy. 721 See Smythe (2010). 722 “Nippon Killer” (1911), 22. 723 See Max Ehrlich Association (2000 – 2012). 724 Nazi Germany and its allies murdered, among others: Hans Behrendt, Egon Friedell, Eugen Burg, Fritz Grünbaum, Karel Hasler, Kurt Gerron, Kurt Lilien, Paul Morgan, Miklós Vig, and Otto Wallburg.

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“genocide and industrialized cruelty” that devoured many other European comedians in those tragic years of our ‘modern’ Western history.)⁷²⁵ Laughter can certainly give us solace from life’s many cruelties, as Kant had intimated. Whether it can save us from cruel demise, however, it is not so certain. Actually, it may even hasten it.

1.4 Charlie Hebdo Look at the history of the prophets. You will see that Jesus (upon whom be peace) did not remain among his people very long before he was taken up to heaven. But you all know well that Abraham (upon whom be peace), who in one sense stood at the beginning of the line of prophets, took up his axe to shatter all the idols; he was not afraid of being cast into the fire and burned. If he had been afraid, he would not have been a prophet. This man who stood alone in the face of such great forces and who was then cast into the fire —he could not follow a logic that required him, if slapped on one cheek, to turn the other cheek for it to be slapped, too. That is the logic of the indolent, the logic of those who do not know God and who have not studied the Qur’an. —Imam Khomeini⁷²⁶

In 2015, one particular case of murderous violence brought together, in the most dramatic manner, the issues of humour, cruelty, and free speech. Not only did charges of “cruelty” proper and tokens of commonplace humour collide on this specific occasion, but also, in a manner of speaking, the East and the West did the same.⁷²⁷ Their collision, moreover, occurred along the moral boundaries that, in all certainty, ought not to be crossed by public communication, as we are to explain in this section of our volume.

725 Gilyazova, Zamoshchanskii, and Zamoshchanskaya (2020), 20, who echo somewhat Maritain’s (1973a, 247) older observation that, while “the ancient world was well instructed in cruelty”, modern “science and technique” made the “cruel … carnal means of war … more and more grandiose, and almost astronomical in scale”. As to the often-underplayed role of German, American, British, and other for-profit corporations in some of history’s worst genocides, including the Holocaust, see, e. g., Kelly (2016). 726 Khomeini (1981), 219. 727 In the 1990s, Huntington (2007) wrote an article and then a very successful book about the “clash of civilizations” involving the liberal West and the conservative Muslim East. His thesis is very old, though, and the phrase itself can be found already in Mathews’ (2007, 196) 1926 book, Young Islam on Trek. The famed French historian Fernand Braudel (2002, 79) identified an even older division between “two Mediterraneans” that the alleged clash supposedly reiterates, i. e., a Phoenician-Persian “Orient” and a Graeco-Roman “Occident”.

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1.4.1 Terrors Between 7 and 9 January 2015, in the great city of Paris and the surrounding region of the Île de France, three armed men staged five shooting attacks, killing 17 people and wounding another 22.⁷²⁸ The armed men were the brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi and a friend, Amedy Coulibaly.⁷²⁹ They were known to the French authorities as radical Islamists.⁷³⁰ All three men died while exchanging fire with the police in two separate incidents, which were the result of their coordinated battleplan.⁷³¹ During their gory part of the premeditated homicidal mission, the Kouachi brothers told witnesses that they were linked to Yemen’s Al-Qaeda.⁷³² Prior to embarking on his own gory part, instead, their friend Coulibaly pleaded his allegiance to ISIS in a video recording.⁷³³ After their death, the Arabian cell of Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the three men’s actions.⁷³⁴ France has had a long history of tensions with the Muslim world and its own large Muslim minority. Possibly, the most visible instance occurred at the time of the Algerian War of Independence, i. e., during the 1950s and the early 1960s.⁷³⁵ In 2015, though, the acts of violence occurred in an even broader transnational context, which we must address here, most succinctly.⁷³⁶ 1.4.1.1 Internationally The roots of this transnational context reach back to the Saudi- and US-backed Jihadist rebel fighters operating in the 1980s Afghan war theatre.⁷³⁷ (1) These rebel fighters were known in the West as “mujahedeen”, which is a term that has since become part of the ordinary English lexicon. The declared aim of these warriors was to erase ‘godless’ Marxism from all Muslim lands,

728 See, e. g., Kepel and Jardin (2017). Having double-checked the book’s information, it should be noted that the exact number of fatalities varies slightly across sources. 729 Kepel and Jardin (2017). 730 Kepel and Jardin (2017). 731 Kepel and Jardin (2017). 732 “Les frères Kouachi” (2015). 733 Onyanga-Omara (2015). 734 K. Vick (2015). 735 Kepel and Jardin (2017). 736 We are not suggesting that Islam is inevitably cruel. Rather, some of its adherents can be cruel —like those of several other religions (see, e. g., Eller 2010). Contemporary Jihadists are a patent example of this possibility. 737 Kepel (2003).

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many of which had robust diplomatic, political, cultural, and economic ties with the USSR and its allies.⁷³⁸ (2) In the 1990s, the Gulf War and the ensuing continued presence of ‘infidel’ US troops on Islam’s sacred yet oil-rich Arab soil engendered considerable resentment among the radical Muslims, especially Saudi, many of whom had either fought in Afghanistan or been coached by veterans of that conflict.⁷³⁹ Some of these combatants trained and/or hid on Afghani soil or in neighbouring Pakistan.⁷⁴⁰ These Jihadists, old and young, launched a prolonged terrorist campaign against ‘polluted’ Eastern objectives as well as ‘polluting’ Western ones, the most iconic of which were New York’s Twin Towers in September 2001.⁷⁴¹ (3) Two years later, the retaliatory US-led invasion of Iraq and the crude imagery of “American soldiers humiliating Muslims at the Abu Ghraib prison” poured copious fuel on the already-well-lit flames of global Jihadism, including Chérif Kouachi and his associates in France.⁷⁴² In one of history’s many cruel ironies, the Muslim radicals that had been combatting the Marxist ideology, itself a brainchild of the West, turned against their former backers.⁷⁴³ This time, they started combatting the West’s liberal ideology.⁷⁴⁴

738 Kepel (2003). 739 Kepel (2003). 740 Kepel (2003). 741 Kepel (2003). 742 Callimachi and Yardley (2015), par. 1. Khader (2015) argues that avenging the horrors of Abu Ghraib was actually the main aim of the Al-Qaeda-sanctioned terrorist mission of the Kouachi brothers. Yet another cycle of cruelty, in short. 743 Marxism was born in Germany and inspired scores of European socialists and communists in countries such as France, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece. Do note that neither “Marxism” nor “ideology” disqualify per se a theory, stance, or argument. Good reasons must be supplied, always. As Baroncelli (1998, 49) wrote: “the term [‘ideology’] was used nonsensically … a few years ago, by those who claimed as ‘ideological’ all the politically explicit theories, and in particular—I wonder why—any left-wing one” in order “to dismiss them”. As to the mujahedeen’s own ideology, insofar as it made them the sworn enemies of the dream of international atheist communism envisioned by Marx and Engels in the 19th century, these so-called “freedom fighters” received ample training, intelligence, equipment, money, and military support from Reagan’s US administration, who proved to be the best of all allies of murderous individuals such as Osama bin Laden (Taylor 2014, caption of picture 17). The bleak historical irony at play, which is still unfolding, should be patent to the discerning reader. 744 Kepel (2003). Armed with the satirist’s keen eye for history’s cruel ironies, Zinoviev argued that “Islam is resisting westernisation” and that “[t]errorism is a threat that the West itself has provoked”, insofar as “[t]he West is a global aggressor” (as cited in Hanson 2010, 22; emphasis added).

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What is more, according to leading scholars in international relations and security studies, these Muslim radicals are likely to continue to do so in the foreseeable future.⁷⁴⁵ 1.4.1.2 Nationally The January 2015 attacks were also a highly localised matter, which reflected the difficulties experienced by the Gallic nation vis-à-vis integrating fully and satisfactorily its sizeable Muslim population.⁷⁴⁶ France was, this time also in an artistic/cultural sense, the commando’s chosen target, not New York or some location in Great Britain. Specifically, the chosen target were the Parisian headquarters of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which was hardly a standard name worldwide before the terrorist assault. If anything, Charlie Hebdo was simply a small business enterprise in the 11th arrondissement of the French capital.⁷⁴⁷ In any case, the Kouachi brothers managed to kill therein 12 people and injure another 11.⁷⁴⁸ According to the survivors’ accounts, the attackers stated repeatedly that their deliberate act of violence was intended to “avenge the Prophet”, whom the French artists had “insulted” far too often with their disrespectful caricatures and blasphemous cartoons.⁷⁴⁹ Not only were these images to disappear from the public realm, but their very creators too, literally.⁷⁵⁰ In addition, the attackers made it Each responsible person will have to decide whether Zinoviev was correct or merely exaggerating, based on her knowledge of history, Islam, and the languages required to access an adequate number of sources originating from all the affected countries. Being fluent in few Western languages alone, we prefer not to pass any trenchant judgement on this matter. 745 Kepel (2003). See also Schurman, Grol, and Flower (2016). The trite logic of violence breeding violence, which we remarked on in conjunction with Chesterton and Smart, is further exemplified. 746 Kepel and Jardin (2017). 747 Prior to the attack, the magazine’s “distribution figures [were] at most 60 000 copies and [it had] a relatively minor web presence” (Weston Vauclair 2015, 8). According to Lilti (2021), Charlie Hebdo has been trying to regain its marginal place in the socio-cultural arena in France before the 2015 terrorist attack turned it into a totem of secularism in that nation as well as abroad. Hence, it has been engaging in repeated acts of self-caricature. 748 See Kepel and Jardin (2017), who noted that the Kouachi brothers killed a fellow French Muslim, the policeman Ahmed Merabet, who had tried to stop them from escaping. Among the victims were most of the artists working for the journal, known to their readers as Charb, Tignous, Honoré, Cabu, and Wolinski (since these artists presented themselves to the public, the press and the interviewers with their nom-de-plume, we use their pseudonyms here). 749 Seelow (2015), pars. 1 and 4; see also “Attaque contre Charlie Hebdo” (2015). 750 It is a cruel irony indeed, but it could be plausibly argued that the murdered cartoonists were not making fun of the Prophet and/or of Islam as such. They may well have been making fun of the literalist interpretations of their message, especially among today’s influential Wahabi circles, who

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clear many times that it was not their intention to “kill any woman”.⁷⁵¹ This was so because ‘true’ Muslims, unlike Westerners in Iraq, have genuine “honour” in warfare.⁷⁵² In the end, the terrorists did murder one woman, i. e., the columnist and psychoanalyst Elsa Cayat, herself of Tunisian origin, who got shot in the confusion of the attack.⁷⁵³ The Kouachi brothers’ deadly weapons and their homicidal utilisation, not just their vocal statements, were the means whereby to send out a loud message. Its immediate recipients were the shocked, bleeding survivors at Charlie Hebdo’s, of course.⁷⁵⁴ Then there were all the Parisians, Frenchmen, Europeans, and Westerners, to whom a stark note of reproach had just been issued.⁷⁵⁵ There were Eastern recipients too. The allegedly ‘compromised’ Muslims were reminded of what ‘true’ Islam is meant to be like, according to the Kouachi brothers and like-minded Jihadists. The ‘true’ followers of the Prophet, instead, were confirmed and comforted in their beliefs.⁷⁵⁶ In effect, some of the ‘true’ Islamists’ wishes had been realised ipso facto, insomuch as Charb, the director of Charlie Hebdo, had already received re-

have been trying to restore a 7th-century village-born Arab virtuist worldview and austere way of life as the best templates for the 21st-century ‘global village’ (see Robinson 2022 on the sparse population of early-medieval Mecca). These circles’ future success or failure cannot be predicted, for the most committed devotees can also be the most effective game-changers in both politics and culture. Nevertheless, it is not too difficult to fathom the comic potential of the contrast between, on the one end, Muhammad’s times and lifestyles and, on the opposite one, current times and lifestyles, whichever end of the spectrum one may personally favour axiologically. As far as Jews and Christian are concerned, Monty Python’s controversial 1979 comedy, The Life of Brian, played repeatedly around this sort of contrast, inter alia, thus producing an irreverent mockery of Roman Palestine at the time of Jesus’ life and preaching. In this respect, Charlie Hebdo and the several other outlets around the world that have been circulating satirical cartoons in the same vein could be regarded as reiterating the humorous example of Boccaccio (1886, e. g., day 3, story 4 and day 4, story 2) who ridiculed in his Decameron the credulous popular Christianity of 14th-century Italy, or the British prog-rock band Genesis who mocked the greedy and hypocritical Protestant televangelists of 20th-century America in their 1991 song “Jesus, He Knows Me”. 751 Seelow (2015), par. 4 752 “Attaque contre Charlie Hebdo” (2015), par 5. 753 Seelow (2015), par. 1. Concerning Islam, Morreall (1999, 129) argued that “with its total submission to God, [it] has neither the individualism and questioning of suffering required for the tragic vision, nor the playfulness of the comic vision”. Perhaps, our century’s suicidal-homicidal Jihadists have been seeking a heroic, tragic path in Islam. At the same time, though, doing so by means of cruelty may indicate cowardice rather than heroism (see, e. g., Leopardi n.d.a. [1898], 2338), or excessive loyalty to a group (see, e. g., Steele 2021). 754 See, above all, Lançon (2018). 755 Kepel and Jardin (2017). 756 Al-Qaeda’s later claim of responsibility for the attacks in Paris was a proof of this coincidence of belief.

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peated death threats from Jihadists, was listed on Al-Qaeda’s most-wanted list, had been the target of suspected assassination conspiracies, and lived under police protection.⁷⁵⁷ Now, finally, he was dead.⁷⁵⁸ The tragic events at Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters exemplify how proclamations, edicts, epistles, and posters for all to see and read can be written in bloody ink. As the Arabian cell of Al-Qaeda claiming ultimate responsibility for the killings in France asserted in their official post-attack statement, these lethal actions were “intended as ‘revenge for the honor’ of the Prophet Muhammad”, whom the satirical magazine had “repeatedly mocked” and “the depiction of whom is forbidden by Islamic tradition”.⁷⁵⁹ Literalist minds had just sent a letter—and it was nothing new. Roman crucifixions and Calvin’s public burnings of heretics belong to this truculent lot of messaging too.⁷⁶⁰ Fatal violence, throughout human experience, has been a standard and well-tested form of communication, whether employed by public authorities, their challengers, the powers-that-be, the misguided, the delusional, or the underdogs.⁷⁶¹ The blood-stained iconoclastic message issued by the Kouachi brothers at Charlie Hebdo’s succeeded in capturing the attention of a mammoth audience.⁷⁶² Following the murders in Paris, official and unofficial condemnations of the brothers’ atrocious act of terrorism poured in from all quarters, not least many Islamic organisations and the institutional representatives of the world’s Muslim nations.⁷⁶³ Mass memorials took place all over France, as well as in many other countries, the biggest one being a “Republican March” held in Paris on the 11 January 2015, in which about two million people participated, including scores of world leaders.⁷⁶⁴ The circle had closed. The international tensions producing terrors at the national level had become, once again, international.

757 Ward (2015). As Kepel and Jardin (2017) reported, Charb’s bodyguard, Frank Brinsolaro, was also killed by the Kouachi brothers in their attack. 758 Moreover, his murderers must have believed that Charb’s soul would also go to hell. 759 K. Vick (2015), par. 2. It should be noted that the polycentric Islamic tradition varies internally in allowing/prohibiting the depiction of the Prophet (see Oboler 2015). Also, as argued by Lilti (2018), caricatures can de-sacralise images outside religion too, if the images are imbued with sufficient sacredness, value, and status. 760 Sending messages by means of crucifixion is not a thing of the past. Islamic fundamentalists have brought it back into practice (see, e. g., Dearden 2015 and Zorthian 2016). 761 Psychologists acknowledge routinely this expressive function (see, e. g., Blumenthal 2006). 762 “Iconoclastic” is used here in its original meaning, which evokes a long history of violent destructiveness also in Christian nations, especially in the 8th, 9th, 16th, and 17th centuries (see, e. g., Besançon 2000). 763 “Arab League” (2015). Noted Muslim cartoonists also condemned the murders (see Pinto 2015). 764 “Paris attacks: Millions” (2015).

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1.4.1.3 Punditry The media coverage and the critical literature about the terrorist attacks—journalistic at first, then scholarly—were immense from the very onset, and they have kept growing unstoppably to the present day, particularly in light of the subsequent acts of Jihadi violence perpetrated on French soil in November 2015 and 2016.⁷⁶⁵ (Additional acts have been taking place after these ones too.)⁷⁶⁶ Reverberating worldwide, the Charlie Hebdo massacre quickly became cultural shorthand for Islamic terrorism in Europe, if not even for religious intolerance and terrorism in general. The Charlie Hebdo massacre has already been analysed from the greatest variety of disciplinary and sub-disciplinary perspectives. These include, among others: (1) political theory and philosophy;⁷⁶⁷ (2) cultural studies;⁷⁶⁸ (3) graphic arts;⁷⁶⁹ (4) pragmatics;⁷⁷⁰ (5) Jewish history;⁷⁷¹ (6) urban sociology;⁷⁷² and

765 On 13 November 2015, more murderous violence within and around Paris shook further the grieving nation, killing 129 people and injuring 661; of the 13 Islamic terrorists involved in the November attacks, only one is believed to have survived, i. e., the French national Salah Abdesiam, who was arrested in Belgium in 2016 and sentenced in 2018 to 20 years for complicity in acts of terror and attempted murder, since he had resisted arrest by the police and opened fire upon them (Rankin 2018). All the other attackers were either shot dead by the French police or blew themselves up in order to avoid arrest (Kepel and Jardin 2017). On 15 March 2020, French prosecutors issued an order to try Salah Abdesiam and 19 other suspects, who are believed to have provided logistical and material support to the attackers (“Paris attacks: French” 2020). 766 The grim controversy regarding the so-called “Danish cartoons” continues, as a suspected terrorist was arrested in September 2020, after stabbing a person in the proximity of Charlie Hebdo’s former headquarters (Breeden 2020), and 47-year-old schoolteacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov in Paris for having shown his students said cartoons and similar materials (“We Are Not Afraid” 2020). 767 See, e. g., Tate (2016), whose use of Locke is truly apropos, insofar as much Western moral and political thought, between the 16th and the 18th century, concerned itself with the cruelty caused by religious warfare. 768 See, e. g., Ball (2017). 769 See, e. g., Morel (2016). 770 See, e. g., Gonzales and Kaufmann (2016). 771 See, e. g., Grove (2015). 772 See, e. g., Zerhouni (2016).

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(7) Russian journalism.⁷⁷³ In the remainder of this chapter, we focus only on select, relevant aspects of the intersections and interplay of humour, cruelty, and the classic liberal issue of free speech.

1.4.2 Thoughts The issue of free speech arose immediately in connection with the tragic incident of Charlie Hebdo. This was the case because its artists had intentionally courted controversy over and over again by targeting with their scathing lampoons the Muslims’ holy prophet Muhammed, the belief-system of the Jihadists, and many other religious symbols and creeds, including Judaism and the long-reigning Catholic Pope Karl Wojtyla, i. e., John Paul II.⁷⁷⁴ As “Philippe Val editor and the Charb insisted[, …] all three Abrahamic religions were equally mocked” by their satirical newspaper.⁷⁷⁵ The adherents of one of them, arguably, had decided to do something deadly serious about all this uninhibited and disrespectful ludicrousness.⁷⁷⁶ Throughout its 50-year-long history, Charlie Hebdo has been notorious in France for its piercing sarcasm, salacious gags, and plainly crass comic materials.⁷⁷⁷ Its style has followed the well-established example of older Gallic satirical publications since the early 19th century, such as La Caricature and Le Charivari. ⁷⁷⁸ Above all, it has continued the sort of aggressive, take-no-prisoners humour made popular in 1960s France by the monthly magazine Hara-Kiri, many artists of which ended up working also for Charlie Hebdo. ⁷⁷⁹ The tensions with Islamic believers and especially dangerous Islamists became noticeable only after Charlie Hebdo’s decision to republish a set of satirical cartoons about Muhammed that had been issued originally by the Danish outlet Jyllands-Post-

773 See, e. g., Khroul (2015). 774 Weston (2009). 775 Weston Vauclair (2015), 12. 776 In light of Hillman’s (1995b) studies, we are left speculating about these adherents’ level of sexual repression. 777 Charlie Hebdo ran originally from 1969 to 1982 and then again as of 1992 (Weston Vauclair 2015). 778 Weston Vauclair (2015) and Tanitoc (2009). 779 Weston Vauclair (2015) and Tanitoc (2009). Hara-Kiri was banned after mocking Charles de Gaulle’s death.

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en in 2006.⁷⁸⁰ These images had already led to widespread protests across the globe and initiated debates about freedom of expression, freedom of creed, freedom of the press, multiculturalism, and a host of related topics.⁷⁸¹ The debates were no mere academic exercise. Subsequently to that fateful editorial decision, Charlie Hebdo’s Parisian headquarters were fire-bombed and their website hacked, bringing the street protests, not just the debates, suspiciously close to their équipe. ⁷⁸² If being fire-bombed and hacked were not enough, the editors of Charlie Hebdo were also sued.⁷⁸³ Eventually, the French Islamic organisations’ attempt at having the editorial team sanctioned under the country’s hate-speech laws was quashed by the French courts as an infringement of a fundamental constitutional right of the team: freedom of speech.⁷⁸⁴ To be exact, the “court case brought by the Grande Mosquée de Paris, the Union des organisations islamiques en France and the Ligue islamique mondial” was defeated by Charlie Hebdo “in February 2007 on the basis of its right to critique religion through satire”.⁷⁸⁵ 1.4.2.1 Liberalism As is still the case in several liberal countries, satirical cartoons and comic literature are allowed to exist and circulate in France, whether in good or bad taste, which is essentially an aesthetic and moral judgement to be left to each purchasing reader to pass. Legally, all these artistic expressions are treated as plausible instances of the basic freedom of speech to be enjoyed by all French citizens and even more so by the press and the pundits who are meant to be part of the nation’s liberal system of socio-institutional checks-and-balances.⁷⁸⁶ Specifically, it is believed that censoring comical publications would set a dangerous precedent and arguably facilitate further restrictions, even if tolerating such publications means granting room in the public sphere to forms of commonplace humour that, in other social 780 Kahn (2010). The editor and artists of the Danish outlet have also been the targets of death threats and assassination plots by Europe-based Islamists (see Andreasen 2008). 781 Kahn (2010). 782 “Les SDF du net” (2011). After being fire-bombed, the newspaper started presenting itself in the editorials and frontpages “as a ‘journal irresponsable’ [irresponsible newspaper]” (Weston Vauclair 2015, 10). 783 See Kahn (2010), who reports that the same conclusion had been reached by the Danish courts, which adjudicated on the permissibility of the public circulation of the cartoons. 784 Kahn (2010). 785 Weston Vauclair (2015), 11, note 18. 786 France’s legal regulation of the press is highly imperfect and capable of illiberal episodes, according to Uddin (2015). Even more troublesome is the global record of liberal nations, insofar as journalists were killed by US soldiers in Iraq and whistle-blowers revealing these crimes hunted down like criminals (North 2015).

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contexts, would lead to vocal condemnations and even abrupt dismissals, if not formal prosecutions.⁷⁸⁷ In a lengthy op-ed on The New York Times, David Brooks broaches the sensitive notion that the French artists that “are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression … wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds … on any American university campus”, where their “puerile” humour would have been indicted for “hate speech”, lost whatever “funding” it might have been receiving, and been erased from the face of the earth by firm administrative action in the name of decency, respect, and/or political correctness.⁷⁸⁸ Evidently, some liberal lands are more liberal than others.⁷⁸⁹ Brooks notes as well how satirists and comic artists, in their peculiar and creative ways, are capable of articulating thoughts that nobody else could express as effectively or in such a manner as to reach a portion of the public opinion that would not be likely to have other opportunities to reflect upon matters of social and moral import.⁷⁹⁰ Though often louche, unseemly, and/or infantile, “[s]atirists and ridiculers … provocateurs and insulters” and “other outlandish figures serve useful public roles”.⁷⁹¹ They “expose our weakness and vanity … puncture the self-puffery of the successful … level social inequality” and “expose the stupidity of the fundamentalists”.⁷⁹² Satirical newspapers such as Charlie Hebdo have long been believed—and now they have also been judicially confirmed—to contribute to that ‘marketplace of ideas’ of which liberal societies have been supposedly in favour, since at least the year of publication of Mill’s On Liberty, whereby we are taught to “be legally tolerant towards offensive voices, even as we are socially discriminating”.⁷⁹³ In this connection, The French journalist Jean-François Kahn was quoted saying: “Charlie Hebdo was certainly significant. You can like it or not, but you can’t deny that it … brought a different way of speaking about things, people didn’t dare to speak in a certain way or to say things about certain events, or certain peo-

787 At an informal level, public opinion would censor behaviours akin to Charlie’s humour as most ill-mannered. 788 Brooks (2015), pars. 1 and 8. 789 We are hinting, here, at George Orwell’s (2014) 1944 satire, Animal Farm, which attacked Stalinism’s betrayal of Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution and its pursuit of equality and social justice—or “Heaven on Earth”, as noted. 790 Brooks (2015). 791 Brooks (2015), pars. 9 – 11. 792 Brooks (2015), pars. 9 and 10. 793 Brooks (2015), par. 16.

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ple, or certain values.”⁷⁹⁴ Satire would then be a plausible tool in the pursuit of truth, not merely of a cheap laugh.⁷⁹⁵ Historically, it has been a standard liberal tenet to argue that the circulation and debate of multiple viewpoints are expected to lead to multiple positive outcomes: a better-informed citizenry; more creative social environment; broader spectrum of possible life-plans for each mature individual; higher level of democratic pluralism within the living community; clearer perception of faulty arguments and ludicrous prejudices; and more firmly entrenched legitimacy for the public institutions. Leave the ‘marketplace of ideas’ open and flowing, and liberal societies will reap, at least, some of these substantial benefits. As Simpson wrote at the close of the last century: “Cartoonists … who poke fun at the idiosyncrasies, hypocrisies and infighting of religious, political and military life, are necessary for a healthy, open society.”⁷⁹⁶ This is the core belief that, grosso modo, most liberal constitutions still presuppose and protect to a significant extent.⁷⁹⁷ 1.4.2.2 Laïcité Exemplarily, in the liberal camp, Baroncelli himself argues openly against any form of “censorship”, insofar as its practice, even if motivated by the best intentions, turns regularly: (1) its targets into potentially inspiring “martyrs” to be emulated; and, above all, (2) its intended beneficiaries into unthinking minds who stop reasoning about why they are right and why their enemies are wrong—in the many, newer ways that these foes devise.⁷⁹⁸

794 As translated in Weston (2009), 121. 795 It should be noted that pursuing the truth does not mean reaching it, nor being able or even likely to reach it. 796 Simpson (1998), 24. 797 The German philosopher and political theorist Jürgen Habermas celebrates the communication-centred, pluralistic, supposedly rational deliberative sphere of modern liberal democracies, to such an extent as to deem this sphere the functional equivalent of the religious social foundations that were common in ancient times (see Ø. Larsen 2011). 798 Baroncelli (1999), 54 – 56. See also Baroncelli (1996, 44 – 80), where the philosopher-humourist remarked on the fact that politically correct terms turn often into new terms of offence for the younger generations, whose libido deridendi appropriates the new words and turns them into fresh taunts. It is a cruel irony and also mirror-like reversal of the much-praised linguistic practice whereby formerly derisive slurs are “reclaimed” by the targeted groups and/or made into positives (St. Clare 2018, 79 et passim). Contextually prevalent pragmatic intentions and usages are crucial for words to acquire and/or maintain their meaning. Semantics is, per se, undecisive, i. e., a mere potentiality for insult, reclamation, neutral study, and countless other speech acts. Some hu-

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And the foes of liberty have always been numerous in the present as well as in the past. The modern French State has an unambiguously anti-Catholic history behind it.⁷⁹⁹ This history reverberates in its granting full freedom of expression to the breed of comedy embraced by Charlie Hebdo, whose unashamed satire is a further evident instantiation of the official secular character of the French State. In particular, such a freedom is a palpable demonstration of the celebrated principle of laïcité, which has been promoted vigorously in the laws of the country since the 1905 act on the separation of Church and State.⁸⁰⁰ Albeit positively capable of exasperatingly scatological, sexist, misanthropic and racist feats of humour, Charlie Hebdo has fallen largely under the protection of the secularist Gallic constitutional set-up and, a fortiori, stout liberal background that justifies this set-up in theory.⁸⁰¹ The satirical newspaper’s own contributors have been aware of these favourable conditions and they have taken pride in embodying the principle of laïcité by keeping its expression alive within French society in the most antagonistic ways that they could concoct, whatever friction their editorial decisions could cause.⁸⁰² Somehow, beneath its “broadly libertarian … outspoken, punkish” humour, Charlie Hebdo has been the point of convergence of classical liberalism, French anticlericalism, Dadaism, anarchism, May ’68, and anti-globalism.⁸⁰³ As the journal’s editor Val stated in 2004:

mourists have even exploited the possibility of converting neutral terms into risqué expressions (see, e. g., Stephen Fry’s use of “coitus” in lieu of “fuck” in “The Treaty of Westphalia” 2008). 799 See, e. g., Rosenblatt (2018), chaps. 2 – 6. 800 See Saunders (2009) commenting on the centenary of the 1905 act. 801 See, e. g., Espinoza Ariza (2015). 802 Weston (2009). 803 Weston Vauclair (2015), 7 and 13. A committed communist revolutionary, Gramsci (1977, vol. 1, 75 – 76, Q1, par. 65) was not entirely dismissive of his own day’s French “humoristic magazines” whence Cavanna’s creations eventually developed, insofar as the former believed their “criticism of mores” to “belong to the sphere of ‘good sense’ or ‘common sense’: they try to modify the average opinion of a certain social group by means of criticising, suggesting, correcting, renewing, introducing new ‘commonplaces’. If they are well-made, with ‘verve’, with a modicum of detachment, but nonetheless with an appeal for the average opinion, they can have a very large dissemination and exercise a very important function… They must situate themselves within the very field of ‘common sense’ by distancing from it that much which allows for a mocking smile, but not for disparagement or arrogant superiority.” It is a cruel irony that Gramsci died in the prison where Mussolini had him locked away, and that it took a world war and millions of casualties for the fascist regime to fall, notwithstanding the many jokes and lampoons directed at Mussolini and his dictatorship (see, e. g., Ettore Petrolini’s 1930 comedy Nerone). Adding scorn to injury, no communist revolution ever ensued in Gramsci’s native country, and an openly and eerily ‘nostalgic’ right-wing government is being inaugurated in Rome while we write these lines.

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There is no controversy over the editorial line. It’s not a line in any event, but a general charter set by François Cavanna, the founder of the newspaper. It demands loyalty to laïcité, the defence of ecology, democratic principles, the ideals of the Enlightenment, the struggle against racism and anti-Semitism and the condemnation of cruelty to animals.⁸⁰⁴

This “general charter” might sound innocuous, intuitively pluralistic, and perhaps appealing to liberal as well as to progressive minds and hearts.⁸⁰⁵ Nonetheless, as regards the humour at play in Charlie Hebdo, it should be noted once more that it has never been ‘true’ humour à la Critchley, Leacock, Pirandello, or Schopenhauer, not even remotely.⁸⁰⁶ Quite the opposite, neither warm compassion nor cold sublimity can be found in it. If anything, the ordinary “phrase ‘cynical humor’ these days” can capture “this style of wittiness as clever but cruel. It is humor had at the expense of others, accompanied by the kind of laughter that is belittling and derisive.”⁸⁰⁷ The style of Charlie Hebdo has always consisted in intentional ridicule, rude in the manner of lewd and nude imagery, blatant in its offensive and punch-inthe-stomach choice of lexicon, uncouth to the point of travesty, scandal, wilful shock, and insult.⁸⁰⁸ It has never been a paragon of measured humour à la Shaftesbury, Addison, Hartley, or Beattie.⁸⁰⁹ It has actually been much closer to the sort of unrefined buffoonery and outrageous vulgarity that they wished to do away with and Harvey, in times much nearer to us, condemned as cumulatively oppressive.⁸¹⁰ When such an unrestrained derisory spirit is applied to the Islamic prophet Mohammed, of whom many Muslims think one should not even paint or sketch an image, it is not difficult to grasp the sense of profound disrespect and utter humil-

804 As cited and translated in Weston (2009), 125. 805 Laïcité is not a common ideal in the Islamic world, which demands moderation in humour and tackles only very cautiously religious subjects in art (see, e. g., Fenoglio and Georgeon 1995, Tamer 2009, and Rosenthal 2011). 806 These thinkers were addressed in greater detail in H&C1. See also Chapter 2 of Part 1 for a much shorter account. 807 Marmysz (2020), 114. It is somewhat apt that cynicism and fanaticism should collide thusly, insofar as they are the two sides of one and the same coin, whereby absolute dis/value is presumed and no reassessment permitted. 808 See, above all, Weston (2009) and Weston Vauclair (2015). 809 These thinkers were tackled in H&C1. See also Chapter 2 of Part 1 for a shorter account. 810 See Harvey (1999). Norlock (2014, pars. 1 and 2) commemorated Harvey’s commitment to “social justice, moral solidarity … feminist philosophy and advance visions of a better and more just society … her service to the Canadian Society of Women in Philosophy [against …] sexism … racism … discrimination”.

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iation that many people may have experienced when coming across Charlie Hebdo’s averred artistry.⁸¹¹ Then again, this sort of pained reaction would not have been surprising to the cartoonists and writers at Charlie Hebdo. ⁸¹² Their newspaper’s very logo proclaims stridently, stubbornly, and smugly that its humour is meant to be “bête et méchant”, i. e., stupid and nasty.⁸¹³ On this point the journal’s ‘father’, François Cavanna, stated long before the 2015 terrorist attacks that the reason why he launched publications of this ilk in his career, especially Hara-Kiri and Charlie Hebdo, was that he could no longer stand “[c]artooning for very small children”, insofar as their lack of “vulgarity” failed to “satisfy [his] profanatory appetites. [He] craved great, vengeful sneering laughter” but “had no outlet for [his] ferocities… [He] wanted to be Rabelais … and the only thing [he] was given to do was to keep young children smiling”.⁸¹⁴ 1.4.2.3 Cruelties Regarding any possible indication of cruelty on Charlie Hebdo’s part, it should suffice to say that, in line with Bergson’s theory of comicality, some brutal cruelty could not and cannot but be at work in such a streak of declaredly “stupid and nasty” humour.⁸¹⁵ For half a century, the newspaper’s editors, columnists, and cartoonists have been markedly unsympathetic to the pain that their humour could and should elicit in their targets. As Charb confirmed in an interview: “We go

811 Even after condemning the terrorist attack, many members of the public refused to identify with the controversial newspaper (see, e. g., Giglietto and Lee 2015). In Niger, major riots and violence against Christian targets followed the reopening of the newspaper after the terrorist attack (see, e. g., Schritt 2015). 812 In Freudian terms, their cartoons were the graphic equivalent of dirty jokes. 813 The motto had already been used by Hara-Kiri, based on a 1960 reader’s complaint (Cavanna et al. 2018). 814 As cited and translated in Weston (2009), 112. The reference to Rabelais is most telling, since this 16th-century French physician and scholar was the last Western ‘giant’ of premodern buffoonery, bursting with funny obscenities, unruly hedonism, and rejoicing in rowdy carnivalesque chaos (see, e. g., C. Clark 1983). 815 The brutal cruelty implied by Bergson’s anaesthesia of the heart reverberates in the common understanding of “cruelty” in contemporary Maghrebin Arabic, i. e., “hardness or toughness … of the heart … having qalb kaasaH (a tough heart) or qalb Hjarr (a heart of stone)” (Maalej 2008, 414). As to Quranic and literary Arabic, which is not an Indo-European language, there is no single exact match for “cruelty”, but rather an array of terms referring to excessive violence, harshness, inflexibility, mutilations, disproportionate injustice, unjust chastisement, sick wantonness, and thirst for blood (see Serrano Ruano 2011). A similar plural and partial overlap of semantic areas characterises Arabic renditions of “humour” too (see, e. g., Kerras and Serhani 2019).

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out of our way to find the most taboo subjects possible, just so we can laugh, and it’s the taboo that makes it so much funnier.”⁸¹⁶ Nothing beats ridiculing the tribe’s idols. Mocking widespread cherished icons and values is what the artists of Charb’s newspaper have always been after, counting intentionally and recurrently on the pain that they could cause. With their satire, they have always aimed at laughing at some people at least as much as they have been hoping to be laughing with some others. As stated by Cavanna, Charlie’s gloves were meant to be off and stay off from the very inception of their fanzine: Nothing is sacred. Principle number one. Not even your own mother, not the Jewish martyrs, not even people starving of hunger… Laugh at everything, ferociously, bitterly, to exorcise the old monsters. It would pay them too much respect only to approach them with a straight face. It’s exactly about the worst things that you should laugh the loudest, it’s where it hurts the most that you should scratch until it bleeds.⁸¹⁷

Stupid and nasty humour has an appetite for blood, at least metaphorically. Sadistic cruelty cannot be excluded either, as a consequence. As the magazine’s motto implies, its artists have pursued a line of comedy that is calculatedly loathsome and inflammatory. In her account of Charlie Hebdo’s activities and self-perception, Jane Weston commented acceptingly yet tellingly on the “crudeness and … cruelty” of the newspaper’s humour, which she claims to hide an “advanced irony and ‘hygienic’ black humour” pulling punches in all directions, “frequently targeting as it did the weak and disadvantaged in society without apparent remorse”.⁸¹⁸ Leacock’s words of caution about cruel humour sound out-dated and hollow when compared to Charlie Hebdo’s daily practice before as well as after the 2015 terrorist attack: “The chief danger … is to try to find ‘fun’ in the horrors and cruelties which form so sizeable a part of the world’s history. They must be far, far away indeed to be safe ground. Nothing can make the Spanish Inquisition funny, nor the torture chambers of the Middle Ages, or the hideous wife-murdering of Henry VIII.”⁸¹⁹ Even though Charlie Hebdo’s “crudeness and … cruelty” have proven historically more popular among “left-wing French intellectuals” than “morally conserva-

816 As cited and translated in Weston Vauclair (2015), 8. 817 As cited and translated in Weston (2009), 110. 818 Weston (2009), 110. Perchance Charlie Hebdo’s cruelty is an in terrorem technique, yet ridentem. Maritain (1960, 210 – 211) himself, curiously, claimed that much late-modern artistry (e. g., Picasso), which focussed on the deformation of the human figure, combined “positive aggressiveness” and “black humour” in ways comparable to ancient “Tantric or … Aztec … magical instrument[s] for fright and terror”—but also “contempt for man”. 819 Leacock (1938), chap. 3, sec. 4, par. 35.

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tive sensibilities”, many members of the team at Charlie Hebdo have never had any clear political agenda or lofty ideological aspiration, pace Cavanna’s “general charter”.⁸²⁰ On the contrary, these artists have often incarnated Hazlitt’s irresponsible jeerers, who turn everything into a parody, even if other people suffer because of that and no intellectual or spiritual progress is achieved anyhow.⁸²¹ In a fully selfaware nihilistic or Dadaist mode, many team members’ philosophy has been simply and purely to seek laughter for laughter’s sake, without any higher or deeper motive that would legitimise their relentless and merciless deployment of satirical blows in all conceivable directions: “[W]e were all completely agnostic in the group. We didn’t believe in anything, we had no taboo, we took the piss out of ourselves, out of everybody. We laughed about death.”⁸²² After their own tragic death, the guest editor of the special issue of Charlie Hebdo commemorating the fallen artists decided to describe them sarcastically and unapologetically as a bunch of “sexually obsessed cartoonists, anti-globalisation economists and clergy ravagers brought together by the desire to laugh, denounce things, and above all to enjoy causing offense”.⁸²³ Albeit plausibly heroic in their death, the slain artists had never been true gentlemen à la Shaftesbury. Moreover, insofar as the enjoyment of offending people is so highlighted, the ranking of Charlie Hebdo’s priorities could not be spelled out any better, and the element of sadistic cruelty at play in their humour no more candidly laid bare.⁸²⁴ In keeping with the insights on the forms of cruelty provided by Hallie, the terrorist attack by the Kouachi brothers can then be said to constitute an instance of responsive cruelty against an initial, conceivably culpable, provocative cruelty.⁸²⁵ Armed with machine guns and bombs, these men did not start a fight. They entered one in Paris that had already started, although on paper, or one that they believed, with more than a modicum of justification, to have been started, yet once again on paper only. Therefore, the crucial question arising in this connection is: can the persistent and intentional satirical cruelty of Charlie Hebdo justify the cruel massacre that took place in 2015? 820 Weston (2009), 114. 821 Hazlitt (1845). His work was dealt with in detail in H&C1. 822 The contributor Bernier as cited and translated in Weston (2009), 114. Their humour could be described as “libertarian”, hence recalling Rand’s (1997) Little Street hero, for whom nothing was sacred. The leftist Adorno (2005, 141) too, though, spotted nihilistic “horror” in popular humour, notably “pictorial jokes filling magazines”. 823 As cited and translated in Weston Vauclair (2015), 10. 824 Satire has been connoted as intrinsically cruel by many commentators (see H&C1 and Chapter 2 of Part 1). 825 As seen in Chapter 3 of Part 1, Hallie (1969) recommends mitigation with regard to responsive cruelty.

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1.4.2.4 Justifications The fundamental wrongness of killing people, especially innocent ones, has been recognised by all historical cultures, and any exception to this seemingly universal realisation has been variously and carefully discerned in the world’s legal, theological, social, and ethical practices and theories. Nevertheless, as seen in Chapter 3 of Part 1, Sade and, to a less patent degree, Machiavelli, Smith, and Nietzsche exemplify articulate violations of this realisation. As “shocking to common sense” as their conceptions may be, they belong to a sceptical ethical tradition whose champion has been Hume, who wittily stated: “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian, a person wholly unknown to me.”⁸²⁶ We cannot provide here a thorough and final assessment on this matter which has kept philosophers busy for centuries. What follows in this subsection is therefore only a concise argument relying on shared sensitivities, a few relevant suggestions arising from well-established research in the social sciences and ethology, and the rationale of extant legal frameworks, but it cannot be taken as the last word on such a huge ethical topic. Readers interested in investigating further this matter and the ultimate grounds of normativity in particular should probably start by reading all three volumes of UNESCO’s Philosophy and World Problems which we briefly introduced in Chapter 1 of Part 1.⁸²⁷ In any case, the killers at Charlie Hebdo’s seemingly thought that they were justified in murdering other human beings, as far as we can credibly reconstruct from their public statements.⁸²⁸ We emphasise “thought” because depicting these terrorists as ‘monsters’ or ‘madmen’, albeit popular with the press and certain political factions, fails reprehensibly to signal the process of free, reasoned, task-driven deliberation operated by the Kouachi brothers, who were responsible for their atrocities in a moral and, had they survived, in a legal sense.⁸²⁹ As the God-fearing and peace-loving Chesterton wrote in his own day vis-à-vis religious violence and, befittingly, about secular allegations of fanatical “cruelty”: The Secularist says that Christianity produced tumult and cruelty. He seems to suppose that this proves it to be bad. But it might prove it to be very good. For men commit crimes not only for bad things, far more often for good things. For no bad things can be desired quite so pas-

826 As cited in Blanshard (1975), chap. 4, pars. 15 – 22. “Ethical” meaning here ‘concerning moral philosophy’. 827 McMurtry (2011). See also M. Polanyi (2023) for a personalist resolution of Hume’s challenge. 828 Nobody can know for sure what these individuals or any others actually thought and pursued. 829 As noted in Chapter 1 of Part 1, we assume people to have free will and personal responsibility.

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sionately and persistently as good things can be desired, and only very exceptional men desire very bad and unnatural things. Most crime is committed because, owing to some peculiar complication, very beautiful and necessary things are in some danger.⁸³⁰

As typical of his prose, Chesterton added also a humorous coda to his serious point: “For instance, if we wanted to abolish thieving and swindling at one blow, the best thing to do would be to abolish babies. Babies, the most beautiful things on earth, have been the excuse and origin of almost all the business brutality and financial infamy on earth. If we could abolish monogamic or romantic love, the country would be dotted with Maiden Assizes.”⁸³¹ As far as can be plausibly inferred from their public statements, the terrorists attacking Charlie Hebdo had reasons for their actions or, at least, they thought that they had reasoned motives, which they articulated explicitly.⁸³² Additionally, also on the basis of their statements and declarations, we can affirm that they thought that these reasons or reasoned motives were so good—or good enough—as to justify performing an apparent or lesser evil, i. e., killing other human beings—no maiden assize, then. As extreme as their chosen path of action, they thought that they were doing something right, even if it they knew that they could be seen as doing something wrong.⁸³³ Whether because they wanted to avenge their Prophet’s honour or believed that they were the instrument whereby Allah could avenge the Prophet’s honour, the Jihadists acted coherently and effectively, like many a person before them engaging in honour killings.⁸³⁴ Many cultures have regarded killing or, at least, gruesome corporal punishments, as appropriate responses to major offenses to oneself, one’s own family, kin, rank, creed, or culture.⁸³⁵ Insults demand apt retaliation, especially when they occur in public, and some call for nothing less

830 Chesterton (1904), pars. 19 – 20. 831 Chesterton (1904), par. 20, who is being wryly provocative. Christianity and especially Chesterton’s modern Catholicism have been enemies of religious violence. E. g., Pope Francis has recently stated: “Hostility, extremism and violence are not a religious soul’s offspring: they are betrayals of religion” (as cited in Grana 2021, par. 1). 832 We do not tackle the many possible distinctions between “reasons” and “motives”, as per, e. g., Alan Richard White (1958). 833 The terrorists’ shouted reasons for their actions, as reported by the survivors, reveal as much. 834 The terrorists’ insistence on “honour” needing vengeance has been amply confirmed by the survivors. On a broader level, their insistence on it indicates that, because of the responsible endorsement of different fundamental concepts about reality, “people are inevitably participating in making very different worlds, which, nevertheless, exist side by side” (Cristaudo 2021, 554; emphasis added). Different worldviews can envision different worlds. 835 See, e. g., Cooper (1910) for a vast overview.

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than homicide.⁸³⁶ It is a matter of social reputation and, inextricably, moral duty.⁸³⁷ Muslim nations are often cited in connection with the practice and the condoning of honour killings, albeit their enduring social patterns may actually be replicating and reinforcing older patriarchal, pre-Islamic traditions.⁸³⁸ Such traditions, incidentally, having been shared by many European nations until relatively recent times.⁸³⁹ In the past three centuries, however, it is undeniable that most nations have gradually abandoned this honour-centred approach.⁸⁴⁰ From a legal point of view, all nations on Earth have abandoned the notion that any sufficiently offended citizen may take retaliation freely in his or her own hands and mete out chastisements to supposedly culpable parties, so as to fulfil his or her moral duty.⁸⁴¹ Retribution, particularly in the case of supposed grave violations, has become a matter for State authorities to take care of, as amply attested worldwide by both legal theory and institutional practice.⁸⁴² Besides, as observed in Chapter 3 of Part 1, the Enlightenment and Beccaria’s worldwide influence on penal codes aimed at making State institutions themselves (e. g., the judiciary, the police and

836 See, e. g., Pope (2012) on enduring trends and traditions. 837 There exist many historical examples of pacifism that would interpret this duty as a matter of seeking reconciliation and forgiving, rather than clashing with the offender. Some of the known examples are secular, Hindu and Islamic. Most, though, are Christian, as discussed in Bennet (2003), Cahill (1994), and Fiala (2018). 838 See Pope (2012) and Ball (2017). As to the Arabian cultures, Henberg (1990, 110) stressed in particular the pre-Islamic “pagan virtue of muruwwa—‘manliness’”, which requires headstrong “adherence to the blood feud”. Provided, of course, that “patriarchy” should be a quintessentially cultural and male phenomenon. For one, while discussing the issue of “rape jokes” in today’s Nigeria, Okwoli Ogba (2022, 243 and 155; emphasis added) wrote of “the violent instinct of patriarchy towards women” that “radical feminism” is meant “to tame”, i. e., as though culture were actually the tool to be used against an innate aggressive proclivity of men’s nature, as Sade or Freud would have certainly suggested (see Chapter 3 of Part 1). For another, we may be at risk of underestimating “women’s agency and participation in making and dictating social conduct” inside allegedly patriarchal cultures, as Cora (2022, 138; emphasis added) argued vis-à-vis “honor crimes” perpetrated by female characters in Ottoman literature. Gender equality might exist qua gruesome cruelty. There can be good and bad parity (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 839 See, e. g., Bell (2007) on rural Italy. 840 See Bell (2007), Pope (2012), and Spierenburg (2008). “Mediterranean societies” are often said to have retained more elements of “honor and shame” as key “social values” (Moxnes 2010, 19). 841 In particular, see United Nations (1966a). 842 See, e. g., Funk (2003).

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the prisons) less likely to engage in blatantly cruel agency onto other human beings, should these be proven guilty of terrible crimes.⁸⁴³ Overall, the Enlightenment and Beccaria seem to have been successful on the global scene, as proven by the small number of countries where corporal and capital punishments are still commonplace.⁸⁴⁴ And all the more by the universal formal rejection of torture.⁸⁴⁵ 1.4.2.5 Errors and Excesses Even if we wanted to be as charitable as possible to the men that assaulted Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters, still we could not vouch for their act of vengeful terrorism, for it followed no formal judicial process of any kind, not even in some mediumlevel recognised Yemenite, Saudi, or Pakistani court of Sharia law taking most seriously social honour, personal moral duties, and crimes of blasphemy, along the most traditional cultural lines of Muslim interpretation that exist on the world stage.⁸⁴⁶ Vendettas, as conducive to our grinning approval as they may be in fictional stories, are a known recipe for social disaster and economic backwardness, as illustrated by endless blood feuds in medieval Iceland or in some of today’s least prosperous regions in Europe.⁸⁴⁷ States cannot function well if they do not enjoy the Weberian monopoly of coercion.⁸⁴⁸ States, as a result, do not approve of unauthorised personal revenge as a means of retribution and reject it openly, also in the Islamic world.⁸⁴⁹ We saw in Chapter 3 of Part 1 how Lecky had already reasoned that taking retaliation away from the individual citizen and making it a matter of deliberation for the official institutions of the State are a fundamental step in the history of

843 Marwah and Joplin (2020, 37) argued that Beccaria’s chief contribution to the world’s jurisprudence and penal praxes was precisely to entrench the criterion of “proportionality” into the penal institutions of nearly all countries. 844 See, e. g., APPROACH (2017). Of course, a few centuries of success could be reversed in the future. 845 Again, see United Nations (1966a). With regard to torture, see the rejection of cultural relativism as a threat to universal human rights penned by Glacier (2013), chap. 4, on Morocco. 846 See, e. g., Knudsen (2004) on Pakistan. 847 See, e. g., Byock (1982) and Spierenburg (2008). 848 See, again, Funk (2003). We are referring to Max Weber, not the Romantic humourist Karl Julius Weber. 849 Again, United Nations (1966a) is sufficient a proof for this universal claim. As to recent defences of the universality of human rights in the Muslim context, see, e. g., Setia (2019) and Glacier (2009).

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civilisation itself.⁸⁵⁰ To advance from apparent “savagery”, terms such as “revenge”, “vengeance”, “feud”, and “payback” must disappear as the canonical means of description and interpretation of “guilt” and “retribution”. “Justice”, without the questionable qualifier “mob”, must replace them instead.⁸⁵¹ With the introduction of a formal notion of ‘justice’, there result as well clearer standards of quality and quantity of blameworthiness and consistent consequent chastisements, which are not left to the isolated individual to determine and bestow.⁸⁵² Within this formalised context, that which offends, how severely, in what ways, and what compensation is due emerge in predictable and standardised forms and, with them, the entire system of justice distinguishing a civilised society from a barbaric one.⁸⁵³ As to identifying ‘civilisation’, it does not matter here whether the lexicon in which the system of justice is cast is religious, ethical, or legal, as long as such a system is established.⁸⁵⁴ The most basic and universally recognised standards of retributive justice being “proportionality and not punishing the innocent”, which are so fundamental that they can even apply to “personal retribution”, i. e., “revenge”, and the gruesome domain of warfare.⁸⁵⁵ In Charlie Hebdo’s instance, the elephant in the room is the conspicuous lack of proportionality between the satirists’ provocative cruelty and the terrorists’ responsive one. As the “surviving cartoonist Rénald Luzier (Luz) highlighted”, the assassinated employees of his own “‘putain de fanzine’ [a damn comic book] were just people who drew little stick men. And little stick women.”⁸⁵⁶ Was murder a proportionate response? No, it was not.⁸⁵⁷ 850 It is implied that we accept, overall, Lecky’s assessment, which agrees with LVOA (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 851 See Benesch (2015), who argues that blasphemy laws were aimed at protecting blasphemers from the violent excesses of angry mobs seeking prompt revenge. Liberal States took blasphemy more ‘lightly’ than civil society. 852 Following Barden and Murphy (2010), we understand “justice” along the lines of canonical Roman law: rendering to each what is due to them, i. e., “suum cuique tribuere”. 853 Echoing Lecky, Temple (1934, lecture 15, par. 25) wrote: “The diminution of that callous cruelty, in which men were content to inflict suffering on others, is true progress. The civilisation of the penal code is true progress.” 854 E. g., Vico (1948, par. 14) linked the etymon Ious [Jupiter] with the Latin i/jus [right, law], hence “justice”. 855 Barton (1999), 42. A thorough discussion of the differences between justice and revenge would exceed the boundaries of our volume. Hence, to ground the principle of proportionality qua fundamental standard of justice, we refer to an in-depth scholarly book that is sympathetic to revenge. As to war, see, e. g., Biggar (2015), 197– 199. 856 As cited and translated in Weston Vauclair (2015), 10. The implicit accusation is that the terrorists, apart from being cruel, had also no sense of humour, in an eerie analogy with the twice-hu-

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(1) Inside the boundaries of French law, pickets and protests could have been staged to express resentment and disagreement, as done already by many Islamic organisations in 2006 in order to present the whole world with as vocal a denunciation of the ostensibly blasphemous Danish cartoons as it was possible. Had he still been alive, Leacock, who was not a Muslim, would have probably supported these pickets. When writing about the “the principles of true humor”, he explained: In it malice has no place, nor the degradation of things sacred to others. It is a lesson to be learned and remembered. Nor can humor, even where it is meant to be merely comic and harmless, venture to associate itself with images or recollections of pain, cruelty and death. Just as we must not jest over sacred things, so we must not jest over death except in the mock bravery of hysteria in danger or in the challenge of defiance.⁸⁵⁸

(2) Outside the boundaries of the law, but in a language that the employees of Charlie Hebdo might have even grasped as truly apt, Charb and his colleagues could have been targeted with pies in the face, spit in the eyes, or buckets of dung on the head.⁸⁵⁹ (3) Murder, instead, led to: (3a) loss of innocent life;⁸⁶⁰ (3b) major backlashes against Muslims worldwide;⁸⁶¹ (3c) penal and administrative consequences for the Kouachi brothers’ associates and sympathisers;⁸⁶² (3d) reduction or loss of any widespread support that millions of affronted Muslims might have had among non-Muslims in light of Charlie Hebdo’s “offensive” cartoons;⁸⁶³ and

miliated victims of oppressive humour discussed by Harvey (1999) whom we addressed in detail in H&C2. 857 Hallie (2001, 83 f.) himself admitted that killing people can be justified, albeit in extreme circumstances alone, and with plenty of moral “ambivalence” or “ambiguity” still gnawing at it. “I thought of my combat days when I helped stop Hitler, but I had been drafted, and I helped stop the mass murders by killing as many [drafted] German soldiers as I could with my 155-millimeter artillery piece. I was a helpful killer who violated the negative demand against killing in order to obey the positive one to spread life” (Hallie 2001, 176 – 177). Alternatives to killing ought to be sought after and tried first, always, and at length. Killing, instead, kept for rare exceptions. 858 Leacock (1938), chap. 7, sec. 3, par. 13. Obviously, our statement is a rhetorically charged guess. 859 Faecal projectiles have a long history in human protests, as discussed in Kozain (2013). 860 See, e. g., the Muslim policeman who tried to stop the Kouachi brothers. 861 See, e. g., Downing, Jackson-Preece, and Werdine-Norris (2015) and Callamard (2015). 862 See, e. g., Willsher (2018). 863 Gottfried and Barthel (2015), par. 4.

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(3e) reinforced Islamophobia, especially in France, where the tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim communities were already dangerously heated and, unhappily, continued to escalate.⁸⁶⁴ (4) Negative consequences in this world might have been morally secondary or irrelevant for the terrorists.⁸⁶⁵ Nonetheless, their own pursuit of lethal violence can still be seen as a violation of the sacred duties of each Muslim believer, who ought to leave Allah the final word on whether, when, and how anyone should be punished, infidels included.⁸⁶⁶ (4a) Confined to their niche of Francophone readers, gloating in the infantile cruelty of their iffy humour, what threat could Charlie Hebdo’s artists pose to the honour of Mohammed, Allah’s chosen prophet?⁸⁶⁷ (4b) Is it not blatantly proud and culpably vain to substitute oneself to the Almighty? (4c) Would, perchance, the omnipotent Allah be incapable of punishing these silly rowdy heathens as He sees fit?⁸⁶⁸ Because of the polycentric and ever-mutating nature of Quranic hermeneutics, we cannot deny that several and, at times, contradictory answers to these questions might be proffered by eccentric individual Muslim clerics and/or scholars of

864 See, e. g., Kiwan (2016). 865 We specify “in this world” because the Qur’an promises eternal joys of the flesh in the afterlife to warriors who should die in holy wars, e. g., sura XLVII:15 – 16 (Il Corano 1993). 866 This line of argument is secondary, we must admit, insofar as there is no single source of authoritative interpretation of the Qur’an. The Muslim religion is, both organisationally and hermeneutically, as pulverised as evangelical Christianity or orthodox Jewish denominations; hence, it facilitates the germination of fundamentalist sects responsible for violent actions (see, e. g., Guidère 2012). Any self-appointed cleric can issue a fatwa, including terrorists and unchartered preachers, despite many Muslim States’ heavy-handed attempts at regulating the religious sphere (see, e. g., Ranstorp 1998 and Vidino 2018). Besides, in the Qur’an, analogously to what occurs in the Torah, there is no lack of bellicose passages glorifying the destruction of the enemies of the faith, e. g., sura XLVIII: 18 – 24. Lastly, we cannot read the Qur’an in the original Arabic, hence we cannot even begin to hope that we could legitimately add our own ‘authoritative’ interpretation to countless others. More modestly, we content ourselves with voicing our tentative, reasoned conclusions on the basis of the accessible textual sources. 867 Given their import in people’/s/’ life, religious beliefs ought to be taken seriously, even if they may not be universally “shared premises … for political debates … in a liberal polity” (Räikkä and Weyermann 2011). 868 The fiftieth sura, among others, does advise to let unbelievers be, for they will be punished on Judgement Day, after which dreadful hellish punishments will ensue anyhow (see, e. g., Henberg 1990, 113 – 116).

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Islam.⁸⁶⁹ In the even longer history of their own Abrahamic religions, Christians and Jews have certainly encountered the most perplexingly divergent interpretations of the sacred scriptures.⁸⁷⁰ Some of these interpretations have even included instructions allowing for infanticide.⁸⁷¹ Others still have shown callous indifference towards the use of gruesome chastisements and/or capital punishments.⁸⁷² Making sense of God’s message and applying it well are, apparently, a tricky business.⁸⁷³ 1.4.2.6 Grunfphilosophie and the Life Ground At any rate, we do not need clerics, rabbis, or Biblical experts to strengthen the point about proportionality that has been made above.⁸⁷⁴ Nor do we require academic philosophers that sound keen on propounding “the little conceptual scandal” perpetrated by Hume a long time ago, as Baroncelli penned in his usual hu-

869 Different Quranic interpretations are reflected also in the different “Muslim family laws” of countries whose legal systems “are based on Shari’ah” (Dastagir et al. 2020, 281). Still, many would support our interpretation, e. g., the condemnations of Islamic terrorism issued by recognised Muslim authorities such as the Islamic Networks Group (2020). In the Shi’a tradition, Khomeini (1981, 33), who was not inimical to the death penalty, stated in the introduction to Islam and Revolution: “the punishment must be in proportion to the crime”. In the even older Indo-Iranian tradition of the siyasatnamas, whoever wishes to be a good “shepherd” or “the shadow of Allah on earth”, must be “fair” and “eliminate cruelty over people” (Çelik 2020, 120 – 122). 870 See, e. g., Shahak and Mezvinsky (1999), and Roshwald (1973a) and (1973b). 871 Voltaire (1912, chap. 15, par. 6) recalled the case of a Danish Protestant “sect, whose principle was the best in the world: it was to secure eternal salvation for their brethren; but its consequences were peculiar. They ‘knew’ that all infants who die unbaptised are damned, and that those who are so fortunate as to die immediately after baptism enjoy eternal glory. So they proceeded to kill all the newly baptised boys and girls they could find. No doubt this was procuring for them the greatest possible benefit: preserving them from sin, from the miseries of this life, and from Hell, and sending them straight to Heaven.” 872 See, e. g., Bodin (1995) on witch-burning and Nash (2007, 185) on drilling through blasphemers’ tongues. 873 In yet another cruel irony of the human condition, such a business might well decide our postmortem fate. 874 We do not wish to imply that gross disproportion between determining an alleged guilt (or threat) and meting out an allegedly deserved correction are an exclusive problem of the religious sphere. Secular versions have existed aplenty, e. g., knee-jerk legislation, judiciary scapegoating for the sake of social peace, and the destruction of inferior races and/or cultures for the sake of progress and/or civilisation. As noted, none less than Adam Smith (1904) was more than willing to accept the Spaniards’ genocidal colonialism, for it had ensured a much more optimal economic output in the Americas, whilst improving both the human and the animal stocks over there.

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morous style.⁸⁷⁵ The scandal at issue being to cleverly defend cultural and, in particular, moral relativism in one or more of their many forms.⁸⁷⁶ An example of this scandalous relativism being 20th-century “emotivism”, which Baroncelli—albeit largely guilty of the same subjectivist penchant—dubbed sardonically Grunfphilosophie, i. e., as though it were a risible stance coming out of a comic strip.⁸⁷⁷ 1.4.2.6.1 Performative Demonstrations These academic philosophers’ everyday behaviours have been showing incessantly, uncompromisingly, internationally, and shamelessly that, once the professorial gown is taken off, their mundane existence proceeds on the basis of well-tested and uncontested universal values.⁸⁷⁸ Among them, the most paramount appear to be those concerning the respect, protection, and fulfilment of human life, which is harmed directly and visibly in rare occasions only, and the harm of which is regularly punished most severely.⁸⁷⁹ This being the case whether the harmed life is that of their kin in primis, or their neighbours, fellow citizens, and humans overall in nearly universal degrees of frequency and generality.⁸⁸⁰ As a matter of empirical research, it has been known for decades that, as long as people attend from their rational faculties (and a plethora of additional details pertaining to the concrete circumstances) so as to attend to what is right and wrong, most of them, if adequately socialised and allowed to mature, will produce strikingly convergent moral assessments from a relatively early age and wherever 875 Baroncelli (1994), 85. In Italian, the onomatopoeia “grunf” refers to a sound made by pigs, hence the odd German-sounding term in the heading above—it is one of Baroncelli’s many jokes. In addition, Otto Grunf was a recurring character in the popular Italian comic strip Alan Ford, which has been in business since 1969, circulating also in France, Brazil, Denmark, and throughout the Balkans. 876 Relativism comes in many guises, depending on the disciplinary field of provenance, e. g., ordinalism and alleged value-neutrality in economics, positivism in law, cultural relativism, and ethnocentrism in anthropology. 877 Baroncelli (1994), 85. Grunfphilosophie has its own merits and functions, insofar as reflecting on our rational faculties’ limitations can help us to avoid a dangerous practical commitment to “follies, superstitions or errors”, gain full awareness of the fact that we are “ridiculous creatures” possessing a “weird and farcical character”, and prefer “the virtue of tolerance” to that of an inflexible devotion to a seemingly noble cause (Nicholls 2002, 466). 878 Philosophers would speak of a “performative contradiction”. Common people of “hypocrisy”. 879 This is also the conclusion reached by the life-value onto-axiologist Noonan (2018) who comes to it, ironically, by developing an erudite study of death, and awareness thereof in individual and collective existence. 880 Baruchello (2011) tackles numerous ways, direct (via positiva) and indirect (via negativa), in which philosophical schools and individual philosophers have corroborated LVOA since Thales’ day (see Chapter 1 of Part 1).

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in the world they may be.⁸⁸¹ This convergence is noticeably marked with regard to the most extreme, i. e., life-disabling, forms of human action and interaction, such as suicide or murder.⁸⁸² Homicidal behaviour, in modern criminology, is regularly listed alongside other forms of “deviant” behaviour because, nomen omen, it deviates from the peaceful norm, which is neither modern nor mysterious.⁸⁸³ Conflict-focussed philosophical anthropologies, such as those of Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes and their pre-Darwinist intellectual heirs, still appeal to many Darwinist hearts and minds today. Indeed, the appeal lasted also in the interim. In the 1930s, a longtime and fairly loyal subject of the British Empire, and our Canadian humourist of choice, could still write: We are less cruel than earlier peoples, except in moments of fury: we have not their indifference. Gladiators are replaced by county cricket; a torture chamber by a police station; and a Chinese execution by a stipendiary magistrate. It is true that we read of single and idyllic tribes of the remote past, or of remote geography, unsullied by human crime, unspoiled by human vice. They are like Mr. Irvin Cobb’s Bolshevik, who is a man who will give you everything he’s got and he hasn’t got anything. These idyllic views of savage life seem to dissolve on closer sight: behind the bright greens of the foreground are the dark shadows of cannibalism and infanticide and the fungus of filth.⁸⁸⁴

As an anthropological datum, however, known ‘primitive’ communities have never been conspicuously prone to homicidal conduct on a large scale, which is just too dangerous and too costly for such small and exposed communities to endorse and cultivate.⁸⁸⁵ Cultural anthropology has long been unanimous on this non-idealistic yet moderate depiction of the human being.⁸⁸⁶ Already in the early 20th century,

881 See, e. g., Snarey (1985). 882 “[T]he prohibition of murder” runs deeper than “human rights”, which have “an element of stipulation” about them (Griffin 2008, 91). This deeper source of moral insight is rooted in LVOA’s “life ground” itself—hence the present subsection’s heading—i. e., “[c]oncretely, all that is required to take the next breath; axiologically, all the life support systems required for human life to reproduce or develop” (McMurtry 2011, vol. 1, 34). 883 E. g., Levi (1980). 884 Leacock (1938), chap. 9, par. 1. 885 See, e. g., Collins (1974) emphasising how warfare requires technology, surplus males, food reserves, etc. Von Mises (1998, 172) was perhaps unwarranted when stating “that in primitive man … the disposition for cruelty [was] innate” (see also Fromm 1992, part 2, chap. 8, claiming that “cruelty” proper is mostly learnt, particularly when favoured and/or cultivated by life-destructive social norms). In any case, as Chesterton (1929 – 1973, par. 3) noted, given the elapsed time, any hypothesis is game, for we will never know (see Chapter 2 of Part 1). 886 Even the charge of idealising primitives into the stereotypical “bon sauvage”, levied against the precursor of all such anthropological studies, i. e., Rousseau, is misguided, for Rousseau, unlike Diderot, never used that expression, while the positive appraisal of Indigenous tribes vis-à-vis the

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the Norwegian-American economist and humourist Thorstein Veblen adopted it himself, and he did so with a pinch of sarcasm insofar as he distinguished between a modest total of two phases of whatever “human evolution” there may have been in the history of our species, i. e., stepping from “savage” to “barbaric”.⁸⁸⁷ As to the loathed civil wars in Michel de Montaigne’s troubled times or the secluded libertines’ libidinous frenzies that the Marquis de Sade beaconed in his writings on cruelty, these are major deviant circumstances within ‘advanced’ stages of human socio-cultural evolution causing people to fall more easily into life-destructive, cruel behaviours. How could they not? As observed long ago by the Nobel-laureate father of the modern science of ethology, Konrad Lorenz, even the meek and now quasi-extinct turtledove, the very symbol of purity and peace in many world cultures, can exhibit the utmost cruelty when locked inside the same cage with another adult member of its own species.⁸⁸⁸ It is only when the focus of our attention is switched onto the rational faculties themselves—as done regularly by academic philosophers, and not least by Grunfphilosophen—that the scandalous relativism of much modern and most postmodern culture seems justified.⁸⁸⁹ This happens because of the indefinite murkiness ensuing from trying to sort out the countless subsidiary details comprised therein, and the manifold and most diverse resulting pictures of such faculties emerging thereof.⁸⁹⁰ It is in the latter kind of context, the ‘professional’ one, that we can take seriously Baroncelli when asserting:

allegedly “civilised” populations of Europe had already been voiced by Montaigne in his Essays, in the 16th century (see, e. g., Hermand 1972, 26 – 27). 887 See, e. g., Dugger (1984). Plenty of room remains for gossip and other mild cruelties, humorous ones too. Veblen’s own scathing irony may count as one. 888 Lorenz (2002), 172 – 174. As to the turtledove’s endangered status, see: https://www.operation turtledove.org/. 889 This kind of ‘game’ is not a modern one. It is as old as the Socratic method of elenchus, which turns, often via open irony, the practical competences of socially acknowledged experts (e. g., judges, artists, sages, generals) into a theoretical object to be explained in explicit terms (e. g., by asking: “what is justice/beauty/wisdom/courage?”). In its modern and postmodern instantiations, the game’s outcomes have often been sceptical, as also exemplified in Socrates’ older paradox whereby “[he] knows that [he] knows nothing” (traditionally, scio me nescire). Yet scepticism may not be a tenable stance. For one, M. Polanyi (1962c, 253) argued that nothing solid can be built on the basis of scepticism, least of all scientific knowledge itself: “In spite of Hume’s scepticism and its antecedents, going back to ancient Pyrrhonism, there was no self-doubt among scientists in the modern free societies… On the contrary, belief in science stood supreme as the only belief that remained practically unchallenged.” 890 Arguably, Western philosophers’ hypocrisies might stem from the conceptual quagmires due to trying to map out sharply ‘reason’ and/or ‘emotion’, the mutual relationship of which is a proverbial can of worms. As seen in Chapter 1 of Part 1, Attardo and Raskin (2017, 51) recognised these

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Something like “reason”, certainly, should exist, and it should be the foundation for everything else. However, I don’t know what it is, and the awareness of my ignorance engulfs me with terrible feelings of guilt. Yet, at the same time, I know very well that nobody can state, in good faith, that he knows exactly what Reason is, or at least that he knows a meaningful definition of it such that, concomitantly, all the people who revere Reason agree with one another, if not even those who are afraid of it or that resent it.⁸⁹¹

Under such conditions, sceptical doubt can only flourish, especially if it is left unchecked by the awareness of the crucial Gestalt switch that has occurred.⁸⁹² And too much seemingly intelligent and allegedly justified doubt can lead to the peculiar situation crystallised into one of Russell’s best-known quips: “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”⁸⁹³ 1.4.2.6.2 Puerile dictum We can reasonably set aside countless potential and/or actual expert subtleties and, probably, phony academic objections—plus their host of attendant philosophical ‘ghosts’. These intricacies and inventions may have a role to play in clarifying complex issues, but they can also obfuscate simple ones.⁸⁹⁴ On this point, satirising the pretences of his own profession, Baroncelli himself noted: “What is philosophy? G.E. Moore, showing the shelves of his library, replied: ‘What’s inside these books’. Good Lord! They should have asked him in a subway station.” ⁸⁹⁵ Even a child can see how massively disproportionate was the cruel reaction of the Kouachi brothers to the stupid and nasty—i. e., cruel—commonplace humour of Charlie Hebdo’s columnists and artists.⁸⁹⁶ The Jihadists thought that they were

hypocrisies and quagmires too. Tellingly, a 17th-century Cartesian feminist—ante litteram, of course —and rebellious Catholic priest, Poullain de la Barre (1677, 165), spoke of the “timorousness in Women” as “a Rational passion” before men’s evil “contempt … rage, and cruelty”. 891 Baroncelli (1997), 127. 892 The analytical ‘explosion’ of a common term by way of shifting our attention onto it can affect any and every concept, not least those that we have used most often in our volume, e. g., ‘being’, ‘meaning’, ‘violence’, and ‘thought’ 893 Russell (2009), 676. As fellow philosophers, we belong to the cohort of people suffering from “doubt and indecision”. We do remember, for one, that “Know Thyself” is the command imparted to us by ancient wisdom, but we are also aware of the fact that this kind of knowledge is notoriously hard to attain. 894 If and when philosophical scrutiny does either thing is, ultimately, a personal judgement about specific cases. Each reader can pass one on our books, for instance. 895 Baroncelli (2011), 88. 896 Different might be this matter, were we to take seriously Khader’s (2015) claim that the AlQaeda-sanctioned terrorist mission of the Kouachi brothers was aimed at avenging the US-led in-

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exacting an eye for an eye, but in fact it was just a matter of not seeing eye to eye. It was a disagreement that could not possibly justify such an explosion of “blind cruelty”, which our culture has tellingly and recurrently associated with “the Devil” itself.⁸⁹⁷ As it was insightfully stated by a boy named Hassan, about 11 years old of age, and a pupil in a French school at the time of the shootings: The Jihadists, in fact, interpret everything upside-down. The whole Muslim religion is interpreted by them this way; it is written that killing people is forbidden, and they go out and kill people, also those of Charlie Hebdo, those who have written, Luz and the others, those who have caricatured the prophet, and it is not good to caricature the prophet… The Jihadists do not know what is true, because they … they don’t know what the true Muslim religion is; they just do what they have in mind, they say “he who drew the prophet, well, he gets killed”, when in fact in the Qur’an there stands written “if anyone has drawn a drawing of the prophet, he will be punished when he dies, but you don’t have to kill him, let him be”, because it is not good to kill … it is not good to kill people.⁸⁹⁸

Ironically, some of the deepest and wisest realisations on seemingly intricate ethical and socio-cultural affairs are to be heard, as the Biblical saying goes, out of the mouth of babes.⁸⁹⁹

vasion of Iraq in 2003, which caused the death of countless innocent Muslims. Yet the brothers’ choice of Charlie Hebdo as their target, plus the statements that they are reported to have made during the attack, are not consistent with this claim, also in consideration of Charlie Hebdo’s prolonged history of consummate taunting of life-destroying US imperialism. 897 Heard (1930), 260. 898 As cited in A. Simon (2019), 7. The young boy’s interpretation of Islam’s understanding of homicide is easy to substantiate with references to relevant suras, such as IV:92 – 93, V:32, VI:151, XVII:33, and XXV:68 – 69. In a Thomist perspective, Hassan can be said to be making a correct use of his rational faculty whereby he spots what is good and what is bad and, a fortiori, what constitutes good conduct under the specific circumstances, i. e., the so-called personal use of recta ratio (see Utz 1994, pars. 1.1.1 – 1.1.2). Perhaps, relativism can never fully take over. However, this is far too large and complex an issue to be sorted in this book, or in one of its footnotes. 899 Psalms 8:2. The vulgata led to two common phrases which are still heard today, at least in educated circles: ex ore infantium and ex ore parvulorum veritas. The former is also the title of a poem by the noted Victorian lyricist Francis Thompson (1912, 807– 808), whose introspective art he claimed to have been led into by his childhood experiences qua repeated victim of “hate for hate’s sake, cruelty for cruelty’s sake. And as such they live in my memory, testimonies to the murky aboriginal demon in man” (as cited in Meynell 1913, 17).

2 Humour Against Cruelty Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. —George Bernard Shaw¹

In his 1983 book, Taking Laughter Seriously, Morreall outlined the benefits of humour, whether commonplace or ‘true’, in a very eloquent way: The nonpractical stance in humor, along with its openness to novelty in experience, keeps us from anxiety… With a sense of humor we are especially well equipped to face new situations, and even failure, with interest, since humor is based on novelty and incongruity, on having one’s expectations violated. The distance in humor, too, gives us a measure of objectivity in looking at ourselves… Hence we are less egocentric and more realistic in our view of the world. We are more humble in moments of success, less defeated in times of trouble, and in general, more accepting of things the way they are.²

Unlike Morreall’s positive outlook, the focus throughout our multi-volume research on the link between humour and cruelty has led us to view the former with some cynicism and, to be frank, trepidation. The ease and potency of cruel humour to cause harm and the ease with which it can be used by malicious people are much more than we expected, perhaps naïvely, when we started our research.³ Besides, it seems that all or most forms of humour (especially the funnier ones) carry with them a non-inconspicuous trace of heartlessness.⁴ So, is there hope for humour? Does it have some really redeeming qualities? What possible benefits does humour truly confer?⁵ In this chapter, we investigate primarily commonplace humour’s life-enabling manifestations, i.e., the ways in which it can help human beings to endure, if not overcome, life’s misery and tribulations.⁶ As we noted in Chapter 1 of Part 1, none less than Kant, the serious champion of the German Enlightenment, addressed this point, adding laughter to Voltaire’s two sources of solace for humankind: hope and

1 As cited in Joshua et al. (2005), 647. A playwright famous for his humorous comedies, G. Shaw (2006) offered a treatise on education tackling explicitly the scourge of cruelty against children, especially chap. 4. 2 Morreall (1983), 128. 3 Perhaps, neither author was teased cruelly enough in his youth to be traumatised permanently. 4 We focussed on the negative interplay between humour and cruelty in H&C2. 5 LVOA offers principled axioms to distinguish benefit from damage (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 6 All main themes and theses presented in this chapter are meant to substantiate those of Chapter 3. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111256108-004

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sleep. As also repeatedly observed in our exploration, so-called “dark” humour, gallows humour, humour among hospital patients, deathbed mirth, and self-deprecation can lighten people’s state of mind under all sorts of dreadful situations. Making a point of hopefulness in the book, this chapter combines the notions of ‘humour’ and ‘cruelty’ by charting tokens and functions of humour qua antidote to cruelty.⁷ We start by looking at the evidence showing that humour can have a beneficial effect on mental health and then turn our attention to physical health. The reason being that, in order to affect the body, humour has to influence the mind. This makes it a more suitable starting point. Throughout our analysis, we are also looking at the effect that humour has on people facing harsh circumstances, such as loss, pain, disease, or death. Finally, we explore whether cruel humour has or not any specific qualities and/or special potentialities in this regard.⁸

2.1 Can Humour Be Beneficial? Il riso fa buon sangue. —Italian proverb⁹

Although perhaps morbidly inclined in our philosophical exploration, we cannot help but to acknowledge that humour has, at least, the ability to make some of us feel good some of the time, as long acknowledged by the likes of Aristotle and Aquinas with regard to comedy, laughter, and play.¹⁰

7 We mean an antidote to life-disabling cruelty, i.e., reducing ranges of motility, felt being and/or thought. See Chapter 1 of Part 1. 8 As all written texts, our account relies on a host of tacit presuppositions regarding ideas that, when attended to rather than from, are far from univocal and/or easy to grasp, e.g., ‘health, ‘mind’, ‘person’, and ‘pain’. Yet we can count on the reader’s interpretative charity and the language’s convenient polysemy to get our points across. 9 “Laughing improves the blood/cheers you up.” A token of popular wit, this adage encompasses all three main meanings of nominal “humour” at once, i.e., a bodily fluid, a mood, and something funny. This proverb is also the title of a book about “laughter” proper published by the Italian psychologist Alessandro Zucchelli (2009, 14), who argued, inter alia, that laughter is “interrupted crying”, i.e., that it is rooted in the same physiology as tears, as claimed long before him by D. Hartley (1801), whom we discussed in detail in H&C1. 10 Their views were dealt with in detail in H&C1, especially Aquinas’ ones.

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2.1.1 Positive Emotions As it was asked in the late 1990s—and answered too—by the American social psychologist Barbara L. Fredrickson: “What Good Are Positive Emotions?”¹¹ Her central premise is that emotions are, by definition, associated with urges that, in the scientific literature, have been called specific action tendencies. These specific tendencies prepare both body and mind to behave in a certain way. Anger, for instance, elicits either a fight-or-flight response. Yet, people do not always act on these urges, their actions depending instead on a multi-faceted interaction of intentions, impulse controls, coping styles and cultural norms, as well as on the estimated likelihood for the behaviour at issue to have beneficial consequences under particular circumstances (e.g., is a weapon or an escape route readily available?).¹² 2.1.1.1 A Specific Study Not all emotions are created equal. As Fredrickson wrote: To date, then, numerous theorists have argued that emotions (in general) evolved because they promoted specific actions in life-threatening circumstances and thereby increased the odds of the ancestors’ survival. To be sure, models based on specific action tendencies provide sound and compelling descriptions of the form and function of many negative emotions. (Sadness may be the prime exception, which is typically linked with a generic urge to withdraw from action.) Even so, I would argue that many positive emotions do not fit such models. First of all, positive emotions do not typically arise in life-threatening circumstances, and perhaps by consequence, they do not seem to create well-defined urges to pursue a specific course of action. What good are positive emotions then? From a functional perspective, do positive emotions have any adaptive value? To my mind, existing emotion-general models hinder psychology’s ability to answer these questions adequately.¹³

Since positive emotions do not promote specific actions in the same way as negative ones, they are of a qualitatively different stock. Social scientists like Fredrickson have argued against a single general-purpose model of human emotion and instead propose separate models for positive and negative ones.¹⁴ The latter cate-

11 Fredrickson (1998). We do not tackle the conceptual distinctions of ‘emotion’ from ‘feeling’, ‘sentiment’, ‘passion’, etc. 12 Fredrickson (1998), 302–303. Whether to act or not upon our impulses is at the heart of un/ethical conduct, also with respect to laughing matters, i.e., commonplace as well as ‘true’ humour (see Chapter 2 of Part 1). 13 Fredrickson (1998), 303. 14 Fredrickson (1998), 303–304.

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gory can easily be fitted into traditional models of specific action tendencies. However, to create a better model of positive emotions, she proposes to discard two standard presumptions: (1) That emotions must necessarily lead to specific action tendencies. Unquestionably, positive emotions often create urges to act, but also seem to be less prescriptive than negative emotions about which particular actions are to be taken. Indeed, it can be said that they lead to nonspecific action tendencies.¹⁵ (2) That emotions must inevitably trigger tendencies for physical action. Positive emotions seem rather to spark changes in cognition, although changes in physical activity may, in some cases, follow.¹⁶ As a replacement for action tendencies, Fredrickson proposed thought-action tendencies, and instead of specificity, she emphasises the relative breadth of the momentary thought-action repertoire: Using this new terminology to paraphrase traditional action-oriented models, negative emotions function to narrow a person’s momentary thought–action repertoire. They do so by calling to mind and body the time-tested, ancestrally adaptive actions represented by specific action tendencies. This function is without question adaptive in life-threatening situations that require quick and decisive action in order to survive. But threats to life and limb are typically not at issue in circumstances that give rise to positive emotions (exceptions might include a subset of positively construed challenge situations). Absent such threat, quick and decisive action is often not required. It follows then, that the automatic narrowing of a person’s momentary thought–action repertoire may not be common to all emotions, but instead may be more characteristic of certain negative emotions. By contrast, many positive emotions seem not to (and perhaps need not) narrow a person’s momentary thought-action repertoire. Even so, changes in typical thought and behavior patterns do occur during positive emotions. I propose the alternative view that many positive emotions broaden a person’s momentary thought-action repertoire. Accordingly, experiences of certain positive emotions prompt individuals to discard time-tested or automatic (everyday) behavioral scripts and to pursue novel, creative, and often unscripted paths of thought and action.¹⁷

According to Fredrickson, positive emotions, such as joy, interest, contentment, and love, broaden temporarily our thought-action repertoire and buttress our personal resources, whether these are physical, intellectual, or social.¹⁸ Positive emotions expand our attentional focus and spark our creativity. In the most extreme cases, like elation and mania, they can lead to over-inclusion of thought. Negative

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Fredrickson Fredrickson Fredrickson Fredrickson

(1998), 303–304. (1998), 303–304. (1998), 304. (1998), 307.

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emotions, on the contrary, serve to increase and narrow down our focus. This is seen most dramatically in states of high arousal provoked by anxiety and fear, e.g., when facing a cruel adversary.¹⁹ Fredrickson’s “broaden-and-build” model stated that positive emotions expand an individual’s momentary thought-action repertoire and thereby “function as efficient antidotes for the lingering effects of negative emotions, which serve to narrow an individual’s thought-action repertoire”.²⁰ A surge of positive emotions may prompt individuals to “discard time-tested or automatic (everyday) behavioral scripts and to pursue novel, creative, and often unscripted paths of thought and action”.²¹ That means that experiencing positive emotions through humour will cause a momentary expansion of the thought-action repertoire, which again would lead to a greater sense of self-efficacy for dealing with problems and stress.²² A person filled with positive emotions will have a greater ability “to initiate and sustain action towards a particular problem (agency) and/or increase the individual’s perceived ability to work around obstacles to problem resolution (pathways)”.²³ 2.1.1.2 General Considerations Further studies in the field of positive psychology have offered additional insights into the connection of humour with health-related outcomes. In that context, humour is viewed as a quality of the individual that promotes resilience and wellbeing by means of cognitive reappraisal of stressful events. Such a reappraisal being understood as the ability to reframe negative events so as to find meaning, higher purpose, and/or benefits that can be derived from it, e.g., positive changes or a renewed appreciation for life. Amir’s humorous existentialism, as discussed in H&C2, is a sophisticated and erudite project based upon precisely such a kind of sense-giving reappraisal. Significantly, inability to handle stressful events in this way has been linked to mal-adjustment by many psychologists, whereas successful reappraisal is commonly associated with enhanced psychological adjustment and, to a lesser extent, enhanced physical adjustment to chronic illness.²⁴

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Fredrickson (1998), 308. Fredrickson (1998), 315. Fredrickson (1998), 304. Vilaythong et al. (2003), 81. Vilaythong et al. (2003), 81. See, e.g., Fritz et al. (2017), 846.

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It is reasonable to assume that this process of reappraisal might share some common features with the incongruity that is so important in the production of humour. Both are involved in taking selected facts and twisting them to an allegedly beneficial end. One might even hypothesise that many psychological disorders have a lack of reappraisal ability qua central feature.²⁵ Both humour and reappraisal can then be seen as cognitive strategies enabling individuals to shift their perspective about a stressful situation, viewing it more as a positive challenge rather than as a negative threat, and thereby gaining a sense of mastery. Both may also help people to distance themselves from the emotional impact of an event. Not surprisingly, humour has been associated with reappraising events as less threatening.²⁶ Self-enhancing humour, in particular, may facilitate emotional regulation and coping by means of reframing and is, for example, reportedly reduced among depressed patients, meaning that these patients’ negative cognitive distortions remain unchallenged.²⁷ We do not mean to medicalise all states of depression and humourlessness, though. Arguably, there may be circumstances under which it makes sense to endorse a tragic view of life and a general unwillingness to joke about the dreadful conditions that are being faced.²⁸ Which and when a line can be drawn separating sharply between clinical depression and reasonable hopelessness is indeed a thorny issue which neither of us can honestly claim to have been able to resolve.²⁹

2.1.2 Physical Health There is a widespread belief that humour can improve health. It is a notion that dates to Biblical times.³⁰ This idea has gained increased momentum in the last decades, however, insofar as studies supposedly showing the health benefits of laughter, i.e., commonplace humour, have been highlighted by the popular media.³¹ This renewed emphasis has led some health professionals to devise humour-based interventions, such as therapeutic clowns, comedy carts, and laughter yoga.³² Empir-

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Paranoia and obsession are stark examples of this kind of inability to envision alternatives. Fritz et al. (2017), 846. Fritz et al. (2017), 846. This issue was also tackled in H&C2. Ditto. Rowe and Regehr (2010), 452. Martin (2004), 1–2. Martin (2004), 1–2.

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ical research, however, has not yet given us firm grounds for such a straightforward claim.³³ 2.1.2.1 Specific Studies In a 2001 comprehensive review of research articles examining the association between humour and physical health, Rod A. Martin found that although laboratory experiments showed some effects of comedy on several components of immunity, the findings were inconsistent.³⁴ Moreover, most of the studies had methodological flaws.³⁵ Pointedly, he reported some alleged evidence of the analgesic effects of exposure to comedy, but similar findings were also readily found with regard to negative emotions.³⁶ Furthermore, Martin saw few significant correlations between trait-measures of humour and immunity, pain-tolerance, or self-reported illness symptoms, little evidence of stress-moderating effects of humour on physicalhealth variables, and zero evidence of increased longevity with a greater sense of humour.³⁷ Some years later, Martin pointed out in a subsequent article that the question of the relationship between humour and physical health remains unanswered.³⁸ This is largely due, as anticipated, to methodological issues with the available studies, which suffered from several prosaic challenges. Mundane problems can engender methodological perplexities. Because of inadequate funding, in fact, most of these studies were small and had insufficient control groups, making it difficult to draw solid conclusions. Martin therefore called for broader and better-designed studies, as well as more rigorous definitions of relevant variables.³⁹ Having so cautioned his readers, Martin could nonetheless indicate how there are four possible pathways, in all likelihood, through which humour could benefit physical health.⁴⁰

33 Whether empirical research will ever produce such a result is itself an empirical issue. 34 Martin (2001). 35 Martin (2001), 504. In the contemporary scientific literature on humour and health, no effort is made to try and distinguish sharply between “humour” proper and its many lexical cognates, e.g., “comedy”, “laughter”, “satire”, etc. The issue of “true humour” à la Schopenhauer or Pirandello does not arise either, as a consequence, and is basically absent from the social sciences at large, which depict observable humour rather than promote an ideal one. See also H&C1. 36 Martin (2001), 504. 37 Martin (2001), 504. 38 Martin (2004), 2. 39 Martin (2004), 2–3. 40 Martin (2004), 3. These four pathways have since become fairly standard in empirical research.

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(1) The benefits may result from physiological changes in the body that accompany laughter, e.g., in musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, endocrine, immunological, and nervous systems. Vigorous laughter might exercise and relax the muscles, improve respiration, stimulate blood circulation, increase production of analgesic endorphins, decrease levels of stress-related hormones, and enhance the immune system.⁴¹ This would mean that it is actually laughter that causes the physicalhealth benefits and, a fortiori, enjoying humour without laughing would have no favourable consequences. Indeed, laughter would be expected to have beneficial effects even without humour being involved (e.g., feigned or forced laughter). This has been the premise of the laughter club and laughter yoga movements.⁴² As Martin concluded, such an approach would imply that the person with the ‘healthiest’ sense of humour is the cachinnator who laughs as riotously and as often as possible, whereas people who enjoy dry humour with a mild titter or a smile gain nothing. Humour interventions should therefore be aimed at getting people to laugh frequently and intensely.⁴³ (2) An alternative mechanism outlined by Martin is that humour might influence health through positive emotional states.⁴⁴ Positive emotions, regardless of how they come about, may be beneficial to health by way of several consequences, such as increasing pain-tolerance, enhanced immunity or undoing the effects of negative emotions on the cardiovascular system.⁴⁵ Compared with the first pathway, this one is less specific to humour and laughter, and more generally conducive to anything that promotes positive emotions. Humour as such would not have any unique qualities, as stipulated in the first model, but would rather be seen as one of many ways to increase positive mental states, along with happiness, love, joy, optimism, etc. Furthermore, if this is truly the pathway for humour, laughing overtly would not be necessary for achieving health benefits. Instead, the person with the ‘healthiest’ sense of humour would be the one with the most cheerful temperament and a playful approach to life.⁴⁶ Somehow, a Hippocratic-Galenic good humour would be more crucial than laughing as such.⁴⁷

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Martin (2004), 3. Martin (2004), 3. Martin (2004), 3–4. Martin (2004), 4. Martin (2004), 4. Martin (2004), 4. See Chapter 2 of Part 1.

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(3) The third potential mechanism suggested by Martin emphasises the favourable effects of humour on moderating the adverse ones of psychosocial stress.⁴⁸ It is known that stressful experiences can adversely affect various aspects of health via the chronic production of stress-related hormones leading, inter alia, to the suppression of the immune system and increased risks of cardiovascular disease. Coupled with the notion that certain personality traits and coping styles can moderate these health-related effects, we could conclude, at least in theory, that a humorous outlook on life might also increase coping skills by allowing individuals to maintain perspective and to distance themselves from stressful situations. As a consequence of this hypothetical pathway, people with a greater sense of humour might be expected to experience fewer adverse effects of stress.⁴⁹ This stress-moderator pathway suggests that the cognitive aspects of humour are more decisive than laughter itself, and places particular importance on the ability to maintain a humorous outlook during times of adversity. Humour and laughter during non-stressful times would, on the other hand, be less germane to health. This also raises the possibility that certain styles of humour (e.g., perspective-taking humour) may be more health-enhancing than others (e.g., markedly self-disparaging humour). Accordingly, if this is the true pathway, therapeutic intervention is a clear candidate for stress-management training.⁵⁰ (4) The final option put forth by Martin assumes that humour may indirectly influence health via the level of social support. Echoing Hutcheson’s and Hartley’s pioneering work in the Age of Enlightenment, certain individuals may be better suited to use humour to reduce interpersonal conflicts and to stimulate positive feelings in others, and consequently reap more numerous and more nourishing relationships.⁵¹ This greater level of social support may in turn bring about a reduction in stress with the accompanying health-related benefits.⁵² Here the focus is on interpersonal aspects of humour and the social competence involved in using humour to enhance relationships. If this is the correct pathway, it means that therapeutic interventions should emphasise social-skills training in which individuals are taught to develop a socially facilitative use of humour.⁵³ According to Martin, it is imperative that researchers have a clear perspective on which potential mechanisms they are investigating when it comes to the effects

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Martin (2004), 4. Martin (2004), 4. Martin (2004), 5. See H&C1. Martin (2004), 5. Martin (2004), 5.

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of humour on physical health.⁵⁴ To that end, he himself outlined the four possible pathways listed above. This methodology should dictate how studies are designed, what types of questions are asked, how humour is measured and manipulated, which other variables are included, as well as the choice of health-related outcome/s.⁵⁵ 2.1.2.2 Studies’ Specifications With regards to experimental studies where participants are usually exposed to humorous stimuli (typically a comic video) either alone or in groups and various physiological measures are assessed before and after this intervention, Martin emphasised the use of control groups to rule out the possible interference from other non-humour-related variables, e.g., diurnal variations, passage of time, presence of other people, etc.⁵⁶ Additionally, the researchers should record the frequency, duration, and intensity of laughter to determine whether laughter is necessary for the physiological changes or a less overt appreciation suffices on its own. Martin even proposed that conditions should be included in which some participants are instructed to withhold laughter whilst others are asked to laugh out loud.⁵⁷ He suggested as well that researchers should also use non-humour-related experimental conditions to evoke positive and negative emotions. This would be done so as to determine whether changes in the physiological parameters are specific to humour or are also found with other positive, if not perchance negative, emotions.⁵⁸ On top of investigating the hypothesised benefits of laughter and humour-induced positive emotions, Martin suggested the use of an experimental approach to look at the stress-moderator model of the humour-health association.⁵⁹ For example, individuals might be exposed to a stressful laboratory procedure (e.g., anticipate painful electric shocks or be exposed to a distressing video) while humour is manipulated as the independent variable, either by providing participants with a humorous stimulus or instructing them to produce humour. Again, non-humorous control conditions would be needed.⁶⁰

54 Martin (2004), 5. 55 Martin (2004), 5. 56 Martin (2004), 5–6. 57 Martin (2004), 5–6. However hard, controlling laughter is possible, e. g., for health’s sake or ethical conduct., for most of us on most occasions 58 Martin (2004), 6. 59 Martin (2004), 6. 60 Martin (2004), 6–7.

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Martin also outlined a more clinical approach to this research question, experimenting outside of the standard laboratory and using field studies involving experimental interventions. He suggested using humour as a therapeutic intervention in a variety of clinical settings. For instance, with either healthy participants or medical patients, measuring the longer-term health-related outcomes and, once again, with appropriate control groups and manipulation checks.⁶¹ Apart from experimentation, research on this topic also lends itself to correlation studies, as we have gathered throughout this volume. This approach does not reveal causal relationships, but is nevertheless a less costly and rather practical way to measure individual differences (usually with questionnaires), looking at associations with other health-related variables.⁶² As stated by Martin, it should be possible to demonstrate whether there is a link between humour and health, at least if the associations are robust and significant.⁶³ A clear advantage for correlation research is the use of more complex statistics to weed out the modulating effects of other more indirect mechanisms, such as the stress-moderation and social-support ones. Forever preaching methodological caution, Martin asserted that in the correlational approach, it is vital to carefully select reliable and valid measurement instruments assessing the exact components of humour that are relevant to each specific pathway.⁶⁴

2.1.3 Smoking Guns In an interesting study of Finnish police chiefs, Kerkkanen and his associates rejected the hypothesis that a greater sense of humour is related to better physical health.⁶⁵ Actually, their longitudinal analysis showed an absence of any significant relationships between ‘sense of humour’ scores at baseline and physical health and well-being three years later.⁶⁶ 2.1.3.1 Up North Kerkkanen and associates concluded that no evidence showed that a sense of humour, either self-reported or peer-rated, was related to changes in physical health

61 62 63 64 65 66

Martin (2004), 7. Martin (2004), 7. Martin (2004), 7. Martin (2004), 7–8. Kerkkanen et al. (2004). Kerkkanen et al. (2004).

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over a period of three years. The few correlations that were actually meaningful showed the opposite effects of those predicted by the humour-health hypothesis, i.e., higher humour was related to increased smoking, higher body-mass index, and higher overall risk for cardiovascular disease.⁶⁷ Analysing the data cross-sectionally was also generally unsupportive of the humour-health hypothesis, with the majority of relationships being non-significant.⁶⁸ Of the two significant correlations, one was supportive of the hypothesis (higher humour scores were related to lower systolic blood pressure), and one was opposed (higher humour scores were related to more alcohol consumption).⁶⁹ The positive associations found in the Finnish study between some sense-ofhumour scores and health-risk factors, such as increased smoking and alcohol consumption, are potentially important. Philosophically, we, the authors of this volume, could not avoid noticing, for one, an ironic contrast between quality and quantity of life. However, the authors of the actual study cautioned against overinterpretation, which is certainly the humanist’s penchant. Nevertheless, they too emphasised that the results may provide some indications that a sense of humour is related to a lifestyle that actually promotes, rather than decreases, health risks.⁷⁰ The Finnish research team tentatively linked their overall result to the assumption that individuals with a greater sense of humour often have more extroverted personality traits.⁷¹ Extroverted individuals, as compared to introverts, are more likely to drink alcohol and to smoke, less likely to quit smoking, and more likely to be obese.⁷² Kerkkanen and his associates also pointed to the fact that individuals who are seen as more cheerful in childhood have a higher lifetime-mortality risk.⁷³ The logic at play being that more cheerful individuals underestimate the impact of risky behaviours and therefore act more carelessly about their health.⁷⁴ Saturnine temperaments, then, may well be likely to lead longer, miserable lives.⁷⁵

67 Kerkkanen et al. (2004), 30. 68 Kerkkanen et al. (2004), 30. 69 Kerkkanen et al. (2004), 30. 70 Kerkkanen et al. (2004), 31. 71 Jung’s (1960–1990, vol. 6) original formulation of these two fundamental categories in the psychology of types remarked repeatedly on their being unequally present in each person, i.e., they are not mutually exclusive. 72 Kerkkanen et al. (2004), 31. 73 Kerkkanen et al. (2004), 31. 74 Kerkkanen et al. (2004), 31. 75 We tackled the notion of Saturnine aka melancholic temperaments in H&C1.

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2.1.3.2 Down Under The link between humour and well-being has, however, been documented by a number of studies.⁷⁶ Nonetheless, as the Australian psychologists Boyle and JossReid pointed out, in many of these studies, the measurements do not reflect the multidimensionality of both variables, i.e., neither humour nor well-being.⁷⁷ For example, an individual might be highly appreciative of humour, but thoroughly unable to produce it. Likewise, one might have a positive attitude towards humour, but be incapable of using it to his/her benefit as a coping mechanism. This means that humour can have at least four different dimensions with little correlation between them. It is also fitting to note that well-being is itself an extremely difficult concept to define, and it involves a gigantic plethora of psychological, physical, and social components.⁷⁸ In order to overcome the limitations inherent in many health-related studies, Boyle and Joss-Reid used an ample, diverse, community-based sample to test the hypothesis that humour contributes significantly to health, i.e., that individuals with a poor sense of humour would be more prone to ill-health. The measurements of both variables were made using multidimensional questionnaires.⁷⁹ The sample included 504 participants and consisted of three groups: community, university students, and respondents with medical conditions.⁸⁰ The authors did not witness a uniform effect of humour on health. Instead, humour was shown to impact three subscales of health in the community group, but affected only one subscale in the other two groups, i.e., pain and emotional wellness among students and the infirm.⁸¹ Similarly, Boyle and Joss-Reid determined that no difference in health was found between low- and high-humour individuals within the community group, but did see a difference in the other two groups.⁸² Furthermore, the more pain the participants within the medical group reported, the more difference was seen between low- and high-humour individuals.⁸³

76 See, e.g., an overview in Boyle and Joss-Reid (2004), 51. 77 Boyle and Joss-Reid (2004), 51. 78 Boyle and Joss-Reid (2004), 52. 79 Boyle and Joss-Reid (2004), 52. The Rand 36 was used to measure well-being and MSHS to measure humour. This “Rand” has nothing to do with the libertarian novelist-philosopher dreaming of Nietzsche’s Superman., as far as we know 80 Boyle and Joss-Reid (2004), 51. 81 Boyle and Joss-Reid (2004), 58. 82 Boyle and Joss-Reid (2004), 58. 83 Boyle and Joss-Reid (2004), 58.

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In summary, these results indicate that when researching the relations between humour and health, it is important to define the specific dimensions of the phenomena under investigation, as well as to assume that the relations are, generally, not linear.⁸⁴

2.1.4 Gunning Smoke To further investigate the relations between humour and various aspects of psychosocial and physical health and well-being, many researchers have used a number of self-report measures focussing on some aspects of the idea of ‘sense of humour’ that are considered to be conducive to well-being.⁸⁵ As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, a sense of humour is itself a multi-faceted construct which comprises various components that do not necessarily relate to one other in any meaningful way and a clear grasp of which is often frustrated. Unfortunately, [m]uch of the scientific literature examining the relation between humour and well-being has often taken the over-simplistic view that a sense of humour is a positive and desirable personality characteristic that enhances psychological health and well-being. Researchers generally assume that individuals with a strong sense of humour possess a number of other desirable traits, such as greater optimism, self-acceptance, self-confidence, and autonomy. Humorous people are also thought to be able to cope more effectively with stress, to generally experience fewer negative moods such as depression and anxiety, to enjoy greater physical health, and to have more positive and healthy relationships with others.⁸⁶

To measure the psychological benefits of having a sense of humour means that this sense has to be deconstructed into the fitting subcategories, i.e., in accordance with manageable research protocols. 2.1.4.1 Questions From a methodological perspective, unless convenient questions and categorisations are adopted from the start, the “humour” at issue is bound to remain shrouded in an unhelpful hazy smoke. Thus far, in fact, the empirical results have been a mixed bag, as Kuiper and Martin had already reported at the close of the 20th century.⁸⁷ In their studies, they looked at the correlation between several 84 Again, humour as such proves poorly amenable to scientific treatment, whereas select aspects of it are preferable. 85 Martin et al. (2003), 49. 86 Kuiper and Martin (1998), 159. 87 Kuiper and Martin (1998), 176–178.

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widely used self-report humour scales and attendant variables, measuring different aspects of mental health and well-being (e.g., dispositional optimism, psychological well-being, self-esteem, moods). They concluded that the measurements of humour were, if reliable, only weakly related to mental-health constructs.⁸⁸ Later studies in the same field found that this correlation, when at all statistically significant and replicable, is typically less than .25, which suggests that the aspects of humour being measured account, at best, for less than 6% of the variance in mental health.⁸⁹ It seems that, although humour is almost universally allied with good mental health and well-being, demonstrating this relationship in a sound empirical fashion is not an easy task. Perhaps making sense of “humour” proper belongs to a domain that is better approached by philosophy and/or the humanities, as exemplified by the humorous existentialism of Amir and, for that matter, Morreall, both of whom we discussed in H&C2. Alternatively, one possible explanation for the feebleness of the reported empirical associations is that the available psychometric tools do not discriminate adequately between the beneficial and adaptive aspects of humour and those that are less conducive to mental health or even detrimental to it. As we have introduced in this volume, and the reader will also understand from personal experience, people use and enjoy humour in a variety of ways, including the many nasty ones that were tackled in H&C2. Regularly, though, healthy psychological functioning has been linked to certain styles of humour (e.g., affiliative, self-deprecating, or perspective-taking), while other forms have routinely been associated with poorer psychological health (e.g., sarcastic, disparaging, or avoidant humour).⁹⁰ 2.1.4.2 Questionnaires The Humor Styles Questionnaire, developed and validated by Martin and associates, dealt with, in the first place, the potentially detrimental uses of humour for the joker’s psychological health.⁹¹ Supplementarily, it dealt also with the more benign forms.⁹² They postulated a 2×2 model of humour functions with four dimensions relating to individual differences. Two were detrimental and two benign.⁹³ The resulting four functions being:

88 Kuiper and Martin (1998), 176–178. 89 See Martin et al. (2003), 50. 90 Martin et al. (2003), 50. Expert classifications of these styles, as usual, vary (see, e.g., Dionigi et al. 2023). 91 Martin et al. (2003), 48–75. 92 Martin et al. (2003), 70. 93 Martin et al. (2003), 53–73. All ensuing statements in this subsection are based on these pages.

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(1) Affiliative humour. Those who are high on this dimension tend to say funny things, tell jokes, and engage in spontaneous banter to make others laugh, strengthen relations, and reduce tension among others.⁹⁴ In order to put others at ease, these persons are also likely to use self-deprecating humour, say funny things about themselves, and not take themselves too seriously, while still maintaining a visible sense of self-acceptance. Basically, it represents a non-hostile, tolerant use of humour that is affirming of self and others, however difficult it may be to gauge such a positive characterisation when contrasting claims arise. When examining the association between the affiliative-humour scale and various measurement of positive mental health, the researchers found that it was most strongly related to extroversion and openness to experience. It was also positively correlated with cheerfulness, self-esteem, psychological well-being, social intimacy, and femininity (communion) and negatively associated with depression, anxiety, seriousness, and bad mood. To sum up, people who ranked high on this measure were found to be socially extroverted, cheerful, emotionally stable, and concerned about others. (2) Self-enhancing humour. It involves a mostly humorous outlook on life, a tendency to enjoy its incongruities, and the maintenance that perspective even in the face of stress or adversity. It is associated with other humour-related functions, such as coping, perspective-taking, and emotional regulation. In some sense, it is related to the classic Freudian definition of humour, as it describes a healthy defence mechanism that avoids negative emotions while maintaining a realistic perspective in aversive situations. Compared to affiliative humour, this dimension is more intrapsychic than interpersonal (i.e., closer to Amir’s original conception of “compassionate aggression” than to our socialised redescription of it).⁹⁵ This scale was found positively correlated with cheerfulness, self-esteem, optimism, psychological well-being, and satisfaction with social support and negatively associated to depression, anxiety, and foul mood. Additionally, it was negatively correlated with neuroticism but positively to extraversion and openness. Finally, it was found positively related to assumed “masculinity” (aka “agency”) and negatively related to “femininity” (aka “unmitigated communion”). (3) Aggressive humour. It describes the use of sarcasm, teasing, derision, socalled “put-down” or disparagement humour, as amply recorded throughout our volumes, especially H&C2.⁹⁶ It also includes the use of humour to manipulate oth94 As seen in H&C1, many 18th-century British philosophers stressed these qualities of humour and laughter, including Hutcheson, Hartley and Addison. 95 See Amir (2019) and our extensive discussion of her work in H&C2. 96 As noted throughout our research, philosophers have been worrying about these features of laughter and, later, “humour” proper, since at last the days of Plato and Aristotle.

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ers by means of a threat of ridicule—however sub silentio it may be and easily disguised as ‘mere’ humour. In general, it relates to the tendency to express humour without regard for its potential impact on others (e.g., ableist, sexist, or racist jokes) and includes compulsive expressions, i.e., when one finds it difficult to resist the impulse to say funny things that are likely to hurt or alienate others.⁹⁷ The aggressive-humour scale was found to be negatively associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness and positively to neuroticism. It was also firmly associated with unmitigated masculinity, but negatively related to femininity (“communion”). Unsurprisingly, showing how these categories were no sheer expression of gender prejudice, it was found much more commonly in men. It was, unquestionably, positively associated with measures of hostility and aggression, but negatively to seriousness. (4) Self-defeating humour. It involves regular use of self-disparaging humour, attempts to entertain others by doing or saying funny things at one’s own expense, allowing oneself to be the target of others’ humour, and chuckling along when being scoffed at or disparaged. Consistently with Harvey’s remarks on this subject, such a behaviour can also be seen as using humour qua defensive denial, hiding underlying negative feelings, or avoiding the challenge of dealing with bigger problems.⁹⁸ Those who rank high on this dimension may seem witty or amusing (e.g., so-called “class clowns”), but there transpire underlying elements of emotional neediness, avoidance, and/or low self-esteem. Intriguingly, self-defeating humour was found to be unrelated to the other three dimensions measured and could be viewed as quite separate from them. The scale was positively related to neuroticism and negatively to agreeableness and conscientiousness. It was also positively associated with depression, anxiety, hostility, aggression, bad mood, psychiatric symptoms, and undesirable masculine traits (“unmitigated agency”) and negatively related to self-esteem, psychological well-being, intimacy, satisfaction with social supports, and femininity (“communion”). Like aggressive humour, self-defeating humour was found to be significantly more prevalent amongst men. The scale-development procedures resulted in four eight-item scales with good reliabilities and appeared to be appropriate for use from adolescence to old age. Some of the scales were moderately correlated with each other, which likely reflects a general tendency to engage in humorous behaviour. In any case, the inter-

97 The root causes for such strange compulsions fall under the purview of depth psychology, in all probability. 98 See Harvey (1999), whom we discuss extensively in H&C2.

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correlations were low enough for the scales to be considered to be assessing distinct aspects of humour. The research thus conducted clearly highlights the importance of looking into different dimensions of humour and that, by treating humour as a single construct, we might be missing out on critical information. Even so, it is important to note that the division between benign and deleterious uses of humour is one of degree, rather than a sharp dichotomy, and the very assessment of the different uses may be perspective-, context-, and/or result-dependent.

2.1.5 Blurred Borders As Martin and associates stipulated, that which can be seen as benign forms of affiliative humour may often involve some disparagement, such as when friends or colleagues boost their feelings of group identity, cohesiveness, and/or well-being by making fun of other groups and/or individuals whom they dislike, whom they do not genuinely consider as full peers in terms of moral or social standing, or who pose some kind of perceived threat. Cruelty, in short, is never too far away, whenever humour is unfolding.⁹⁹ 2.1.5.1 General Considerations Affiliative humour may also take on the form of playful teasing of some members of one’s own group, however mildly aggressive this line of conduct can be deemed to be. Likewise, benign forms of self-enhancing humour may involve inner amusement from observing the ignominious defeat of one’s adversaries or the sheer inferiority of another person in some respect.¹⁰⁰ The researchers have generally distinguished between the moderately aggressive elements in these relatively benign forms of humour and the more hostile ones that could possibly hurt vital social relationships with others, such as friends, family members, and colleagues. In the same way, self-deprecation may be an effective element in affiliative humour, since people who gently poke fun at their

99 See also H&C2. 100 As amply admitted in our own research, the abysses of a person’s mind are a mysterious place which third-person methodologies such as those of scientific psychology may not be equipped to probe to a very great depth.

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own deficiencies and do not take themselves too seriously are usually seen as more likeable and less threatening.¹⁰¹ This has therefore to be contrasted with the more excessive self-disparagement seen in self-defeating humour. Nevertheless, it might not be viable to try and disentangle completely these benign and deleterious forms, and we should not be overly concerned by the fact that they can also overlap to some significant extent.¹⁰² Lived contexts are likely complex. And humorous reality may simply be far less polite than our ideal codes of conduct dictate, pace Shaftesbury and his many spiritual heirs.¹⁰³ 2.1.5.2 A Specific Study A recent study by Richards and Kruger examined the moderating role on perceived stress and physical health that is brought about by the four humour styles that are still conventionally assumed in much experimental psychology on “humour” proper: (1) self-enhancing, (2) affiliative, (3) self-defeating, and (4) aggressive.¹⁰⁴ Their study found that greater use of affiliative humour was related to fewer reports of physical-health symptoms.¹⁰⁵ However, they saw no significant correlations between affiliative humour and perceived stress.¹⁰⁶ The authors suggested that this might be due to the fact that affiliative humour mostly benefits social cohesion and self-esteem rather than coping with stress.¹⁰⁷ In the same study, self-enhancing humour had a negative correlation with perceived stress. As this style of humour helps the individual to maintain a sense of self-worth and belief in his/her own abilities, it should indeed facilitate an optimis-

101 All these studies occur in the realm of reported perceptions. Whether self-deprecating individuals are actually more likeable and less threatening is a different empirical question which is hard to answer in a definitive way. 102 Martin et al. (2003), 52–53. 103 Given the size of the literature on political correctness and commonplace humour, his heirs appear to be legion. 104 Richards and Kruger (2017). 105 Richards and Kruger (2017), 5. 106 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6. 107 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6.

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tic outlook in times of stress.¹⁰⁸ Furthermore, as stress narrows the mental scope of a person, having a generous dose of self-enhancing humour would also be expected to help with broadening one’s perspective and see the stressful events as less threatening.¹⁰⁹ Somewhat surprisingly, self-enhancing humour was not shown to have any significant negative correlation with physical-health symptoms.¹¹⁰ As this trait, by definition, serves to boost the self-confidence of the individual, it might be expected to decrease physical-health symptoms by protecting the individual against the physical effects of negative emotions, but that does not seem to be the actual case.¹¹¹ Richards and Kruger found positive correlations between self-defeating humour and both perceived stress and physical-health symptoms.¹¹² This sort of humour is not indicative of natural humility, but rather can be seen as something that lowers a person’s self-worth, leading to less self-efficacy in times of stress and more physical symptoms.¹¹³ As the authors note, this finding underscores that, while individuals may benefit from the use of humour, such a modus operandi applies only to certain forms of it. Other styles of humour, such as self-defeating ridicule or self-mockery may actually be harmful to a person’s health.¹¹⁴ One reason for the detrimental effects of self-defeating humour is that it can function as an avoidance strategy, meaning that stress is not dealt with in a constructive manner and instead builds up.¹¹⁵ In time, the accumulated stress leads to permanent damage, inasmuch as the person’s well-being is eventually crushed by the mounting pressure. Moreover, insofar as the use of the self-defeating style of humour is characterised by self-disparagement to gain social acceptance, rather than being the cause, it may actually be a symptom of underlying emotional problems, such as neediness, low self-esteem, avoidance, neuroticism, anxiety, and/or depressed mood. Self-defeating humour can be a way to ingratiate oneself with others and, as the results of Richards and Kruger indicate, that feeling of ingratiation and belonging can, at low stress levels, protect physical health.¹¹⁶ However, “as perceived

108 Whether persons maintaining self-worth are actually worthy individuals is, altogether, a different value issue. LVOA may be of help in this connection. 109 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6. 110 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6. 111 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6. 112 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6. 113 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6. 114 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6. 115 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6, which applies to the whole paragraph above. 116 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6.

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stress levels increase, successful use of self-defeating humor for social support reasons may start to fail due to over use of this negative style of humor alienating others, thus leading to an increase in poor health”.¹¹⁷ Furthermore, we must add that, as Harvey noted, this kind of humour can be a telling symptom of a broader social malaise, i.e., of unjust cultural, political, legal, and/or societal arrangements which, when taken for granted, can even constitute institutionalised cruelty à la Hallie.¹¹⁸

2.1.6 Stress and Pain A somewhat novel approach to investigating the benefits of humour was taken by Fritz and associates in a 2017 study where they asked their typical sample of university students to recall the most stressful event that had happened to them in the past three years.¹¹⁹ Needless to say, the responses varied greatly, e.g., failing to make it on a school sports team, breaking up with a partner, being charged with a crime, and the death of a family member.¹²⁰ 2.1.6.1 Stress The authors expected that those participants that measured higher on the explicit “humour” dimension would experience reduced psychological distress in response to personal stressors.¹²¹ Additionally, they predicted a dose-response curve in this relationship, i.e., that under conditions of low stress, there would be little difference between individuals scoring low or high on dispositional humour. Conversely, under levels of psychological distress, those scoring high on dispositional humour would experience reduced levels of psychological distress as compared with those scoring low.

117 Richards and Kruger (2017), 6. 118 See Chapter 3 of Part 1 and our extensive discussion of Harvey’s ethical studies in H&C2. Also, it should be noted that, focussing on individual premises and circumstances, current psychological studies of self-defeating self-mockery stay clear of the broader context that facilitates its appearance and perceived necessity. 119 Fritz et al. (2017), 849. 120 Bouquet and Riffault (2010, 22) took a broader, humanistic, and Bergsonian perspective and acknowledged humour’s importance with regard to “being able to laugh at oneself”, “making life’s tragedy more livable”, “social correction”, “social intelligence”, and “a way to gaze upon the world”. Given that all of these dimensions are tackled via earlier thinkers, we do not engage with their excellent study in any particular and/or emphatic manner. 121 Fritz et al. (2017), 849, which applies to the whole paragraph above.

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Fritz and colleagues also examined different humour styles in this context, and they hypothesised that affiliative humour (i.e., the propensity to tell jokes and make others laugh) and self-enhancing humour (i.e., a humorous outlook on life and amusement by daily events) would act as stress-buffers.¹²² Furthermore, they expected the two maladaptive styles of humour, i.e., aggressive (i.e., the inclination to tease or alienate others) and self-defeating humour (i.e., to excessively disparage oneself and being the target of others’ jokes) would be detrimental to coping with stress.¹²³ Additionally, Fritz and her team attempted to untangle the possible mediating factors for these relations between humour styles and coping.¹²⁴ They hypothesised that affiliative and self-enhancing humour would be correlated with greater positive social interactions which would then mediate the relations with reduced distress. Aggressive and self-defeating humour, on the other hand, was expected to correlate with reduced positive social interactions, mediating the relations of these humour styles with greater distress.¹²⁵ They also examined the extent to which reappraisal explained the relation of humour with psychological distress.¹²⁶ To a large extent, the results obtained by Fritz and associates supported their hypotheses.¹²⁷ Self-enhancing and affiliative humour were found to reduce psychological distress, and these relations were mediated via social interaction.¹²⁸ The process of reappraisal was also found to mediate the relations of self-enhancing humour and psychological distress, meaning that humour decreases distress, at least partly, by way of positive reframing of the event in line with Amir’s philosophy, which we discussed in detail in H&C2. Looking at those participants that reported going through a highly disruptive event during the past three years, it became clear that those with high humour levels experienced less psychological distress than did those with moderate- and low levels. However, intriguingly, a similar protective stress-buffer effect was revealed for aggressive humour.¹²⁹ Under conditions of high current-life disruption, those who frequently used aggressive humour experienced less psychological distress than did low- and moderate users. To make us feel better under stressful conditions,

122 123 124 125 126 127 128 cial 129

Fritz et al. (2017), 849. Fritz et al. (2017), 849. Fritz et al. (2017), 849. Fritz et al. (2017), 849. Fritz et al. (2017), 850. Fritz et al. (2017), 852, which applies to the whole paragraph above. As frequent and helpful as solitary humour may be, all studied persons sought humorous sointeractions. Fritz et al. (2017), 852, which applies to the whole paragraph above.

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then, the humorous aggression that we can make use of does not have to be compassionate and/or refined, pace once more, Shaftesbury and his spiritual heirs. Wit, after all, is not one and the same thing as wisdom.¹³⁰ 2.1.6.2 Pain Humour has also been the subject of many studies within the health sciences, and topics such as pain and death have been included in the mix. Pain, in particular, has been widely studied, possibly because, unlike death, it lends itself to experimentation.¹³¹ The dead, among other things, seem adamantly reluctant to fill out questionnaires. Not to mention replying to direct questions. Jokes aside, the relation between humour and pain is an important one insofar as anything that can be used to treat pain is undoubtedly of the highest clinical importance.¹³² The framework for the study of pain and humour is, most often, whether the latter can improve endurance against the former. For decades, then, scientists have set up experiments to see if and how humour can affect pain perception as well as pain-related variables such as quality of life.¹³³ An excellent overview of these studies by Pérez‐Aranda and colleagues pointed out that the results need to be interpreted with caution, insofar as many of them are fraught with methodological problems.¹³⁴ Besides, as previously stated, in order to affect the health of an individual, humour must be appreciated. Therefore, ‘sense of humour’ seems to be a more far-reaching concept than ‘humour’ per se. While the word “humour” functions as a broad and thin umbrella-term for all things that are potentially funny, the expression “sense of humour” refers to the deeper and thicker mechanisms of humour within a person and her social interactions.¹³⁵ As the prolific Rod A. Martin defined it, a “sense of humour” refers to “habitual individual differences in all sorts of behaviours, experiences, affects, attitudes,

130 Again, we must refer our readers to H&C1 for an articulation of our understanding of “wisdom” proper, which does not imply, though, that we are wise. 131 All the studies in this subfield of psychology presuppose the unquestionably negative character of pain. LVOA indicates that there may exist good pain. 132 Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 221. 133 Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 221. 134 Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 221. 135 Logically, however, the latter presupposes the former.

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and abilities relating to amusement, laughter, jocularity, and so on”.¹³⁶ His conception has subsequently been enriched by other authors, who approached it as being: (1) a cognitive ability (i.e., an aptitude for creating, understanding and reproducing); (2) an aesthetic response (i.e., enjoyment); (3) a habitual behaviour (e.g., to frequently laugh, tell jokes and amuse others); (4) an emotion‐related trait (i.e., cheerfulness or motivation); and/or (5) a coping strategy or defence mechanism in the face of adversity.¹³⁷ In other words, there is plenty of research going on, but also no univocal comprehensive model of a sense of humour either.¹³⁸

2.1.7 Pain and Persons When discussing pain, it is important to distinguish between acute and chronic forms. Acute pain is a very beneficial physiological reaction to noxious stimuli that are causing damage to body tissue and trigger fast avoidance behaviour. The stimuli may be chemical, thermal, or mechanical in nature. Chronic pain is a different beast altogether. By stipulative definition, it affects one or more parts of the body for at least three months, produces an array of physical, psychological, and social problems, and impedes daily function. In researching humour, experiments are usually more focussed on the acute form, while the chronic form is usually investigated using questionnaires and correlation studies.¹³⁹ 2.1.7.1 General Considerations Although studies about the relations between humour and pain have focussed on both physical and psychological parameters, it is crucial to recap that any effects that humour may have are bound to be first and foremost via psychological mech-

136 As cited in Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 221. “And so on” is one of the linguistic ways in which the possibly infinite ‘subsidiary details’ of any studied phenomenon can be, at once, tacitly included and explicitly excluded. 137 Such a plurality of options is no surprise. As Heckhausen and Heckhausen (2018) showed, the social sciences have been producing many alternative hypotheses about motivation, but there has been no solid and enduring agreement across the board on any singular one. Scientifically, we still ignore why we do what we do. This is no mere academic issue, for mis/understanding motivation has been linked to mental illnesses (e.g., Weir et al. 2021). 138 Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 221. 139 Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 222.

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anisms. Whether humour can have analgesic effects, boost the immune system, or protect cardiovascular function is, in the end, dependent on the individual activities of perceiving and interpreting it.¹⁴⁰ Many psychological processes have been thought to bring about the pain-relieving effects of humour. Three of them have been recurring frequently in the extant literature. (1) Similar to what happens in the pain-gates at the level of the spinal cord, it is possible that humour may provide distraction from pain stimuli at the level of higher cognitive processing in the brain, i.e., the perception of the endogenously derived pain is suppressed by competing with the exogenously originating humour.¹⁴¹ (2) Another idea is that humour can help with cognitive reappraisal of painful experiences, bolstering resilience, and consequently well-being.¹⁴² Laughing in the face of pain can give a sense of relative mastery over the situation and help refocus from the negative towards the positive, in line with, inter alia, Nietzsche’s and Rosset’s acceptance of life’s inevitable cruelty.¹⁴³ (3) It could be that the effects of humour are mediated through social support in that some people, who are more adept at using humour, may be also better at initiating and maintaining sound social bonds and therefore get more support from others when having to cope with pain.¹⁴⁴ In the study of pain under laboratory conditions, the usual outcome measures are features such as pain-threshold, pain-tolerance, and pain-sensitivity.¹⁴⁵ The painful stimuli are often in the form of a cold-pressor test, i.e., transcutaneous nerve stimulation or ischaemic pain brought about by temporarily shutting off of blood flow to arms or fingers using a blood-pressure cuff. Some studies have included clinical samples, but most use university students or general population samples. 2.1.7.2 Specific Studies The earliest psychological studies of this nature looked at whether watching a humorous video clip or hearing humorous audiotape had any effect on pain-thresh-

140 141 142 143 144 145

Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 222. Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 222. Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 222. Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 222. Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 222. Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 222, which applies to the whole paragraph above.

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old or tolerance.¹⁴⁶ A two-part study by Rosemary Cogan and associates, looked at whether laughter could suppress feelings of pain.¹⁴⁷ (1a) In the first experiment, 20 male and 20 female subjects were asked to listen to either a 20-minute laughter-inducing, relaxation-inducing, or dull-narrative audio tape, or no tape at all.¹⁴⁸ They were then subjected to experimentally induced pain via pressure, and their pain-tolerance was measured. The authors found that the pain was better tolerated in the laughter- and relaxation-inducing conditions. (1b) In the second experiment, 40 female subjects were exposed to similar painful stimuli, and their pain-thresholds were measured after they listened to a laughter-inducing, interesting narrative or uninteresting narrative audio tape, completed a multiplication task, or experienced no intervention.¹⁴⁹ The authors found that the pain-thresholds increased for subjects in the laughter-inducing condition. They concluded that laughter, as opposed to simply any distractive stimuli, reduces pain-sensitivity. (2) Disappointingly, a later study by Ofra Nevo and associates largely failed to replicate the results of Cogan and her colleagues.¹⁵⁰ (A more charitable perspective would be to say that it offered more nuances to the mix.) In Nevo’s study, undergraduate students were exposed to a painful stimulus in the form of a cold-water pressor. Whilst having one of their hands submerged in cold water, a third of the subjects watched a humorous film, another third watched a documentary film, and a third acted as controls, hence receiving no distraction from their pain.¹⁵¹ As an added feature of their study, Nevo and associates also measured the participants’ humour and divided them into high- or low-humour groups, according to self-report questionnaires. Contrary to the results of Cogan’s team, the humorous film did not help control pain more than the documentary film.¹⁵² However, a positive relationship was found between pain-tolerance and sense of humour, especially with the capacity to produce it. Subjects who perceived the film as funny tolerated more pain.

146 Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 222. 147 Famously, Huxley (2006) imagined a dehumanising society in which feelings of pain are chemically eliminated. McMurtry (2011, vol. 1, chaps. 2 and 6–7) instead reflected on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ pain, in keeping with LVOA’s fundamental axioms of value and disvalue (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 148 Cogan et al. (1987). 149 Cogan et al. (1987), 139, which applies to the whole paragraph above. 150 Nevo et al. (1993). 151 Nevo et al. (1993), 71. 152 Nevo et al. (1993), 71, which applies to the whole paragraph above.

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(3) This conspicuous degree of variation is, in all likelihood, to be linked with this volume’s drumbeat that humour exists, ultimately, in the eye of the beholder and its effects are therefore only ever to be experienced at an individual level, i.e., by actual living persons. It also means that all studies must consider individual differences in humour, inasmuch as humour only helps when it is perceived as such. As Karen Zweyer and her colleagues put it: Experimenters implicitly assume that their humor intervention is equally amusing to everybody. This obviously is not the case, as large inter-individual differences exist in terms of both receptiveness to certain humor stimuli and the magnitude of the response. One can also expect that a small percentage of people will watch a funny film and just not find it amusing at all. If experimenters employ large groups those effects might be negligible, as effects average out and the power of the test is still strong due to the large sample size. However, for studies with a smaller sample size, this heterogeneity can be problematic and may prevent finding results. For this reason, but also for the sake of illuminating the process, it is important to study moderator variables that are crucial for the emergence of differential effects.¹⁵³

(4) Two American psychologists, James Rotton and Mark Shats, also tested the hypothesis that repeated exposure to humorous material would reduce distress, pain, and the debilitating effects of medication following surgery.¹⁵⁴ They tested this assumption in a field experiment by randomly assigning 78 post-surgery patients to either a control group or eight experimental groups formed crossing types of videotape (humorous versus serious), perceived control (choice versus no choice), and expectation of pain (positive versus negative). Their results showed that humour reduced requests for minor medication in the two days following surgery, if combined with the expectation that it could in fact reduce pain. If patients were deprived of their choice of whether to view humorous material or not, being made to watch it actually increased the use of heavy analgesic. Additionally, Rotton and Shats concluded that humorous films may actually have an adverse effect on pain-tolerance, especially if the movie does not match the patient’s preferences. The ability to choose what to watch was a key factor in enjoying the film and, thus, in increasing pain-tolerance. These results complicate the relation between humour and pain and should be a warning to all those who want to use humour as a blanket analgesic therapy. Ab-

153 Zweyer et al. (2004), 88. 154 Rotton and Shats (1996), which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing one.

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stractions can only take us part of the way. Each person matters too. Humour will only work if the specific patient appreciates it and/or is ready for it.¹⁵⁵

2.1.8 Pain and Expectations To further investigate whether it is humour alone or just humour as one-possibility-among-many for creating distraction from pain that is responsible for any analgesic effects, Mahoney et al. designed a seminal study controlling for people’s expectations of benefit from laughter.¹⁵⁶ 2.1.8.1 A First Study Recruiting undergraduate students in introductory psychology, the research team divided them into a 2x2 factorial with an additional control group.¹⁵⁷ Participants were randomly assigned to either a humour or relaxation group and were given one of two instructional sets to create an expectation that the treatment would either increase or decrease their pain-threshold (i.e., the expectation variable). Individuals assigned to the control group were exposed to humour, but given no instructions that could generate expectations of its possible effects. All participants answered questionnaires measuring humour and related variables. After they had completed the scales, an initial measurement of pain-thresholds was taken using a blood-pressure cuff. Pressure was applied manually to one arm, and the participant was instructed to indicate the point at which any discomfort was felt. Following the initial measurement of their pain-threshold, the participants received the following instructions (with variations as indicated by the brackets) depending on which of the four experimental groups they belonged to: “Research has shown that after people have been laughing (relaxing), they focus on their experience and become more (less) sensitive to pain and discomfort. But more research is needed. So, what we’re trying to do in this study is to replicate an earlier study showing that people are less able (more able) to tolerate discomfort after laughing (relaxing).”¹⁵⁸

155 See in this regard M. Polanyi’s (1962c) “personal knowledge”, which we outlined in Chapter 4 of Part 1. 156 Mahony et al. (2001). 157 Mahony et al. (2001), 217–220, which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing one. 158 Mahony et al. (2001), 220.

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The participants then viewed either a comic episode or the relaxation video, completed the semantic differential scales, and rated how funny they perceived the comic video to be. The video selected to elicit laughter was “The Soup Nazi” episode of the US TV comedy Seinfeld, whilst “Dreams of Hawaii”, a video of equal length, was selected to induce relaxation. After the viewing, a second measurement of pain-threshold was obtained.¹⁵⁹ In short, the study showed that both the humour and relaxation videos raised discomfort-thresholds, and the effect of both types of video stimulation was enhanced by expectations.¹⁶⁰ As the authors stated, the results suggest that some of the successes of the wide variety of humor and laughter interventions currently being used in applied settings may be due, in part, to the interaction of existing beliefs about the value of humor and laughter and the potentiating messages, either stated or implied by the very existence of the intervention in a clinical setting, that the intervention will be successful. As with any placebo effect, the benefits are real enough. Although these results are suggestive, they do not generalize to either pain or discomfort in clinical settings.¹⁶¹

The crux of their message being “that an induced humor state is no more effective than induced relaxation in coping with discomfort”.¹⁶² Even so, Mahoney and her associates were not quite ready to render a final verdict: Yet, there is something special and unique about mirthful laughter, which is always an indivisible amalgam of its composite mechanisms, that has not yet been explained satisfactorily. It is fairly safe to assume that most people in pain would prefer a laughter intervention, particularly one of their own choosing, over relaxation exercises, hypnotism, or reading a brochure arguing the benefits of a particular program. Perhaps this assumed preference is attributable to other components of humor and laughter, such as enhanced mood, physiological and emotional arousal, altered perspective, and increased sense of control, which have not yet been controlled experimentally. It is possible that the beneficial effects of laughter, although not quantitatively superior to the effects of relaxation, distraction, or expectation, are qualitatively superior in some way.¹⁶³

Many more variables, then, might still be playing an important role.

159 160 161 162 163

Mahony et al. Mahony et al. Mahony et al. Mahony et al. Mahony et al.

(2001), 220–221. (2001), 217. (2001), 224–225. (2001), 225. (2001), 225.

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2.1.8.2 Two More Studies For example, an older study by Weisenberg et al. assessed the effects of film-induced mood on pain perception, varied film-type and length and introduced a 30-minute waiting period between the film-viewing and the pain-stimuli (again, a cold-pressor test).¹⁶⁴ The experimenters had volunteers watch either humorous, Holocaust-based, or neutral films that were respectively 15-, 30-, and 45 minutes in length. A so-called “no-film” group served as controls. The results indicated that watching a humorous film increased pain-tolerance in the cold-pressor test, but the same effect was also seen for the length of the film, regardless of the type, i.e., watching any kind of film for an extended period increased the pain-threshold. They concluded, rather modestly, that humour and laughter cause physiological changes that take time to take their full effect. In sum, it is arduous to show convincingly that it is humour itself, rather than the more general phenomenon of distraction, that has this beneficial effect on people’s pain-perception. For instance, dramatic and tearful films have as significant effects as humorous films do in this respect.¹⁶⁵ Similarly, Laura Mitchell and her team demonstrated analogous results from pain-threshold measurements while listening to humorous tapes, music, or completing an arithmetic task.¹⁶⁶ Granted, music and humour were somewhat more effective in this than the arithmetic task, but listening to preferred music actually gave the participants more sense of control over the painful experience than humour did.¹⁶⁷ Still, the results need to be interpreted with caution, insofar as the participants were allowed to choose the music that they listened to, but had no such alternative when it came to the humorous material.¹⁶⁸ And as the previous discussion has shown, when it comes to humour, having a personal choice does matter.¹⁶⁹

2.1.9 Pain and Moods Contemporary psychological research into humour has typically been more concerned about the perceived quality of the stimulus (i.e., how funny the material is) rather than the intensity of the response that it creates within the subject

164 165 166 167 168 169

Weisenberg et al. (1998), which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing one. See e.g., Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 224. Mitchell et al. (2006). Mitchell et al. (2006). Mitchell et al. (2006). Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 224.

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(i.e., the degree of amusement).¹⁷⁰ There is of course the easy option of just asking subjects to indicate their amusement level on a questionnaire. Another, more behavioural approach is, instead, to monitor smiling and laughing.¹⁷¹ Unquestionably, people often laugh and smile just out of courtesy or even nervousness. Therefore, any attempt to use smiling and laughing as endpoints must be able to distinguish between the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’. How to aggregate laughing and smiling into one response poses yet another problem.¹⁷² In this connection, Martin strongly advocated for better measurements of laughter in all of its structural elements and functional variations: Much of the research to date, using experimental laboratory procedures with exposure to comedy videotapes, has either implicitly or explicitly focused on the hypothesis that health benefits result from physiological changes accompanying laughter. However, most of these studies have failed to monitor the empirical occurrence of laughter, to distinguish various types of laughter, or to examine the relation between duration, frequency, or intensity of laughter and physiological outcomes. Thus, it may be that genuine physiological effects of particular types or degrees of laughter have gone largely undetected in the research due to sloppy methodological procedures, resulting in the weak and inconsistent pattern of results with which we are now faced.¹⁷³

Verbal ratings and behavioural data are usually only slightly correlated, meaning that your bellowing laughter might not be a certain indicator of your enjoyment.¹⁷⁴ In the field of pain research, that complicates matters, insofar as it has been argued by some scientists that laughing possesses, in itself, therapeutic benefit. Another important question about the relation between humour and pain is which features of humorous behaviours and experiences are expected to increase pain-tolerance in the laboratory setting.¹⁷⁵ Studies have mostly revolved around passive enjoyment but, as Karen Zweyer and associates point out, active creation of humour might have greater effect, inasmuch as it involves more effort and would likely provide more distraction. Equally unresolved is the question of the intensity and/or complexity of the response to the stimulus being used, i.e., whether subjects have to actually laugh

170 Zweyer et al. (2004), 89. 171 Behavioural approaches also allow to test individuals who are not literate, hence broadening the target group. 172 See Zweyer et al. (2004), 89. 173 Martin (2001), 515. 174 Zweyer et al. (2004), 89, which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing two. 175 As noted in H&C2, especially with reference to Wittgenstein and, secondarily, Heidegger and Krichtafovitch, moods are important vis-à-vis the aspects of reality that we are likely to grasp and/ or focus on. All foregrounds require backgrounds, after all.

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or just get into a cheerful mood. Correspondingly, it is imperative for these studies to ascertain whether it is merely the humorous stimulus by itself that is sufficient to provide the analgesic effect or if other variables, such as mood, emotion, memory, and/or reasoning, play a major role as well. 2.1.9.1 Studies A thorough study by Zweyer and associates aimed at separating the factors that are considered potentially essential for the analgesic effects of humour (i.e., mood, behaviour, and cognition related to humour).¹⁷⁶ They also looked at whether the personality-traits of cheerfulness and seriousness moderated pain-tolerance. To that end, they randomly assigned subjects to three groups, each having a different task to pursue, while watching a funny film. They were labelled Cheerfulness, Exhilaration, and Humour production. A seven-minute segment of the short film “Mr. Bean at the Dentist” was used as the stimulus. The film includes sound but not speech. The participants received different instructions on how to behave while watching the film depending on which group they had been assigned to.¹⁷⁷ Zweyer and associates used an inventory to measure the three constructs of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood, both as states and as traits.¹⁷⁸ Participants were asked to rate how pleasant the task was to them, successful they were in following it, interesting they found it, well they were able to concentrate on the task, far the task served as distraction during the cold-pressor test, and funny the film was to them. Subjects of the humour-production group also indicated how funny they thought their commentary was. All participants were also asked

176 Zweyer et al. (2004), 85–119, which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing three, plus a list. 177 A detailed description of the methodology of the study is provided here both to give the reader a deeper understanding into this particular study and offer insight into how such studies are generally conducted. Therein lies, after all, much of the difference between the ‘old’ humanities and the ‘young’ social sciences. 178 The difference between traits and states in psychological research was succinctly outlined by Steyer et al. (2015, 74): “One reason is that researchers need to know whether a change in observed test scores or other observed measures reflects changes in the psychological attribute to be measured (e.g., depression, anxiety, stress, life satisfaction, etc.), situational fluctuations, method effects, or even just measurement errors. This consideration already implies that we intuitively make a distinction between an attribute of a person (a trait), an attribute of a person-in-a-situation (a state), and observable measures that may reflect both these components, but that typically also contain method effects and measurement error.” Fascinatingly, the reliance on intuitive distinctions recalls and corroborates M. Polanyi’s (1962c) epistemology-cum-phenomenology (see Chapter 4 of Part 1).

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if they had seen the film beforehand and generally liked Mr. Bean as a comedy character. A video camera was installed behind a one-way mirror in an adjacent room, providing a close-up view of the participants’ face and shoulders. All observable facial movements of each participant were coded using an anatomically based system. Frequency, intensity, and duration of movements relevant for exhilaration and the identification of non-enjoyment smiles were coded. Moreover, the occurrence of laughter (and humour production) was coded too, based on the audible reactions recorded with the help of a highly sensitive hidden microphone. Measures of pain-threshold and pain-tolerance were taken much before the cold-pressor test, immediately before, immediately after, and 20 minutes after. The aim of their complex experiment was threefold. (1) The researchers were interested in the variations of enjoyment of humour to study whether cheerfulness (as a mood), exhilaration (as affect) and humour production (as involving more cognitive elements in enjoyment) have different effects on pain-tolerance. Those components were added to watching a funny movie and each was manifested in one of the three experimental groups. (2) The researchers studied whether the degree of enjoyment moderates any effect. Both experiential and behavioural indicators of liking humour were used and, for the latter, various distinctions among types of smiles were drawn. Basically, only displays of enjoyment (i.e., joint action of the zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi muscles) were expected to moderate the effects of humour on pain.¹⁷⁹ (3) The researchers examined whether trait-cheerfulness and seriousness moderate the effects of a humorous film on pain. The results of the study by Zweyer and associates showed that the average painthreshold and pain-tolerance increased in all three humour groups after watching the film and remained at an elevated level for at least 20 minutes.¹⁸⁰ This indicates that the effect of humour might extend beyond the mere moment. However, the 20‐minute interval chosen was not long enough to determine when the induced effects disappeared and pain-tolerance returned to baseline. But it is necessary to

179 These experiments may seem thorough, but today’s “surveillance capitalism” can attain much more, for corporate software is utilised daily to monitor heartbeat rates, breathing patterns, the faintest noises, and the typing patterns of unsuspecting computer users all over the world, liberal nations included (Zuboff 2019, title et passim). 180 Zweyer et al. (2004), 109–110, which applies to the whole paragraph above.

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note that, after this interval, the measured mood states had already returned to baseline levels, even though the pain-tolerance effects still prevailed. Most importantly, the study revealed that the facial expression of sincere enjoyment is a mediating factor in the relationship between humour and pain. For pain-relief to occur, it seems that the participant has to enjoy the humorous intervention with a real “Duchenne smile”.¹⁸¹ On the contrary, laughter did not have any effect.¹⁸² Those participants who were experiencing negative emotions during the time of the study were less likely to receive any benefit of pain-relief from watching the humorous material. The same applied to those subjects that were instructed to make voluntary efforts to show and amplify joy. All this led the authors to conclude that ideally, for a pain-tolerance effect to occur, individuals should enjoy themselves in an unrestrained manner not blending enjoyment with any other emotions, and they should not be forced to laugh. In regards to the latter, we do not know what happens when initially forced laughter turns into genuine emotional laughter. At present, we only know that it is the enjoyment display in high frequency, intensity, and duration that yields this effect, whereas merely verbal signs of enjoyment do not. This is not meant to imply that subjective enjoyment per se cannot be used to predict pain-tolerance, or is dissociated with facial expression, as subjective ratings and facial expressions of enjoyment were significantly but modestly correlated. However, as a single point measure (taken in retrospect), a subjective enjoyment rating may not adequately capture the affective events, whereas the continuously recorded facial actions do, and thus the latter are better predictors.¹⁸³

2.1.9.2 Suggestions Given the methodological limits inherent to third-person studies of eminently firstperson phenomena, the study did not provide any information about qualitatively different types of laughter that are intuitively known to reflect emotional states. Nonetheless, in line with older claims by humanistic psychology, the results suggested that the vocal act of laughter is neither necessary nor, at least, a better predictor than facial display.¹⁸⁴ Fascinatingly, Zweyer and associates found that lower intensities of laughter (single or repeated audible expulsions of air) were more predictive than laughter associated with phonated (“ha-ha”) sounds. Thus, genuine enjoyment at the level of a big smile seems to be optimal. However, one should not over-interpret the find-

181 182 183 184

See Ekman et al. (1990), 342–353. Zweyer et al. (2004), 110, which applies to the whole paragraph above. Zweyer et al. (2004), 110–111. Zweyer et al. (2004), 110–111.

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ings, as they need to be replicated first. Also, it might be good to study a larger sample and examine different elements of laughter (facial, gestural, postural) as possible predictors.¹⁸⁵

The authors also raised an essential discussion about the causal relationship between humour and pain, noting that, as little is known about the involved neural mechanisms, all inferences of causality must be resisted—from a scientific point of view. Causality was not to be inferred, in short. High versus low enjoyment was not varied experimentally, so stating that “enjoyment led to higher pain-tolerance” is not warranted, based on these results. Other explanations cannot be ruled out.¹⁸⁶ It could, for example, be possible that the causality worked in reverse, i.e., that greater tolerance for pain led to a greater enjoyment of humour. Or, maybe, some spurious third variable, perhaps having to do with temperament at a physiological level (e.g., the genetic roots of a deep-reaching Bergsonesque “anaesthesia of the heart” or of an older Galenic “humour”) influences both pain-tolerance and cheerfulness. Further studies would have to be done to tackle this question and, more importantly, better research technology would have to be available.¹⁸⁷ It is crucial to note that when individual differences were not taken into account, the three humour groups did not show differences in changes in pain-sensitivity or pain-tolerance, meaning that they all worked equally well.¹⁸⁸ Still, within the groups themselves, voluntary effort correlated negatively with pain-tolerance and, in the cheerfulness condition, the suppression of overt behaviour generally lowered the effects. Zweyer and associates found also that trait-cheerfulness and trait-seriousness moderate the effects of humour on the pain parameters, but in a complex manner. Participants with a low level of trait-cheerfulness had increased levels of paintolerance immediately and 20 minutes after the film in the exhilaration group; the same applied to subjects with a high level of trait-cheerfulness in the humour-production group. These two subgroups seemed to be responsible for the overall increase in pain-tolerance immediately and 20 minutes after the film. Subjects with a low level of trait-seriousness, though, had an overall higher level of painthreshold and pain-tolerance. When looking at the combination of trait-cheerfulness and trait-seriousness, it also seemed to be that those with low trait-seriousness were responsible for the effects found for trait-cheerfulness.

185 186 ical 187 188

Zweyer et al. (2004), 111–112, which applies also to the ensuing paragraph above. By stressing these issues, Zweyer et al. (2004) display exemplary methodological and theoretawareness. Zweyer et al. (2004), 112. Zweyer et al. (2004), 112, which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing one.

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One possible explanation that the authors offered is that, while both high levels of trait-cheerfulness and low levels of trait-seriousness went along with a higher level of state-cheerfulness, the subjects being low in trait-seriousness showed more genuine smiling and laughter in the exhilaration- and humour-production groups.¹⁸⁹ Insofar as genuine smiling and laughter, but not state-cheerfulness, were found positively related to pain-threshold and pain-tolerance, it was probably the fact that the subjects being low in trait-seriousness smiled and laughed more that, eventually, produced the increase in pain-tolerance in those two groups. A plausible further confounding issue might be that individuals with high levels of trait-cheerfulness are likely to laugh a lot more in their everyday lives and, therefore, might be more used to laughing and not experiencing the physiological changes as strongly as individuals with low levels of trait-cheerfulness. As summarised by Pérez‐Aranda and associates, the experimental data has shown that humour can diminish the perception of pain, but have not convincingly demonstrated that humour has any specific attributes beyond other distractors.¹⁹⁰

2.1.10 Moods and Pain Chronic pain is very different from the acute form, and even though physiological attributes may play a role in how people engage with the latter, psychological variables such as anxiety, depression, life satisfaction, and distress are key in managing chronic pain.¹⁹¹ (1) A recent study of patients suffering from fibromyalgia syndrome, conducted by Fritz and colleagues, offered some interesting insights.¹⁹² Specifically, their research revealed that people who had higher measurements of humour experienced less psychological distress at baseline and reported fewer daily physical symptoms.¹⁹³ Needless to say, it is also quite possible that the assumed causality might be operating in reverse, i.e., instead of humour causing less pain, less pain can facilitate humour.

189 Zweyer et al. (2004), 113, which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing one. 190 Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 224. 191 Pérez‐Aranda et al. (2019), 225. 192 Fritz et al. (2017), 846, which applies to the whole paragraph above. 193 Fibromyalgia syndrome is a debilitating chronic disorder that causes widespread bodily pain and tenderness and concentration difficulties. The symptoms and their severity vary considerably between patients but usually include some disability, fatigue, and impaired function (Galdon et al. 2006, 40).

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(2) Another study by José Galdon and colleagues found that, in patients suffering from temporomandibular disorders, those who were less inclined to use humour tended to pay more attention to their symptomatology and were poorer at minimising their conditions.¹⁹⁴ Granted, the same precautions apply to the interpretation of this data as with the study above. The causality might just be the other way around, i.e., worse symptoms could very well make a person less inclined to see the humorous side of things.¹⁹⁵ (3) The question of causality was partly resolved by Erin Merz and associates in a later study.¹⁹⁶ They designed longitudinal research assessing the relationship between humour and health in patients with systemic sclerosis, which is a progressive rheumatic disease. Based on their results, the authors concluded that humour did not improve the quality of life in chronic disease to any significant measurable extent. Suffering persons’ suffering went on unabated, and humour made no verifiable difference.¹⁹⁷ Furthermore, while the notion of humour providing an inexpensive and accessible intervention among the chronically ill is certainly appealing, Merz and her colleagues suggested in their study that this relationship is probably associative and modest at best, i.e., its statistical power was limited and it could not really say whether better humour causes less suffering or whether less suffering causes better humour. (4) Even if the question about causality may have been somewhat illuminated, the results of other studies led to even further complexities with regards to the relevant typology of humour in conditions of stress and/or pain. A 2010 study by Freeman and Ventis, for instance, examined the relationship between humour, stress, and health in retirement.¹⁹⁸ Their data suggested that the adaptive value of different styles of humour depends very much on the level (low or high) of stress that the (retired) person perceives. Pressure leads more easily to preoccupation than to pranks. No big surprise there. The details of how different typologies of humour presented themselves in that study, however, were quite unlike any other, including those that we have already discussed. The results of Freeman and Ventis suggested that even the simple and common labels of “adaptive” or “maladaptive” humour may be sorrily inade-

194 Galdon et al. (2006). 195 Ordinary self-observation lends credence to this possibility. 196 Merz et al. (2009), which applies to the whole paragraph above. 197 Humour may not be significant, if not even inappropriate, under conditions of prolonged and sometimes utterly hopeless pain and/or overwhelming anomie, as we argued in H&C2. 198 Freeman and Ventis (2010), 138, which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing two.

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quate. They found that self-enhancing humour only appeared to be truly adaptive in situations of high stress. In low-stress situations, retirees with high self-enhancing humour did not appear to differ from those with lower values. This sort of empirical result may well lead to the conclusion that the adaptive value of each style of humour is highly contextual, i.e., under low stress there is no advantage to self-enhancing humour, but there might be under high stress. Similarly, self-mockery, i.e., self-defeating humour, only appeared maladaptive when daily hassles were minimal.¹⁹⁹ Nevertheless, when daily hassles were present at a higher level, a higher self-defeating score was related to experiencing less pain and could therefore be seen as possessing an adaptive quality. The same pattern applied to aggressive humour, and the logical conclusion seemed to be that the extent to which self-defeating and aggressive humour are maladaptive depends very much on the concrete, specific situation faced by each person.²⁰⁰ Gender is also a factor that needs to be considered when exploring adaptiveness in the use of humour, according to Freeman and Ventis.²⁰¹ In their study, they saw a consistent pattern of divergence between males and females across multiple health-related outcomes. In males, a high self-defeating- or aggressive-humour score was adaptive during high stress. In females, on the other hand, a high self-defeating- or aggressive-humour score was more maladaptive when in highly stressful situations. These results highlight the fact that both contextual and individual factors need to be considered in the study of humour style and health. Gender is appreciably one variable. Age might be another.²⁰² (5) These findings have also interesting implications for the Humor Styles Questionnaire, developed in our century by Martin and associates.²⁰³ By dividing humour styles into a 2x2 model of adaptive styles (i.e., affiliative and self-enhancing) and maladaptive (i.e., aggressive and self-defeating), Martin and his colleagues acknowledged that humour is not a unitary construct but rather a multi-faceted one. Yet, it must be noticed that the results of the study conducted by Freeman and Ventis imply that even the addition of positive and negative humour styles is not sufficient to explain the complexities of humour.²⁰⁴ It appears that the adaptive value of the humour styles may not be an all-or-none phenomenon. Rather,

199 200 201 202 203 204

In H&C2, we addressed in more detail the variety and functions of self-mockery. Freeman and Ventis (2010), 139. Freeman and Ventis (2010), 139, which applies to the whole paragraph above. Issues of gender and age also reflect broader socio-cultural constructs. Martin et al. (2003), 50 and 48–75. Freeman and Ventis (2010), 139.

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their adaptive or maladaptive nature is both contextual (e.g., high- or low stress) and dispositional (e.g., gender).²⁰⁵ In the end, humour keeps escaping the firm grasp of those who study it, leading to new interrogatives and more possible lines of analysis with each new determination. At the same time, a veritable mound of in-depth studies keeps accumulating in all disciplinary areas, offering intriguing vistas on, at least, select aspects of “humour” proper. We are thus curiously reminded of Castoriadis’ wry definition of “ridiculous”, i.e., “a state that falls short of either failure or non-failure”.²⁰⁶

2.2 Can Cruel Humour Be Beneficial? ‘Trolling’ and ‘flaming’ represent terms for online behavior that refer to negative or hostile interaction, and represent an area for further pursuit as they would appear to carry abusiveness and cruelty to levels unlikely in real-life social situations. They sometimes involve expressions of or reactions to humor and so merit attention in research contexts in the areas of disparaging or failed humor. Among friends and acquaintances on social-networking sites, there is often a built-in braking mechanism on abrasiveness and cruelty. On hardcore bulletin boards like Reddit and 4chan, or other forums allowing anonymous comments (or fabricated usernames), unrestrained disinhibition is possible and more likely. —Eric Weltz²⁰⁷

2.2.1 Solidarity In what has to be one of the most humorously titled articles in the history of scientific publishing, i.e., “Humor Orgies as Ritual Insult: Putdowns and Solidarity Maintenance in a Corner Donut Shop”, Scott Patrick Murphy followed suit and gave a compelling account of the beneficial use of cruel commonplace humour.²⁰⁸ 2.2.1.1 Orgies To be frank, his subject is not outrageous in any way, insofar as Murphy looked into how in-group members can exhibit a sense of solidarity by earning permission to direct verbal putdowns towards another in the company of others. Neither was his chosen topic particularly innovative, inasmuch as most males and a good 205 Freeman and Ventis (2010), 139. 206 Castoriadis (1997b), 92. 207 Weltz (2017), 512. See Jane (2022, 571–576) for an account of sexist “trolling” and its feminist counterpart, which involves many different expressive strategies. 208 Murphy (2017).

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portion of females recognise this form of banter in their own circle of friends. Shaftesbury’s English gentlemen may well have engaged in plenty of just such joshing around the year 1700.²⁰⁹ Admittedly, however, psychological research about this interesting phenomenon has been lacking. Besides, the innovative aspect of it lies somewhat in the methodology, but even more so in the theoretical approach which, for one, complexifies the role of pain in human interactions. Set in a corner donut shop in southern California, Murphy’s paper describes how a group of old, straight, white, middle-class men direct improvisational putdowns towards each other and attempts to explain how this banter preserves a sense of group solidarity.²¹⁰ In what must have been emotionally draining and physically infusing fieldwork, Murphy became a regular at the shop where small groups of friends, between three and ten men, regularly gathered over morning coffee. The men were aged 67 to 95; most were in their 80s. Many had been friends for longer than 30 years, having lived in the same neighbourhoods, attended the same churches, engaged in the same leisure activities, and, in a few cases, worked together. ²¹¹ A “humour orgy” is, in this ethnographic framework, a distinct form of ritual insults, characterised by successive, situation-dependent bouts of talk where members of the group play with interpersonal meanings and take turns “givin’ it” and “takin’ it”.²¹² Although we have not given much room to improvisational humorous banter in this volume, it is ever-present in everyday life, abundantly found in public places and private settings, and occurring across a whole array of relationships.²¹³ Using humorous putdowns as a form of teasing is a risky way of communicating, for it can easily be interpreted as unmitigated aggression. As we discussed in H&C2, misfiring humour can lead to dreadful consequences in a person’s life. The reason is straightforward. This kind of humour is part friendly and part unfriendly. Teasing and putdowns are especially precarious when people do not know each other very well and can easily evolve into antagonism and/or all-out conflict.²¹⁴

209 We are referring, of course, to the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (see H&C1 and Chapter 2 of Part 1). 210 Murphy (2017), 108. Given the informal premises of Murphy (2017) and its spelling in the title, we keep using the word “donut” instead of the more formal “doughnut”. 211 Murphy (2017), 113. 212 Murphy (2017), 109. 213 Murphy (2017), 109. 214 Murphy (2017), 111.

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Yet again, humorous putdowns can also serve to demonstrate one’s ranking within the group by identifying with whom one is close friends.²¹⁵ Humour can thus be seen as a marker of solidarity between group members. Having the unstated licence to make ruthless fun of your friend means that the boundaries are loosely demarcated and the relationship is solid enough to cope with such a seemingly vicious state of affairs.²¹⁶ The subjects in Murphy’s study appeared to share a common understanding such that the participant “takin’ it” believes that the participant “givin’ it” thinks that the participant “takin’ it” and other peers in the immediate audience believe that the uttered insult is not true. Thus, in the donut shop, the regular ‘givin’ it’, the regular ‘takin’ it’, and peer audience members that are regulars potentially ‘givin’ it’ or ‘takin’ it’ by implication, tacitly agree that the proposition is not true. Hence, audience members in the donut shop that are not members of the peer group may not be able to distinguish between instances of ritual insult and personal insult.²¹⁷

Humour orgies are, according to Murphy, different from stand-alone bouts of humorous interaction because they give participants the sense that the status hierarchies and mandated conduct of broader society do not apply to the social and moral worth of their own peer group. It is, in Bakhtinian terms, a carnival.²¹⁸ And that shared understanding is, in terms of Murphy’s subtly psychoanalytic sexual metaphor, the “climax” of the carnivalesque ritual.²¹⁹ This sort of humorous banter is therefore not a way for the participants to distinguish themselves in any way. Quite the contrary, humour orgies solidify a “wefeeling” shared among the group members, counterintuitively, by apparently putting one another down in the most outrageous ways.²²⁰ 2.2.1.2 Roasts An interesting perspective on this carnivalesque use of cruel commonplace humour comes from the study of Kasunic and Kaufman of the r/RoastMe platform

215 The mock-aggression of social animals has been emphasised by ethological-evolutionary theories of humour. 216 Murphy (2017), 112. 217 Murphy (2017), 118. 218 Murphy (2017), 125. 219 Murphy (2017), 125. 220 Murphy (2017), 125.

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on reddit.com, which we discussed at length in H&C2.²²¹ In this online sub-community, which is based on people willingly posting photos of themselves (the roastees) and thereby offering anyone (the roasters) to use them as the targets of offensive jokes and comments, one might think that the relations of the perpetrator vis-à-vis the target would be one of emotional dissociation. Quite to the contrary, the study showed that invested perspective-taking was a critical component of people’s engagement in r/RoastMe. A majority of the participants, who had commented as roasters, discussed directly engaging in perspective-taking as part of the roasting process, i.e., imagined themselves in the place of the person who had posted a photo and thought about what they would want to hear if they were in their place. Some of them, as the study reports, wanted to make roastees feel valued in the present and positive about the future. Sometimes, being in the firing line is humour’s whole point, for something good can come out of it. Wanting to make the roastees laugh was also mentioned, insofar as some of the roasters stated that laughter was one of the best things you could provide others with, especially if you were going through tough times. The roasters felt that by chaffing someone else for their weaknesses, they provided the roastees with relief, notwithstanding the momentary pain involved in the process. Roasters also sought out roastees with whom they personally identified, e.g., based on gender or sexual orientation. As Kasunic and Kaufman pointed out, identifying with roastees can be psychologically beneficial for the roasters. Being able to see someone that has the same flaws as yourself can make you realise that you are not alone, and being able to criticise someone else about it can even make it a little better or, at least, more bearable. This point, incidentally, had already been made, most eloquently, by Morreall: When the person with a sense of humor laughs in the face of his own failure, he is showing that his perspective transcends the particular situation he’s in, and that he does not have an egocentric, overly precious view of his own endeavours. This is not to say that he lacks selfesteem – quite the contrary. It is because he feels good about himself at a fundamental level that this or that setback is not threatening to him. The person without self-esteem, on the other hand, who is unsure of his own worth, tends to invest his whole sense of himself in each of his projects. Whether he fails or succeeds, he is not likely to see things in an objective way; because his ego rides on each of the goals he sets for himself, any failure will constitute personal defeat and any success personal triumph. He simply cannot afford to laugh at

221 Kasunic and Kaufman (2018), which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing three.

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himself, whatever happens. So having a sense of humor about oneself is psychologically healthy.²²²

2.2.2 Superiority Given our review of the scientific literature and our candid reflections on our own experiences, we concluded that cruel humour often treats other people with contempt and, at times, operates shamelessly by means of public acts of belittlement. Sometimes it shows no reverence for even our most sacred institutions, intuitions, or ideas. The same goes for the most terrifying and tragic parts of our existence, whether individual or collective.²²³ Cruel humour takes on subjects like pain, finitude, and decay, and makes light of them, giving us the opportunity to laugh about even the most morbid topic. Whether it is then termed “cruel”, “black”, “gallows”, “morbid”, or “sick”, this sort of humour may, in some cases, help us to discuss, at a comforting distance, the absurd, cold, paradoxical, and/or cruel nature of our puny lives.²²⁴ Being a future feast for maggots, each of us may sometimes obtain some relief by poking fun at his/her wretched condition, if s/he happens to ponder upon it candidly and humorously.²²⁵ 2.2.2.1 Deidealisation Although we all expect physicians to be both caring and compassionate, learning medicine in schools and hospitals often leads the students to develop a cynical and contemptuous disbelief in the sincerity of people’s motives and/or statements.²²⁶ This process is sometimes called “traumatic deidealisation”.²²⁷

222 Morreall (1983), 106. As argued in H&C2, this approach is overly individualistic and neglects the fact that there can be oppressed people who possess valid reasons to have no self-esteem and desire to laugh. 223 In a review of Lundquist and Dyrbye (2022), Castañar Rubio (2023, 242) characterised Danish national humour as “show[ing] little respect for taboos… Everything can be made fun in the Nordic country: religion, sex, politics, foreigners, minority, or the monarchy.” Thus, the Danish cartoons discussed in Chapter 1 would seem to belong to a well-established local praxis of relief-inducing, taboo-breaking, cruel humour. 224 Leopardi, Schopenhauer and Cioran loom large here, but Lucretius and Gracián could be mentioned too. 225 See also Willinger et al. (2017), 159. 226 We cannot but reiterate our warnings about making claims concerning the turbid realm of human motivation. See also H&C2. 227 Testerman et al. (1996), 43.

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As the students advance through their medical studies, they frequently become more cynical. The defining point seems to be when they transition from their pre-clinical to their clinical studies and start to engage with patients in hospital settings.²²⁸ There, the atmosphere among the health professionals is saturated with cruel humour.²²⁹ Derogatory and cynical comments towards patients are both sanctioned and commonly used.²³⁰ Testerman and his colleagues studied this shift from altruism to cynicism and suggested that there might be two models that can explain it: (1) One is the professional identity model, which suggests that medical students’ cynicism and their use of derogatory and cynical humour towards patients results from the harshness of their socialisation into the complex and ambiguous ethical environment of the medical profession. This model would predict that once through their training and after assuming some level of authority of their own, they would become less cynical.²³¹ (2) The other is called the intergenerational model and states that the development of cynicism is a learned response to mistreatment by cynical attending physicians.²³² Their study provided evidence for the former model, but not the latter. 2.2.2.2 Distances A later study by Wear and associates found that there were certain unwritten rules between attending physicians and residents pertaining to the humour ‘game’. In essence: [T]he person or group with the least authority, particularly students, almost never initiated derogatory and cynical humour directed at patients. However, they noticed that some lessening of this rule occurred when students became more familiar with the styles and values of the attendings and residents in any given clerkship. Residents may initiate derogatory and cynical humour around attendings but only after they have ‘watched’ the attendings with whom they are working and noted their attitudes towards such humour.²³³

228 229 230 231 232 233

Testerman et al. (1996), 43. Wear et al. (2009), 34. Wear et al. (2009), 34. Testerman et al. (1996), 43. Testerman et al. (1996), 43. Wear et al. (2009), 36.

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Regardless of which department they were attached to, the study conducted by Wear et al. indicates that the objects of humour that the students engaged in included, predominantly, alcohol- and drug-abusing patients, obese patients, and a generous category of ‘difficult’ patients. All attending and residents cited similar motives for the use of derogatory and cynical humour directed towards patients: to relieve frustration, fatigue, stress, and anger; respond to patients demands; make light of difficult work; distance oneself; and stay sane. The pressure had to be discharged, somehow. They also used clinical terms such as “counter-transference” and “defence mechanism”; and last but not least, they said that cruel humour was a way of effecting camaraderie with their peers.²³⁴ The use of cruel humour in these situations can be qualitatively different. One of the attending doctors interviewed by Wear and associates described this succinctly. He distinguished between gallows humour and derogatory humour and likened it to “the difference between whistling as you go through the graveyard and kicking over the gravestones”.²³⁵ Gallows humour is practised “just to survive”, he said, but derogatory humour relates more to specific “classes” of undeserving people, such as drug addicts.²³⁶ Good old superiority would seem to be at work, then, although proving itself to be, in all likelihood, neither good nor old.²³⁷ Conveying information about patients using cruel humour can lead the recipient to form all sorts of preconceived notions about them which might later impede their medical treatment by biasing and/or clouding the medical expert’s judgement.²³⁸ Similarly, it can be disheartening for the patient and his/her family members to hear the medical staff giggling, not to mention if they suspect that their laughter is aimed at the patient in question.²³⁹ People working in situations where they are faced regularly with truly tragic events, such as police officers, health professionals, or military personnel, seem to resort recurrently to humour in a way that most of us would find incomprehensible.²⁴⁰ The following account was given by the ethicist Katie Watson in an article about gallows humour in medicine: It was 3:00 AM and three tired emergency room residents were wondering why the pizza they’d ordered hadn’t come yet. A nurse interrupted their pizza complaints with a shout:

234 Wear et al. (2009), 37. 235 Wear et al. (2009), 39. 236 Wear et al. (2009), 39. 237 Once again, determining whether such a humour is good or not is an evaluation that each person must make. 238 Wear et al. (2009), 37. 239 Wear et al. (2009), 37. 240 See Watson (2011), 37.

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“GSW Trauma One - no pulse, no blood pressure”. The residents rushed to meet the gurney and immediately recognized the unconscious shooting victim: he was the teenage delivery boy from their favorite all-night restaurant, and he’d been mugged bringing their dinner. That made them work even harder. A surgeon cracked the kids rib cage and exposed his heart, but the bullet had torn it open and they couldn’t even stabilize him for the OR. After forty minutes of resuscitation they called it: time of death, 4:00 a.m. The young doctors shuffled into the temporarily empty waiting area. They sat in silence. Then David said what all three were thinking. “What happened to our pizza?” Joe found their pizza box where the delivery boy dropped it before he ran from his attackers. It was face up, a few steps away from the ER’s sliding doors. Joe set it on the table. They stared at it. Then one of the residents made a joke. “How much you think we ought to tip him?” The residents laughed. Then they ate the pizza.²⁴¹

The use of cruel humour by people who face tragic circumstances in their day-today working lives can be seen as a form of ingroup communication or a backstage language that is only meant for select members.²⁴² The ingroup is often narrowly defined, as also clearly highlighted by Watson in her examples of rehabilitation physicians who feel that it is all right for them to joke about disability but get truly angry when they hear surgeons do it, and senior psychiatrists who sometimes joke about patients, but feel that younger physicians have not yet earned the right to do it.

2.2.3 Succinctness Another seemingly minor but potentially noteworthy theme that comes up in the scientific literature is that cruel humour might, in some way, give people the opportunity to condense their communication. Such a humour is, often, delivered in a brief manner: puns, one-liners, clever rejoinders, etc. Indeed, the condensation of information is sui generis to much commonplace humour. By means of this compression, humour can dispense the facts more quickly and more directly than it would otherwise be possible, stripped of any wordy cushioning or verbose consolation.

241 It could be argued, quite reasonably, that this kind of cruel humour is aimed at exploiting in toto humour’s inherent anaesthesia of the heart so as to help the healthcare workers to cope with the greater load of suffering and/or death that they cannot but encounter, compared to most other members of their broader societies. 242 Watson (2011), 38, which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing one.

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Whether brief or extended, wild or mild, usual or unusual, the use of humour to deal with serious or tragic events is still fraught with all sorts of pitfalls and shortcomings.²⁴³ As Freud pointed out, laughing at a joke can make us feel intoxicated, childlike, or anxious to “avoid criticism and find a substitute for the mood”.²⁴⁴ As he explained: A change in mood is the most precious thing that alcohol achieves for mankind, and on that account this ‘poison’ is not equally indispensable for everyone. A cheerful mood, whether it is produced endogenously or toxically, reduces the inhibiting forces, criticism among them, and makes accessible once again sources of pleasure which were under the weight of suppression. It is most instructive to observe how the standards of joking sink as spirits rise. For high spirits replace jokes, just as jokes must try to replace high spirits, in which possibilities of enjoyment which are otherwise inhibited—among them the pleasure in nonsense—can come into their own: “Mit wenig Witz und viel Behagen.” Under the influence of alcohol the grown man once more becomes a child, who finds pleasure in having the course of his thoughts freely at his disposal without paying regard to the compulsion of logic. I hope I have now also shown that the absurdity-techniques of jokes are a source of pleasure. It need only be repeated that this pleasure arises from an economy in psychical expenditure or a relief from the compulsion of criticism.²⁴⁵

The worst danger of receiving opinions and arguments in the jocular form is, probably, that it makes it more difficult to deal with them in a critical manner.²⁴⁶ As also Watson pointed out, echoing the much older 18th-century concerns of Beattie and Hartley, when we are laughing, we are not in a full critical mode.²⁴⁷ Furthermore, if we were to regain control of our reasoning skills, it would prove socially awkward and awfully unhumorous for us to try to tackle the relevant premises of the joke because we would have to kill the light mood that the joke elicited.²⁴⁸ Jokes, and not least cruel ones, can also provide people with a more potent argument than an unhumorous one, even if the inherent logic of the former happens to be utterly bogus.²⁴⁹ A short and sharp witticism, mordacious comeback, or rapier-like bon mot can deflect, defy, discount, and/or destroy a much-better rea243 See, e.g., Jane (2022, 573; emphasis added) on how “ironic misandry builds feminist solidarity while offering the benefit of brevity”, but comes with so many moral and practical drawbacks as to constitute “a false economy”. 244 Freud (1960), loc 2091. 245 Freud (1960), loc 2056–2064. 246 This phenomenon may explain why humorous scholarship, albeit extant, is rather exceptional in all fields. 247 Watson (2011), 38–39. See our accounts of their views in H&C1. 248 In H&C2 we mentioned the notion of ‘party-pooper’, which would apply here too. 249 If rhetorically potent, weak arguments can defeat stronger ones also outside humorous contexts (e.g., tribunals).

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soned-through argument, whether in a discussion between two persons, televised debate, academic symposium, or parliamentary session.²⁵⁰ As such, humour can be a friend and ally of ignorance, ignobility, inanity, injustice, and prejudice, whether obtusely conservative or naïvely progressive—when not obtusely progressive or naïvely conservative.²⁵¹ Alternatively, the unsuccessful jokesters can also readily prompt the disingenuous yet highly effective defence stating: “I was only joking.”²⁵²

2.2.4 Sanguineness Cruel humour can be a way of facing both the cruel absurdities of life and our even more absurd attempts to try to deal with them, yet without giving up. Healthcare professionals are frequently confronted with just such incongruities. Laughing in the face of tragedy conveys simultaneously that we cannot understand what is happening and are able to accept that. Thus, their cruel humour can be an expression of the frailty of existence and our willingness to soldier on despite the fear and the madness.²⁵³ Some experts take less kindly to the use of cruel humour in clinical settings, as the barbed rebuttal of Watson’s analysis from a fellow medical ethicist, Nicole Piemonte, has shown.²⁵⁴ Both authors actually agree on the notion that humour making light of traumatic, harrowing, and/or painful subject matters could be a symptom of an ineffective approach aimed at dealing with the tragedy at hand or, more sinisterly, “a cover for cruelty”.²⁵⁵ Additionally, both Watson and Piemonte recognise the human need for 250 See, e.g., E. Larsen (1980) on political settings. 251 We mean negative prejudice (e.g., “men are beasts”), not positive prejudice (e.g., “all Frenchmen are great lovers”). The former example is a telling instance of cruel “malebashing” that, according to Susan and David Williams (1996, 47–51), is often deployed in parallel with the inane notion that “men are engaged in a self-conscious and (nearly) universal conspiracy to oppress women”. Cast humorously and seemingly justified as a legitimate critique of patriarchal culture, such prejudice and inanity can then circulate easily among self-styled agents of progress (see, e.g., the London-based TikTok comedian Shumirun Nessa 2022). The hypocrisies arising from callow anti-patriarchal posturing can be lambasted humorously in return, e.g., in episode 4 of season 3 of the British sitcom Derry Girls (2018–2022), where a group of northern-Irish girls talk lewdly about local young farmers with whom they are fantasising to have sex, but then condemn in a self-righteous manner the ‘sexism’ of their group’s only male member, who naively dared to ask his female companions to help “pick him up” a local farming girlfriend. Girlfriends are not something to be ‘picked up’, like some kind of object or a thing. 252 Watson (2011), 39. 253 Watson (2011), 41. 254 Piemonte (2015). 255 Piemonte (2015), 376.

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the use humour when faced with existential incongruity.²⁵⁶ In many healthcare environments, this is a daily occurrence, and with it must come a sense of powerlessness in the disparity between what patients and family expect you to be capable of and the reality of your limitations, i.e., healthcare professionals may use humour, also of the cruel type, when they fail to conquer death and decay, which are normally experienced as being inherently cruel in turn.²⁵⁷ 2.2.4.1 Givin’ It Piemonte raises issue with Watson’s claim that cruel humour of that sort might still have additional redeeming qualities.²⁵⁸ Specifically, Watson presents the following argument: [W]hen a compassionate professional gets overwhelmed, gallows humor may be a psychic survival instinct, and that’s why it is not an abuse of patient trust when it’s done backstage and for the right reasons. Something that looks maleficent towards one patient may actually be an act of beneficence towards the patients who will come next. So yes—if the delivery boy were my son and I heard the joke, I would want to tear their eyes out. But if I was the person in the next ambulance, hurtling towards their emergency room after my car wreck, my heart attack, my rape, I’d be glad they made that joke. Because they needed to laugh before they could eat, and they needed to eat to be at their best when it was my turn. …When a terrible joke is the only bridge between horror and necessity, gallows humor can be a show of respect for the work that lies ahead. So tell your jokes. Tell them somewhere I cannot hear. Then treat me well when we’re together.²⁵⁹

Although Piemonte acknowledges (1) the refinement of Watson’s argument, (2) the overall need for humour within medical practice, and (3) the need for healthcare workers to have some means for (3a) coping in the face of trauma and human suffering, and (3b) not being asked to carry the weight of every patient’s grief, she believes that there has to be a better way of dealing with tragedy, i.e., in a less defensive and less dismissive way than through cruel humour.²⁶⁰ 256 Piemonte (2015), 376. 257 Being death and decay “natural” cruelties à la Hallie (see Chapter 3 of Part 1), facing exaggerated expectations adds “human” ones too. Moreover, Watson (2011) and Piemonte (2015) serve as an eerie reminder of Hobbes’ (1985) dismal wisdom about the human condition, i.e., that, at some point in life, we all become cruelly vulnerable and, ultimately, ridiculously powerless. 258 Piemonte (2015), 376. 259 Watson (2011), 44. 260 Piemonte (2015), 376–377.

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Piemonte maintains that even though cruel humour can be seen as a legitimate way of dealing with powerlessness in the often-absurd world of medicine, it also seems that clinicians and students use it thoughtlessly and far too often. That is, few of them actually consider why they resort to this type of humour, how it functions, and whether better alternatives are available.²⁶¹ Therefore, Piemonte advocates teaching more direct forms of coping “that do not come at the expense of trivializing something that, for a patient’s friends and family, might be an unspeakable loss”. Piemonte draws attention to the effects of cruel humour on the healthcare staff’s professional development itself, i.e., those who are present in the ‘backstage’ where the cruel jokes are told. There are, undeniably, implicit messages hidden within all such humorous remarks, and, given the serious nature of their occupation, these messages inevitably touch upon and convey attitudes about events of grave significance. As in all organisations, the working cultures of a hospital or other healthcare environments are determined by unwritten rules on what is permissible and what is not, most of which is tacitly absorbed. As Piemonte points out, however, hospitals are also teaching facilities and what is communicated there will define the students’ development as caregivers. She opines that the use of coping mechanisms such as cruel humour “not only affects medical students and their growth towards becoming healers but is also symptomatic and indicative of a much wider problem in medicine—namely, medicine’s failure to address adequately the complexity of illness, suffering, and death”. Rather than focussing on what is acceptable or unacceptable humour, the more urgent question is why cruel humour is routinely used be the medical professions in the first place. 2.2.4.2 Takin’ It One of the benefits of cruel humour, according to Watson, is that it can function as “rapid-truthing”, i.e., telling the truth quickly and directly and thereby moving the conversation along.²⁶² Watson takes an example of a nasty joke from a senior neonatologist: A group of medical professionals and ethicists were considering the case of a neurologically devastated newborn. The discussion focused on the medical facts for an extended period of time (but what about this test, what about that test, how can you predict A, B, and C . . .) until Bill ended the debate by saying, “Look. He’s more likely to be second base than play second base.”

261 Piemonte (2015), 377, which applies to the whole paragraph and the ensuing two. 262 Watson (2011), 38, which applies to the whole paragraph and the ensuing two.

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Although initially shocked at this comment (not all the colleagues seemed happy either, though no one said anything), Watson wondered whether the joke actually served as “functional shorthand”, helping the team of doctors to move the analysis forward. 2.2.4.3 Givin’ It Some More Piemonte counters this account with a story of her own and recounts how she attended a memorial service for a friend’s stillborn son.²⁶³ The father was a secondyear medical student, and his wife gave birth to their baby, who was diagnosed with a chromosomal defect at a university’s hospital. Both parents were naturally devastated, but also claimed to have learned a great deal from going through this experience. The father, especially, said that it had “changed his perception of what it means to be a doctor, that a doctor is a caregiver, someone who walks alongside patients in their suffering and makes an effort to know their story and become a part of it”. Then Piemonte asks the pungent question: “And I wondered what would happen if, next year when he begins his clinical rotations, he heard his attending physician make a joke behind the scenes about a second base.” At the end of the day, attending to the suffering of patients requires both an attempt to give meaning to the witnessed suffering and, at the same time, realise the absurdity of it: Some of the suffering seen in medicine is so great that no amount of reflection can make sense of its existence. It may very well be that the irony of trying to resuscitate the teenager who was bringing your dinner is so absolutely and painfully absurd that making a joke is the only way to capture the capriciousness of life and death and the confusing nature of the human condition. But, then again, maybe not. Maybe with an understanding that medicine is a practice and not a certain science, a practice positioned on the threshold of life and death and infused with existential unknowns, we can begin to see that doctors can only ever do their very best and that medicine can only ever momentarily delay the unyielding trajectory of our finitude. Perhaps when clinicians are able to express their fears and anxieties and when they can address their feelings of helplessness in the face of illness and death, they will no longer feel such an intense need to distance and detach or make deprecating jokes in the face of failure because death will no longer be seen as such. And if this is asking too much, then maybe a more realistic request is for mentoring physicians to stop themselves before they make such jokes, even when they are made backstage, and to keep in mind that there are often others present who are learning from them how to respond, how to cope, and ultimately how to be.²⁶⁴

263 Piemonte (2015), 378, which applies to the whole paragraph and the ensuing one. 264 Piemonte (2015), 387–388.

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Life’s cruelty, at times, may have to be met with the soberest seriousness.²⁶⁵

2.3 Facing Cruelty with Humour I always try to appear cheerful at my lectures and even to laugh at my own jokes. Oddly enough this arouses a kind of resentment in some of the audience. “Well, I will say”, said a stern-looking woman who spoke to me after one of my lectures, “you certainly do seem to enjoy your own fun”. Madam, I answered, “if I didn’t, who would?” —Stephen Leacock²⁶⁶

As seen, there are some indications in the scientific literature that humour can be therapeutically beneficial for patients dealing with severe illnesses or pain. The data is scant and the exact mechanisms behind this proposed effect are unclear. Those partial to the cognitive perspective have argued that humour may be protective insofar as it gives the individual an opportunity to temporarily distance the self from the negativity of the situation and, instead, adopt a more light-hearted view. It is, after all, difficult to laugh at something and find it wholly terrifying at the same time.²⁶⁷ Similarly, it has been suggested that humour can help us to regulate emotions, thereby reducing the impact of negative ones such as anxiety, frustration, and sadness.²⁶⁸ The traditional line of Shaftesbury, Spencer, Freud, and the Freudians would describe it as a mechanism for discharging pent-up emotional energy.²⁶⁹ In times closer to us, those more physiologically inclined have also implicated the Gate Control Theory of Pain.²⁷⁰ In other words, they have claimed that humour can

265 Allegorically, Jung’s (2009, liber secundus) manifestation of the devil itself (i.e., “the red one”) hammered on the notion that “seriousness” is boring and detestable, even in the face of life’s cruel tribulations. At the same time, in a typical Jungian manner, the devil’s carefree attitude was admitted as a path towards joy, albeit a fleeting one. 266 Leacock (1922), 192. Joking with and at oneself may counter many foes: criticism, melancholia, illness, self-loathing, etc. 267 See an overview of the extant research in Goodenough and Ford (2005), 280. 268 Goodenough and Ford (2005), 280. Again, we do not need here finer lexical distinctions concerning “affects”, “sentiments”, “feelings”, “passions”, etc. 269 See H&C1 and Chapter 2 of Part 1. 270 Far is it from us to undermine the value of this fantastic theory (Melzack and Wall 1965), but it is worth noting that surprisingly little advancements have been made by modern science in dealing with this archenemy of human well-being, i.e., pain. The most important theoretical developments are from almost 60 years ago, and the highly problematic gold standard of treatment, i.e., opium-derived chemicals, have been in use, probably, since the dawn of humanity. The Gate Control Theory of Pain assumes that the spinal cord has a neuronal “gate” that allows pain signals to

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provide competing inhibitory inputs into transmission pathways for pain-related signals.²⁷¹

2.3.1 Cancer and Banter The man was perishing apace Who played the tambourine: The seal of death was on his face— ’Twas pallid, for ’twas clean. “This is the end”, the sick man said In faint and failing tones. A moment later he was dead, And Tambourine was Bones. —Tinley Roquot (Ambrose Bierce)²⁷²

While it is unclear whether humour has any effect on the development trajectory of physical illness, it may nevertheless have a separate role in helping people to face serious illnesses, especially of the potentially fatal sort.²⁷³ For instance, in a qualitative study with 40 men suffering from testicular cancer, Alison Chapple and Sue Ziebland found that almost all them discussed the topic of humour at some stage of the interview.²⁷⁴ Additionally, many interviewees actually raised the subject of humour, remembering jokes made at the time of the diagnosis, in the hospital, or later in the workplace and/or among friends.²⁷⁵ Most of them recalled verbal jokes. However, some non-verbal humorous situations were described too: “one man remembered that when he returned to work, a colleague mimicked his new body shape, walking round in circles, pretending to be lopsided. This man found this ‘quite funny’, and he said that he preferred it if someone ‘took the mickey’ instead of offering sympathy”.²⁷⁶

pass through on their way to the brain, where they materialise into the sensation of pain. The gate can, however, also block these signals on the level of the spinal cord, especially with competing signals. This offers a good explanation for why we rub our foot vigorously after kicking the table. The tactile signal may block the pain signals. But psychological signals might also work similarly in providing interference. 271 See an overview of the extant research in Goodenough and Ford (2005), 280. 272 Bierce (2000), 66–67. 273 Rowe and Regehr (2010), 453. 274 Chapple and Ziebland (2004). 275 Chapple and Ziebland (2004), 1127. 276 Chapple and Ziebland (2004), 1127–1128.

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Some of these cancer patients claimed that humour helped them deal with their illness, and there were several examples of predominately male colleagues joking with the patient about his condition at every opportunity. Other patients claimed to sincerely enjoy humorous cards that were sent to them while in hospital.²⁷⁷ Chapple and Ziebland suggested then that the jokes might have helped them to cope, but also just provided great amusement in and by themselves.²⁷⁸ Notedly, the cancer patients in this study described using humour in various circumstances also in order to hide their feelings and deal with worries relating to the diagnosis and the subsequent treatment.²⁷⁹ The scientists associated this conduct with the widespread cultural norm of men not wanting to appear weak or oversensitive, as it might undermine their masculinity, social acceptance, and sense of self-worth. Although some of the men they interviewed said that they broke down and cried when they were told the diagnosis, others had used humour to conceal their emotions: Yeah, um I’ve always been the sort of person that’s always fought things, not physically fought, but you know, that’s always been the way that I, get on with things and I’ve always been, you know, wanted to see the funny side of things really. And I actually said to the um to the doctor at the time, when he told me, he said, “[patient’s name], you are allowed to show some emotion”. And I just said, “Dr., look, I’m a Leeds United supporter, I get worse news than this every Saturday”. And he said, “Are you sure you’re alright, do you want me to ring people?” I said, “No, no, I’ll do it”. And he er went out of the room and when he went out the room I burst into tears, and I don’t mind admitting it, yeah.²⁸⁰

The study by Chapple and Ziebland also revealed an interesting point on the camaraderie-building potential of humour among hospitalised patients. The studied men often found it extremely hard to voice their anxieties in front of family members and tended to bottle up their emotions to spare their feelings.²⁸¹ Still, when meeting other patients at the hospital ward, they would talk to each other and exchange banter about their compromised health. This use of humour has possibly significant implications for all these patients, as their camaraderie indicates a sense of solidarity with others who share similar health issues. In a hospital setting, where men of different backgrounds and generations are

277 Whether they really did so or not is, of course, a much more complex empirical issue to determine. How do we know that we have really enjoyed something? 278 Chapple and Ziebland (2004), 1128. 279 Chapple and Ziebland (2004), 1128, which applies to the whole paragraph above. 280 Chapple and Ziebland (2004), 1128–1129. 281 Chapple and Ziebland (2004), 1130, which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing one.

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gathered, joking about their sorry state might therefore reduce tension and cement interpersonal cohesion. Another foremost cultural norm related to masculinity made an impact on this study. ‘Having a laugh’ is something that men usually value greatly. It is truly central to their masculinity, according to Chapple and Ziebland. In particular, the ability to ‘take’ a joke is seen as an important and valued aspect of the male self-identity, which, however, is culturally situated and may thus differ depending on the country or community of origin. Significantly, some of the testicular-cancer patients feared that they might have lost their status as legitimate subjects for banter and jokes in male-dominated environments and would only feel reassured if friends and colleagues should continue to make fun of them.²⁸² Many respondents emphasised that they did not mind the jokes made by co-workers because they wanted to be treated normally and did not want others to feel sorry for them. So while men use humour, also of a pointedly cruel kind so as to avoid talking about emotional issues, the same humour is used to maintain full group membership and self-respect. This is definitely reminiscent of the studies looking at why people offer themselves up as targets for cruel jokes. Some individuals find it paramount to be able to demonstrate to others their tolerance for physical pain, i.e., to ‘take’ a cruel joke can be a display of a persons’ ability to suffer psychological pain. For sure, in the context of testicular-cancer patients, this is likely to be related to masculinity and its attendant traditional gender roles, which include, in many cultures, warrior-like penchants for penance and general expectations of male expendability.²⁸³

2.3.2 Cancer and Hope The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. —Voltaire²⁸⁴

A 2005 review of the role of humour in oncological care by Joshua and associates stated that, while few studies addressed the issue of humour among the terminally ill, the available data indicated that almost all patients saw humour, not least of a cruel kind, as a useful tool to help them through the remaining days of their lives.²⁸⁵ At the same time, only a tiny minority actually felt that humour of any 282 283 284 285

Chapple and Ziebland (2004), 1131, which applies to the whole paragraph above. See Farrell (1993), chap. 2. Traditional male gender roles are discussed further in Chapter 3. As translated and cited in Ernst (2018), 137. Joshua et al. (2005), 645–648, which applies to the whole subsection above.

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kind was emphatically present at that stage in their lives. Rather, all terminal patients indicated that a modicum of humour, also of the cruel sort, was indispensable for social bonding, and more than half felt that it enabled them to change their perceptions of circumstances that would otherwise prove emotionally overwhelming. Most of them saw humour, also of the cruel ilk, as a way to maintain hope during otherwise bleak days. Empirically, humour is actually rated among the ten highest “hope-giving” behaviours recorded by Western oncologists. Joshua and associates classified humour in oncology into two broad categories. (1) The vast majority consists of unplanned and spontaneous repartees during conversations between an oncology professional and a patient and/or their family. (2) Subsidiarily, there is the “prepared” humour, which is often found in patient literature and is meant to help patients see the lighter side of certain aspects of cancer care. The use of humour in oncology is generally seen as bringing about benefits in three distinct areas of the patients’ life, i.e., psychological, communication-related, and social. (1) As we would have expected from our earlier discussion about the works of Freud and others, humour is interpreted as a far-reaching psychological defence mechanism in oncological care settings. It is—along with other mature defence mechanisms such as altruism, anticipation, asceticism, sublimation, and suppression—a way of allowing the person to adapt to an anxiety-provoking stressor in a productive manner. The use of humour may give patients the necessary psychological distance from their own deaths while still acknowledging their terminal condition, i.e., limiting their level of awareness of their situation and finding an acceptable way to deny reality, albeit temporarily. This effect is summarised in this quote from the article by Joshua and associates: The other reactions—anger, depression, suppression, denial—took a little piece of me with them. Each made me feel just a little less human. Laughter made me more open to ideas, more inviting to others, and even a little stronger inside. It proved to me that, even as my body was devastated and my spirit challenged, I was still a vital human.²⁸⁶

(2) Considering that communication in the oncological care settings often revolves around an incurable, if not terminal, disease, the use of humour is different and 286 Joshua et al. (2005), 646.

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more delicate than in most other situations, even within other medical specialties. Both the life-threatening nature of the disease and the often-invasive available treatment options require the patients and care workers to engage in conversations that are highly confrontational and dealing with unsettling end-of-life questions. These tough issues can arise abruptly, with unexpected diagnoses and/or the need for them to be addressed early in the doctor-patient relationship. It is therefore ideal to “have a form of interaction that quickly provides a sense of familiarity, does not offend, and is easily facilitated”.²⁸⁷ Humour can be instrumental in achieving these goals, as it can both create a more relaxed atmosphere and forge bonds between people. Humour can also reduce tension or embarrassment in both the patient and the doctor when they are going through intimate questioning or examination. Most importantly, it also provides a sense of familiarity that is needed in the relationship between an oncologist, a patient, and their family. Humour can humanise the physician in the eyes of the patient. (3) As to the social role of humour in oncological care, Joshua and his associates state: The number of people involved with patients and their family in the initial diagnosis and management of cancer is generally underestimated. Medical, nursing, and allied health and secretarial staffs all become involved. Humor has an important role in establishing these relationships by breaking the ice, reducing the fear of the unfamiliar, and encouraging a sense of trust. Victor Borge’s edict that “laughter is the shortest distance between two people” holds true.²⁸⁸

2.3.3 Children If a stranger enters the room, or if someone looks at a sleeping child, the nurse spits three times, though they (illos, the children) are already protected by the god Fascinus, who is the guardian not only of children but also of generals. —Pliny the Elder²⁸⁹

The therapeutic use of humour in a clinical setting is a delicate matter and needs to be carefully executed if it is not to have the opposite effect. This is especially relevant in paediatric patients.²⁹⁰ The cruelty of life decried by Leopardi and

287 Joshua et al. (2005), 646. 288 Joshua et al. (2005), 646. 289 As translated and cited in Pareto (1935), par. 1344, note 3. As comical as they come across, superstitions have long been used to combat stress, including the ones entailing the use of bodily humours, saliva in particular. 290 Goodenough and Ford (2005).

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other philosophical pessimists means also that innocent children are not exempt from having to undergo painful medical procedures and/or face lethal pathologies. This simple and unpleasant truth has spurred research into possible means of diminishing their discomfort and/or increase their coping skills under such circumstances.²⁹¹ Studying the use of humour in paediatric patients is fraught with all sorts of difficulties, both methodological and ethical. Children may be less adept at describing their pain. Besides, their limited metacognition makes it more difficult to investigate their sense of humour than in the average adult population. Some children, however, deal more competently than others with uncomfortable medical procedures, and those are more likely than their peers to tend to cope by spontaneously asking questions (i.e., be “information seekers”), using problem-focussed methods (e.g., behavioural distraction), exercising positive self-talk, and refraining from negative emotions or catastrophic thinking.²⁹² 2.3.3.1 Specific Studies Two Australian researchers, Belinda Goodenough and Jennifer Ford, made a material contribution to this field of research by re-assessing previously validated paediatric self-report measures (the Pain Coping Questionnaire and the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale for children), as well as developing the Sydney Children’s Hospital Humor Coping Scale for Children (SCH-Hum), which is a specially designed self-report measuring the pain-humour connection. The SCH-Hum is a concise 10-item self-report scale for children.²⁹³ Seven of the items address the general aspects of using humour to cope, i.e., they are not pain-specific, and the remaining three items measure humour coping for any pain type (e.g., acute versus chronic). The initial piloting study for the SCH-Hum indicated that paediatric patients using humour more frequently as a pain-coping strategy were also more likely to use other adaptive methods, such as cognitive distraction, rather than maladaptive ones, e.g., catastrophising, which is assumed universally in the scientific literature as the most negative option.²⁹⁴ A follow-on study of the SCH-Hum Scale examined the relationship between humour-coping scores and standard painrelated outcomes in hospitalised children.²⁹⁵

291 292 293 294 295

Goodenough and Goodenough and Goodenough and Goodenough and Goodenough and

Ford Ford Ford Ford Ford

(2005), 279–280. (2005), 279–280. (2005). (2005), 281. (2005), 279–298.

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Given the plausible yet hypothetical emotional benefits of humour-coping, the scientists asked the children to provide them with separate ratings of the sensory intensity of pain (i.e., “how much?”) and its affective quality (i.e., “how unpleasant or distressing?”), instead of the global estimates of pain-intensity in the pilot study.²⁹⁶ Despite the previous reservations about the reliability of children’s assessment of pain, it is now thought that children as young as 5 years of age can reliably provide such information.²⁹⁷ The primary objective for Goodenough and Ford was to examine: (1) the relationship between self-reported measures of coping-humour; (2) other non-humour-based pain-coping methods; and (3) ratings of pain-intensity and unpleasantness in paediatric patients. The battery of tests that each child had to complete was quite extensive and consisted of four elements: (1) ratings of pain-intensity and unpleasantness; (2) ratings of general coping styles and strategies for pain; (3) ratings of general humour (i.e., creation and coping); and (4) pain-related coping humour measured by the SCH-Hum Scale.²⁹⁸ On that basis, the authors proposed the following hypotheses: (1) children with higher scores for humour-coping would be more likely to use adaptive and direct strategies to deal with pain (e.g., problem-focussed avoidance such as distraction);²⁹⁹ (2) children who scored lower on humour-coping would be more likely to use maladaptive emotion-focussed avoidance styles to deal with pain;³⁰⁰ (3) ratings of humour-coping would be more strongly associated with ratings of pain’s unpleasantness (i.e., the affective/emotional dimension) than sensory intensity.³⁰¹ All in all, their results supported the prediction that children who made more use of humour as a specific strategy for dealing with pain were also more likely to demonstrate more direct problem-focussed pain-coping styles (e.g., approach and distraction).

296 297 298 299 300 301

Goodenough and Goodenough and Goodenough and Goodenough and Goodenough and Goodenough and

Ford Ford Ford Ford Ford Ford

(2005), (2005), (2005), (2005), (2005), (2005),

282. 282. 282. 283. 283. 283.

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(1) After statistically controlling for other factors, humour-specific coping (especially pain-related) accounted for almost half of the explained variance in ratings for a distraction/problem-focussed pain-coping style.³⁰² (2) The results also provided support for the second prediction, i.e., that children who used emotion-focussed avoidance pain-coping styles more frequently would also show less use of humour as a coping strategy.³⁰³ However, very little of the variance in use of an emotion-focussed pain-coping style could be explained in this study (just 20%).³⁰⁴ The data were in the general direction of the proposed hypothesis, but this trend was dependent on age-related interaction, i.e., the hypothesis was better supported by results concerning younger children.³⁰⁵ (3) The third hypothesis was also supported by the results. ³⁰⁶ Children who gave higher ratings for pain-unpleasantness also gave significantly lower ratings for the use of pain-related humour-coping. Furthermore, pain-unpleasantness ratings, assumed to reflect the emotional dimension of pain, best predicted the variance of the emotion-focussed coping variable. This would suggest that pain-related humour-coping is inversely related to the emotion-focussed style. 2.3.3.2 General Considerations It is often assumed that “laughter is the best medicine” for paediatric patients coping with pain. Childhood is, after all, the time of unconstrained laughter and unbound joie de vivre. Yet in light of the study by Goodenough and Ford, the use of humour in children who use emotion-focussed methods for coping with pain or give relatively high ratings of the unpleasantness of pain may actually be contraindicated.³⁰⁷ Therefore, the wholesale use of humour to manage pain in paediatric patients is not recommended, and the authors only suggested that any spontaneous use of humour may be reliably practiced with those children who demonstrate direct adaptive approaches, such as distraction strategies, to deal with pain-related distress.³⁰⁸ As the authors cautioned, the correlational methodology of their study precludes us also from making straightforward assumptions on the causal relationships

302 Goodenough and Ford (2005), 293. 303 Goodenough and Ford (2005), 293. 304 Goodenough and Ford (2005), 293. 305 Goodenough and Ford (2005), 293. 306 Goodenough and Ford (2005), 293–294, which applies to the whole subsection above. 307 Goodenough and Ford (2005), 295. 308 Albeit common at many levels of human agency, one-size-fits-all strategies are often unrecommendable.

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between pain- and humour-coping in hospitalised children.³⁰⁹ All the examined relations are purely correlations; hence, there could be a number of confounding variables at play. Nevertheless, these results indicate that, in some cases, humour is a viable option for modulating the emotional aspects of pain in children that are already comfortable with distraction methods. With regard to those children who spontaneously use emotion-focussed avoidance (e.g., catastrophising), it is likely that humour-coping will not be as effective. This means that the use of humour among highly anxious children is not recommended. In point of fact, those children who find humour-coping difficult may even find it dismissive or anxiety-enhancing, especially if used by healthcare workers and parents alike.³¹⁰

2.3.4 Carers The one way to make bereavement tolerable is to make it important. To gather your friends, to have a gloomy festival, to talk, to cry, to praise the dead—all that does change the atmosphere, and carry human nature over the open grave. —G.K. Chesterton³¹¹

Humour is often cited as a coping mechanism among those who work regularly in close proximity to traumatic events, such as healthcare workers, social workers, police officers, priests, firefighters, and journalists.³¹² For sure, it seems reasonable for people holding such jobs to have something to fall back on, as studies also show that repeated exposure to the trauma of others can lead to secondary post-traumatic disorder.³¹³ Among many healthcare professionals, especially those involved in palliative care, terminal illness is the norm, and crisis, grief, sadness, and anxiety are commonplace. We do not know for sure whether or not Chesterton, despite being a keen humourist, would have included laughter and banter among the appropriate behaviours to be exhibited at the “gloomy festival” that he recommended as a way to cope with grief and mourning and thereby “change the atmosphere”. Nevertheless,

309 Goodenough and Ford (2005), 296. 310 Goodenough and Ford (2005), 295–296. 311 Chesterton (1958), 136. 312 Possibly because of their inevitable association with dreadful realities, these professions are also the object of humour as a way for observers and/or society at large to cope with the mere thought of such realities. 313 See, e.g., Craun and Bourke (2015), 593.

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a seminal study by Kinsman Dean and Gregory revealed that humour and laughter are a pervasive and persistent part of the palliative-care environment.³¹⁴ Reaching from warm subtleties to boisterous hilarity, they varied in expression from gentle remarks, witty expressions of incongruity, playfulness, dark humor, and the sharp edge of humor with a bite. In each circumstance, humor generated an outcome, ranging from a momentary flicker of a smile to a small chuckle, or to uproarious laughter that energized and lightened the atmosphere. Humor served myriad functions. Among these multiple functions, three primary categories emerged: building relationships, contending with circumstances, and expressing sensibility.³¹⁵

Humour seems to be an effective companion to have on the way towards “the open grave” too. In the palliative-care setting, humour has repeatedly been seen as a potent tool for establishing, enhancing, and extending supportive relationships. It has a clear therapeutic value, as it allows communication to develop beyond the usual pleasantries and towards giving meaningful support to those facing their own mortality.³¹⁶ Humour also provides the care staff with a sense of community, energy, and support in the face of so much dying and death.³¹⁷ Many care staff workers use humour to bring about a new relationship with their patients and families. Plainly, admission to a palliative-care unit is a heartwrenching affair. The patient and his/her family members have to come to terms with the fact that that active treatment is no longer viable and find themselves in different stages of acceptance or denial of the seriousness of that situation. The time leading up to admission has often been marred with severe deterioration in the health of the patients and, consequently, people are stressed, frightened, and tired. Under these circumstances, the healthcare workers, patient, or family members often revert to humour as a way of putting others at ease. A good anecdote from Kinsman Dean and Gregory reads as follows: Moving through the admission process, Sebastian reaches the psychosocial details: “Are you married?” Mrs. D: “How do you think I got 5 kids?” Sebastian, smiling: “There are several ways these days”.

314 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 140. 315 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 140. 316 This is also Vosmer’s (2022, 10 and 16) claim, especially as regards secular societies in which “[d]octors replaced clergy at the bedsides of the dying” and “black humor” is the only tool left to “attend to people’s fear of dying and the distressed of the bereaved”, hence letting “gallows humor” become “a transitional object in contemporary society to reduce fear” (see Bienenfeld 2002 on this standard psychotherapeutic notion). 317 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 141.

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Mrs. D: “I was a good girl, I did it the usual way!” They both chuckle. The atmosphere becomes less tense.³¹⁸

Albeit seemingly risky or, as in the cited case, possibly risqué, such light-hearted interactions can alter the situation, relaxing the patient and opening up a way to build a better human connection.³¹⁹ Subsequently, the patient and family members become more trusting and thereby more receptive towards the treatment being offered.³²⁰ Empirical research suggests that the use of humour makes a person seem more striking. That is also true in the palliative-care environment.³²¹ Care workers are drawn to their more humorous colleagues, and these are usually found more pleasant to work with. Similarly, patients and families speak more favourably about these workers. Importantly, the same applies to the patients. Those who display more jovial behaviour have more and longer visits, both from their own families and from the staff. The reverse is true of those patients that are more reserved, Saturnine, and gloomier. Hidden under the guise of humour, terminal patients often communicate their deeper concerns as well as their understanding of the inevitability of what is about to happen to them. This can serve to strengthen relationships. An example from the study conducted by Kinsman Dean and Gregory tells of a nurse that had been admiring an expensive recliner that a patient had brought with her. When the nurse expressed her admiration for the chair, the patient responded that it had been bought in a furniture store known for offering “Don’t pay a cent for 2 years’ financing”. With a twinkle in her eye and a mischievous smile, she quipped: “I’ll never have to pay for this chair!”³²² The message was obvious. The patient knew that she was about to die and was prepared to face that inevitability, presumably, in a more light-hearted way.³²³ Another similar story was of a woman reconciling with her mother about being a troubled and troublesome teenager. In her final days, her mother was heavily sedated with painkillers that induced hallucinations. One night, after a remarkably ‘rewarding’ hallucination, she said to her daughter: “If I had known you

318 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 141. 319 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 141. 320 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 141. 321 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 141–142, which applies to the whole paragraph above. Once again, old and new senses of “humour” overlap. 322 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 142. 323 Again, no certainty can be provided. What lies in the depths of a person’s bosom is never fully fathomable, plausibly to the person herself as well.

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were having such a great time when you were taking drugs, I would have been more understanding.”³²⁴ Joking about their experiences with drugs was a healing opportunity to laugh together about a difficult time in their past. The likely implication being as well that all was in the past and forgiven.³²⁵ Humour and laughter were found to be weighty means for both patients and staff to contend with circumstances of tension and sorrow that unavoidably came up in palliative treatment. Certainly, the use of humour does not change the raw facts of such a situation, but it can influence the lived experience of these final days.³²⁶ Humour often provides a much-needed respite, i.e., a moment’s pause for all those involved with the burden of suffering and grief. This transformation can be visible as a physical change in bodily posture and/or facial expression.³²⁷ Releasing psychic pressure changes not only a person’s outlook and attitude, but also her outward appearance.

2.3.5 Catharsis Comedy is able to be cathartic because the things that it is laughing at spring from the same well of human emotion that produces the laughter. —Corinne Petersen³²⁸

Humour, as seen, is a complex beast, and its impact cannot be reduced to being either good or bad, harmful or helpful. Whereas light-hearted humour has been shown to increase bonds among working colleagues, that is not always the weapon of choice for those facing other people’s traumas. Rather, it is the dark and cruel forms of humour that are used primarily, such that jokes can be made about situations that are physically threatening and/or emotionally disturbing.³²⁹ Humour is, among if not above other things, a social signal, and it is not particularly difficult to imagine that if a group of people are in life-or-death crisis, a well-laced and funny casual-sounding comment might significantly reduce the

324 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 142. 325 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 142. 326 At a deeper epistemic level, there may be no such thing as “raw facts”, for “the real vehicle and begetter of all knowledge is the psyche”, whether or not we like this ‘fact’ (Jung 1960–1990, vol. 9.2, 173, par. 268). 327 Kinsman Dean and Gregory (2004), 143. 328 Petersen (2020), 2. 329 Craun and Bourke (2015), 593.

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stress level, rally the troops, and galvanise their focus.³³⁰ Reverting to our discussion about psychoanalytic theory, we can see that the use of humour can have a cathartic effect, reducing negative emotions such as anger, aggravation, and aggression.³³¹ The use of cruel humour among professionals that regularly face tragic situations could consequently be seen as a form of stress-relief, i.e., relieving the worker of unbearable feelings of horror, helplessness, and anger, and thereby reducing psychic anxiety.³³² As Leopardi had already noted in the 19th century, we humans laugh “chiefly about things that are effectively all but laughable, and often we do so precisely because they are not laughable”.³³³ The risk of this type of humour is, as pointed out in an article by Rowe and Regehr, that it can possibly rekindle and even intensify feelings of anger and aggression, and dehumanise others who are the target of the relieving jokes.³³⁴ Looking at the use of cruel humour among workers in these professions in the framework of the superiority theory might make us see it as a protective mechanism, one that differentiates the initiators from the unfortunates whom they encounter and target. By somehow blaming the victim for their own grave misfortunes, these professionals might justify a belief that they are immune from similar calamities. This is commonly seen in contexts involving victims of sexual violence, e.g., when members of the public or of the professional classes reassure themselves through flippant remarks that such a fate is not going to be met by them.³³⁵ This use of cruel humour has also an element of incongruity to it, i.e., that there is a humorous discrepancy between reality and the premise of the joke.³³⁶ People who make it their livelihood to deal with other persons’ tragedies are likely to be filled with enthusiasm and hope for all the good they can achieve through their work. The reality is perhaps more along the lines of disgruntled and cynical co-workers, uncooperative and ungrateful clients, and constant reminders of your own limitations, especially in the face of natural or socio-cultural forces that no individual can withstand on his/her own. Humour, then, might be seen as a remedy for those grave incongruities.

330 Despite the prevailing focus on humorous incongruity, studies on humour’s social facets keep being produced, notably from a functionalist perspective. 331 Though enjoying Aristotelian roots, this notion has a well-established pedigree in Freud’s psychoanalysis too. 332 Rowe and Regehr (2010), 450. 333 Leopardi (n.d.a. [1898]), 1894. 334 Rowe and Regehr (2010), 450. 335 Rowe and Regehr (2010), 450–451. 336 Rowe and Regehr (2010), 452, which applies to the whole paragraph above.

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Humour may also have a special role in excessively stressful situations as such. We have all probably made a nervous joke. These might be especially prone to fail to elicit the desired response, which actually makes them all the more interesting. Why do we feel compelled to make light of a terrifying situation, even if it can result in antagonism from our audience? Why cannot we stop ourselves from making jokes when we know that they are not going to be received in a positive way? The most immediate answer is that humour, in all probability, is the most effective way to reduce the perceived stress. Therefore, we use it even though we risk belittling the people around us and devaluing their feelings, or meeting their disapproval and resentment. For example, some people cannot resist breaking up the most sombre and tragic moments, as they feel strangely compelled to make a joke at a funeral. Even horror movies can induce some form of comic relief, which external observers may well perceive as incongruous.³³⁷ Incontestably, just the physical aspect of laughter in those sorts of situations can be seen as helping with breathing and reducing muscle stiffness, thereby making the individual more capable of performing complicated tasks.³³⁸ There are indeed other avenues for releasing tension, such as screaming or weeping, but these are palpably more detrimental to social cohesion than humour. Also, open expressions of grief and fear or vulnerability are often seen as signs of weakness among associates and co-workers. Moreover, in highly stressful situations, teamwork is essential, meaning that screaming and weeping are not the preferable responses, insofar as they can alienate co-workers and stress them even more. Therefore, humour is used as a socially acceptable form of release and reduction of anxiety. In parallel, professionals facing regularly human tragedy under highly stressful conditions need to maintain emotional control in order to complete their tasks, and some sort of detachment is inevitable, if not preferable, i.e., the professional needs to be able to shut out the emotional reactions of the bystanders in order to stay focussed on the technical procedure. An anaesthesia of the heart can only be welcomed, under such circumstances, at least on pragmatic grounds. And what better than humour can bring about such a Bergsonesque anaesthesia?³³⁹

337 Boryslawski (2020, 256) noted how “the monstruous” can turn easily into “the humorous” because of their shared tendency to challenge “human cognitive limits and limits of humanity itself”. 338 Rowe and Regehr (2010), 453–454, which applies to the whole paragraph above and the ensuing two. 339 This question is rhetorical. We specify it because, on previous occasions, some referees and readers failed to grasp this use of interrogative sentences, which are not meant to prompt a genuine reply, but simply make a point.

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2.3.6 Crime Scene Investigations Russia … had a secret and powerful police [that] made the word policeman smell worse than the word thief. —G.K. Chesterton³⁴⁰

Law enforcement officers are among those who are frequently exposed to the cruellest horrors which are hidden from most people, their minds, hearts, and senses. 2.3.6.1 A First Study In some fascinating research, Vivona looked exclusively at crime scene investigators (CSIs), who frequently must endure sights, smells, and tragedies that are beyond most people’s comprehension.³⁴¹ As in all human contexts, wisecracks, jokes, and laughter are a part of that working environment too, albeit variable, according to situations and personal tastes. Thus, Vivona recalled a joke that was reported by one of the interviewees: A man was found murdered in his apartment, stabbed multiple times. During a briefing on the incident, the crime scene investigators had been told that the middle-aged victim participated in cross-dressing activity. Upon entering the scene, they observed the victim had a full mustache. As an investigator examined the bloodied corpse, he stated to no one in particular, “Cross dressing with a mustache, did he ever think this through?”³⁴²

Vivona recognised that while many individuals could laugh and see some humour within such settings, others could not even understand the very act of joking in them. Nevertheless, Vivona maintained that engaging in humorous behaviours was actually “vital to the performance of such serious jobs and the negotiations of the emotional burdens associated with working among those who have died in a violent manner”.³⁴³ In his work, Vivona identified three major themes: (1) the role of cruel humour in group dynamics such as acculturation, integration and socialisation; (2) cruel humour as a means of mitigating tensions and stress; and (3) cruel humour as a barometer of persons’ emotions.³⁴⁴

340 341 342 343 344

Chesterton (1958), 87. Vivona (2014). Vivona (2014), 127–128. Vivona (2014), 128. Vivona (2014), 134.

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(1) Given that CSI work is extremely emotionally demanding, it is obvious that not all individuals can belong to this group of professionals. According to Vivona, cruel humour can be an indicator of whether a person is seen as a contender or not: “How people react to situations with or without good humor can be an indication of their fit with this work and the work culture associated with it. For lack of a better term, initiations occur with new CSIs. Some of these events are intended to be humorous, to see how the new members work and what they can tolerate.”³⁴⁵ Novice CSIs do not possess the experience of the more seasoned co-workers, but they are nevertheless expected not be fearful or squeamish about the situations that they find themselves in, no matter the level of cruelty displayed by the crime scene which they are meant to investigate. Then, gradually, what was shocking to a beginner becomes normal with experience. As reported in the study at issue, it even becomes an almost perverse joy that one ceases to be affected by death. With some pride, one of the participants in the study described himself and his colleagues as “twisted freaks” precisely for being able to enter some of the most horrific scenes without any visible discomfort.³⁴⁶ While it is difficult to resolve the possible differences in the nature and frequency of humour between diverse professions from the data that is available, more emphasis is put on it in some working environments than in others. In the CSI’s environment, Vivona maintained that humour is vital, particularly dark and nasty banter between co-workers.³⁴⁷ This entails jocular aggression and teasing that deflates the target’s ego. If successful and funny, such games of aggressive repartees dance on the thin line between playfulness and hostility. Among the CSI professionals, it seems to be a part of the acculturation process, actively giving them a “thicker skin”.³⁴⁸ It might therefore be suggested that the implicit rationale for piercing ribbing among CSI workers is, in the end, character-building.³⁴⁹ (2) The second theme that Vivona identified is the role of cruel humour in mitigating tensions and stress.³⁵⁰ The sources of stress for the studied CSIs were varied. They certainly understood the seriousness and responsibility of investigating major crimes which often exemplify the great cruelty that human beings are capable of. Another stressor was the working conditions that, in some cases, were very disturbing: “The participants described scrambling in dark, confined crawl spaces,

345 Vivona (2014), 127–128. 346 Vivona (2014), 135. 347 Vivona (2014), 135. 348 Vivona (2014), 135. 349 Whether it is so or not, it is an empirical issue dependent upon the specific conception of ‘character’ at play. 350 Vivona (2014), 137.

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the horrible odour of decomposing flesh, attending autopsies, digging through garbage dumpsters, and removing bodies burned beyond recognition from fire scenes. Often the work assaults the senses and emotions of the CSI.”³⁵¹ Cruel humour or sick jokes were frequently cited as a way of reducing stress and focussing on the task at hand, i.e., a way to bring about a thorough anaesthesia of the heart à la Bergson and maintain effective resilience.³⁵² In the CSI’s working environment, cruel humour resets emotion by distracting and/or deflecting attention from the emotional strains, thereby allowing the workers to continue to perform at a high professional level.³⁵³ After all, the CSIs have no control over the circumstances in which they work. If they were to give up, it would be severely detrimental to them personally, to say nothing of the overall pursuit of justice. Therefore, their use of cruel humour works as a distancing mechanism or, in their own cited jargon, an “emotional reset”, an “emotional re-boot” or, even, an “emotional Red Bull”.³⁵⁴ In the gruelling crime scene, workers can find themselves going down a dark path and need such a humour to re-energise, as well as to remove themselves from all the pain and suffering of which they are witnesses.³⁵⁵ As the CSI workers often find themselves in threatening situations—if not literally to their lives, then at least to their sanity—they frequently engage in gallows humour. This sort of humour is especially relevant in situations that are too serious to be funny; their remarks often verge on the severely inappropriate.³⁵⁶ Nevertheless, it may be necessary for people to make fun of what imperils them in order to mentally disengage from the circumstances, including the grisliest and most sensory-disturbing contexts: There was the dismembered body in black garbage bags. We were going through it and you know it’s human and it’s all dismembered, it stinks, you have a ring of people around one of the bags, one of our guys is gently tearing into bags to look inside trying to identify body parts, horrible smell. So he’s like ok I think I got a leg, then he’s like yep this is a thigh, then I don’t know who said it but someone from the back yells, “see if they got any wings!”³⁵⁷

(3) The third theme revealed by Vivona is that of cruel humour as a barometer of emotions. In the working environment of the CSIs, for the most part, being able to

351 Vivona (2014), 137. 352 Vivona (2014), 137. On the ordinary lexical equivalence of “cruel” and “sick”, see, e.g., Feinberg (1978), 166–167, and Vosmer (2022). 353 Vivona (2014), 137. 354 Vivona (2014), 138. 355 Vivona (2014), 138. 356 Vivona (2014), 138. 357 Vivona (2014), 138.

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produce and appreciate cruel humour can be seen as a sign of resilience and emotional health. Inversely, the lack of humour-production and appreciation can be an indicator of impending emotional exhaustion and burn-out.³⁵⁸ The supervisors in Vivona’s study seemed to be actively monitoring the use of cruel humour among their subordinates. If they saw that their workers were engaged in their tasks while maintaining a good sense of humour, they assumed that the team was functioning well and negotiating stress effectively. However, as soon as teams or individuals within them stopped joking and mocking one another, the supervisors became worried.³⁵⁹ Although cruel humour was reportedly used to moderate stress in many situations for the CSIs, there were still occasions when it did not work at all. The most noteworthy example of how humour functions as a barometer of emotional burden is when the CSIs process crime scenes where children are victims. In the context of the next study to be tackled in this subsection, the following quote from Vivona is particularly relevant: “Joking exists during most investigations; however, the jokes and humor always stop, without exception, when the CSI encounters the emotionally challenging circumstances of child victimization.”³⁶⁰ 2.3.6.2 A Second Study A study of male and female police officers engaged in child-abuse investigations, headed by Rebecca Wright, painted a somewhat darker picture of the use of cruel humour within the domain of law enforcement.³⁶¹ It showed that although a range of negative job stressors were identified, the discussions tended to focus on two: the heavy caseload and professional collaboration. Remarkably, the contents of the children’s disclosures were not perceived to be a significant source of negative stress even though the participants were aware of the detrimental impact that sexual, physical abuse and neglect has on children’s development. Many participants explained that a certain degree of desensitisation occurs (except in extreme cases such as abuse resulting in death) which enables them to function in an empathetic yet detached manner.³⁶²

358 Vivona (2014), 139. 359 Vivona (2014), 139. 360 Vivona (2014), 140. 361 Wright et al. (2006). 362 Wright et al. (2006), 504–506. Desensitisation was a central concern for Susan Sontag (1977), who thought that, “ironically”, the very “photographs that are meant to shock us into action … make us feel even more distant from the problem” (Maxfield 2022, 4; emphasis added).

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It is thought-provoking, for lack of better words, that the reality of the victims does not register as stressful stimuli in either male or female police officers. This either reflects an almost sociopathic ability to distance yourself, as with criminally psychotic individuals, or a very well-developed defence mechanism. Despite having access to in-house training and mental-health counselling, all of the participants preferred informal coping mechanisms in dealing with work-related stress. Humour, also if not especially of the cruel kind, was viewed as a highly valuable strategy in releasing stress and maintaining a light-hearted working atmosphere.³⁶³ This was achieved by making jokes, laughing with colleagues in a bantering fashion, and “seeing certain aspects of the case work in a comical light”.³⁶⁴ The last part of this sentence is especially problematic. Although not explicitly stated, such an assertion seems to suggest that the police officers can actually make fun of the violent trauma inflicted upon a child. What follows only serves to reinforce this interpretation, as the authors state that while cruel humour “might be seen as inappropriate to outsiders, participants emphasised that the intent was never derogatory nor was amusement achieved at the expense of child victims”.³⁶⁵ Similarly, Wright and associates made note of “one officer who had only recently commenced working in child abuse recalled her initial attitude to the way that the casework was sometimes described and how her attitude had changed over time, to a point of recognising that black humour actually serves as a buffer to internalising children’s traumatic experiences”.³⁶⁶ Discussing their results, Wright and colleagues concluded that using cruel humour as a strategy to tackle exposure to grave human tragedy might not be the optimal option. On the contrary, it might well exacerbate professional insularity and conflicts among professional groups.³⁶⁷ This kind of humour, moreover, is very disrespectful of the victim and its family. Besides, it is likely to offend some fellow officers, especially insofar as some of them may have close relatives that have been the victims of such types of abuse. Furthermore, the strategies may be regarded as reactive rather than constructive in nature. In other words, while the strategies adopted by the officers could be effective in diffusing feelings of tension when they arise, they do not address the underlying source of tension and thereby do not reduce the likelihood of it recurring. The continual cycle and repetitive nature of work-

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Wright Wright Wright Wright Wright

et al. et al. et al. et al. et al.

(2006), 509–510. (2006), 509–510. (2006), 509–510. (2006), 509–510. (2006), 509–510.

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based conflicts and pressures could exacerbate professionals’ feelings of being powerless, inconsequential or incompetent.³⁶⁸

We can then infer that humour, also of the nastiest kind, may be reasonably seen as an important defence mechanism against stress, especially in professions that have high levels of in-built affective intensity on a daily basis, such as emergency workers, law enforcement, and healthcare workers.³⁶⁹ In situations marred by extreme human tragedy and suffering, cruel humour can provide some much-needed lightness, possibly better than milder forms of humour. The old relief theory of humour, then, may still have something ad rem to teach us.³⁷⁰

2.3.7 Coaches Among the residues that are alien to asceticism but appear in concrete phenomena in combination with the ascetic residue, notably, are the residues of personal integrity .. They manifest themselves in the ascetic’s pride, and through them asceticism becomes a kind of sport. The ancient Athenian Cynics unquestionably enjoyed the astonished wonder that their antics aroused in other people. —Vilfredo Pareto³⁷¹

Anyone who has ever attended a sporting event is familiar with the level and aggressiveness of the abusive banter that athletes can be subjected to. And they are not alone in enduring humiliations and taunts that would drive many of us mad with rage or cause us to break into tears out of frustration and shame. The poor individuals who willingly take the role of refereeing such events—well, they would merit a whole volume of study. The 20th-century Scottish comedian and chansonnier, Matt McGinn, rightly dedicated a hilarious song to such heroic and/ or foolish persons.³⁷² Sports such as football are also an interesting environment in which to study humour and cruelty, considering the high stakes and enormous pressure among the contestants, as well as the collective emotionality and lack of inhibition in the audience during something that has no ‘real’ consequence whatsoever. If

368 Wright et al. (2006), 510–511. 369 T. Scott (2007), 350. 370 As mentioned in Chapter 2 of Part 1, relief theory has been suffering a prolonged decline in favour of incongruity theory. See also H&C1. 371 Pareto (1935), par. 1179. This observation recalls the issue of being able to ‘take’ a joke. 372 It is the 1966 song “Footba’ Referee”.

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cruel humour is ‘just a joke’, football et similia are, in the end, ‘only a game’. Or so do many people think, more often than not.³⁷³ This well-established and long-lived crucible of human emotions, devoid of real meaning as it might be, frequently reveals the less palatable features of human nature.³⁷⁴ This is especially true of racism, but also of prejudice towards gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, intellectual ability, and so forth. When it comes to finding a feature that can allow for cruelly humorous attacks, people’s aptitude and creativity can truly reach the widest and wildest imaginable extents.³⁷⁵ 2.3.7.1 Fußball European football has been for a long time inundated with racism, with abuse of Black players in particular. Both fans and players have repeatedly caught uttering or chanting racial obscenities. National and international football governing bodies have, in the last decades, launched several high-profile campaigns such as “Kick it Out”, “Show Racism the Red Card”, and “No Room for Racism”, in order to promote messages of tolerance and anti-racism.³⁷⁶ Several academic studies on racial social identity and racial humour in the context of sports have also been carried out. One of these studies, by Wolfers, File, and Schnurr focussed on a male under-19 football team in Germany and was discussed in detail in H&C2.³⁷⁷ The authors of that study used recordings of interactions among the players on the sidelines and substitutes’ bench during, before, and after matches and training, and conducted interviews with players as well while also observing the team in its daily and weekly activities. Wolfers and her colleagues discovered that the players constructed distinct subgroups along racial lines which were potentially harmful to the team’s cohe373 One is reminded of the famous quote by legendary Liverpool football club manager Bill Shankly: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” Some have claimed that the fiercely socialistic Shankly was misquoted. Nevertheless, the quote probably reflects some football fans’ view accurately. 374 It should be clear by now that we are not keen on any highly specific description or definition of this ‘nature’ for, in our view, there are far too many personality types and psychological profiles to produce a neat list of key connotations. Here too, innumerable subsidiary details abound, not least tacit ones (see Chapter 4 of Part 1). 375 It is therefore rather ironic to read the following advice in Simpson (1998, 41): “It is a good general rule that if love does not prevail between you and others, think twice before you joke with them”. 376 Wolfers, File, and Schnurr (2017), 83. 377 Wolfers, File, and Schnurr (2017), 83–94, which applies to the rest of the sub-subsection.

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siveness and unity. Granted, they did not find any malicious racial abuse in this team, but it could nevertheless be argued that the frequent use of racial humour constituted normalised ‘everyday racism’ with its intricate links to power-laden ideologies, implied social inequalities, and, pretty much à la Hallie, institutionalised cruelties. It is problematic when such racial humour is expressed without challenge, insofar as it legitimises racial stereotypes as somehow harmless and takes on a relatively subtle form that is disguised as acceptable cruel humour, hence becoming part of the group’s normative ways of behaving and communicating with each other. At the same time, the same study revealed that the football players did create effective solidarity with other team members by using humorous and teasing comments that included scathing ethnic remarks, among other things. When racial tensions are present, a viable modus vivendi might be a modus ridendi. 2.3.7.2 Football Even within the racially charged environment of football, humour, not least of the cruel sort, can be used to counteract negative behaviour. A study by Kevin Hylton examined the use of humour by Black football coaches in England as a rhetorical device against racism, i.e., how techniques of humour are used in everyday racialised experiences.³⁷⁸ The study showed that using of techniques of humour enabled feelings of subordination and humiliation to be transposed into forms of resistance, while its physiological and psychological benefits could lead to inter-racial relief and catharsis. The paper concluded that such techniques of humorous response remain underexplored as important tools of resistance to everyday racism. In his analysis of the protective effects of humour among Black football coaches, Hylton drew on the three main theories that have also been the framework of our study, i.e., incongruity, superiority and relief.³⁷⁹ (1) By so doing, he found that the idea of superiority could be seen where some of the stories of racism in his study resonated with ideas of humour arguing that the perpetrators of racist acts were being effectively subverted and the racists’ own presumed notion of superiority revealed displaced feelings of anger, ambivalence, insecurity or hurt. (2) Humour can of course, cause two people to laugh for different reasons. The listeners may laugh due to a sense of superiority ensuing from the joker, while the joker may laugh because of the repressed emotion and tension that saves on the psychic stress of such experiences. In light of the relief theo378 Hylton (2018), 343, which applies to the whole paragraph above. 379 Hylton (2018), 329–331, which applies to the list above and the ensuing paragraphs.

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ry of humour, it could be assumed that humour offers the potential victims a way of releasing feelings of anxiety in a plausibly less damaging manner than, say, open confrontation. (3) Lastly, incongruity offers victims of racial abuse a technique to reverse racist words and take away their power by countering the affective effect and playing around their semantic and pragmatic features.³⁸⁰ Comical intelligence can defy cruel intolerance. Hylton also looked at other frameworks for how humour could counter racism. Among them, he highlighted how humour can (1) function as an ethnic glue, (2) celebrate survival, or (3) act as a safety valve to release mounting intercultural and interracial tensions. (4) Similarly, he also considered the physiological uses of humour as a coping mechanism. (5) Pragmatically, when it comes to extracting something light out of stressful situations, humour can make everyday struggles and disappointments easier to manage and overcome. (6) Humour can also be seen as a way to speak truth to power or (7) shift situations from the negative to the positive. However attractive the possibility of humour as a countermeasure against racism might seem, Hylton’s paper does certainly highlight the extremeness of the vitriol that the Black coaches have been subjected to throughout their careers, and the consequent potential for genuine and enduring damage to their psyche. Cruel humour abounds in his study, but mainly as a means of abuse. The healing power of humour, instead, only makes a pale appearance in these stories.

2.3.8 Fatal Accidents Death is a time limit; but differs in many ways from New Year’s Day. The divisions of time which men have adopted are in a sort of way a mild mortality. When we see the Old Year out, we do what many eminent men have done, and what all men desire to do; we die temporarily. —G.K. Chesterton³⁸¹

380 We discussed insults in a more detailed manner in H&C2. 381 Chesterton (1958), 72–73.

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In the 21st-century, Tricia Scott suggested that using cruel humour under terrible circumstances has nothing to do with humour as such.³⁸² 2.3.8.1 Commonplace Humour To laugh in a situation where nothing funny has actually happened, e.g., when a person has suddenly died, poses before us a contradictory situation and a puzzling question: why do we respond to it jokingly, rather than with a sombre composure? In other words, why select something that is incongruous, rather than something that is not so?³⁸³ (1) As discussed throughout this volume, humour has the power to unite people. Sharing a macabre humour about encountering death may be a way for different persons to facilitate solidarity among them and come to terms with what they are going through. Among the aforementioned professions, cruel humour can help workers to deal with the reality and suddenness of death and help them cope with situations that other people might find emotionally draining. It therefore acts as a mechanism of encouragement allowing for the modification of beliefs and reorganisation of meaning.³⁸⁴ This being in line, moreover, with the conclusions reached by Rosset’s and Amir’s philosophical existentialism.³⁸⁵ (2) Encountering the death of others is also a challenge to us all. It pulls us away from the comfort of everyday mundanity and forces us to face our own impending mortality, decay and decomposition.³⁸⁶ Our view of the body, as a result, can be very bipolar. For one, we can see it as something sacred and pure. Inversely, the body can be seen as profane and chaotic. Death forces us to take seriously the latter view. As Tricia Scott wrote, maintaining ontological security requires that death and the potentially polluting body be managed and controlled, and the death processing industry is adept at recreating ontological security by normalizing the death experience within socially acceptable margins. An example of this is manifested in the way death workers represent the body to look as if it were asleep rather than dead. The body providing a metaphor for social order because bodily seepage (blood, milk, urine, faeces, vomit, sweat, and tears) represents dirt, disgust, and horror and the impossibility of clean, pure, and proper. Thus, when dealing with the mutilating effects of sudden death on the body and the impossibility of social control, emergency personnel develop a sense of what is appropriate. As in the following quotation from a police officer, the more sensational

382 383 384 385 386

T. Scott (2007), 350–364. T. Scott (2007), 350–351. T. Scott (2007), 351. See Chapters 2 and 3 of Part 1. Their philosophies were explored in detail in H&C1 and H&C2. T. Scott (2007), 360.

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the incident the more likely it is to attract a comment of disbelief such as “Christ, have a look at the state of this!”³⁸⁷

(3) As we have repeatedly remarked in this chapter, for people working in appalling circumstances involving mangled and mutilated bodies, the use of cruel humour may credibly be seen as a way of regaining emotional control when faced with cruel challenges.³⁸⁸ These situations are naturally unbearable in any sense, and if an individual is to stand any chance of functioning within them, emotional distancing becomes the only viable way. Allowing yourself to react as any normal person would do, i.e., by crying, screaming and/or vomiting, is out of the question. (4) For some people, moreover, the best way to gain affective separation and deal effectively with this kind of upsetting settings is to reframe the situation— or even human existence overall, for that matter. There, humour can truly be the saving grace. Though not just your everyday ha-ha humour. Rather, humour that redefines human values and worth in a stinging manner. In other words, cruel humour.³⁸⁹ 2.3.8.2 Cruel Humour Interviewing nine focus groups of nurses, paramedics and traffic officers in accident and emergency departments at hospitals in the north of England, Scott found that cruel humour by emergency personnel was fundamentally derived from the pressures of emotionality, as well as their needs for coping, facing emotional exhaustion, and experiencing a general sense of annoyance.³⁹⁰ Within the cruel humour theme, she identified seven expressive categories: (1) “Quick-witted quips” are an aspect of the camaraderie within teams that work under demanding and emotionally taxing conditions. For example, paramedics laughing at a call coming in early in the morning describing an unfortunate individual who had woken up dead.³⁹¹ (2) A “twist in the tale” is a quick-witted humorous expression eliciting sustained laughter.³⁹²

387 388 and 389 390 391 392

T. Scott (2007), 360, which applies to the ensuing two paragraphs as well. Historically, hunter, warrior, and farming societies had, in all likelihood, different thresholds sensitivities. Other forms of humour can flourish in these environments and/or mingle with the cruel type. T. Scott (2007), 354. T. Scott (2007), 355. This category is, unfortunately, poorly defined and sketchily described by T. Scott (2007).

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(3) The third category refers to occasions when workers attempt to find a humorous “moral to the story” unfolding in front of their eyes. For instance, Scott interviews a police officer who came onto a scene where the cadaver lay collapsed behind a toilet door. Despite being told by his co-workers to proceed with caution, the officer did not realise the awkward location of the body and banged the door into the head of the deceased. Humorous comments followed with the overall moral to the tale that: “if you’re going to die don’t go to the toilet”.³⁹³ (4) The term “vulture mentality” describes humour involving the victim’s property.³⁹⁴ It applies, e.g., to joking about the body as convenient for rich pickings: A paramedic relayed a story concerning a dead man: I mean we’ve come back in the depot and the lads have said, “Oh, what was that then?” and, “Oh, it was just someone who got hit by a car like you know, he’s in the mortuary now”. And they’ll turn round and say, “Well what size feet was he?” you know, “I could do with a new pair of shoes!” “Was his jacket damaged?”³⁹⁵

(5) The fifth category describes “ironic expressions”. An example of that involves attending traffic officers delivering the cheekily named “Deathogram” to the victims’ relatives. The deceased in question was a young man with repeated convictions for joy riding and related car crimes. Nevertheless, the police delivered the news of the death with the required sensitivity and gave the parents the opportunity to speak with the emergency team and say their final farewells to their son. After that, the officers mused with a sense of irony that they reckoned that car crime went down by about 50% in the month that the young man died.³⁹⁶ (6) “Cadaver rhetoric” refers to humorous outbursts among workers dealing with dead bodies when either the cadaver displays some unusual physical changes or is found in embarrassing circumstances. Scott gives an example of traffic officers which attended the scene of a fatal incident where the male victim had left a certain pair of his anatomy on the stone wall. This led to the officers having a good laugh about it afterwards.³⁹⁷ (7) The seventh and final category of humour put forth by Scott, “censoring humour expression”, is actually anti-humour. Although humour plays a major role in the working lives of people dealing with death, the ability to censor hilarity is also relevant. This happens both on a personal level, i.e., censoring your own

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T. Scott T. Scott T. Scott T. Scott T. Scott

(2007), 355. (2007), 356. (2007), 356. (2007), 356–357. (2007), 357.

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thoughts and speech, and on a social level, e.g., your co-workers reprimanding you or giving you the evil eye.³⁹⁸

2.3.9 Funerary Arrangements I wish to be cremated. One tenth of my ashes shall be given to my agent, as written in our contract. —Groucho Marx³⁹⁹

In order to investigate the use of cruel humour in working environments in which professionals are constantly exposed to death, bereavement, and human suffering, Annalisa Grandi and associates conducted in recent years a series of qualitative interviews with workers holding managerial, supervisorial, and operatorial positions in the funeral industry sectors, i.e., morgues, cemeteries, funeral services, and crematoria services.⁴⁰⁰ The researchers probed how such a humour can coexist with these elements, how it is formed, and how it is managed by the workers facing, almost daily, cruel human suffering and coping with traumatic content.⁴⁰¹ (1) Based on the model by Martin and associates, the authors found the affiliative humour style particularly important.⁴⁰² Supposedly, it fosters effective relationships both in the workplace and with other professionals working in different but related sectors.⁴⁰³ (1a) A special sub-category of affiliative humour identified by Grandi et al. was pranks.⁴⁰⁴ It seems that pranks are a widespread part of the funeral service environment. One classical prank appears to be commonly directed towards new employees. An interviewee described it in a detailed way: I laid down on a stretcher – I disinfected it first! – […] I even took my socks off and let my feet lay outside (of the stretcher) […] A wet sheet on me, in order to show that the corpse was very disgusting, that it was leaking, my hand placed like this (she crossed her arms on her chest) in order to hide that I was breathing. When this guy came in, my colleague said to him “Come and see what we picked up. Look, it’s dreadful, it’s leaking a lot from its mouth, from its nose, it’s all wet!” I could hear and got a glimpse of this guy’s silhouette from behind the green

398 T. Scott (2007), 357. 399 As cited in “Groucho Marx” (2018), par. 11. 400 Grandi et al. (2021). 401 There may be rare individuals who are unable to perceive the suffering or the traumatic character of the content. 402 Martin et al (2003), 50. 403 Grandi et al. (2021), 2. 404 Grandi et al. (2021), 2 and 5.

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sheet and he said “How disgusting! You’re right”. Since he wasn’t wearing his gloves, he couldn’t raise the sheet[…] As he got nearer “Waah!!!” and I sat up.⁴⁰⁵

(2) Grandi and associates identified five categories and one subcategory of selfenhancing humour that have a more intrapsychic focus than the affiliative form.⁴⁰⁶ Overall, they all seem to function mostly as coping mechanisms when dealing with negative emotions. Workers use this kind of humorous style even when they tell workplace anecdotes to family and friends in order to highlight the ‘light side of things’ that happen at work—thus suggesting, implicitly, that hermeneutical reconfigurations of reality can also occur within as well as outside these professional contexts which require turning tragedy into comedy to some degree.⁴⁰⁷ “Cadaver rhetoric”, which we know from Scott’s earlier analysis, is thus categorised as a self-enhancing form of humour by Grandi and her collaborators.⁴⁰⁸ (2a) A sub-category of “cadaver rhetoric” is the use of raw or peculiar language, especially when referring to the deceased body. One example of this is the surgeon who does not close the eyelids on the corpse properly after harvesting the corneas from them, prompting his co-workers to compare the blood leaking with the pictures of the Virgin Mary. In the same way, a worker describing a situation where a lot of corpses had to be prepared and the family members were getting impatient and difficult to deal with, said that on the tip of his tongue was the following sentence: “I haven’t finished dressing your father, because I’ve got another one over there who’s leaking like a fountain”.⁴⁰⁹ (2b) One form of self-enhancing humour that Grandi’s team identified is laughing along with clients of the funeral services, which in some cases is deemed to be wholly appropriate, although the jokes always refer to death, if not to the dead him-/herself.⁴¹⁰ (2c) Another is tragicomedy, which means finding the comic side to a dramatic and disheartening event: A crematorium worker recalled the case of a client who went to collect his mother’s ashes. The worker in charge checked on his list to see which colleague took care of that cremation, and as he found it, he read his surname out loud. The fact was that his colleague surname

405 406 407 408 409 410

Grandi et al. (2021), 6. Grandi et al. (2021), 2. We discussed extensively this hermeneutical reconfiguration in H&C2. T. Scott (2007), 357, and Grandi et al. (2021), 2 and 6. Grandi et al. (2021), 6. Grandi et al. (2021), 7.

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corresponded to a domestic animal noun, so as the client heard it, he said frantically “No, no! What animal! They are my mother ashes!”⁴¹¹

(2d) “Context ambiguity” is yet another category of self-enhancing humour, brought about by incongruence or ambiguity that may cause people to incorrectly interpret the reality of a given situation.⁴¹² Another crematorium worker recalled a case reported to him by a client. He was an old widow who had bought his burial recess ahead of time – and arranged to include his name and picture – next to the one of his deceased wife. He moved to a different town several years earlier, so when he happened to be back in town, he went to the cemetery to visit his beloved wife. A woman carrying a baby, moved closer to him to ask information and he answered to her “I don’t know, I’m not from here anymore”. The woman turned and saw the gravestone with the picture of the man standing in front of her, so she screamed and ran away (32CR), believing she had been talking to a ghost!⁴¹³

(2e) A particular category of self-enhancing humour emerged from the analysis, and it was labelled “undertaker’s humour”, to quote the participants’ own words. This was seen as a healthy way of dealing with negative emotions that was strictly confined to the funeral context: “A morgue operator, as he emphasized how good his colleague was in hair dressing of the deceased, added ‘I mean, she dresses this hair in such a fabulous way, sometimes I’d like to lay down (on the stretcher who holds the corpse) and have her do mine!’”⁴¹⁴ It is important to recognise that these professionals need to adopt positive and adaptive coping mechanisms in the inauspicious and heart-rending working situations that they find themselves in on a regular basis. Cadaveric rhetoric, tragicomedy, and context-ambiguity are all, quite patently, coping mechanisms that are obviously and directly connected to this line of work. Humorous narratives in situations with a fierce emotional impact play a protective and normative function and help the workers to gain emotional distance from what is happening.⁴¹⁵ Once again, then, a Bergsonesque anaesthesia of the heart may be the most expedient subjective remedy to an objectively difficult situation, and humour can be an efficient way to let out some of the accumulating psychic pressures.⁴¹⁶

411 Grandi et al. (2021), 7. 412 Grandi et al. (2021), 7. 413 Grandi et al. (2021), 7. 414 Grandi et al. (2021), 8. 415 Grandi et al. (2021), 7–8. 416 Bergson and Freud can walk hand-in-hand. As explained in H&C1, the former’s cardiac slumber means a reduction or absence of sympathetic feelings. Lust, aggression, spite, and spleen, then, can still be vented out via humour. And as explained in H&C2, callousness can be a precursor, if not a precondition, for sadism itself.

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(3) Apart from the relatively benign forms of, largely, cruel humour, i.e., the affiliative and self-enhancing styles, Grandi and her colleagues identified as well a third, more malevolent form.⁴¹⁷ This category includes humorous expressions with a teasing or derisive purpose, expressing sarcastic and/or cynical outlooks. (3a) The latter outlook was especially prevalent, and some participants described their attitude at work as very cynical insofar as there was an atmosphere in the workplace such that all involved workers kept trying to prove that they were less vulnerable than the others. This is, undeniably, yet another form of detachment from the proximity with death with which these people find themselves in close quarters day after day. As always, the question arises about whether or not this is a useful method to cope with difficult circumstances, especially in the long run.⁴¹⁸ (3b) Grandi and her team also noted a cynical attitude towards the clients who frequently have different educational backgrounds and are often old and infirm, not to mention bereft and grieving. “One of the workers revealed that there was a blackboard where all the co-workers used to write all the ‘stupid things’ said by the clients”.⁴¹⁹ Certainly not benign and probably not a mere mechanism of defence, cynicism is more likely to be a consequence of the emotional pressure under which these professionals are constantly required to operate. As repeatedly seen in this chapter, psychic pressure can seek aggressive openings whereby to exit. (4) Having to always maintain composure and warmth in difficult circumstances, tend to corpses in a broad range of variously dreadful conditions, and empathise with strangers throughout the day is definitely going to take a lot out of a person. Moreover, the ability to regulate feelings differs between individuals and within individuals. All humans have a tipping point, and its location may change considerably, depending also on the specific time and circumstances in a person’s life. Besides, being unable to express and regulate emotions is likely to lead to the depersonalisation of others, if not even to self-alienation. However, the cynicism resulting from emotional exhaustion, sooner or later, can affect and spread to clients, co-workers, families, etc.⁴²⁰ Even if one might be tempted to categorise the cadaver rhetoric sub-theme and the subcategory of raw language as cynical forms of humour, Grandi and her collaborators would disagree, for they considered them as having a positive connotation, i.e., as being psychically protective.⁴²¹ Grandi and her colleagues maintained 417 418 419 420 421

Grandi et al. (2021), 8. Grandi et al. (2021), 8. Grandi et al. (2021), 8. Grandi et al. (2021), 8. Grandi et al. (2021), 8.

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that this sort of language plays a role in creating a sense of belonging, an identity, and that it enables effective communication between co-workers. Thus, the last category that emerged (“Behind the Curtains”) may not be specifically ascribable to just one of the previous humour styles, but should rather be seen as informing all of them: Using the workers’ own words, one of their main concerns is to keep all kinds of expressions of humor out of the client’s sight, namely, to keep them “behind the curtains”. It is paramount to maintain professionalism when dealing with clients. Some workers reported that it was difficult for them to find a place to laugh with co-workers, since they shared their workplace with clients (like cemetery operators or some crematorium operators). Many workers also reported how difficult it is sometimes to hold back laughter in certain situations “…sometimes when clients are here it’s hard […] I have to hide myself under the desk … or “…a moment when you say to yourself ‘I must not look at my colleague, otherwise …’” and at the end of the work day, it is even harder “… fatigue doesn’t help in holding back laughter, let’s put it that way!” From the narratives emerged the professionals’ need for a physical space where they could recovery. Most of the time, they are under the watchful eyes of the clients and just like actors who sometimes need to withdraw and go into their changing room before coming back on stage again, they need a safe space where they can distance themselves for a while “… we need to unplug for a while. Just among us, of course. The main thing is to maintain professionalism with the clients, total support for their needs, but then (smiling) among us … we are human beings”. Another operator explained further “You have to keep in mind that it is not only important to take a break from the job… I mean I should take a break, I should have a place where I can unwind, chat and have a cup of coffee and laugh with a colleague, because I am not allowed to snicker in the corridors, I can’t make a joke, downplay … that is what makes me feel normal, makes me get back to normality, that is what helps me get over the grim situation I have just experienced: where do I go for that?”⁴²²

Humorous cynicism may thus be the ugly child of very cruel circumstances.

2.3.10 Rape Political correctness is America’s newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people’s language with strict codes and rigid rules. I’m not sure that’s the way to fight discrimination. I’m not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech… These allegedly well-intentioned people have strayed so far from reality that it will not be a surprise for me to some-

422 Grandi et al. (2021), 8.

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day hear a rape victim referred to as an “unwilling sperm recipient”. —George Carlin⁴²³

In H&C1, we tackled in great detail select socio-scientific studies about one of the cruellest acts known to humankind, i.e., rape. In H&C2, in turn, we discussed extensively the pervasive role that rape jokes have in cruel humour. As we noted, this particular type of jokes is largely shunned by joke-telling members of the educated public because of its inflammatory nature. However, it is frequently used by standup comics, such as the quoted George Carlin, who have regularly seen much value in its daring ‘edginess’.⁴²⁴ Since many people are themselves the victims of violent sexual assaults and all are likely to know someone who has suffered the consequences, joking about rape creates an uneasy flow of consciousness about pain, degradation, violence, dominance, oppression, sex, and humour. Psychologically, laughing at a rape joke cannot be divorced from simultaneously downplaying the survivor’s experience or the anguish experienced by his/her closest associates. Whether a rape joke can ever be funny is therefore both debated and debatable, but it is undeniably an appropriate subject for anyone studying the relationships between humour and cruelty.⁴²⁵ In this tragic and traumatic context, in fact, one of the notable recent developments has been the rise the of women-authored rape jokes.⁴²⁶ 2.3.10.1 Sarah Silverman A good example is the brusque American comic Sarah Silverman, who uses cruel humour in order to highlight situational ironies involving rape victims and the apparent hypocrisy of a culture that views rape as a serious crime while laughing at it in certain settings. She frequently puts her audiences in a so-called “double bind”, leaving them with only two options: laughing or expressing dismay. If a

423 Carlin (2004), 69–71. As to Carlin’s campaign against censorship, Twenge, VanLandingham, and Campbell (2017) suggested that he may have won it, for more and more swearwords have become more and more ‘public’. Or, in yet another ironic cruelty, the terms that he worried about were normalised, while new prohibited terms arose. As discussed by Baroncelli (1996, 44–80), the standards for ridicule’s un/acceptability are fluid. 424 Edginess qua aesthetic criterion entails no explicit rule, but only a personal judgement within a social setting involving plenty of tacit conventions (see Chapter 4 of Part 1). Understood as a duty, moreover, edginess could even be construed as an ethical criterion on the comedian’s part. We do not pursue this issue further, however. 425 Given their inherent callousness, rape jokes indicate an anaesthesia of the heart, if not sadism (see H&C2). 426 See L. Cox (2015), 965 and 974–976, which applies to the first two paragraphs of the subsection.

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rape victim laughs, s/he takes part in his/her own humiliation. If s/he does not laugh, s/he is seen as a killjoy. In either case, significant subordination can be achieved. Silverman’s participation in the 2005 documentary The Aristocrats is a good example of her unique approach to problematic rape jokes. The film revolves around a single joke which has for a long time been reserved for the backrooms of comedy clubs, being solely told by comics to other comics. It revolves around a family of performers pitching an act for a promoter. The narrative varies, but the punchline is always the same. The performance turns out to be a disgusting incestuous orgy of the family members, including bizarre sexual acts with faeces and bestiality, with each one of the over 100 comics taking part, making his/her utmost to outdo their colleagues in detailed descriptions of depravity. In the end, the hapless promoter asks what the act is called and gets the answer: “The Aristocrats”.⁴²⁷ In the documentary, Silverman delivers an extended version of the joke, but with an important twist, as she takes on the character of a former child star nostalgically recalling her family’s “Aristocrats” act: “I don’t actually put The Aristocrats on my resume anymore”, she states with a sentimental tone, “but it doesn’t take away from my pride”.⁴²⁸ Her version is packed full of unimaginable depravities, but unlike her mostly male colleagues’ versions, is delivered in a sober and thoughtful manner, as if she was recalling it for a therapist. She also claims that an actual person, television and radio host Joe Franklin, was the promoter and he became so enthralled with her family’s performance that he ingratiated himself with them and eventually lured young Sarah to his office to show her his special bed for ‘little people’. At this moment, Silverman looks directly into the camera and says, “Joe Franklin raped me”. As Beth Anne Cooke-Cornell points out in her article on the American comedian, the poignant core of Silverman’s delivery mirrors the thoughtless versions given by her male colleagues in almost every way, except for her unhumorous conclusion, where she highlights the fact the Aristocrats joke is always about the sexual molestation of women and children. By making the claim, “Joe Franklin raped me”, she is introducing literal rape into a joke that traditionally works because the violence is unreal. In the words of Cooke-Cornell, Silverman turns “The Aristo-

427 Sade’s pornographic and parodic descriptions of 18th-century French aristocracy come to mind, in this respect (see Chapter 3 of Part 1). Besides, the gods of classical mythology, with whom Europe’s aristocrats liked comparing themselves, seemed rather accepting of the most volent and bizarre sexual perversions, including bestiality (e.g., Zeus turning himself into a swan to seduce or perhaps rape Leda, queen of Sparta). 428 Cooke-Cornell (2018), pars. 10–13, which applies to all remaining paragraphs in this sub-subsection.

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crats” into “a meta-rape joke, exposing the truth about the rape joke, which is that beneath the irony and the attempts to counter rape culture, the ironic rape joke subordinates the victim to the satisfaction of male laughter. Hers is a literal rape joke, exposing the shortcomings of all other rape jokes.” Throughout her career, Silverman has been criticised for her many rape and meta-rape jokes. As a woman, she can claim that “rape can be funny” without having to wrestle with the same moral dilemmas that her male counterparts are faced with (whether they are aware of them or not). Her unchosen body and acknowledged gender give her a certain permission insofar as they are inherently linked with victimhood in current American culture. Therefore, on her Jesus is Magic tour in 2005, she could quip: “I was raped by a doctor. Which is, you know, so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.” Nevertheless, there are moral dilemmas, even for a female comic. Rape is real and male aggression is real. Above all, cruel suffering is real. Silverman’s shows often attempt to correct her approach by using caveats and meta-jokes to emphasise the inherent aggression: Rape is obviously the most heinous crime imaginable, but rape jokes are great … because they make a comic seem so edgy and so dangerous. And the truth is, it’s like the safest area to talk about in comedy. Because who’s gonna complain about a rape joke? I mean, I would say rape victims, but they’re traditionally not complainers. I know, that was a tasteless joke about the fact that rape victims often don’t report rape.

This joke forces the audience to acknowledge both the rape victim and the cultural forces that permit a comic to joke at the victim’s expense. With it, Silverman manages to foreground a familiar excuse for the rape joke in liberal societies, i.e., free speech, which is at the same time a precondition for her comedic act itself. In this circuitous way, she exposes another real threat, i.e., the cruel stifling of the victim’s voice in favour of an oppressive narrative. 2.3.10.2 Other Comedians An even more direct and poignant approach was adopted by two Canadian comics, Heather Jordan Ross and Emma Cooper, who founded the Rape is Real and Everywhere Comedy Tour in 2016, where rape survivors took their own experience of sexual violence and made it the subject of their jokes.⁴²⁹ In this context, the actuality of the person’s trauma is central. One comic begins, “Let’s talk about the time

429 Cooke-Cornell (2018), pars. 13–18, which applies to all remaining paragraphs in this sub-subsection.

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my uncle raped me!” Another quips, “If you don’t laugh at these jokes, I got raped for nothing.” One of the founders, Emma Cooper, came up with the following joke: “My rapist left a poem on my bicycle beforehand. In the poem he misspelled the word ‘beautiful’ with two L’s. I need a higher standard of rapist. My rapist is an idiot.” This joke has two main purposes: to demonstrate the victim’s intellectual superiority to the attacker and remind the audience that the perpetrators are seldom unknown or psychopathic attackers. The most daring style of comedy is without a doubt that of Adrienne Truscott in her show Asking for It. She goes on stage wearing a bra but no panties, and performs in front of framed photos of disgraced comics Daniel Tosh and Bill Cosby. Although some audiences might find this method a little over-the-top, there is a heart-rendering point to it. Namely, taking the literal rape and connecting it to the literal pussy, supposedly ‘asking for it’, her costume (or lack thereof ) forces the audience to realise that this is the body that the so-called “rape culture” of contemporary societies is said to claim to be okay to rape. Another interesting initiative by director Kelly Bachman was the stand-up performance Rape Jokes by Survivors: A Night of Comedy and Catharsis, the stated purpose of which was to help rape survivors to heal through humour, however cruel it may come across. As the comic Brittany Brave explained: “It’s a very consensual audience, ironically. We all know what we’re getting into.” Tellingly, Brave begins her set by saying: “My name is Brittany, and I know that makes you either want to take me to the mall or punch me in the face. If you’re my ex-boyfriend, you get to do both.” Again, this is a sort of joke that places the audience in a dilemma. On the one hand, actual subjects of the joked-about violence are present. On the other hand, the members of the audience have also been conditioned to laugh at jokes about it. If we assume that they are free responsible agents, they must make a moral call about the cruel humour to which they are being exposed and how they respond to it.⁴³⁰

2.3.11 Genocide [W]e – Western mankind in the broadest sense of the word – are accustomed to attach yet another meaning to the notion of civilization. This more pregnant and ambitious idea of civilization covers a vast field of facts and tendencies, of axioms and habits such as the respect for personal freedom and security, the belief in argument and discussion, the humanitarian

430 See Chapter 4 of Part 1.

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standards of conduct, the appreciation of a well-divided and well-balanced system of the amenities of life, the reverence for objective truth and impartial judgment, the sense of proportion which comes under the general heading “sanity”, or the consciousness of human limitations and frailties (as measured by the generally valid standard of human dignity), which is sometimes called a sense of humour. —Aurel Kolnai⁴³¹

The possible benefits of humour, also of the cruel streak, in dealing with the trials of life could not be highlighted more clearly than by looking at the atrocities suffered especially by Europe’s Jewish populations in the fateful years before and during World War II.⁴³² Despite the monstrousness of this trauma or indeed perhaps because of it, humour and laughter played crucial psychological roles for countless people during the Holocaust, in the ghettos, and in the concentration/death camps. 2.3.11.1 General Considerations In the words of Chaya Ostrower, humour “became a unique weapon of those who felt helpless and could not rebel or resist”.⁴³³ Under so cruel circumstances, cruel humour too can function as a defence mechanism, i.e., “automatic, psychological strategies, subconscious measures that protect the individual from external or internal pressures, which might include thoughts, memories, or emotions that threaten the individual or arouse unbearable anxiety”.⁴³⁴ Defence mechanisms come in many shapes and sizes. Some are indisputably more benign than others. But they all share two characteristics: they are denials or distortions of reality and, to a substantial extent, operate unconsciously.⁴³⁵ On the basis of the evidence accumulated by generations of scholars and scientists, there is no doubt that humour is one of the most elegant and effective defence mechanisms when human beings experience negative emotions such as sadness, anxiety, or fear. When individuals can see humorous elements in adverse situations, they gain another perspective on the situation and thereby avoid being overwhelmed by the negative emotions, for a while at least.⁴³⁶

431 Kolnai (1938), 210; emphasis added. A Hungarian-born Jew and a Chesterton-inspired Catholic convert, Kolnai (1938) offered one of the most extensive philosophical indictments of Nazism before World War II. 432 For an overview of those decades and of the “short 20th century” overall, see Hobsbawm (1994, title et passim). 433 Ostrower (2015), 183. 434 Ostrower (2015), 184. 435 Ostrower (2015), 184. 436 See Chapter 2 of Part 1.

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As also insisted upon by Morreall and Amir, both of whom were tackled extensively in H&C2, humour and laughter are important mechanisms for coping with the psychological pressures of life as such and may have an essential place in safeguarding our emotional and physical health.⁴³⁷ A psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor, the Viennese father of logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, stated in his autobiography: To discover that there was any semblance of art in a concentration camp must be surprise enough for an outsider, but he may be even more astonished to hear that one could find a sense of humor there as well; of course, only the faint trace of one, and then only for a few seconds or minutes. Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. I practically trained a friend of mine who worked next to me on the building site to develop a sense of humor. I suggested to him that we would promise each other to invent at least one amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one day after our liberation.⁴³⁸

We saw in Chapter 2 of Part 1 and, in greater detail, H&C1 how Sigmund Freud argued that the functional essence of humour is that it allows the individual to spare him-/herself painful effects by substituting the emotional possibility of sorrow with amusement. In this way, humour enables people to cope with harsh situations without being overwhelmed by negative emotions.⁴³⁹ As the Holocaust survivor Felicja Karay stated: Humor and satire played a tremendous role, in my opinion… It was a cemetery all right, and exactly for that reason, the mere fact that we wanted somehow to preserve our personality … they wanted to make robots out of us. This was the integral part of our inner, mental struggle for our human identity, the fact that we could still laugh at things… Humor was an integral part of our spiritual resistance. And this spiritual resistance was the pre-condition for a desire

437 Amir (2013, 7) offered also the most concise and instructive taxonomy of the relations between Western philosophy and humour at large: “1. The Ridiculous Philosopher” (e.g., Thales falling into the well), “2. The Laughing Philosopher” (e.g., Democritus, Diogenes, and Montaigne as merry wise men), “3. The Comical Philosopher” (e.g., Socrates as ironic teacher), “4. Philosophy is Comedic” (e.g., using “irony, wit, sarcasm, humour” in philosophical writings), “5. Wit is a Virtue” (e.g., laughter as part of the good life), “6. Laughter is the Mark of the Human” (e.g., homo ridens and homo risibilis), “7. Laughter is Epistemologically Valuable” (e.g., Shaftesbury’s test of truth), “8. Laughter is Ontologically Rooted” (i.e., “reality itself is comical”). 438 Frankl (1984), 63. Frankl (1984, 11 et passim) described this sense of humour as “grim” and “strange” while stressing incessantly its psychological value. 439 Ostrower (2015), 185.

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to live, to put it briefly… No matter how little it occurred, no matter how sporadic it was, or how spontaneous, it was very important. Very important!⁴⁴⁰

The changes in humour and jokes that were told within the Jewish community during the Holocaust reveal the broader transformations of people’s psyche when facing impossible conditions. The prisoners were forced into the pathological atmosphere of the ghettos and camps, and the sense of humour that they had in their previous lives was no longer as relevant, if at all. The jokes became harsher, more brazen, and offensive—crueller, in fact.⁴⁴¹ This new sense of humour generally emerged after only a short period of adjustment: A situation that was funny to veteran prisoners was often terrifying and repulsive to new prisoners, testifying to the long-term prisoners’ gradual adaptation to the brutality of the camps. From the lively stories the old-timers told and the expressions they used, the new prisoners were able to derive information on how to survive, what were the norms of the cooperative lifestyle in the pathological world of the camp, and how to relate to the reality of their new lives. This was the educational, didactic function of humor in the camp; a successful joke could replace long explanations and illustrate the situation better than relating numerous details.⁴⁴²

During the Holocaust, all sorts of jokes were told within the Jewish ghettos and concentration camps. Nevertheless, more and more of them were influenced by the horrible conditions and the effect that these had on people’s psyche. Some of the jokes were notably aggressive, vulgar, and/or cynical, designed to amuse the listeners by gratifying and sublimating the hostility that they were experiencing, but had little chance of expressing otherwise. 2.3.11.2 Specific Theories The use of such a humour can thus be understood from the viewpoints of both superiority and relief. (1) Aggressive humour, for example, allows the person in distress to see herself as superior to the tormentor and also release the frustrated aggressiveness that is bottled up inside. In a somewhat delusional manner, aggressive humour could give the Holocaust’s victims the fleeting luxury of seeing themselves as being superior to their executioners, hence avenging the suffered cruelty with responsive cruelty

440 As cited in Ostrower (2015), 183. 441 Ostrower (2015), 190–191. 442 Ostrower (2015), 191.

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of their own.⁴⁴³ An example of such aggressive humour directed against the Nazis can be found in Ostrower’s account: [Adolf ] Hitler, [Hermann] Goering, and [Joseph] Goebbels meet at “Kaiserhof” for a meal. They agree that each would order a chicken, though Goering orders two for himself. But as so often happens, the eyes can eat more than the stomach, and there’s a chicken left over. What to do? They agree that the first person who passes by the window where they are sitting will be invited in and given the chicken. After a moment’s wait, a man passes. He is called in. And it was a Jew! “Verfluchter Schweinhund [you damned son-of-a-b—]”, Hitler addresses him, “according to our agreement you shall have this chicken, but only on the condition that everything you do to the chicken, we will do to you. If you snap off a drumstick, we’ll break one of your legs; if you tear off a wing, it will cost you an arm; and if you wring the chicken’s neck, your neck will suffer the same fate. So eat; the chicken is yours, you Judeschwein [you Jewish swine]!” The Jew stands for a moment, then picks up the chicken and plants a juicy kiss right on its rump.⁴⁴⁴

No systematic reports of the use of humour in concentration camps exist, and all that we have are anecdotes that are inevitably tainted with the morals of hindsight. This is notably true of sexual humour. According to Freud, laughing at a sexual joke not only liberates emotional energy, but also permits enjoyment of forbidden thoughts.⁴⁴⁵ The circumstances in the ghettos and camps were far removed from any sense of normality and, as a result, sexual humour lost most of its implicitness and discretion, becoming far more direct and ruder. Most certainly, the types of sexual jokes told in these horrible situations would not be the kind that most survivors would have made before or after. Besides, it would seem that sexual humour made a scarcer appearance in these circumstances. The hierarchy of human needs would dictate that starving people are not especially preoccupied with the erotic elements of existence.⁴⁴⁶ On the other hand, jokes about food were abundant.⁴⁴⁷ Furthermore, there are some indications that the dismal surroundings of the ghettos and camps decreased the use of sexual humour more for women than men.⁴⁴⁸ In some ways, cruel humour, especially gallows humour, can also be seen as a method for reducing the anguish and anxiety that accompany any acute awareness of ones’ own mortality.⁴⁴⁹ Perhaps, more romantically, we could say that in joking

443 444 445 446 447 448 449

Ostrower (2015), 186. Ostrower (2015), 186. Ostrower (2015), 188. Ostrower (2015), 188. Ostrower (2015), 193. Ostrower (2015), 188. Ostrower (2015), 191.

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about death we celebrate the fact that we are alive, i.e., that we do not yet belong to the silent society of the dead: “By joking about death, we tell ourselves that we are unlike the dead. We laugh at the dead because laughter helps us feel superior in comparison.”⁴⁵⁰ (2) Sociologically, the concentration camps were crowded with people from all walks of life. Many survivors later pointed to the fact that prisoners who arrived at the camps with acquaintances or friends from home or who were able to make friends had an easier time adjusting. The social nature of humans is not just an inconsequential epiphenomenon, but an essential survival skill. A solitary individual is less likely to stay alive.⁴⁵¹ As we have repeatedly stated throughout our volume, and was reported long ago by Hutcheson and Hartley, humour acts as a lubricant for social interaction among group members, enhancing their cohesion, reducing tension, and creating an overall positive atmosphere.⁴⁵² The social nature of humour and the innate tendency for individuals to assume certain social roles, even under the most extreme circumstances, are thus tellingly highlighted in the following account by a survivor: When you were with people, and it didn’t matter if it was in the ghetto or the camp or Auschwitz, after a moment of silence … you lived within, you always lived with other people, you were not alone… And whoever had a sense of humor would express his humor there as well… I’ve always been the type that loves laughter when I’m in company… Everything you say can be said with humor… During the bad moments, like in every situation, whether it’s during a war or in peacetime, or if someone feels bad inside and doesn’t open up to anyone and doesn’t want anything, so OK, he keeps silent and doesn’t laugh. But there is always humor in groups… Even though there was no theater and no professional stand-up performers, there were natural stand-up performers and that’s all you need. There is always one. In every group, under all circumstances, there’s always one.⁴⁵³

(3) Superiority and relief can also reinforce each other. Cruel humour can be used to raise morale among the oppressed, to provide them with at least some elements of resistance and, perhaps fantastically, undermine the morale of the tormentors. As William M. Thackeray had already noted in the 19th century, “popular humour … ever since Steele’s and Addison’s time”, can engender a satisfying sense of “collective superiority”, by allowing “the people” to be pitched against some

450 451 452 453

Ostrower Ostrower Ostrower Ostrower

(2015), 191. (2015), 189. (2015), 188. See H&C1 on the two Enlightenment thinkers. (2015), 190.

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“wicked aristocrat”, who is to be “bepummeled” ad libitum, even if only in their imagination.⁴⁵⁴ Under terrible circumstances, cruel humour can thus be claimed to be able to become for some persons: (1) a distraction, (2) means of vengeance, and (3) self-protection, as well as (4) an emotional escape from the unbearable.⁴⁵⁵ Humour is certainly not enough to change the cruellest circumstances, if it can even change the ‘merely’ cruel ones. Nevertheless, humour can help a person or even a community to cope with them, i.e., deal with these circumstances to some life-enabling extent—however minimal it may be, of course, and for as long as humour’s beneficial effects can actually last.⁴⁵⁶

2.3.12 A Third Set of Reflections NELL NAGG

(without lowering her voice): Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. But— (shocked): Oh!

NELL: Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it’s always the same thing. Yes, it’s like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don’t laugh any more. —Samuel Beckett⁴⁵⁷

“There was a famous joke in Warsaw, but not only in Warsaw: Two Jews meet, and one of them eats a piece of scented soap. The other Jew asks him, ‘Moishe, how come you’re eating scented soap?’ Moishe responds, ‘If they’re going to turn me into soap, at least I’ll smell good.’”⁴⁵⁸ The Jewish people have a long tradition of self-deprecating humour. They frequently make fun of their individual weaknesses, but also of their own culture. Yet

454 As cited in Figueroa-Dorrego and Larkin-Galiñanes (2009), 503–506. 455 Ostrower (2015), 191. 456 As repeatedly noted in our three volumes, very different views exist on the duration of these effects. 457 Beckett (1957), lines 194–196. 458 Ostrower (2015), 191–192.

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sometimes, self-deprecating humour is not about revealing weaknesses, but showing strength: “Only a self-confident person can reveal his or her weaknesses.”⁴⁵⁹ It comes as no surprise that, in the ruthless realities of life within the ghettos and concentration camps, the Jews turned to their tradition of barbed self-mockery to find something to make them laugh and feel better.⁴⁶⁰ Plausibly, this may have been the most common form of humour that was used therein.⁴⁶¹ Also, the longer and the deeper is the suffering, the more congenial such a type of humour becomes. As two contemporary humour scholars state on this point, Jewish humour is a remedy to a historical existence that has been nothing but “cruel … always hard, a struggle”.⁴⁶² One of the best jokes ever told, in our judgement, is brimming with sarcasm, poignancy, and cruelty. It originates from Jewish piety and it involves the cruel horrors of the Holocaust: “A Holocaust survivor who dies and goes to heaven. On arrival he tells God a Holocaust joke. And God says: ‘that isn’t funny’. The survivor replies: ‘Oh well, you had to be there.’” The joke does not make anyone laugh out loud. Its structure is simple, with a generic punchline. Rather, its humour lies in its sense of profound loss, grievous life experience, and haunting and indeterminate personal spirituality.⁴⁶³

459 Ostrower (2015), 192. 460 The oppressed person’s self-mockery performs in this case a very different function from the “self-derision” that Baier (1993, 454) claimed to be characteristic of the philosophy of Hume, i.e., self-correction: to act better. 461 Ostrower (2015), 192. 462 Gini and Singer (2020), 30; emphasis added. 463 We do not have a reference for this joke, which we came across in our adult life. Given its elegiac tone, this joke reminds us of the distinction between “humour” and “laughter” operated by Beattie (1778, essay 2, 325) and discussed in H&C1.

3 Concluding Remarks Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. —Carl Gustav Jung¹

As seen especially in Chapter 2, there is a long-lasting and wide-spread belief that humour can benefit people in terms of physical and/or mental health. Also, as exemplified and discussed in Chapter 2 of Part 1 and in further depth in H&C2, it has even been argued that humour can lead to existential meaning and philosophical wisdom which can stand on a par with the noblest metaphysics and the most venerable religious creeds, e. g., Lydia Amir’s extensive philosophical work on “humour” proper. The extant socio-scientific evidence, though, seems to be largely anecdotal, insofar as the available research is internally plural, if not fragmented, and, at times, plainly contradictory. Some studies have shown benefits; others have not. And yet, using humour in the face of cruelty is a very common theme in the realm of human experience, including the sciences and the arts. From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, it seems extremely unlikely that this pattern of human conduct should be so prevalent and pronounced if it did not have some obvious benefits. What they are exactly, though, and how exactly humour works in such situations are still pretty much a riddle. Needless to say, the expected scientific standards of exactitude may be the actual problem in such a context. For one, as amply shown in the Part 1 of this volume, polysemy abounds and, in all likelihood, cannot be easily cast aside—lest we stop talking of “humour” and “cruelty” proper, i. e., as these two terms have actually been used and addressed in the Western humanities and the world’s social sciences for quite some time.² For another, ignoring something because it cannot be measured or managed scientifically or acting as though it did not matter or even did not exist may not be the greatest display of intelligence that a responsible scholar can offer under the circumstances.³ Aware of these complexities and conundrums, we ourselves have favoured throughout our research a philosophical approach that, while avoiding bold and trenchant statements, facilitated nonetheless the art of reflection qua “negative capability”, i. e., exploring as many aspects of the matters at issue as possible while

1 As translated and cited in Goel and Sahni (2014), 226. 2 See also H&C1. 3 As often noted in our volumes, we agree with M. Polanyi (1962c) on the importance of Western culture at large. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111256108-005

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sustaining and even accepting uncertainty, cultivating interpretative plurality, contemplating unusual and unsettling perspectives, activating the imagination, suspending judgement, tolerating unresolved tensions, and recovering important insights and valuable information from the many available sources, despite the fact that these sources frequently disagreed with one another, and/or presented us with indecencies, immoralities, inaccuracies, incongruities and/or irregularities.⁴ Conscious of such a rich yet somewhat puzzling multiplicity of suitable standpoints, we have therefore strived to avoid simplification, which is useful on many occasions, but also constitutes an often-unrecognised step towards ignorance— whether wilful or not—insofar as simplification focuses on the least ambiguous pieces of knowledge, i. e., a small kernel of our understanding that does not truly reflect the total reality of that to which it refers and of which we have experience. While some readers may have found our approach enlightening, others are likely to have found it extenuating. Unfortunately, it is a trite case of opportunity cost, akin to the loss of meaningfulness that clear-cut definitions can produce, i. e., the semantic wealth, pragmatic versatility, and cathectic depth that can be deliberately sacrificed for the valuable sakes of semantic precision, pragmatic efficiency and cathectic unobtrusiveness.⁵ Think, for instance, of the venerable term “soul”. While specific definitions of it can be given, e. g., in line with a Neoplatonic or Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of it, these definitions cut themselves short from capturing the depths of personal significance exhibited by vague yet common usages such as “soul brother”, “soulmate”, “soul food”, or “soul music”.⁶ As indicated in Chapter 4 of Part 1, there exists a linguistic-conceptual cost to be paid whenever we veer, on the one end of the available spectrum, towards the crystal-clear univocity of a sign (e. g., the ‘plus’ operator in arithmetic) or, on the other end, towards the creative equivocality of a symbol (e. g., the cross in Christian cultures).⁷

4 Hillman (2018). As indicated in Chapter 1 of Part 1, LVOA provides the ultimate criteria for said importance and value. 5 See also H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1. 6 Hillman (2011). 7 Whether psychic reality can be better approached and/or understood by means of signs (e. g., one-to-one correlations between psychic contents and behaviours, genes, neuropathways, neurochemicals, etc.) or symbols (e. g., associations, amplifications and interpretations of dreams, fantasies, archetypes, etc.) has been one big issue of contention since at least the days of Freud’s and Jung’s seminal forays in psychology. As far as we are concerned, we are methodologically ecumenical and willing to learn from all schools of thought. Their diversity, just like the parallel multiplicity of academic disciplines available to humankind, reflects, in our view, not only the vast complexity of our universe, but also the well-established diversity of extant personality types.

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3.1 Humour and Life’s Cruelty Humanity does not strive for happiness; only the English do. —Friedrich Nietzsche⁸

The key issue at play seems to boil down to a common scientific problem, i. e., you have to know what it is that you are trying to measure.

3.1.1 What Is It? Although all socio-epistemically competent people can be said to know humour when they encounter it, conceptualising it in univocal and rigorous scientific terms that all researchers could utilise is, on the contrary, a tall order. In yet another instantiation of the from-to phenomenological shift that Polanyi’s seminal work identified, ‘humour’ makes perfect sense when we attribute it to phenomena that we are focussing upon, but it pulverises into countless subsidiary details when we switch our attention onto the concept itself.⁹ A folk concept, humour may well be up for a Bakhtinian carnival or a mischievous prank, as far as serious scientists and stuffy scholars like us are concerned.¹⁰ The enduring and commonplace use of patently cruel humour remains problematic at many levels, as we have repeatedly outlined throughout this volume— so, for the moment, there is no need to rehash that discussion. Rather, one cannot help but wonder whether the primordial essence of all humour is not, to some degree, rooted in cruelty, particularly of the brutal or callous type.¹¹ When we want to have fun, especially if we are faced with terrible situations as those explored in the present chapter, we go into an empathetic slumber—an anaesthesia of

8 Nietzsche (1997b), chap. 1, par. 12. The quip was directed at Bentham’s and Mill’s doctrine of utilitarianism. 9 As seen in H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1, this phenomenological switch is central to M. Polanyi (1962c). Pirandello (1992, title) applied a similar one to personhood, concluding that each of us is “one, no one and one hundred thousand [selves]”. As most Buddhists and some Western philosophers have argued, our ‘I’ is far from being certain. 10 Consistently with Bakhtin’s reflections, the disparaging use of the word “folk” in the sciences may indicate elitism. As also mentioned in H&C2, Bakhtin’s oeuvre is a reminder of ethical and aesthetic standards that are not those commonly endorsed by the middle and upper classes whence the vast majority of academics and scientists still originate, hence also their tacit assumptions concerning taste, decorum, etc. See also Kipnis (1998) and (2006). 11 This being the dismal conclusion that was reached in H&C2.

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the heart à la Bergson.¹² Instead of gnashing our teeth in fearful and sympathetic horror, we open our mouths in riotous and sinister laughter.¹³ One might speculate whether the same does not apply to all human activities. Love, friendship, work, sex, hope … anyone, anyone? Aren’t we always switching off, tuning down, and/or variously manipulating our own emotional attitudes to try to get some satisfaction out of our short and arduous lives?¹⁴ How else could we find some respite from life’s relentless challenges, inexorable grinds, and merciless aggravations? Brutal cruelty might well be the secret ingredient of Rosset’s existentialism, which we briefly addressed in Chapter 3 of Part 1.¹⁵ Moreover, as we saw in the same chapter with regard to Sade and Nietzsche, there have certainly been philosophers and philosophical schools arguing that cruelty, including that of the sadistic type, is the deepest, hidden, inherent drive of all life in nature, not least human life.¹⁶ We may still extoll the virtue of compassion, but we should not expect it to be commonplace.¹⁷ Whether selfish or self-righteous, many people can often excel in one another’s censure.¹⁸ Based on the cacophony of theories and studies that we have encountered, it is difficult, if not unwise, to try and make clear-cut and uncompromising claims and determinations. However, some of them may be less controversial and suspect than others. For instance, it can still be hypothesised with a reasonable degree of confidence that humour works, among other things, as a defence mechanism against the trials and tribulations of life, making us abler to cope with the apparent futility of our fragile and fleeting existence.¹⁹ As Galbraith penned in his journals as US Ambassador to India: “The worst of moments, I should note, still vouchsafe their modicum of humor.”²⁰ Perchance, it may even be the case that the worse

12 See Chapter 2 of Part 1. We also discussed extensively this aspect of humour in H&C2. 13 Ditto. 14 Once again, we do not need finer distinctions concerning “emotions”, “feelings”, etc. 15 See also H&C1. 16 Were such stances correct, the ethical issue would be which cruelties to allow and/or how much thereof. 17 We noted in Chapter 1 that compassion can itself produce paradoxical consequences, including cruel ones. 18 This censure being more often informal censoriousness than formal censorship (see Chapter 1). 19 Much of Chapter 2 exemplifies this approach, which reverberates Morreall’s and Amir’s humorous existentialism that was discussed in detail in H&C2 and is further instantiated by Marmysz (2003). The same conclusions were also reached in the final chapter of H&C1, especially in connection with McDougall (1926). 20 Galbraith (1981), 439, note 15.

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the moments actually are, i. e., the crueller they come across, the more they vouchsafe some humour.²¹ If humour entails a modicum of cruelty of its own, it may well be of the responsive kind, i. e., a means of responding to the human and/or natural provocative cruelties to which we are subjected or that we initiate ourselves.²² Emblematically, we have encountered in this volume many instances of Western thinkers using humour to reframe their situation and effectively transcend, or at least strive to transcend, their existential problems and personal fragilities.²³ To paraphrase John Morreall, the non-practical, surprising, and incongruent nature of humour can plausibly allow, at times, for distance and objectivity and, in the end, even acceptance. ²⁴ As corroborated by many thinkers and experts reviewed in the preceding chapters, humour can be said to offer us at least a temporary respite from the inevitable ferocity and/or brutality of life, though probably not a definitive one.²⁵ Thus, a second question forms. Does humour have any particular characteristics that differentiate it from other ways of distracting ourselves? In other words, is it qualitatively distinct from other frequently used diversions, say, going on a shopping spree, drinking alcohol, engaging in frequent sexual activities, admiring art, or pursuing career-goals?²⁶ In this context, Morreall’s idea of humour as a way of accepting things by viewing them objectively from a distance is worth developing further.

3.1.2 What Does It Do? Seriously contemplating the meaning of our existence or lack thereof is an exercise that many of us shun, fearing that the conclusion might push us into an abyss of hopelessness and depression.²⁷ When events in life force us to make such drastic evaluations, many people still refuse to engage with them and instead resort to assortments of defence mechanisms in order to escape or, at the very least, attempt

21 See, e. g., humour in the context of genocide, as tackled in Chapter 2. 22 As stated in Chapters 1 and 3 of Part 1, this typology of cruelty is derived from Hallie (1969). 23 Additional instances were mentioned and discussed in H&C1 and, especially, H&C2. 24 Morreall (1983), 128. His pioneering work on humour was addressed in detail in H&C2. 25 Even more sources corroborating this point were accumulated in H&C1 and H&C2. 26 Some of these diversions are discussed in further detail in the reminder of the present chapter. 27 We saw in H&C1 how William McDougall (1926), about 100 years ago, argued that a propensity towards humour is hardwired within our psyche precisely in order to protect it from the otherwise overwhelming pain—existential as well as mental—that we encounter in our daily lives.

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an escape. Their behaviour often becomes uncontrollable and addictive, but at least they do not have to deal with the largest issue.²⁸ To distract themselves, as we indicated before, these people may seek comfort, whether successfully or not, in gambling, shopping, sex, reading, material wealth, work, alcohol, violent entertainments, and humour. All these escape routes can be said to distance these people from the real problem. After all, etymologically, “diversion” means gaining distance from an original point, consistently with the Latin verb divertere, i. e., to separate, turn away, digress, and divorce.²⁹ Nevertheless, humour possesses an incomparable element that sets it apart from all other methods that a person may use under such circumstances. Humour is unique in its being epistemically reductive. Alcohol does not make death go away. It only numbs you to the point where you are unable to think about it. Having sex does not eliminate the pressing question of existential meaning. Your focus is just otherwise engaged, for as long as it is likely to last. Of all our defences, only humour has the power to grant us reprieve from the reverence and dread that we would otherwise have to hold perhaps every second of our waking lives.³⁰ The objectivity that humour affords us is not a thoughtful and unbiased perception of things as they really are, but rather the ability to engage with and eventually come to see an incomprehensible and possibly intimidating phenomenon as commonplace and unthreatening. Humour makes God become like our grumpy old next-door neighbour. Death is just a common cold. And existential meaning has all the profundity of a bus-stop advertisement. For as long as it actually keeps going and having a psychologically supportive effect, of course.³¹ Humour could thus be seen as the opposite of spirituality, inasmuch as it seeks to reduce rather than elevate, elicit a sense of worthlessness rather than wonder, make things absurd rather than awesome. Still, both humour and religious faith are well-established mechanisms to help us navigate our lives.³² As Fredrickson stated in her “broaden-and-build” model, experiencing positive emotions through humour expands our thought-action repertoire and gives us a greater sense of self28 “Highest” or “deepest” may also be viable descriptors of such an issue. 29 LVOA may help envision which escape routes may be better than others. 30 The statement is intentionally hyperbolic. As we can be otherwise distracted in our waking lives, so can we be facing the most daunting existential questions in nightmares and nocturnal visions. 31 As we discussed in greater detail in H&C2, Amir thinks of this respite to be a potentially very long one, akin to wisdom, while Kozintsev deems it a merely momentary phenomenon. 32 See Barden and Baruchello (2019) for a detailed account of how and why we think that religious faith can still be a plausible and palatable option in the lives of educated citizens within largely secular societies. Having written a book on this subject, we do not reiterate here its theologically relevant themes and theoretically reasoned theses.

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efficacy for dealing with our problems, anxieties, and stress, whether in a resolutive manner or not.³³ The same, mutatis mutandis, often applies to spirituality. Although Leopardi, Nietzsche, and Collins, among many others, would then emphasise the unappealing and/or unhealthy cruelty of pious ‘asceticism’ in this regard.³⁴ The epistemically reductive characteristics inherent in humour also provide us with means to belittle other people, whether we perceive them as hostile or not. Humour offers us an opportunity to distance ourselves also from other people’s emotions and to handle them not as sentient human beings, but more like objects or machines, as Bergson famously noted.³⁵ We are thereby more easily able, if not prone, to attack them, be it in responsive self-defence or in provocative pursuit of our own elevated status.³⁶ Similarly important is the use of self-disparaging humour which reduces our own existence to frivolous insignificance by pre-emptively disarming the audience and, at the same time, informs us of the peculiar fact that while the universe might be magnificent, we are anything but and are therefore in no way required to seriously contemplate our role in it.³⁷ Is humour a loss of faith, then? Or, as some religious thinkers suggested, does humour facilitate the acquisition of faith in an indirect manner?³⁸

3.1.3 What To Believe? While much of our earthly life is spent without conscious spirituality, every now and then something in the environment jolts most of us into thinking about the essence of being. This might be a negative experience, such as a profound loss, or a positive one, like the birth of a grandchild. Comparing the two might lead many of us to assume that negative events are more conducive to actual rumination, whilst the positive ones usually result in unimpeded flow of emotions. Regardless, these glimpses of spirituality, i. e., personal contemplations of existential

33 Vilaythong et al. (2003), 81. We tackled Fredrickson’s research in Chapter 2. 34 See H&C1 and Chapter 3 of Part 1. 35 See Chapter 2 of Part 1. 36 H&C2 listed numerous examples of cruel humour inducing in the initiator a cherished sense of superiority. 37 We discussed extensively in H&C2 the necessarily cruel elements of self-directed humour. 38 We saw in H&C1 and Chapter 2 of Part 1 how Kierkegaard regarded humour as an important step towards faith.

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meaning, ourselves, and the world around us, form the backbone of heartfelt faith and, either relatedly or subsequently, responsibly held religious belief.³⁹ It is actually a cruel irony that, in modern secular societies, the stronger the religious experience is on a private level, the more sceptically it is publicly received. See, e. g., the backlash that Jung received when stating in an interview broadcast by the BBC: “I don’t need to believe, I know.”⁴⁰ Not only had Jung had mystical experiences since childhood, but he had researched them and their psychological import throughout the world’s historical religions and belief systems, as well as in the clinical cases that had come under his direct purview.⁴¹ As to Jung’s own explanation of the claim cited above, he wrote in a private letter: I know of the existence of God-images in general and in particular. I know it is a matter of universal experience and, in so far as I am no exception, I know that I have such experience also, which I call God. It is my experience of my will over against another and very often stronger will, crossing my path often with seemingly disastrous results, putting strange ideas into my head and maneuvering my fate sometimes into most undesirable corners or giving it unexpected favourable twists, outside my knowledge and my intention. The strange force against or for my conscious tendencies is well known to me. So I say: “I know Him”. But why should you call this something “God?” I would ask: “Why not?” It has always been called “God”. An excellent and very suitable name indeed.⁴²

As seen in Chapter 4 of Part 1, we all have faith—admittedly to various degrees, different levels of awareness, and of all sorts.⁴³ Many people do not believe in deities, the supernatural or higher powers; however, for them to function properly, they too need to maintain unquestioned beliefs in various areas of their lives at most or all times, such as a basic belief in their abilities, the integrity of other people and their community, the reliability of scholarly translations and most printed words, the continued identity of their conceptsʼ and wordsʼ meanings

39 The former is experienced privately by the individual, while the latter is an attempt to share publicly this experience, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. 40 As cited in Edinger (1996), 137, note 1. Jung’s lifelong interest in and copious studies on religious and spiritual phenomena have been amongst the most extensive, cross-cultural, and influential in modern psychology. Hence, they figure prominently in Springer’s Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion (i. e., Leeming 2014). 41 Jung (1989), 62. 42 Jung (1973), vol. 2, 522 – 523. Jung’s experiences did not lead him to embrace any established religion. His highest aim being ‘individuation’, not confessional consistency, which, however, may be the healthiest option for some individuals whose overall personality is steeped in religious practice and belief (see Giaccardi 2014). 43 See also H&C1.

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for the duration of a speech, etc. Even those who are truly sceptical rarely question their belief that pulling the handle will open the door. And, funnily enough, they may sometimes fail miserably in the attempt, either shaking it aimlessly with great violence or walking into the door itself—their nose first.⁴⁴ More importantly, unless we are suicidally depressed, we humans generally believe that our lives are worth living. Despite the fleeting impermanence of our existence and the uncanny ease with which any of us could disappear at any moment, many of us have actually faith in the meaningfulness of our lives. And if our lives have, at least, a real potential for meaning, it follows that we can also choose to live them in a meaningless manner, i. e., there can be a good life and a not-sogood life.⁴⁵ Most human religions and philosophical systems seek to help us live a meaningful life; or, at least, that is their stated intent, though it is debatable how well they deliver for each and every one of us. As seen repeatedly in Chapter 3 of Part 1, Western philosophy has certainly been able to produce inveterate pessimists such as Leopardi and Cioran who forcefully rejected all otherworldly hopes, religious aspirations, and metaphysical sources of consolation.⁴⁶ After all, religious faith is, scientifically speaking, a human invention and, as such, it has been frequently subjected to human folly and considerable lack of moral virtue.⁴⁷ Not the best publicity stunts, in short.⁴⁸ Nevertheless, in most known cases, religion does appear to attempt to guide us towards seeing meaning in our lives and giving us a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves.⁴⁹ Thus, religion not only provides meaning (1) in life that can be (1a) immediate (e. g., the act itself of praying), (1b) intermediate (e. g., cultivating virtue), and (1c) penultimate (e. g., leading a virtuous life).

44 Just think of how most of us rely on the advice of physicians and artisans, or what it would mean for any of us to really try to assess the validity of the claims made by physicists, chemists, mechanical engineers, lawyers, doctors, or architects. Not only would we need many a lifetime in order to do all of that in all of the fields that impact all of our activities, but we could still lack the required talent anyway. In short, we should better start trusting others, i. e., having faith. 45 LVOA would certainly confirm this claim (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 46 See also H&C1. 47 We write “scientifically” because, religiously, we could consider the possibility of divine intervention which science can neither prove nor disprove, given its agnostic premises and empirical protocols (Pius X 1907, par. 6 f.). 48 See, e. g., the murderous acts of fanatical violence discussed in Chapter 1. 49 Whether or not the attempt is fully successful, we will possibly find out after we die.

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it can offer an ultimate meaning of life that is both personal (e. g., saving one’s own immortal soul) and collective (e. g., joining the angelic train celebrating God’s glory).⁵⁰

Despite our best efforts, however, most of us do not live our lives in a constant state of spiritual ecstasy. Mystical jubilation cannot be bought at the counter. Surely, an extraordinary experience, such as one’s own wedding or witnessing some marvellous natural phenomena, can get us ‘there’. But staying ‘there’, i. e., spiritually connected to that heartfelt sense of awe, is problematic, also for the most pious among us. Remarkably, the Nobel-prize winner, Mother Teresa, confessed that she herself experienced “the noche oscura or ‘dark night of the soul’” that Saint John of the Cross had written about in the 16th century, i. e., “a forlorn feeling of being abandoned by God”.⁵¹ And as the 20th-century Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain wrote on this subject: “the night of the spirit is brought about by means of gratia operans and by means of love, both of which know how to be as cruel as the grave”.⁵² The faithful’s life, then, even when divinely inspired and directed, is bound to encounter major challenges and terrible obstacles. Some of these, as the cited sources reveal, are experienced as cruel to the utmost. What is more, regular prayer and well-scheduled rites can themselves turn into trite habits of both mind and body. They may eventually impair, rather than unleash, the numinous force of deep-reaching mystical experience or the ominous one of deranged religious en-

50 Religion may not be the only cultural construct capable of such a wealth of meaning, for art and philosophy may be able to strive for it too, but it is probably the longest-lived and most widespread one in the world’s cultures. 51 Walters (2021), par. 9. We suspect that many secular readers may have no idea whatsoever about what this particular experience is and/or feels like, and therefore may be prone to dis/regard it as confused, bizarre, or even dishonest. Somehow, they lack the information and/or inclinations that are needed to activate their empathetic faculty, in line with Lecky’s (1890) musings on “realising” sympathetically what someone else’s way of life may be like (see Chapter 3 of Part 1). Cristaudo (2021, 554) is correct in suggesting that people lead thoroughly parallel lives. 52 Maritain (1941), 284. Gratia operans is that grace of God which heals us and drives us towards justice. In this perspective, a new sunrise awaits those experiencing such nights. Even so, Maritain’s remark on “love” itself being capable of nothing short of “cruelty” is an intriguing anticipation of Rosset’s existentialist insights (Chapter 3 of Part 1).

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thusiasm. (Life’s many cruel ironies comprise also the difficulty of distinguishing between these two kinds of spiritual elation.)⁵³ Earthly existence, at the same time, throws further barriers and impediments —aplenty, of all kinds, and ranging from the most tragic to the most prosaic. Each of us may be an incomprehensible yet incomparable combination of space dust aiming at higher things. And every breath that we take could well be a sublime miracle in and for itself. But we still need to get the bloody vacuuming done.⁵⁴

3.2 Cruel Humour and Life’s Cruelty Of the squared circle we can only say that it does not exist, because its existence is impossible; yet in order to pronounce on the poor squared circle so cruel a sentence, we must previously have contemplated it – in some sense it must have been. —José Ortega y Gasset⁵⁵

Although it is sometimes considered to be lowly and base, perhaps even unworthy of deep-thinking philosophy and serious science, humour can be interpreted as a vehicle for reflecting on our existence and its apparent futility in the most enlightening ways.⁵⁶ This, as we surmise from our research up to the present point, is remarkably tangible and relevant when it comes to joking about death and diseases, including one’s own. Somehow, such light and fleeting a thing as humour is generally believed to be can actually prove to be strangely well-suited a channel whereby to address something that is as evanescent, fragile, and thin as our own health, if not even our finite earthly existence.⁵⁷

3.2.1 Target Practice When it comes to patently cruel humour, the same instrumental logic might apply, at least under certain conditions. For instance, we could point to the humour or-

53 In other words, Kierkegaard’s famous “salto mortale” into faith persists as a genuine challenge for the believer, even in the face of lived experiences that can be interpreted as mystical (see H&C1 and Chapter 2 of Part 1). 54 We limit here our observations about the realm of faith and religion to this realm’s relationship with humour. For a fuller account of our views on faith and religion, as already noted, see Barden and Baruchello (2019). 55 Ortega y Gasset (1964), 77. 56 See, e. g., T. Scott (2007), 352. 57 By “our” we mean every human being’s health and existence, not just the present two authors’.

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gies in donut dives or the online roasts that were addressed in Chapter 2. Cruel humour is, in any case, more complicated.⁵⁸ In many circumstances, rather than reflecting a positive mindset or being merely a useful defence mechanism, patently cruel humour seems to indicate emotional exhaustion and depressive thought, if not malice and misanthropy in the face of hardly tolerable cruelties. Hilarity, in this way, becomes a melancholic companion of miserable drudgery, the stupefying grind of which the former makes, perhaps, a little more bearable, but at someone else’s expense. Families, barracks, schoolyards, and workshops are, given their structured and repetitive communal living conditions, the ideal stages for such paltry yet piercing tragicomedies.⁵⁹ Burdened individuals must unburden themselves, in some way—if not in any way. Thus, they frequently lambast one another pitilessly as a matter of psychic survival, while confronting the absurd character of existence in its commonest manifestations: clean dishes getting dirty that are washed clean so that they may get dirty again; unmade beds to be made to be unmade to be remade; countless and pointless repetitive drills; inane instruction and incompetent supervision; the tangible, despondent, multi-faceted triumphs of utter superficiality, spiteful pettiness, obtuse self-centredness, and shopkeeper mentality; the shameless self-abandonment of our closest relatives and associates to callous whimsicality, intimate vengefulness, morbid spleen, and unthinking carelessness; and the crassest displays of all-engulfing vanity, blind prejudice, insensitive egotism, and proud ignorance.⁶⁰ Things, as we have seen especially in Chapter 2, may get even worse in professional and/or social contexts where emotional exhaustion and depressive thought can abound and flourish. Not to mention nihilistic malevolence and swift cynicism, both of which can also appear and/or run amok in such dismal settings. Hospital wards, elderly shelters, police stations, morgues, and prisons are just some among the various, very palpable tokens of such a humdrum forlorn reality.⁶¹

58 “Cruel humour” encompasses all cognates such as “black”, “bleak”, etc. See Vosmer (2022). 59 See, again, Canetti (1999, 63), who recalled his own mother as being gleefully “cruel” at times. 60 Ignorance in se is no major problem, if and only if the ignorant is aware of his/her state and wishes to remedy it. Besides, many of the vices listed in the paragraph above can affect the educated and the elites. As Vico (1948, pars. 125 – 127) had already observed, two main types of “conceit” can be found in all historical civilisations: “of nations” and “of scholars”. Whilst the former refers to the dubious habit of all known cultures to regard themselves as the pinnacle of progress and achievement, the latter refers to the habit of most experts in each given epoch to believe that they possess the best knowledge, which is then applicable and applied to all past ages and cultures. 61 We do not imply that such settings must be so always and only, but that they are so frequently and inevitably.

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3.2.2 Tacit Praxes As with all other social activities, humour is guided by an unwritten and tacit social contract, however shaky and obscure this contract may be. There is, in other words, a mutable, murky, but nonetheless mutual understanding among the members of each social group about what is to be considered funny and what is not so —and whether or not each actual person learns and/or manages to abide by this understanding. This contract and its possible contents are vaguely and broadly defined by culture, not only in the wider sense of the macro-culture of societies and nations, but to a greater extent in the sense of each person’s local and context-specific micro-culture, especially as this is dictated and/or monitored by one’s closest associates, e. g., friends, families, bosses, and co-workers—again, more often than not, in a tacit manner.⁶² Concomitantly, it is paramount that every adequately socialised member in the group is somewhat aware of these demarcations, which their mostly tacit connotations make all the harder to grasp clearly, firmly, and effectively. Somehow, we all must find our bearings in the dark and on a veritable minefield, and we are actually and actively expected to do so. No decent member of society, in fact, should avoid engaging in humorous exchanges, as far as our present cultures are concerned and despite all of the attendant risks for the person’s acceptance, reputation, safety, and wellbeing.⁶³ When looked at coolly from an external point of view, it is not a pleasant or an easy position to be in. Yet such is also the human condition, by and large, as we discussed in detail in H&C2. ⁶⁴ As was also amply discussed in H&C2, problems will surely arise in those cases when the social contract is breeched, whether intentionally or by mistake.⁶⁵ This is particularly important whenever the social group is facing tragedy, e. g., when a family has lost a loved one or a team of emergency workers arrive at the scene of some horrible accident.⁶⁶ Such cruel circumstances engender a paradoxical and cruel bind of their own, as discussed in Chapter 2 with regard to the terrible reality of rape.⁶⁷

62 See H&C1 and Chapter 4 in Part 1 on the Polanyian notion of tacit knowing. 63 Farrell (1993) draws an analogous picture for the premodern tests of manhood and today’s courtship rituals. Jumping through hoops wears many a mask. 64 Specifically, we argued in H&C2 that the difficulties of grasping and applying the tacit norms for humorous behaviour add to the pile of cruel miseries that all socialised human beings must endure in their mortal life. 65 See, e. g., T. Scott (2007), 352. Determining intentionality and mistakenness is no easy feat. 66 See Chapter 2. Even trickier are contexts in which one’s own closest relations are affected. 67 See also H&C1 and H&C2.

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(1) On the one hand, the affective import of cruel circumstances would call for a potent means of emotional release, which cruel humour can provide, at least at times. Being capable of cruel humour may also elicit a sense of empowerment, which the victims of rape or other dreadful crimes can probably enjoy too, as was also representatively discussed here in Chapter 2 with regard to the personal experiences recounted by Holocaust survivors.⁶⁸ (2) On the other hand, in an analogous reiteration of the ethical conundrums inherent to the likely necessity of the penal sphere tackled by Hallie et alia in Chapter 3 of Part 1, by pursuing cruel humour, we would be responding to cruelty by means of cruelty, hence perpetuating, reinforcing, and/or reigniting evil in some form or another. This, as was seen in Chapter 1 with reference to Chesterton’s and Smart’s musings on the far-too-common cycles of violence characterising many human communities, has often been a recipe for disaster.⁶⁹ Perhaps, for the higher sakes of peace and cooperation, we should simply abstain from cruel humour, if not from commonplace humour altogether.⁷⁰ In the end, a responsible moral decision must be taken by a particular person, if capable of it, under a specific set of cultural and social circumstances, which are frequently far from clear to analyse, comfortable to cope with, and compassionate in case of error.⁷¹

3.3 Acknowledging Darkness Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people. —Carl Gustav Jung⁷²

Honourable inaction may then seem more suitable than humorous action. Concerned humourlessness more sensible than carefree humour. Dreary dourness more prudent than expansive effervescence. However, can we truly lead a valuable life by standing always and only under the shining light of correct moral behav-

68 Ditto. 69 While tackling the online cycles of provocative misogynistic abuse and responsive “ironic misandry” used by “feminist digilantism”, Jane (2022, 571 – 576; emphases added) wrote tellingly of “an infinite regress of irony” and “endless mimetic blood feuds”, which, metaphorically, hint at much sanguinary yet virtual cruelty. 70 We discussed this thorny dilemma in further detail in H&C2. 71 See Chapter 4 of Part 1. 72 Jung (1973), vol. 1, 237.

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iour, watchful ethical self-awareness, ennobling charitable superiority, and broader social appreciation? Harvey’s reflections on this subject, as recalled in Chapter 1 and discussed in greater detail in H&C2, would advise us to ideally pursue this path, however imperfectly such a pursuit may be accomplished by each imperfect moral agent.⁷³ On our part, we doubt this option to be a truly desirable one. Not to mention one that only some rare saintly individuals could attain to a palpable degree of genuine success in lived experience.⁷⁴ Moreover, much that is of value is likely to hide in the dark. Not just our necessary nocturnal repose.⁷⁵ There are wellknown psychological grounds for expecting, experiencing, and, at times, encouraging our ‘violent’, ‘shady’, and ‘dirty’ imaginings, thoughts, and emotions, not least via humorous and playful avenues, even if we may not like admitting their inherent enjoyability too readily and/or frankly—whether to others or to ourselves. It is to this ‘dark’ and ungainly side of our psychic make-up that we now turn our attention.

3.3.1 A Shadow Commonly, albeit not universally, we humans prefer thinking of ourselves as being primarily the agreeable and talented persona that we are accustomed to parading around in public. This persona being that part of the human ego serving qua leading interface between us and the social world. The persona is, a fortiori, just a tiny segment of our overall personality. Yet, as Jung had dryly observed, in modern Western societies, “the temptation to be what one seems to be is great, because the persona is usually rewarded in cash”.⁷⁶ Even if we may know or have been told that we have a “dark side” or, at least, a ‘darker’ side, we can nevertheless pretend and/or convince ourselves that we are being so good and proper that no such a component can be there any longer; hence opening the door to all kinds of neuroses and psychoses. These include, significantly, displacing or projecting our thoroughly inhibited impulses and sternly

73 In the paragraph above, “ethical” and “moral” were used as synonyms. 74 See H&C2. 75 Ditto. 76 Jung (1960 – 1990), vol. 9.1, 123, par. 221. In the opening paragraphs of her own study, the Italian psychotherapist Damasso (2017, 259) added that Jung implied that the persona is made of plural “masks” that, like ancient actors, we change depending on the occasion, including the therapeutic setting itself. Similarly, Jackson (2017, 25 et passim) wrote of multiple “layers” of the “persona” reflecting the complexity of the “shadow”.

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prohibited proclivities in exaggerated forms onto some other person and/or group, e. g., a romantic partner, relative, neighbour, profession, religious confession, age bracket, gender, ethnicity.⁷⁷ Buried away in the recesses of our psyche and yet denied any conscious recognition by the ego, our unacknowledged daemons are then left seething and festering; hence, bound to come back to haunt us.⁷⁸ A simple but pivotal truth of psychoanalysis and analytic psychology is that “the repressed always return”, whether as nightmares, manias, compulsions, amnesias, addictions, delusions, hallucinations or, as indicated, projections.⁷⁹ This litany of psychopathological ways in which the repressed contents of the psyche return is not exhaustive. It is merely illustrative. Nor does it touch upon the large-scale lifedestructive dimensions that may result from the “return of the repressed”, which, as written by the 20th-century Marxist and Freudian thinker, Herbert Marcuse, can eventually erupt into “cruel and organized slaughter … [c]oncentration and labor camps, [and] the trials and tribulations of non-conformists”⁸⁰. According to his approach, sexual repression is likely to be the unseen engine of some of the cruellest forms of collective agency, a few of which we have encountered repeatedly in the present volume.⁸¹ Quite simply, and somewhat comically, were people to spend much more time and energy having consensual sex with one another or themselves, they would probably have fewer opportunities to go around maiming, terrorising and killing. And sexual distraction is certainly preferable to sorry destruction.⁸² “Make love, not war.” This slogan was most popular in the 1960s, i. e., the decade when Marcuse was probably one of the most famous public intellectuals in the West. Then again, as seen in Chapter 1, all kinds of vocal disagreements and potential cruelties exist also and already with regard to love-making—to say nothing of the cruel horrors of prostitution-related trafficking, violent abuse, coercion, or the sexually based social stigmatisation that we mentioned in H&C2. ⁸³

77 By “displacing” and, above all, “projecting” we are referring to technical terms in both psychoanalysis and analytic psychology that addresses a potentially devastating social manifestation of a person’s one-sidedness, e. g., demonising elderly women as witches, teenage boys as petty criminals, middle-aged white men as cruel masters of the world; fearing Blacks, Hispanics, ‘southerners’, ‘northerners’, Shia Muslims, Catholics, Chinese immigrants in Europe, or white Europeans in East Asia, etc. 78 This psychological realisation was at the basis of the 1956 sci-fi classic movie, Forbidden Planet. 79 Hillman (1995b), 64; emphasis added. 80 Marcuse (1966), 71. We do not address here the complex cycles through which the process is said to go. Noticing the repressive aetiology of cruelty is adequate here. 81 See also H&C1 and H&C2. 82 At least, this is obvious from the standpoint of LVOA (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 83 See, e. g., Voss (2015).

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According to the seminal Jungian studies of the human psyche anticipating and corroborating much of Marcuse’s own contributions, humankind’s most dreadful impulses and embarrassing proclivities are ‘stored’ in the so-called “shadow”, i. e., an interstitial space between the conscious self (i. e., the ego) and unconscious self (i. e., the personal and the collective ones).⁸⁴ The shadow is, in other words, that ‘deep well’ of our psyche where our painful memories, childish proclivities, teenage frustrations, murderous instincts, illicit longings, strange curiosities, incestuous desires, rabid envies and bizarre fantasies are said to reside, whether in a fully conscious state or, more commonly, in a liminal one, i. e., lying between the conscious and the unconscious.⁸⁵ What is more, the well is active, like an Icelandic geyser. The shadow is, in other words, an archetypal complex coagulating all of our psychic rubbish, tainted memories, wacky miscreations, intolerable traumas, impure tendencies, intractable excitations, and emotional bric-a-brac. All complexes are infused with energy.⁸⁶ That is why people do often find ways to live out that which they say they would not be caught dead doing.⁸⁷ When a life is sorry, a double one may be less so. The

84 Jung’s works are described as “seminal” not only because they introduced empirical methods (e. g., word-association and electrodermal-activity studies) and theoretical concepts that are now part and parcel of psychiatry, psychology, and/or Western high culture at large (e. g., ‘complex’, ‘introversion’, ‘extraversion’, ‘archetype’, ‘synchronicity’; see Blocian and Kuzmicki 2019), but also because they furthered psychotherapy’s affirmation as a clinical tool (see, e. g., Roesler 2018, part 4). 85 Some readers may not want to entertain psychoanalytic notions. It is their choice, and/or loss. 86 We focus on the ‘shadow’ because, as Jung (1960 – 1990, vol. 9.2, 8, par. 13) noted, it is “[t]he most accessible of [the archetypes], and the easiest to experience … for its nature can in large measure be inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious”, which is normally replete with past failures, present fears, perverse forbidden fantasies, and perplexingly frightful fascinations, many of which we can bring to a conscious level with ease (e. g., recollections and self-examinations). The “archetypes” being, in short, “the unconscious organisers of our ideas”, or “the image of instinct in man”, as revealed and exemplified in age-old collective mythologems and recurring personal psychologems, e. g., the Mother and the Old Wise Man (Jung 1960 – 1990, vol. 9.2, 179, par. 278). And as exemplified, we must add, in the lives of millions of human beings across history’s aeons and the world’s many cultures such that they end up repeating the species’ basic behavioural patterns despite all kinds of social and personal differences, e. g., falling in love, having babies, raising children, playing, seeking safety, etc. 87 The ‘weakness of the will’ is just one example of the power of the unconscious, which makes us do what we do not want to do—or at least what we say that we do not want to do—and makes us not do what we want to do—or, at least, what we say that we want to do. Experiences such as addiction, phobias, and persistent forgetfulness exemplify this power. As to the term itself, which we associate today with Freud and Jung, Hillman (1991, 22; emphasis removed) wrote: “Depth psychology, the modern field whose interest is in the unconscious levels of the psyche—that is, the deeper meanings of the soul—is itself no modern term. Depth reverberates with a significance, echoing one of the first philosophers of antiquity. All depth psychology has already been summed up by

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shadow is not a mere passive receptacle or ‘place’ of the psyche, but an effective and affective player within it. The human psychic shadow being dirty and smelly, however, it is all too easy for the conscious ego, especially among the most righteous and self-righteous persons that are used to exalting their own persona, to try to suppress in toto these unsavoury elements of their personality to the point of all-out repression.⁸⁸ For example, as the Finnish humour specialist Jarno Hietalahti asserted in a recent study on Jungian psychology and the then-booming political satire directed at the former US President Donald Trump: Humor, even if targeted at the most controversial president in decades, can stem from irrational hatred, and not, for example, high moral values. Amusement in itself is of little worth… [A]re the motives behind mockery (in a depth psychological sense) similar to those of rightwing supporters? Inhumane politics must be criticized, but at the same moment, critics have to be aware of hidden aspects of their own personalities… This means, eventually, the courage to be human.⁸⁹

Hietalahti contended that those “who consider themselves liberal and progressive” are often unaware of and generally unwilling to explore the possibility that they “may have dark motives, too”, hence claiming or presupposing instead that all evil belongs to the opposite ideological camp only, which can be certainly as blind to its own shadow as the former camp and, historically, prone to even crueller projections and attendant paths of action, e. g., persecuting ‘heretics’, lynching immigrants, holding pogroms, or exterminating ‘vermin’.⁹⁰ Living in denial of one’s own cruel proclivities and possibilities, including humorous ones, is not a healthy path for anyone to trudge along. Aspirations to purity and claims of racial or moral superiority are therefore to be regarded with great caution, if not with scepticism. As Jung noted: “The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness.”⁹¹ However awkward and appalling, there is no way to rid ourselves of our troublesome ‘twin’ without harming ourselves in the process. We humble mortals should not try to do so. At least, this being the sensible course of action if we

this fragment of Heraclitus: ‘You could not discover the limits of the soul (psyche), even if you traveled every road to do so; such is the depth (bathun) of its meaning (logos).’” Philosophers should be pleased to read this point. 88 This theme has been exploited in popular culture, e. g., sci-fi movies (see Iaccino 1998). 89 Hietalahti (2019), 36 – 37. 90 Hietalahti (2019), 36. 91 Jung (1960 – 1990), vol. 9.1, 20, par. 44.

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take the Jungian intimations on this matter seriously and, above all, if we really aim at leading healthier existences.⁹²

3.3.2 A Maze Let us imagine that our psyche is somehow built like a few venerable European cities, such as Edinburgh in Scotland or Genoa in Italy. It has its main central street, e. g., the former’s Royal Mile or the latter’s Strada Nuova. This main central street is a historically significant, long but not-too-long, architecturally stunning urban artery, lined with a rhythmic succession of splendid façades, magnificent monuments, and many imposing buildings, which parade fancy shops, art galleries, law firms, museums, tourist attractions, foreign embassies and consular offices, and a great assortment of public bureaus. It is the road where people go to see people and be seen. It sports the edifices where relevant and decorous transactions take place. It is the avenue presenting the world with the civic community and its history at their very best—their proud shared face made, as it were, of mortar, hard stone, the sturdiest timber, granite, shiny flagstone, and precious marble. It is the thoroughfare that is meticulously kept clean and largely devoid of disturbances—unless some well-policed special festival is expected to take place at some specific point during the year. Carnivals are still allowed. All along this gorgeous thoroughfare, however, there is also a multitude of narrow lanes branching off, somewhat like veins on a leaf, that then criss-cross into a veritable maze. This is the labyrinth where the inhabitants’ homes are situated. It is a far-less-spectacular intricate coil of twisted alleys, smelly corners, cracked and peeling walls, and dark passageways. The houses are much more irregular and not nearly as attractive as those situated along the main street—unless the observer is a sincere devotee of late-19th-century décadentisme. There are still loads of businesses, of course, a number of public offices as well, and all sorts of spaces where formal and informal interactions between people occur. Some of them are decorous, others—maybe not so much. Some are actually quite grim. Nevertheless, they all are relevant too, at least for the human beings who live there. They may even be vital. Yet for whatever reason, they are not the sort of reality that the civic community wishes to make plain for all to see, whether these “all” happen to be visitors from some other city or distant country, or even the local citizens themselves. It may be just too prosaic a reality to deserve so much attention. It may be too uncouth. It may be crazed or morally dubious. Perhaps even unlawful, at times.

92 We discussed this matter extensively in H&C2.

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Should such a chaotic and perchance disquieting labyrinth packed with teeming life ever be wished out of existence, still the actual civic community could not do without it in concrete practice. The civic community is, in point of fact, the totality of this complex urban realm. There is no point in pretending that only the beautiful and well-kept central street is, somehow, the city. A face, or even a whole head, is only a small part of the whole person. As each citizenry parades and probably requires its Royal Mile or Strada Nuova, so does it necessitate and, more often than not, benefit from its labyrinthine popular neighbourhoods too, i. e., the sites where the greatest proportion of the inhabitants live, most of their needs are met, many of their wants are expressed, and the bulk of their daily agency plays out—and their nocturnal one too. Those convoluted, dimly lit, pulsating urban viscera are the living body where the vast majority of the city’s people breathe, eat, drink, urinate, defecate, copulate, recuperate, rejuvenate, exercise, sleep, dream, converse, compete, cooperate, compromise, cry, trade, give away, give in, give out, laugh, and variously perform their innumerable other activities—including some shady ones that one pretends not to know about or honestly fails to register. No well-run, self-aware civic community can, must, and/or will do without them. Lest it ceases to be a civic community and becomes, say, a strangely sanatorium-like open-air museum or an eerily prison-like architectural Disneyland. Such being, for instance, the dismal fate of Genoa’s historic enemy, i. e., Venice. But there, on the latter’s main island, they have a marvellous square as the central public face of the city, not a marvellous street. (An analogous urbanistic point applies, incidentally, to Edinburgh’s Central-Belt challenger, Glasgow, where George Square looms large in the city centre, though it is not as conspicuous a centrepiece as St. Mark’s Square in Venice.)⁹³

3.3.3 A Cross We all have a cross to bear, which we can neither destroy nor throw away.⁹⁴ As Orthodox and Catholic confessors had long known in our Christian past—and as scores of psychotherapists keep investigating and corroborating today—individual human life is spent, to a great extent, battling with our shadow, forging compro-

93 The urbanistic allegory deployed in the four paragraphs above came to one of the present authors in a dream. Quite appropriately, we think, given the Jungian contents which it aims at clarifying. This means, however, that we must credit either the collective unconscious or the personal one (e. g., a now-forgotten passage in someone else’s book) for its creation. As the reader can see, our epistemic humility runs deep. It never sleeps, perhaps. 94 Emblematically, the Gospels teach that even God-made-man had to carry one such cross.

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mises and ad hoc truces or else suffering because none has come about that was viable enough. Instead of ignoring our shadow, then, we should try to know where it hides and what it wants so that we may be able to find ways to co-exist with it, i. e., to establish non-damaging avenues whereby to include our less-noble elements in our conscious life.⁹⁵ For example, we may opt for engaging into “active imagination” by means of creative games, emotionally relieving reveries and fantasies, or passion-laden fictions capable of “mending the relationship between one’s ego and the unconscious”.⁹⁶ There may be even more accomplished and aesthetically astounding avenues, such as dramatic playwrighting, artistic dancing, and profound spiritual exercises. Yet these avenues are not common ones. Not all unconscious drives can be sublimated into great art or, say, saintly philanthropic deeds, lest the whole of humanity should be made of Raphaels and Fathers Damien.⁹⁷ Nevertheless, a common spring of action is shared by nearly all human beings, both male and female. As the contemporary Iranian-Canadian art therapist Sheida Shamloo observed, most of us seek instinctively, plausibly from early childhood, active paths for such a psychic wholeness or self-centring, and thereby achieve a healthy balance between our ego and our unconscious drives, which often call for relishing in fantastic imaginings, creative efforts (of poor artistic quality, more often than not), and only seemingly futile play work.⁹⁸ Under such generally harmless circumstances, an individual seeks, inter alia, compensatory avenues whereby to experience, however limitedly, all those emotions and realisations that cannot and may not be relished in daily life.⁹⁹ These intentional daydreams and inventive frolics may easily and frequently contradict the person’s own ingrained tendencies to self-monitoring, “self-censoring”

95 LVOA can help in grasping, at least in principle, what is damaging and what is not (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 96 Shamloo (2021), iii and 9, which is a rare (or unique) combination of Jungian themes, thoughts on censorship, and today’s Islam. This Jungian line of thinking, which acknowledges the psychic shadow as well as its culturally evolved artistic and ludic avenues for self-expression, can effectively answer the several concluding questions put by Vosmer (2022, 21), who was puzzled by the fact that “the celebration of death” and “extreme violence” of today’s mass entertainments (e. g., videogames and horror movies) fail to produce “desensitization”, “[m]ass hysteria or mass masochismsadism/perversion”, “cycles of projection and protective identification, or an amplification of horror, aggressive anti-group phenomena, acting out, and/or annihilation anxiety”. 97 We expect our reader to be familiar with the Renaissance painter and the 19th-century “Apostle of the Lepers”. 98 Jung (1989) himself, to this end, utilised sculpting, rock-building, clay modelling, and drawing. 99 The barriers against fulfilling all of a person’s longings are innumerable. Some are obvious, e. g., time.

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and, as also Castoriadis’ psychoanalytically-informed work suggested, self-loathing.¹⁰⁰ These, in turn, are inscribed in, arise from, and/or develop further because of broader social structures of politico-cultural oppression and socio-personal psychic repression, e. g., the pervasive confessional “brainwashing” that Shamloo claimed to be perpetrated in today’s schools and mass media “by [the] Islamic state in Iran”.¹⁰¹ Seen up close, the human shadow is, typically, a poor devil who can evoke compassion as easily as consternation. Most of us, in fact, are incapable of harbouring the all-engulfing penchant for blood and ravaging that we associate with the likes of Emperor Caligula or Empress Wu—not to mention acting on such a penchant in full conscience.¹⁰² Nevertheless, if utterly denied and thoroughly neglected, the poor devil can turn into an infernal whirlwind capable of destroying the ego itself and/or causing damage all around it, e. g., to relatives and associates of the psychotic individual. Such being, at least, the basic and quintessential wisdom on the subject offered by Jung’s analytic psychology and its various therapeutic offshoots (e. g., Hillman’s archetypal psychology) which, therefore, teach that, by allowing ourselves to pay some heed to our shadow and experience some healthy psychic release, we might learn to love ourselves a little better and a little more honestly, i. e., warts and all—for blemishes and oddities we all possess aplenty qua normal human beings.¹⁰³ Most human beings might still prefer counting their blessings. Counting our own warts, however, may not be so dismal a feat of self-reflexivity and self-discovery as it probably sounds to many of our readers. At the very least, Jung asserted: “the shadow is on one side regrettable and reprehensible weakness, on the other side healthy instinctivity and the prerequisite for higher consciousness”.¹⁰⁴ The energies needed for self-understanding and self-improvement may be those whence our misdeeds and miseries are supposed to come about. In other words, we may be able to accomplish therapeutic and/or existential progress without letting go of

100 Shamloo (2021), 7. See also Chapter 1 of this book. 101 Shamloo (2021), 7. We cannot exclude a priori that there may be cases in which self-monitoring, self-censoring, and even self-loathing are mentally, morally, and/or medically justified. LVOA can be of use in distinguishing among them, at least in a principled manner (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 102 Whether Caligula and Wu were as cruel as commonly depicted, we leave it to historians to debate. Culturally, they serve as mythical personifications of evil rather than well-documented factual instances of it. 103 We do not think that we need to cite expert sources corroborating the notion that we all are flawed. We apologise to any reader who may feel offended. 104 Jung (1960 – 1990), vol. 9.2, 255, par. 402.

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(i. e., repressing) our shadow. ¹⁰⁵ Or, which is worse, without setting the shadow loose on its own, i. e., along truly life-damaging avenues, e. g., physical violence, vicious bloodletting, criminal conduct, and actual rape—cruelty of the most direct and life-disabling kind, in short.¹⁰⁶ We could then come to regard many of the risky and/or risqué aspects of ordinary life as socially and culturally evolved safe paths whereby our shadows’ accumulated pressures can be vented out effectively, pursuing eo ipso some measure of relief and, as Jung characterised it, a healthy amount of “psychic hygiene”.¹⁰⁷

3.4 Playing with Darkness As the credibility of religious experience has declined, erotic experience has … gotten an inflated, even grandiose significance. —Susan Sontag¹⁰⁸

As we all tread on life’s pavement (or sidewalk, in America), we may not wish to pay too much attention to the curb and the gutter running alongside it.¹⁰⁹ Yet they too serve useful and even necessary purposes inasmuch as the curb and the gutter keep the pavement high and dry, and reinforce it structurally too.¹¹⁰ We therefore mention below eight such ordinary and, in all likelihood, exemplary cases of socially permitted psychic ‘sluices’ that, revealingly, have all encountered censure in the history of our culture—for they are thought of as somewhat ‘nasty’, ‘dirty’, ‘inappropriate’, ‘uncouth’, ‘indecent’, ‘immoral’ and/or ‘irrational’.¹¹¹ At the same time, all of these ‘sluices’ have nevertheless and tellingly endured to the point of being protected by constitutional rights in many of today’s democratic countries

105 We saw in H&C1 and H&C2 how wars are a breeding ground for cruelty, including of the humorous kind. 106 Each reader can pick and choose those cruelties that s/he deems to be the worst cases. 107 Jung (1960 – 1990), vol. 9.2., 20, par. 40. Sceptical and modest, Baroncelli (1996, 47) wrote: “I don’t know whether or not man works like a pressure cooker.” Freud, Jung, Bataille, Sontag, Hillman, etc., thought they did. 108 Boyers, Bernstein, and Sontag (2015 – 2016), 257. 109 Some individuals, as we discuss in this subsection, take instead a somewhat perverse pleasure in doing so. 110 We did not deem it necessary to cite any engineering studies on these rather patent matters. 111 “Censure” meaning here both ‘censoriousness’ and ‘censorship’.

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around the world—though sometimes as imperfectly and as inconstantly as was discussed in Chapter 1.¹¹²

3.4.1 Videogames et similia In India and Britain, two contemporary literature and media scholars, Abhik Maiti and Deep Naskar, indicated that violent videogames are particularly well-suited “a[t] providing opportunities for the playing out of fantasies of conquest and control of … the monstruous other”, which they assume to be burrowing within our psychic selves, in line with standard Freudian and Jungian intimations.¹¹³ Played by millions of kids, teenagers, and adults, these games are said to pose no real threat to the societies in which these individuals live. Quite the opposite, by offering means of psycho-affective compensation and self-comprehension, they might even contribute to their wellbeing and to that of their societies too.¹¹⁴ Whether we, as players, shoot at zombies, recreate war-time scenarios, abuse fictional enemies, or engage in equally make-believe theft or murder, dark parts of our personality are given a chance to ‘breathe’, in a manner of speaking, yet without causing anyone to actually breathe their last.¹¹⁵ No real person is injured or killed, in fact, whenever a computer “character [ends up] decapitated, immolated, electrocuted, impaled on spikes, or having his still-beating heart torn from his chest … [or his] head [ripped] off with the spine still attached and h[eld] aloft, vertebrae dangling”.¹¹⁶

112 Perhaps, the legislator knew that these seven conduits have an overall and eventually beneficial role to play. Or else, the legislator, being unable to determine their beneficial character and observing no patent harm either, left it to each and every citizen to pass judgement on such things within the sphere of their private liberty. Of these eight, cases 1, 2 and 3 were tackled already in H&C2; case 7 in both H&C1 and H&C2; while all the remaining ones surfaced primarily, when not solely, in H&C3. 113 Maiti and Naskar (2016), 235. 114 A. Connolly (2008) made a similar case for horror films. As to the “compensation” at issue, it is not the sort of pecuniary transaction about which Galbraith (1983) wrote, i. e., one of the three fundamental types of “power” in social interactions (see Chapter 1 of this book). Still, to avoid any misunderstanding, we qualify it here as “psycho-affective”. 115 See Markey and Ferguson (2017, 28), who not only reiterated the key points made by Maiti and Naskar (2016) and anticipated those of Behrendt (2020; ensuing paragraph above), but also described a “moral panic” within Western societies—and some scientific research—akin to those about alcohol and sex lambasted by Kipnis (2017). 116 Markey and Ferguson (2017), 10. The authors are describing deaths in the 1990s videogame Mortal Kombat.

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Empirically speaking, it is scientifically implausible, if not impossible, to gauge with any exactitude the total amount and the thorough quality of the psychic release facilitated by violent videogames or similar ‘carnivalesque’ syphons.¹¹⁷ One must therefore approach the issue in reverse. For instance, in his extensive research on the peculiar domain of so-called “sexbots”, Behrendt wrote that “sex crimes have not increased in Japan since the widespread ‘liberalization and distribution of pornographic material’ between the years 1972 and 1995. On the contrary, impartial experts have even observed a sharp ‘decrease’ of such crimes. Similar statistical results have been harvested” in many other Western nations, including in an allegedly freedom-loving and certainly gun-friendly country such as the US.¹¹⁸ These decades were also those during which violent videogames, whether or not directly inspired by the Japanese anime that were mentioned in Chapter 1, became a fact of life, which continues today.¹¹⁹ And we can only note that in Japan, as well as in many other liberal societies, violent crime rates are at unprecedented historic lows.¹²⁰ As childish or as juvenile as violent videogames can seem, they may have contributed to a more peaceful society. Moderate occasional regression, perhaps, counters major operant repression.¹²¹

117 See, e. g., Sousa (2020, 72 – 73) on the shocking Japanese “visual novel” entitled Saya no uta which, in line with the insights of “antisocial queer theory”, aims not at innocent ‘fun’ but at fostering uneasy feelings of “antifuturity, negativity, and abjection” by exploring cruel horrors such as “murder, filicide, kidnapping, cannibalism, rape … and scores of gut-churning eldritch sights”. As Jackson (2017, 2) argued in her doctoral work on the realm of anime whence “visual novels” emerged: “[o]n the darker end of the spectrum, anime addresses issues of violence, deviant sexual behavior, and many other shadow aspects of the human experience”. This playful yet conscious confrontation with our inner darkness should facilitate, in non-pathological cases, the soul’s process of “individuation … integration or completion” that is central to Jungian psychology (Jackson 2017, 6 and 38). Relatedly, LVOA can help determine in principle which paths towards such a psychic completion are good, whereas psychotherapists and psychiatrists must do it in practice, first and foremost (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 118 Behrendt (2020), 180 – 181; emphasis removed, citing the late Millian French philosopher Ogien (2005, title et passim and 2007, title et passim), who defended pornography, alleged sexual ‘deviance’ and even “the freedom to offend” in erotic and artistic matters, as long as no conspicuous harm ensued and notwithstanding the “moral panic” that has been surrounding such matters, and pornography in particular, in constitutionally ‘liberal’ countries. See also the analogously Millian reflections by Amy White (2013) and Nick Cowen (2016). 119 See Markey and Ferguson (2017, level 1) for a historical overview of violent videogames. 120 See Behrendt (2020). 121 Given the plethora of probable aetiological cofactors, this concluding line is bound to be a mere hypothesis.

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3.4.2 Circuses and Choruses In Canada, long before gory videogames had made an appearance, Leacock claimed that the changed spectacles of Western entertainment signalled a truly significant step forward in the history of our civilisation: “The Romans liked to see a chariot and its occupant smashed in the circus; we prefer to see a clown fall off a trapeze. Our clown, poor creature, is the living symbol of our redeemed humanity, uplifted from cruelty to make-believe.”¹²² Extending this insight to the present world, we can state that horror movies, grisly TV series, the clowns’ own pretend falls, true-crime series, and the many other fictional circuses of vicarious cruelty flourishing in our societies signal these societies’ broad abandonment of genuine ferocity as a lawful means of public entertainment.¹²³ Perhaps only intense contact sports retain potentially unsettling vestigial traces of the positively cruel and blood-stained Roman arena. Boxing, American football and wrestling, or lesser-known sports such as Florentine football and Gaelic hurling may well be the un/worthy descendants of ancient gladiators and charioteers. However, these modern contact sports too are closely monitored, reviewed, regulated, and refereed in such a way as to reduce the likelihood of life-impairing injuries and death.¹²⁴ As Adorno insightfully remarked on this matter, modern “athletic events” are “tolerated excesses” that “combine cruelty and aggression with an authoritarian moment, the disciplined observance of the rules”.¹²⁵ Seeking over the centuries such a fine and perchance tricky balance between released cruelty and respected rules, having the concrete possibility of turning most of the ancient ferocity and callousness from real into vicarious—if not into downright fictional—might actually be one of the most progressive steps ever

122 Leacock (1935), 11. 123 See also H&C2. Ever the enemy of depth psychology, Popper (1994) could not even begin to fathom any positive, purgative psychic function for violent mass entertainment, arguing instead for a thorough change in its contents, as well as for the selection of its creators by introducing a training and licensing system akin to the ones already in use for driving motor vehicles. The great Austrian liberal, ironically, advocated censorship. (His 1994 reflections on this subject were later translated into English and published in Popper 1997.) 124 Banning American football, boxing, wrestling, and other such sports might be more effective as a form of prevention unless it were to usher illegal alternatives of such a magnitude as to cause even more injuries and deaths. This issue being, however, sheer speculation at present. 125 Adorno (1988), 80; emphasis added. This is an essay on Veblen, where Adorno reflected on the aesthetic and psychological affinities between sport mass-events and fascist rallies, i. e., another sign of lingering cruelty.

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taken by humankind.¹²⁶ This is, at least, the hopeful wisdom intimated by Leacock with regard to the Western circus. On the one hand, our violent animal proclivities are given a chance to be lived in a sufficiently direct and healthy manner, i. e., without utter repression. On the other hand, the expression of these proclivities is prevented from being conspicuously harmful or lethal to us or others.¹²⁷ This incremental transformation being a slow process that, incidentally, is arguably as old as civilisation itself, insofar as myths, storytelling, epic poems, literature, drama, and even non-deadly sports have very old roots which frequently tap into blood and other bodily humours, reflecting perhaps primeval urges and primitive memories, yet without giving into them fully, forcefully and/or furiously.¹²⁸ It is not just circuses that have been providing outlets for our aggression and the titillation of cruelty. Analogous creations have abounded in Western cultures, and their psychological value has not gone unnoticed.¹²⁹ As Jung himself wrote about drama: From the viewpoint of analytic psychology, the theatre, aside from any aesthetic value, may be considered as an institution for the treatment of … complex[es]. The enjoyment of the comedy, or of the dramatic plot ending happily is produced by an unreserved identification of one’s own complexes with the play. The enjoyment of tragedy lies in the thrilling yet satisfactory feeling that something which might occur to one’s self is happening to another. The sympathy of [a person] with the dying [character] means that there is in her a complex awaiting a similar solution.¹³⁰

126 And yet, as seen in Chapter 1, the cathectic force of civilising fictions can remain so strong as to lead to outright iconoclasm and severe censorship. 127 Again, LVOA might be of use to address and assess the claims of ‘harm’ at issue (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 128 We do not address the thorny issues of whether Jung’s collective unconscious can be shown to exist or how and/or whether it reflects epigenetic circumstances in our species’ animal history (see, e. g., Roesler 2012). 129 Albeit discussed separately in this section of our volume, videogames and pornographic fictions are themselves, arguably, artistic subgenres, which can be plausibly grouped with, say, comics, graphic novels, boardgames, and genre cinema (e. g., science-fiction, fantasy, Westerns), i. e., ‘lower’ forms of artistic expression than Greek tragedies, Renaissance frescoes, Romantic operas, etc. As to what exactly makes an art form ‘lower’ than another, unlike Adorno (1997), we do not address the issue here or in any of our volumes on humour and cruelty. As to our understanding of ‘art’ itself, we rely on common-sense ideas of creative activity, personal skill in historically wellestablished practices, feats of imagination and affective power, etc. Art too is probably a cluster concept or family-resemblances term. 130 Jung (1916), chap. 2, par. 5, 43. A corollary of this line of interpretation is that censoring artistic and fictional creations because of their violent or immoral contents might mean hampering people’s psychosocial integration.

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The transformation of Western circuses into less-and-less deadly and physically dangerous spectacles can then be said to be an approximation towards creative fictions that our cultures have been toying with for almost 25 centuries, if not longer, and to very inconstant degrees, but also so that our noetic-emotional nexuses, i. e., the complexes of our psyche may have genuine opportunities to be experienced, explored, elaborated, and, however momentarily, enjoyed or effectuated.¹³¹

3.4.3 Carnivals and Celebrations In the Nordic and Baltic nations, pub crawling and weekly intoxication have been approached as providing, inter alia, conspicuous release from the normative conformism and expected behavioural routines of daily life.¹³² Above all, rather than being the ‘devil’s water’ purely and simply, alcohol has been depicted, perhaps unwittingly, as able to function qua useful social lubricant and a providential facilitator of romantic encounters, especially as regards young people who would otherwise be too awkward, insecure, considerate of one another, and/or afraid of blameworthy impropriety to engage in open acts of courtship, which is itself today a term coloured with anachronism or, at best, with anthropological technicality.¹³³

131 We write “noetic-emotional” because our complexes, psychologically speaking, always mix together conceptual and affective ingredients, which can only be separated in abstracto, but never in lived practice. 132 See, e. g., Part et al. (2011) and Abrahamson (2004). Neither sociological study advocates pursuing such behaviours. Nor do we. If anything, it is risky, especially for underage persons. At the same time, it can also be life-enabling, notably for the young adults taking part in the Bakhtinian festivals that are tackled in the section above. Literature and the arts do probably a much better job at illustrating vividly this borderline domain that is socially accepted and ritualised in both the Nordic and the Baltic world, despite the genuine dangers that are known to be associated with alcohol consumption with which the local cultures have a sort of ambiguous love affair (see, e. g., the 2020 Danish comedy/drama Another Round). (See also Kipnis 2017, 185 – 196, on the grim American variety of this phenomenon on university campuses.) Other cultures have analogous relationships with ceremonial and/or recreational drugs, e. g., hallucinogenic mushrooms in Brazil and cannabis in the Netherlands. 133 As far as we can assess the ever-changing English vernacular, the verb “to court” is hardly ever used today in ordinary parlance to describe the initiation and/or pursuit of romantic and/or erotic relationships. In this sense, it is possibly just a tad less archaic than “to woo” and “to set one’s cap at”. “To date”, “to pull”, “to go out with”, “to run after”, and “to take out” are probably much more common. The reader is likely to be familiar with other synonyms that are currently en vogue, depending also on which English is being spoken (i. e., Australian, Scottish, Canadian, etc.) as well as

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In the 18th and 19th century, parents and communities around and beyond the Baltic Sea would have supervised and regulated young people’s meetings, e. g., by organising and directing balls, festivals, dinners, strolls, and other well-established rituals permitting and promoting courtship under some chaperon’s proctoring and keen supervision. The 20th- and 21st-century advent and advance of individualism, women’s rights, and the youth’s broader emancipation from parental authority ended up casting aside all such vestiges, which were not replaced by anything nearly as structured. Quite the opposite, something looser and far more carnivalesque has generally become the new norm: drinking to the point of losing sight of public perception, acoustic moderation, logical consistency, social courtesy, political correctness, self-consciousness, and overall bon ton. Ironically, the new norm resembles the popular norms of earlier times, especially as described “by the Russian semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin” who celebrated “the folk culture of the Middle Ages”, its omnipresent “laughter”, and its unruly “carnival[s] and the material body, which is conceived in terms of food, drink, defecation and sexual life” well past the point of demure moderation and virtuous temperance.¹³⁴ Fermented humours and distilled vapours may have thus been used in order to enhance good humour, make men and women humour one another’s lust, and exchange bodily humours with gusto, if not in good taste, and whether such a picture is deemed humorous or not. It is also in this way, as chaotic as it may come across, that families of sorts have been formed and human life, eventually, has been perpetuated.¹³⁵ Incidentally, as we write these lines, videos of the current Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin have been going viral in cyberspace and have received much attention by pundits of all sorts around the world. In these allegedly ‘scandalous’ videos, the Prime Minister can be seen dancing unashamedly at a “rowdy party” where she had visibly consumed a few drinks.¹³⁶ Much stern moralising, potent

class, family background, educational level, gender, age group, and social setting (e. g., a polite dinner at the in-laws’, chat with an old schoolmate, conversation with a total stranger at a pub). 134 Gilhus (1997), 110. 135 Living in Iceland, the authors of this book can testify to a widespread and accepting reliance on such messy courtship rituals in their own country. Passing judgment on them is past the point in the present inquiry. In any case, LVOA can be of use to try and determine good and bad paths of action (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 136 “Sanna Marin” (2019), par. 1. The Prime Minister has since stated to the media that she had consumed alcohol and made no use of any drugs, as also demonstrated by a drug test that she took following the incident at issue.

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media pillorying, and palpable Schadenfreude have already circulated in connection with these videos.¹³⁷ Somehow, some individuals cannot miss the opportunity to wear a shining armour, ride a high horse, and assault people whose fault is to be horsing about. The Prime Minister’s joie de vivre has thus been turned into a public-relation faux pas, if not even into a political cul-de-sac. The authors of this volume, for their part, are neither surprised nor shocked to see a person having fun in this manner and, as the phrase goes, “blowing off steam”.¹³⁸ Some readers, however, may have a very different view of the matter, especially as regards the extent to which a Prime Minister is allegedly supposed to respect the ‘dignity of the office’ and/or elected politicians must ‘be held to a higher standard’ of private conduct, perceived decency, and general decorum.¹³⁹ What is more, Sanna Marin is by no means whatsoever the first political leader to have sought this kind of carnivalesque diversion. Rowdy, alcohol-fuelled parties held and/or attended by important statespersons have been a standard feature of our native cultures: from the noisy gatherings of Viking chieftains in medieval Iceland to Silvio Berlusconi’s “stylish dinner parties” in 21st-century Italy.¹⁴⁰ While there can certainly be noticeably different modes and degrees of rowdiness at alcohol-fuelled parties and attendant immoralities, whether alleged or actual, all these noisy nocturnal bashes exhibit and are rooted in the same fundamental urge for psychic release.¹⁴¹ This release being all the more relevant, moreover, in light of the considerable mental stress and massive, sustained, stifling, everyday affective repression that major institutional figures are likely to have to face in their diurnal lives.¹⁴²

137 The mediatic response has been so massive as not to require from us the specification of further references. 138 “Letting off steam” could also be used. 139 Some persons may well have far fewer forgiving attitudes towards alcohol, dancing, and rowdiness than we do. In pluralistic countries such as Finland, Italy or Iceland, the floor is open for debate too, not just for dancing. 140 “Berlusconi” (2012), title. Berlusconi’s far more notorious example might indicate that ‘scandals’ such as the one involving Sanna Marin neither blow necessarily a coup de grâce to a politician’s uncertain career, nor do they lead inexorably to a morally or moralistically driven coup d’état. Enduring a modicum of ignominy for the duration of a few news cycles may be personally hard to swallow, but it does not imply the end of a political trajectory. In any case, future historians will record the outcome of this affair which, at the time of writing, is still unfolding. 141 LVOA may help distinguish between positive and negative modes and degrees of rowdiness (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 142 We write “affective repression” and, in the sentence that is to follow in the main text, “energy” because libido is not merely an erotic/genital matter. As was noted before, Jung (1989 and 2009)

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Finally and fundamentally, as was stated in section 1.3.2.5, the energy of human libido flows everywhere and throughout everyone. Granted, some persons may experience it more violently and/or uncontrollably than others and/or in some specific periods and/or settings than others. Overall, however, libido’s energetic impetus is unstoppable, notwithstanding: (1) its substantial, consistent and continued psychic suppression by actual living persons; (2) these persons’ variously oppressive social milieus; (3) the repression-induced symptomatology that inevitably arises thereof; and (4) the diverse formative cultures that play a crucial role in facilitating or complexifying the approachable, available, and/or acceptable modes of release (e. g., Catholic, Puritanical, Wahabi, hedonistic, ascetic, polytheistic, agnostic, liberal, etc.).¹⁴³ This vital libido is bound to make itself felt inside the person and, at some point, call for outward expression, under the greatest assortment of specific circumstances, whether socio-culturally favourable or unfavourable, heightened by alcohol or numbed by it, among young women or old men, left or right of the political spectrum, north or south of Europe’s geographical map, and in good as well as in bad taste.¹⁴⁴ As to those persons who try hard and perchance too hard to proscribe partying, alcohol, dancing and sex, Willis’ musings on “the shame, guilt and inhibition that denial of the body produces” can be read as suggesting that such champions of “conventional morality” should possibly fear “the return of the repressed in distorted, solipsistic, sometimes frightening form”.¹⁴⁵ himself had already enlarged Freud’s picture of psychic life’s inner dynamism so as to encompass our numinous epiphanies and the most substantial intensities of experience that may flood into and, perhaps, give meaning and/or value to our lives, i. e., past and beyond their standard clinical interpretation as ‘symptoms’ (see also Jung 1960 – 1990, vol. 5). 143 See especially Jung (1960 – 1990), vol. 5. 144 As regards taste, each responsible person must eventually determine whether something— anything in fact—is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, even if there exist acknowledged ethico-aesthetic standards as well as much-admired judges of discernment and sophistication. The poet Petronius was famously said to be the arbiter elegantiarum at Nero’s imperial court, which keeps surfacing in our volume, given Nero’s notorious cruelty (see, e. g., Chapter 3 of Part 1). 145 Willis (1981), par. 4 (see also Chapter 1 of this book). Medically termed, Strossen’s (1995, 17) “sex panics” among fin-de-siècle feminists, Phillips’ (1998, 123) “paranoid reactions” to “consensual sadomasochism” in the same years, and Kipnis’ (2017, 1) “moral panic[s]” on today’s campuses might be instances of such ‘returns’ (see Chapter 1 of Part 1 and Chapter 1 here). Hillman’s (1995b) concurrence is worrying, then, for he was a psychotherapist (see again Chapter 1). Still, while general trends can be spotted, hypothesised, and talked about ad nauseam, each individual case must be assessed on its own discernible clinical facts and de/merits.

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3.4.4 Chanters and Cachalots In the UK, human and social scientists including Mikita Hoy, Geoff Pearson, Gary Armstrong, and Malcom Young have all characterised the highly ritualistic collective chaos of football fandom as one of the truest popular, Bakhtinian carnivals of our age, which too requires ad hoc social settings in which there can occur mass excitement, loud chanting, verbal taunting, heavy drinking, and humorous foul-mouthing.¹⁴⁶ These too are rowdy folk festivals, during which the ‘screws’ keeping us sane, proper, tamed, well-behaved, and inoffensive are loosened up, just a little bit. That something wild and hazardous can be unleashed by such socially permitted activities is visibly signalled by the frequent presence of police forces at football stadiums. The distance separating carnivals from carnage is, sometimes, a dangerously short one.¹⁴⁷ This simple truth was notoriously exemplified by the most tragic cases of hooliganism of the 1970s and 1980s.¹⁴⁸ Following the insights of Freud and his intellectual heirs, then, it must be further emphasised that it is not only libido qua sheer sexual desire that is inordinately repressed for ordinary life to be expressed.¹⁴⁹ There is also the wider aggressiveness inherent to our psychic constitution that must suffer the same fate, which in turn engenders attendant neuroses and psychoses, plus the societal institution of special occasions for release. As penned by the distinguished French philosopher and writer Georges Bataille: “Organised transgression together with the taboo make social life what it is.”¹⁵⁰ Civilised people are like sperm whales, which spend much of their lives feeding in the depths of the world’s seas and oceans, under the pressure of the enormous columns of water that are placed above them. At the same time, these aquatic creatures must come back to the surface and breathe air, for they cannot extract oxygen from the waters that they inhabit. As Bataille argued, “the main trend is clear enough”: in all forms of associated existence, or ‘civilization’ tout court, there exists a basic need for taboo-breaking rituals and nerve-racking praxes allowing for “the transition from compression to explosion”.¹⁵¹

146 See Hoy (1994), Pearson (2012), and Armstrong and Young (2000). 147 Other sports and mass gatherings (e. g., rock concerts) can exhibit the same characteristics. 148 See also Chapter 2 of Part 1. 149 Among these “heirs” of Freud’s and the Freudian approaches to Darwinian competition, sexual selection and instinctual violence, there does bulk large the controversial Konrad Lorenz, who was also the Nobel-prize laureate Austrian ornithologist that fathered ethology, i. e., the science of animal behaviour (see, e. g., Zillmann 1998). 150 Bataille (1962), 65. 151 Bataille (1962), 145.

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Ostensible excesses and exceptions were thus said by Bataille to be part and parcel of this psycho-baric socio-cultural logic, which underpins all communal living, insofar as civilised coexistence calls primarily for instituted means of routine instinctual repression of one kind or another, but can and should allow, secondarily, for special outlets of psychic release.¹⁵² In this connection, while writing about the Marquis de Sade, Bataille even provided a rather unique definition of one of our two titular terms. It reads as follows: “Cruelty is nothing but a denial of oneself carried so far that it becomes a destructive explosion.”¹⁵³ Sperm whales also indicate that, metaphorically as well as ironically, the Bakhtinian carnivals taking place routinely around the world are a matter of humorous fact.¹⁵⁴ The pressure of the water columns standing above the diving marine creatures cannot be withstood unendingly. Not even for the imperative daily necessity of finding something to eat, which is what most people’s ordinary lives have historically consisted in. And when these awesome animals stop being able to reach the surface, then they drown and die a watery death.¹⁵⁵ Puny humans be warned, then, whether or not they are able to swim.¹⁵⁶

3.4.5 Clinics and Compassion In 20th-century Switzerland, Jung stated that “[t]oday we need psychology”, i. e., psychotherapy, in order to probe into our shadow and grasp at least some of its contents, for if “we have no imagination for evil”, then “evil has us in its grip”.¹⁵⁷ Steeped in lofty religious ideals as much as in secular aspirations for endless self-perfecting, social progress, all-pervasive politeness, political correctness, and angelic purity, Western cultures have long dreamt of eliminating completely the ‘beast’ from their make-up, which reveals its continued presence, however, in well-known psychiatric pathologies as easily as in ordinary dreams. By so doing, the id reminds us, human beings, of its indestructibility. Perhaps, we must accept the fact that a healthy mind is also ‘dirty’ and ‘violent’, i. e., that it en-

152 See also H&C1 and Chapter 3 of Part 1. 153 Bataille (1962), 173; emphasis added. 154 Should the reader have been caught off-guard, we hinted here at the original meaning of “humour”, i. e., ‘liquid’ or ‘fluid’. As we hope is now very clear to him/her, “humour” has many more meanings than just ‘funny’. 155 This cetacean simile is merely meant to spur the reader’s thinking. It has no serious zoological pretensions of any sort whatsoever. 156 This pithy conclusion must be read with a modicum of sense of humour, i. e., not literally. 157 Jung (1989), 331; emphasis removed.

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tertains honestly its constitutive aggressiveness and sexual libido, but also seeks viable paths for their discharge.¹⁵⁸ Despite its many subdivisions and internal conflicts, depth psychology at large teaches that the real danger does not reside in acknowledging these components of our psychic make-up, or even in toying with them artistically and/or aesthetically, i. e., while avoiding truly immoral and harmfully violent deeds.¹⁵⁹ On the contrary, as Jung sternly warned his readers, “the conscious mind is … always in the danger of becoming one-sided” by pursuing total identification with the ego’s much-nobler and socially admired “persona”.¹⁶⁰ That is where a fundamental threat to individual and collective wellbeing is located.¹⁶¹ Even when heavily subdued under more and more layers of conscious self-control and/or social pressure—most of which operates in tacit manners—“[t]he unconscious as we know can never be ‘done with’ once and for all”.¹⁶² Arguably, Western culture might have fared better, had it listened to the occasional reminders of the inevitability and ‘providentiality’ of human imperfection peppering the medieval Christian tradition, which Jung explored at length in his studies of mysticism.¹⁶³ These peppering examples are numerous, but here we let suffice the ensuing quote from the 14th-century German mystic and Dominican preacher Johannes Tauler, who came to be known as doctor illuminatus et sublimis. Seldom read today outside Catholic seminars and intellectual circles, Tauler was a

158 Behind the contrast between civility and animality lies the simple biological truth that the latter is much older. 159 Open violence and unrestrained sexuality are the most commonly and most potently repressed proclivities and for good reasons: no civilised society could function without keeping them somehow under an ample measure of control in real interpersonal interactions. Yet all sorts of inclinations can be repressed, depending on the specific socio-cultural circumstances that apply, e. g., wherever men are expected to be strong, straightforward, and stoical, the dispositions for compassion, warmth, tenderness, and care can be repressed by young males in their development with an inevitable attendant host of neuroses and psychoses. Monty Python’s Flying Circus made often fun of the severe, standoffish, upright Englishmen embodying the imperial martial ethos, as well as of their nervous ticks, embarrassing slips of the tongue, quirks, and seething murderousness. 160 Jung (1960 – 1990), vol. 9.2, 20, par. 40. As seen in Chapter 1, Russell (1920, 30) himself claimed that people’s lives cannot be spent for a long time in ways that are “contrary to instinct”. 161 We are leaving aside those rare individuals whose id is nakedly predominant and that society forcibly restrains. 162 Jung (1960 – 1990), vol. 9.2, 20, par. 40. 163 See, e. g., Corbett (2015). By coining “providentiality” we mean the theological idea whereby God is said to extract ex malo bonum, i. e., goodness out of badness, which includes people’s frailties, filth, and sin itself.

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disciple of the more famous Meister Eckhart and, coincidentally, spent part of his mature years in Basel, Switzerland. The quote reads as follows: The horse makes the manure in the stable, and although the manure is filthy and stinking, yet the same horse pulls it into the field with great effort, and from it grows beautiful wheat and the noble, sweet wine that would never come about, were the shit not there. So carry your own excrements in the same way—these being the infirmities which you cannot shrug off, put off or overcome—with effort and diligence to the field of God’s loving will and be serene about yourself. Your excrements will undoubtedly grow delicious, tasty, and fruit will come from it in a spirit of humble serenity.¹⁶⁴

Human imperfection, as unshakeable as it is, should not be repressed mercilessly and/or hated blindly, for it is part of the human make-up and has a potentially lifeenabling role to play in our overall psychic order, i. e., if people learn to cope with it wisely.¹⁶⁵ This does not mean that human beings ought not to try to avoid sin. Simply, insofar as only few saints can accomplish this feat, the rest of humankind must strive for goodness in the knowledge that God will somehow make sure that their failures in this striving will not compromise the eventual positive result on a global scale.¹⁶⁶ The resulting normative guidelines for the Christian believer are rather clear: cultivate a charitable spirit; be aware of God’s mercy and merciful example; allow for love, self-love, forgiveness, and self-forgiveness.¹⁶⁷ Gradually, the better you know yourself, the humbler you should become and the more prepared to face the temptations that will come. As Jung himself ironically wondered: “But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself – that these are within

164 As cited in Jamin (2022), 3. We thank Dr. Jamin for providing us with a copy of his Sunday sermon. See also Tauler (1958), 26. 165 In the course of our research on humour and cruelty, we came across an earlier passing acknowledgment of the continuity between Jung’s and Tauler’s approaches to the problem of evil, recorded by the popular 20th-century British theologian and Orientalist Alan Watts (2014). 166 Smith (1790) was particularly emphatic in this sense. The positive eventual result, however, does not preclude damnation for those individuals who failed grossly in reining in their sinful proclivities and repenting for it. 167 Christian charitability and forgiveness are easily and readily applauded in Western societies, but in a superficial manner. Christ’s own teaching and exemplar are both paradoxical and demanding. As narrated in the Gospels, he forgave his own tormentors and executioners and interceded on their behalf with his heavenly Father who may have not been as merciful. How many victims of the cruelties reported in our volumes would do the same?

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me, and that I myself stand in need of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved – what then?”¹⁶⁸ These compassionate factors too are supposedly at play in the providential order of the Christian universe, which entails not only despicable sins and loathsome weaknesses, but also good-natured and helpful remedies to people’s inevitable failings.¹⁶⁹ Stern judgementalism and uncompromising zeal are, at best, wellmeaning means to make things worse, not better; i. e., by adding cruelty upon cruelty, whether for the sake of meritorious ideals such as ‘equality’, ‘justice’, ‘perfection’, ‘honour’, or else.¹⁷⁰ Humankind’s bloody history, not least that of Christendom itself, is bloated with terrible suffering caused by keen people’s bold conviction of knowing in each and every case right from wrong, good from evil, pure from impure, healthy from pathological, and/or normal from deviant, despite the frequent and patent disagreements on all these matters that can be found among countless different individuals and/or groups—and then these keen people’s coherent and insistent acting upon such a bold conviction.¹⁷¹ As we discussed in H&C2, while recalling Baroncelli’s musings on the subject, indolent indifference could be preferable, at least at times.¹⁷² Not giving a damn may be a means of redemption. Taking a nap may be healthier than taking a stand. None less than Horkheimer admitted that “action for action’s sake is in

168 As cited in Becker (2001), 147. See also Lippitt (2009), (2015), (2016), (2017), and (2019) for indepth studies of ‘self-love’ and ‘humility’ based on Kierkegaard’s existentialism and having implications for psychotherapy. 169 We deem compassion to be not only a key feature of much, though not all, Christianity, but also of the Western psychotherapeutic and psychiatric traditions to which Jung contributed as a scientist, scholar, clinician, and self-reflexive person experiencing psychotic episodes. In this last role, Jung (2009, 238; emphasis added) wrote: “Keep it far from me, science that clever knower, that bad prison master who binds the soul and imprisons it in a lightless cell. But above all protect me from the serpent of judgment, which only appears to be a healing serpent, yet in your depths is infernal poison and agonizing death.” Less lyrically, Behrendt (2020, 188; emphasis added) argued that “the most important point” in “most modern ethical debates”, where the needs and lived experiences of actual persons are regularly sidestepped and/or forgotten in the name of abstract “uncompromising principles”, is the “lack of compassion” characterising them, insofar as “collectivism” is thereby “blended with humanism” and “Maximalist or rigid Kantian-inspired” approaches teaching invariably that “a moral law should be upheld and respected no matter what”, i. e., irrespective of “the consequences” and/or “the peculiarities and special circumstances of a given situation”. We believe that LVOA offers insight into the quandaries explored by him. 170 See the virtuist and literalist instances discussed in Chapter 1 of this book. See also Pareto (1914) on “virtuism” as such. 171 See Chapter 1. 172 See also Baroncelli (1996, 91 – 97). LVOA may help determine when to choose indifference (see Chapter 1 of Part 1).

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no way superior to thought for thought’s sake, and is perhaps even inferior to it. As understood and practiced in our civilization, progressive rationalization tends, in my opinion, to obliterate that very substance of reason in the name of which this progress is espoused.”¹⁷³ A wise and wholesome person knows what and whom to care about, but also when to care not—to say nothing of exercising cautious wariness and candid selfquestioning. People are patently different, have different pressing needs, display different priorities, and plainly operate by different standards on a great number of issues, while also undergoing a process of personal differentiation throughout the course of their lives.¹⁷⁴ For all the abstract generalities and commonalities that empirical observation and theoretical introspection can reveal about us and convincingly warrant, each of us is also and nonetheless a unique and variously fluid human being.¹⁷⁵ Therefore, before entering with eagerness the battlefield or the public square, armed with a single paradigm of humanity by which all ought to abide, serious heed should be paid to Pirandello’s bitter yet humorous verses: “We often judge faulty in other people / that which no longer seems permissible for us to do.”¹⁷⁶ Christianity can be an optimistic faith, whether each different confession and/ or believer within it is then prone to stress more God’s goodness and forgiveness or, instead, the condemnation of our sins. As Tauler’s medieval allegory suggested, long before the birth of any analytic psychology or medical psychiatry, our constitutive uncivil animality should be approached charitably, compassionately, and constructively.¹⁷⁷ Maybe, “holy shit” is more than just one of many common profani-

173 Horkheimer (1947), vi. 174 How much a person changes with the passing of time, ironically, differs across individuals. 175 Deeply aware of this twofold truth about the suffering persons that he regularly met in the clinical setting, Jung (1960 – 1990, vol. 6; emphasis added) offered an apt juxtaposition between title and subtitle: “psychological types” was counterbalanced by “the psychology of individuation”. 176 Pirandello (1982), verses 77– 78. Pirandello is often credited with the following aphorism which is also apropos: “Before judging my life or my character, wear my shoes, walk the walk that I walked. Live my pain, my doubts, my laughter. Live the years that I have lived and fall there where I fell, and then get back on your feet like I did” (Bruni 2016, 44). We were not able to determine with certainty the paternity of this aphorism. As to which needs and standards should apply universally, we do find LVOA sufficiently wary and self-questioning. 177 For instance, S. Austin (2005) explored the therapeutic value of aggressive fantasies in women’s life, the psychoanalytic study of which Horney (1993, 99) pioneered, especially with relation to “cruel impulses”, dreams, “fantasies”, and imaginings “of both an active and a passive nature” prompted by blood. Once again, LVOA can help us understand this “value” as well as the “constructive” uses of our ‘filth’ (see Chapter 1 of Part 1).

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ties, and its existential meaning far more profound and positive than our ordinary use of it would ever fathom.¹⁷⁸ Outside the Christian context and back into the Jungian one, a small additional step into apparent darkness can be taken as well. Jung’s aim was, after all, to “be free and beyond Christianity”.¹⁷⁹ Specifically, ethical conduct itself would seem to demand this merciful approach to our filth or darkness, according to Jung, who went so far as to advise a modicum of deviance in too perfect an existence on grounds that are not merely those of mental health. As he wrote: “to inflict defeat on [our] virtues” means “making a moral effort in a different direction” than the usual one, i. e., that which makes us look good in the eyes of our neighbours, if not even ourselves.¹⁸⁰ To truly get in touch with and caringly embrace our whole self, we all must get our hands or thoughts dirty, to some significant extent.¹⁸¹ The road to psychic wholeness can be said to be, in all probability, paved with minor infractions and many imperfections. Obviously, it is not the proverbial road to hell. At the same time, it is not the traditional road to heaven either.¹⁸²

3.4.6 Pornography and Polytheism In the US, Hillman inferred from Freud’s and Jung’s seminal works and his own extensive clinical experiences a veritable paean for erotica and pornography, the production and promotion of which he defended, inter alia, as a healthy means of release for people’s taboo fantasies, including aggressive ones that, if properly

178 Once again, a final and decisive personal call awaits each individual, especially if s/he is a Christian believer. 179 Jung’s (2009), 235; emphasis in the original. Each reader must decide for him-/herself whether or not this aim is valuable, should s/he happen to belong to a socio-cultural milieu in which Christianity is still important. 180 Jung (1960 – 1990), vol. 9.2, 25, par. 47; emphasis added. 181 See Jung in Giaccardi (2014). As discussed at length in H&C2, life’s cruelty resides also in our having to determine whether to pursue the virtues that are socially expected of us or, instead, “inflict defeat on” them for the sake of personal wellbeing, e. g., by opting for humour in spite of its risks for our public persona and/or its potential aggression of other individuals, given the inherent cruelty of all humorous engagements, which attack others openly, exclude others indirectly, and/or reveal sore aspects of reality. 182 We assume our readers to share enough Christian or Islamic background as to be able to grasp the meaning of “hell” and “heaven” that we relied upon in the two concluding short sentences above. This being yet another token of the countless subsidiary details that must be tacitly shared by writers and readers for communication to occur (see Chapter 4 of Part 1).

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regulated, can supply useful pathways for social and personal wellbeing for all the individuals involved (e. g., actors, writers, producers, patrons).¹⁸³ In this creative and aesthetic context, dreaming of titillating cruelties was deemed by Hillman to be far less cruel than aiming at terminating fictional fantasies in the name of religious probity and/or cultural rectification.¹⁸⁴ Puritans might actually be far more dangerous than pigs, to put it bluntly. And at least some guilty pleasures could or should be healthier for most individuals than the corresponding innocent pains.¹⁸⁵ Specifically, Hillman wrote: Fantasy is innate to human beings, as irrepressible as our other instincts. As such it is more than a private luxury, more than a private necessity. Fantasy is as well a collectively human responsibility, calling for the conscientious, courageous and joyful participation by the citizen in lustful imaginings. Pornographic fantasies require their place in the body politic as part of its instinctual vitality, else the psyche’s life and society’s welfare is thwarted. If pornography… finds no societal support and instead societal suppression, then the citizens and the nation decline into shamed, passive-aggressive victimization.¹⁸⁶

Whether patriarchal, Cathar, Puritanical, Theravada, neo-Victorian, or Wahabi, purity-centred socio-cultural currents have been known to psychologists such as Freud, Jung and Hillman to pursue sexual repression for each and every person, both

183 Distinguishing between “erotica” and “pornography” is hard and, probably, impossible. Willis (1981, par. 6) criticised those who “presume an objective distinction between ‘pornographic images’, which are sadistic by definition, and ‘simple, explicit depictions of sexuality’. The fallacy here is that the range of potentially pornographic images – that is, … used for the purpose of sexual arousal – is limited only by the user’s imagination.” 184 See Hillman (1995b). 185 LVOA might be of use to assess which guilty pleasures should be tolerated, if not encouraged (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 186 Hillman (1995b), 66. His panegyric for pornography matured over time, given the melancholic assessment of this phenomenon contained in Hillman (1981), which suggested that this controversial art form is, psychologically, a bland compensatory mechanism incapable of curing its consumers’ sexual frustration and existential dissatisfaction. Comparing the two texts, three factors can be argued to have been crucial for his change of heart: (1) the Puritanical U-turn of much US feminism in the 1980s, i. e., after having been a pivotal engine for the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s; (2) the sheer amount of socio-culturally enforced sexual repression and attendant human suffering witnessed by Hillman in the psychotherapeutic setting; and (3) his taking into due account the personal meaningfulness of pornography for many of its creators, e. g. writers, actors, photographers, and directors. While (1) and (3) were points already presented and propounded by self-declared “feminists” such as Strossen (1995), McElroy (1995), (1997), and (2001), Willis (2012), and N. Hartley (2018), point (2) is the one truly reflecting Hillman’s specific professional expertise (see also Chapter 1).

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(1) exogenously (i. e., by way of imposed and patently heteronomous prohibitions) and (2) endogenously (i. e., by way of internalised and prima-facie autonomous inhibitions).¹⁸⁷ Historically, countless practical strategies and public ideals have been employed.¹⁸⁸ These, inter alia, have been: (1) physical (e. g., circumcision and infibulation); (2) pharmacological (e. g., cyproterone acetate and other anaphrodisiacs); (3) mechanical (e. g., medieval chastity belts and 20th-century anti-masturbation devices); (4) surgical (e. g., orchidectomy or orchiectomy); (5) legal (e. g., criminalising oral sex or making ownership of a TV set a legal offense); (6) aesthetic (e. g., deeming visual representations of sexual acts to be inherently “obscene”, “dirty”, “scandalous”, “offensive”, and/or “filthy”); (7) artistic (e. g., denying ab ovo all of this ‘obscene filth’ the possible status of art or banning women from acting in plays and movies); (8) therapeutic (e. g., diagnosing lesbianism as a psychiatric condition to be treated); (9) mental (e. g., conceiving of private sexual fantasies, erotic oneiric activity, and/ or lewd daydreaming as ‘deviant’, ‘perverse’, ‘diabolical’, and/or ‘unnatural’); (10) axiological (e. g., pitting ‘higher’ intellectual achievements against ‘lower’ bodily delights or the ‘deeper’ spirit against the ‘superficial’ flesh); (11) social (e. g., deriding, infantilising, and/or stigmatising sex workers); (12) religious (e. g., sanctifying exclusively heterosexual monogamy or reproaching most sexual activities as loathsome cases of ‘sin’ of varying seriousness);

187 The above-mentioned cases are mere examples of a considerably broader phenomenon, and four of them were addressed here in Chapter 1 (moreover, Puritanism was also tackled in H&C2). We must stress, however, how remarkable is the fact that these psycho-cultural forces have been able to cut through the toughest hierarchies (e. g., class and gender) and play a huge role in history’s events, inequalities, and assorted cruelties. At times, they reached all the way up to the tiny pinnacle of, typically, ruling rich men, e. g., the pious theocrats of Rome, Tibet, and Iran. As to the process of internalisation of inhibitions and taboos, different basic theoretical assumptions (e. g., on the role of epigenetics or the collective unconscious) produce different pictures, which may thus focus, say, on the psychosexual development of each child rather than on the species’ evolutionary history at large. 188 The list below may seem needlessly long. Yet, we find it useful to reflect explicitly on mechanisms for repression that, sometimes, have been so ingrained in common mores and expected morals as to be just ‘obvious’.

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(13) moral (e. g., deeming onanism a violation of human “dignity” or loathing public nudity as something obviously “shameful”, “shocking”, and/or “traumatising” to others); and (14) linguistic (e. g., reproving sexual terms and/or conversations about sexual acts as “vulgar”, “inappropriate”, “offensive”, “crass”, or even “cruel”).¹⁸⁹ As a result of these prolonged and pervasive structures for sexual repression—and as repeatedly reported by many cited authorities in psychology, philosophy, gender —and social studies—people’s individual depths have been allo-directed, affected, aggravated, and afflicted by a host of neuroses and psychoses. Commonplace humour itself, however seemingly light-hearted and supposedly innocent, has been a standard victim of these purity-centred pursuits.¹⁹⁰ This being the case, among other things, insofar as commonplace humour hints at and/or touches upon sexual subjects on a very frequent basis and in more or less explicit ways.¹⁹¹ Bizarrely, yet in line with the standard theory of humour and laughter claiming that our amusement pivots primarily around pent-up psychic energy searching for a suitable ‘emergency exit’, a sexually repressive culture cannot but cause a noticeable accumulation of this energy, precisely in connection with the socially policed sphere of sexuality.¹⁹² Repression, in essence, is the unwilling and unwitty mother of obsession.¹⁹³ As Willis succinctly stated: under sexually repressive conditions, “pornography” can become, among other things, “nature’s revenge against culture”.¹⁹⁴

189 Naturally, the list above comprises ideal types that, in reality, have merged and overlapped on many occasions and/or in many ways, some of which were and/or have been directed at specific genders, age groups, social ranks, communities, and/or population sectors. As regards the multifaceted Western forms of sexual repression, Reich (1953, 9; emphasis added) wrote: “In the Christian world and the cultures directly or indirectly influenced by Christianity”, even “the ‘god-given’ genital embrace” between man and woman, whence new life arises, “has turned into the pornographic 4-lettering male-female intercourse”. In short, even love has been fucked with. 190 See especially Hazlitt’s claims on this matter, as outlined here in Chapter 1. In principle, LVOA can help establish which pursuits are comprehensively life-enabling and which are not and, therefore, whether to err on Khomeini’s and Dworkin’s side rather than on Willis’ and Reich’s (see Chapter 1 of Part 1 and Chapter 1 of the present book). In the end, though, a personal call is required, hopefully based on solid empirical bases, yet also reflecting aesthetic, ethical, aetiological, eschatological, and psychological assumptions that cannot be solved by means of scientific data gathering alone. 191 More on this point follows in this chapter. 192 See Chapter 2, especially with regard to Freud, who made this theory commonplace. 193 Hillman (1995b) works in reverse to the claims of cultural ‘pornification’ (e. g., Dines 2010). 194 Willis (1981), par. 4. See also Chapter 1.

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Another related yet even more radical cruel irony awaits the prophets of incorporeal asceticism and eager repression of the carnal sphere, according to Hillman, who reissued de facto Nietzsche’s older insights about priestly and mystical self-inflicted cruelties.¹⁹⁵ Hillman insisted on the notion that sexual libido runs so much deeper than literalism that the latter ends up twisting the former into odd phenomena, not least life-disabling ones, but cannot ever stop it. Even when triumphant, Puritanical janissaries can only attain Pyrrhic victories: Venus victrix states a fact: Venus will out. She will be victorious and she cannot be suppressed. Prostitution is the oldest profession and blue laws have never been able anywhere to extinguish the redlight district. When suppression does rule for a while under fanatic puritan literalism, the goddess goes to compensatory extremes. She returns as a witch in Salem or in epidemics of hysteria afflicting entire convents. The Taliban keep girlie magazines. She infiltrates the Net with pornography and the free-marketing of children for pedophiles. Or she unleashes sadoerotic cruelties in revenge for her suppression in prisons, schools, and offices.¹⁹⁶

Not even academia’s ivory tower can withstand mighty Aphrodite, who, in a patent display of humorous cruelty, leads even the most right-thinking and demure middle- or upper-class scholars, researchers, and scientists, including “sober psychoanalysts” themselves, to debate incessantly “desire, jouissance, seduction, incest, molestations and the gaze into the mirror”.¹⁹⁷ The present subsection is, in this respect, just another case in point scored by the beautiful and invincible goddess, whose mythical children and lively retinue comprise, expressively enough: (1) the gods of fear and panic (Phobos), dread and terror (Deimos), sexual desire (Eros), weddings and wedding banquets (Hymenaios), and male lust (Priapus); (2) the goddesses of seduction and sweet-talking (Peitho), as well as of creativity and fertility (the Graces); (3) the cruel punisher of cruel rejection or unrequited love (Anteros); and (4) the then-male Phrygian-raised victim of an ill-fated rape attempted by a female water nymph (Hermaphroditus).¹⁹⁸

195 See Chapter 3 of Part 1. Nietzsche’s thought was also given ample room in H&C1. 196 Hillman (2004), 126. 197 Hillman (1995b), 39, who showed more than once in his talks and writings the endearing ability to make fun of his own professional community. We tried to do the same with regard to our beloved academic circus. 198 This list is not exhaustive. According to ancient myth, Aphrodite had other sons and daughters. As to Hermaphroditus’ “then-male” status, it was famously changed into an androgynous one when the gods allowed the failed rapist to fuse herself with the object of her desire (Ovidio 2013, 172 – 174, book 4, verses 285 – 388).

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Classical mythology and art, which are no longer a standard field of study for today’s educated elites, did identify long ago the compelling connection between eros and chaos, however allegorically expressed in tales, poems, tragedies, and comedies. Somehow, all must submit to Aphrodite, her children and/or her retinue, whether in a state of merriment or in one of mayhem.¹⁹⁹ She is just too powerful.²⁰⁰ But we could mention as well the less stately realm of journalism and public punditry too, which, in written attempts at sexual humour, have recently compared the 2024 Paris Olympic Phrygian-cap-inspired mascots to “clitoris in trainers”, and Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard skyrocket to “you know, that”, i. e., an erect penis (funnily enough, the author of this article on spatial engineering could not bring herself to inserting the implied “penis” into the title).²⁰¹ Whenever repressed desire or, as the controversial 20th-century sexual psychologist and experimenter Wilhelm Reich would dub it, “genital frustration”, is forcibly ‘squashed’ into some hidden corner of our psyche, then it is going to pop up somewhere else—within the same psyche.²⁰² The more it is repressed, the more such concentrated sexual energy will inexorably translate into a plethora of behaviours and, above all, neurotic and/or psychotic pathways that, more or less

199 LVOA would recommend merriment rather than mayhem (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 200 We do not mean literally that there are gods controlling all of us, though, ironically, we cannot know for sure. 201 See, respectively, Chrisafis (2022, title and par. 1) and Woodward (2021, title), who did include the term “penis” later in the article (par. 20). At the same time, in line with Hillman’s (1995b) remarks on psycho-rhetorical potentiation via censorial means, Woodward (2021) may have counted precisely on the affective intensification that indirect references to sexual matters can have, including to sexual organs. These are only speculations, though. Gauging people’s real motives is difficult (see also H&C2). 202 Reich (1953), 31 (emphasis added), which includes among such bitter fruits of repression “dirty thoughts, lasciviousness, cruelty, direct or moralistic, fake mildness”). Reich’s unorthodox experiments, his outspoken Marxist beliefs and, above all, his unrepentant advocacy for “free love” and “sexual revolution” or “liberation”, made him the target of much political and professional hatred—on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It is indeed a cruel irony that his books were burned in Germany by the Nazis in the 1930s and in the US by court order in 1956 (Turner 2011, title and par. 1; see also Boadella 1973). In the realm of comedy, Woody Allen satirised Reich’s peculiar orgasm-amplifying machines in the 1973 sci-fi movie Sleeper. Yet Allen’s humour did not address therein the dark side of sexual repression that Reich so strongly perceived and combated, inasmuch as Reich (1953, 41; emphasis added) believed that nothing short of “cruelty” proper is actually “born from frustration of the primary need for love and gratification of love in the mating embrace”. In point of fact, Reich’s (1968, 73; emphasis in the original) fundamental “contention is that every individual who has managed to preserve a bit of naturalness knows that there is only one thing wrong with neurotic patients: the lack of full and repeated sexual satisfaction”.

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effectively, should allow for a modicum of compensation—i. e., actual release—or strive hopelessly in such a direction.²⁰³ We can call to mind nightdreams as much as daydreams, persistent intimations, wild exclamations, slips of the tongue, jokes that we cannot keep ourselves from making, idées fixes, strange compulsions, Tourette-like utterings and jerks, spontaneous puns, aggressive projections, sudden visions, and alluring fantasies —to which many persons will then try to give some perceptible and possibly pleasant expression in fictions, games, playacting, and even much-admired works of art.²⁰⁴ When not, of course, in far more tentative and aesthetically less successful attempts at producing something akin, or merely remotely related to, much-admired works of art.²⁰⁵ In today’s Finland, the feminist scholar Susanna Paasonen reported the following brazen statement by a female interviewee who effectively encapsulates the fundamentally Freudian and Jungian approach that Hillman inherited and developed in contemporary psychology: When asked about their “pornographic fantasies”, the respondent said: “Maledom. I often fantasize about dystopias where women’s destiny is pretty harsh. There’s only room for young beautiful women and even for them, only as servants and sexual toys. I’m a pretty militant feminist and insist on full equality in my relationships. This conflict between submission and [those fantasies] feels pretty odd although I consider it all natural on the other hand, as fantasies are fantasies”.²⁰⁶

203 See also H&C1, Chapter 2 of Part 1, and Chapter 1 in this book. 204 This being the psychoanalytical approach characterising Hillman (1995b). Coming from a methodologically opposite direction, Pareto (1935, par. 1331), offered an earlier analogous account of the plethora of phenomena to which the so-called “sex residue” gives birth: “The sex residue is active not only in mental states looking to unions of the sexes or lingering on recollections of such things, but also in mental states that evince censure, repugnance, or hatred towards matters of sex.” The latter sort, as known, would then try to ban ‘scandalous’ art itself. Some countries in today’s world do as much. Michelangelo and Goya would have a very difficult time getting their artworks not impounded in, say, Qatar or Iran, were they to live there today; or they could be accused in the West of “sexism” for portraying naked females (see Willis 1994, 10). Fortunately for them, both artists are long dead. 205 Adorno (1997, 12 and 316 – 317) claimed that “pornography”, “cuisine”, and “fashion” were a step towards “art” proper, since too enjoyable an “erotic element” prevents the creative person from fully “sublimating” her longings. Psychoanalytically, such lower-quality aesthetic creations might function nonetheless as “transitional objects” à la Winnicott, though for adults only sometimes. As to writing “of course”, it should be obvious that “much-admired works of art” are exceptional, i. e., uncommon. Most attempts at art are, at best, mediocre. 206 Paasonen (2021), 5; emphasis added. Her article’s title refers to the female participants’ attitude whereby “[they] watch porn for the fucking, not for the romantic tiptoeing”, and includes “fantasy” qua key term vis-à-vis “women’s porn use” in Finland.

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Peculiar individual penchants aside, the wisdom at issue—if we can call it this way —is an ancient one. It predates Jung, Freud, Nietzsche, feminism, and, depending on the chroniclers, even classical Greek culture. As the legendary Lao Tzu (aka Laozi) stated in his Tao-Te Ching: “The more taboos and prohibitions there are in the world, / The poorer the people will be”.²⁰⁷ (Short and pithy, as typical of his writing.) Many centuries later, the library-science US expert, Jay E. Daily, would then add: “a necessary part of pornography is the happy violation of taboos”.²⁰⁸ Less lyrically than the former and less enthusiastically than the latter, contemporary intellectuals such as Hillman and Paasonen clothed this Taoist realisation in somewhat drier psychological and socio-cultural terms.²⁰⁹ It is clear that, as far as the ‘sex-positive’ feminist camp is concerned, exploring sexual fantasies by way of taboo-breaking fictions is believed to be able to give people a means of temporary relief, as well as a better sense of their own psychic reality and its many erotic dimensions. These, in turn, are not expected to find always genuine and full gratification in these women’s daily lives, since some of the dimensions at issue would be life-destructive.²¹⁰ Fantasies, as noted, are fantasies. And it is as fantasies that they are normally experienced and integrated into people’s lives.²¹¹ As stated by a female interviewee in a recent study by Daskalopoulou and Zanette: In the [pornographic] content that I watch, I am no longer self-conscious about it. As a young girl, I had the impression that what you watch is what you want to do, and I was like… “I don’t want to do it, why do I like to watch it?” Now I understand that this isn’t the case, you can watch something that you wouldn’t do, that excites you to watch. ²¹²

207 As stated in Chan (1973), 166, par. 57, verses 6 – 7. 208 Daily (1973), 256. Ironically, as noted by Asheim (1974, 285), Daily’s belief that both formal “censorship” and socio-cultural “censoriousness” would diminish and lead to the “end of obscenity” in America were quashed by “the Supreme Court decision of 1973 … to reestablish society’s fixation with pornography and obscenity, putting his book in an oddly anachronistic framework”. 209 We leave it to each reader to ponder on such a wisdom, if indeed it is wisdom. 210 Whether or not such fictions should also count as genuine art, it is a longstanding debate (see, e. g., Maes and Levinson 2012, and Maes 2013 and 2019). The debate itself can be deemed so “academic” as to deserve some satirical lambasting. See, e. g., Jarvie’s (2015) scorching, no-holds-barred review of Maes and Levinson (2012). 211 Abnormal cases exist too, such as the cruel child rapists discussed in Dines (2010). See also H&C1 on psychopathy. 212 Daskalopoulou and Zanette (2020), 976.

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Tellingly, another female interviewee cited by Daskalopoulou and Zanette asserted: “I watch a lot of lesbian porn, and I’ve never had sex with a woman.”²¹³ And a third one affirmed: I have a specific fantasy which has nothing to do with my real actions and life. [Although] I am looking for affection in my sexual experiences … the porn that I usually choose is … for example, group sex with 30 men and one woman … and that is something that helps me to come. So, I choose to watch that. Despite all my actions in real life.²¹⁴

These women’s sexual imaginings, erotic fantasies, and attendant fictions might be shocking to some readers, for a variety of possible reasons.²¹⁵ McElroy, for instance, would conceivably mention her own critics’ never-ending preoccupation with “pornography” as “a breach of public morality, or a breach of ‘women’s class interests’”, either of which would justify, in these critics’ view, the sacrifice of many sorrily misguided women’s “individual freedom” in favour of select, better-knowing agents of “social control”.²¹⁶ However, it should be noticed that such ‘wild’ fantasies and fictions are not even enough for some people.²¹⁷

3.4.7 Fetishes and Fictions There have been, there are, and, in all likelihood, there will be both men and women requiring a far more thorough engagement of their minds and bodies i. e., of their physical senses, so as to obtain a hopefully adequate psychic release in the carnal sphere. In the process, these people will challenge taboos, explore shadow-contents, break norms, re/define sexualities, embody creativity, and/or

213 Daskalopoulou and Zanette (2020), 975. 214 Daskalopoulou and Zanette (2020), 976. 215 Concerns for the performers’ wellbeing must be recalled once more, as patently indicated by Hillman (1995b; see Chapter 1). Macleod (2018), interestingly, suggested that most debates among academic feminists have focussed upon pornography’s alleged cultural harms or gender-wide empowerments, rather than on far more prosaic working conditions and labour rights in specific settings and enterprises. In any case, McNair (2013, xi) might have a point when stating that ‘sex-positive’ “feminist literature” corroborated the notion that “women… are not so very different in their sexualities from men, and often share with them an interest in the transgressive, and in the visual, objectifying dimensions of the erotic”. Ironically, there may be gender equality in indecency. 216 McElroy (1997), pars. 36 – 37. See also McElroy (1995) and Willis (1994). See again Chapter 1. LVOA could help assess such preoccupations, to some extent (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 217 See the ensuing point (3.4.7) in the main text and especially Phillips (1998).

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gleefully get ‘dirty’—as well as get away with all of this sensuality without harming anyone in concrete reality.²¹⁸ Whether read, listened to, looked at, or watched, pornographic fictions are already one step beyond private fantasies and daydreaming.²¹⁹ Even farther located are writing, recording, drawing, photographing, or filming, which include, logically, someone’s posing and acting as well, among many other things.²²⁰ As there exist different psychological types, so it can be reasonably inferred that there must exist different recurring avenues by which people strive to obtain erotic gratification, whether successfully or not, i. e., likings, kinks, fetishes, and whatnots.²²¹

218 As to our writing in the paragraph above “without harming anyone in reality”, this string of terms is meant to serve as a reminder of the life-disabling ‘shadow’ that the pornographic industry can itself cast, as also acknowledged by Hillman (1995b) (see Chapter 1 in this book). Some rules are not supposed to be broken, e. g., health-and-safety standards, informed consent, legal protections from “[v]iolence and abuse” (McNair 2013, 158). (We wrote about this cruel side of sexual matters in H&C2.) LVOA may help to identify the key criteria for the regulation of such a domain, given also LVOA’s theoretical continuity with highest-level human rights legislation (see McMurtry 2011, vol. 1, chap, 2; vol. 2, chap. 11; and vol. 3, chap. 13). In all concrete cases, though, real individuals will be called upon to make choices under their personal responsibility and specific circumstances (see Chapter 4 of Part 1). Unless, of course, we deny that some individuals enjoy any such liberty or ability—the implicit and insidious denial of women’s autonomy being part, interestingly, of the reasons why the ‘sex-positive’ feminist Willis (1981 and 1994) criticised so harshly Dworkin (1981) and MacKinnon (1993). 219 A curious intermediate domain was identified by Rebecca Weiss (2014, 134) with regard to socalled “tagging” among male “otaku” and female “fujoshi”. These are “geeks or nerds” who keep themselves busy by “databasing” and “cataloguing the traits of characters from Japanese anime, or animation; manga, or comics; and video games”, not least those of an erotic or pornographic nature, that otaku and fujoshi find capable of “evok[ing] a sense of moe in the observer—a euphoric response not unlike the effects of Prozac… or psychotropic drugs” (Weiss 2014, 134 – 140). Sheer ‘labels’, then, would seem capable of singling out heavily cathected psychic items, which can elicit both emotional responses (e. g., an intense feeling) and noetic responses (e. g., a concept-image). Perhaps, such are the secret thrills of the apparently dull archival and taxonomical duties of lexicographers, entomologists, and librarians. 220 “[A]fter years of interviewing hundreds of sex workers”, McElroy (1997, pars. 1 and 27; emphasis added) concluded that “a common characteristic of the porn actresses I have interviewed is a love of exhibitionism”. See also McElroy (1995). As to the tamer examples mentioned in the passage above, see, e. g., Paasonen (2010, 138 et passim) on the cohorts of amateur writers publishing their creations on a number of websites. Interestingly, the queer American writer and university professor Melissa Febos (2020) argued that writing repeatedly and passionately about one’s own sexuality can be an emancipatory experience for the writer. 221 By writing “whatnots”, we do not imply any disparaging of people’s sexual predilections and erotic manias. As to how many such predilections and manias there are, see, e. g., Vasic (2013) for an attempted simple categorisation of explicit sexual materials on cognitive-anthropological grounds, online videos in particular.

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In the UK, Anita Phillips went even farther than Hillman did and extolled the virtues of “masochism” and BDSM [Bondage and discipline, Dominance and submission, Sadism and Masochism] practices, which she claimed to possess deep existential ramifications: “sexual pain can be … psychologically healing … in transforming inner trouble into something that your body can take and survive… We are all masochists… ‘If I can be invaded, or imagine it happening to me, I must exist’”.²²² In nuce, masochism reveals the same personal willingness to endure pain for a higher aesthetic goal that has been traditionally attributed to the “[t]ortured [a]rtist” who, unlike “technocrats, accountants and lawyers”, chooses “to walk on the wild side” and thereby seeks, fosters and welcomes “overwhelming stimuli” making him/her “creatively” productive.²²³ Consummate artists know far too well that aesthetic inspiration consumes them. Spiritual reward comes with strings attached. If not even with chains, straps, ropes and other contraptions echoing, somewhat ironically yet also instructively, the pious but cruel Tomás de Torquemada and his hell-bent Dominican brethren.²²⁴ What is more, Phillips explained her uncommon panegyric for “masochism” in the stately terms of Jungian psychology: “once one’s chosen attitudes [are] in place, there [is] a kind of coalescence of all the rejected elements, a shadow personality that act[s] in a compensatory way to the conscious side”.²²⁵ In yet another unintentional reprisal of Hallie’s paradoxes of cruelty seen in Chapter 3 of Part 1, the conscious pursuit of the good is thus claimed to be able to generate ‘shaded’ or ‘shadowy’ areas where the bad can and probably must linger on, i. e., for the human psyche not to degrade or disintegrate.²²⁶ In this connection, Phillips singled out her own cherished “feminism” which “promotes female assertion and achievement”.²²⁷ According to her, by so doing, feminism “unavoidably denies another side of life”, e. g., it sidelines and seeks

222 Phillips (1998), 3 and 5. Nudism is yet another traditionally ‘deviant’ practice that, like BDSM, is in the process of “normalisation” in Western societies, while remaining socially awkward, grudgingly tolerated, and, depending on each country’s specific jurisprudence, in an uncertain legal status (see the Swedish sexologist Charlotta Carlström 2019 on BDSM and the German ethicist de Vries 2019 on nudism). See also Jospehy-Hernández’s (2017, 172) ‘snapshot’ rendition of the normalisation of the Japanese term “hentai” from pathological “hysteria” to “a wide range of sexual practices and identities”, hence “[r]eferring to the animated genre as well”. 223 Phillips (1998), 41. Clearly, her views do not coincide with those of Dworkin (1976) (see Chapter 3 of Part 1 and Chapter 1 in this book). 224 We addressed the cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition in H&C2. 225 Phillips (1998), 50. 226 See also H&C2. 227 Phillips (1998), 51.

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utter control over, say, “menstruat[ing], giv[ing]birth to babies, breastfeed[ing]”.²²⁸ Such being, inter alia, the lived scenes and undying symbols of women’s age-old submission to the tyrannical will of pitiless nature and patriarchal culture, all of which can then find eroticised manifestations in a number of sadomasochistic sexual practices that, for a long time, were condemned as pathological by the mostly male experts in psychiatry and psychology.²²⁹ As she concluded: “Masochism is part of the feminist shadow” and, as such, it “contain[s] within it the images and longings that feminism has discarded but that remain strongly and necessarily present in women’s lives”.²³⁰ Ex converso, it stands to reason that in societies where traditional patriarchy has largely disappeared and men are no longer expected to be domineering and aggressive, the counterpart of the feminine shadow, which shows a penchant for masochism, would be a masculine shadow keen on aggression and domination, if not outright sadism. Finally expelled from many of the world’s living societies and from their better-adjusted male personae, the sanguinary Asian plunderer of ancient lore or the despotic pater familias of the remotest Roman antiquity may yet be wandering in some dark areas of men’s psychic shadow. From there, the archaic tormenter calls for a modicum of acknowledgment and attention.²³¹ Such being, at least, a plausible mirror-like male implication of the Jungian line of thinking that Phillips adopted vis-à-vis modern women’s psychic shadow.²³² While it is impossible to gauge empirically the degree of repression and the hidden fantasies of all or most Western men, the fantasylands of online erotica, BDSM, and pornography would seem to corroborate this hypothesis, at least as far as empirical studies can be relied upon. Thus, in a recent survey of booming pornographic videogames on crowdfunding platforms, “[n]on-consensual sex, which includes unwanted sexual touching” and not just “assault or rape”, appears

228 Phillips (1998), 50 – 51. 229 Srdarov and Bourgault du Coudray (2016) provided an analogous argument in their explanation of the success of sadomasochistic literature and films (e. g., Fifty Shades of Grey) among emancipated Western women, who fantasise about Romantic, gothic, unequal relations, while pursuing very different ones in real life. 230 Phillips (1998), 51. Masochism qua common component of the feminine psychic make-up is not only a Jungian theme. The eminent neo-/post-Freudian Karen Horney (1939, 101 – 119 and 246 – 275) wrote extensively about it (see also Horney 1993). Carter (1978) and Ley (2012), though, remarked on the fact that women’s sexualities have sadistic elements as well. Iconic, in this connection, is Sacher-Masoch (1989), whence the term “masochism” emerged. 231 As noted in H&C2, violent sports may be civil means for discharging much pent-up aggression. 232 If true, Dworkin (1976) and (1981) should have welcomed pornography as taming the hypothetical homo stuprans rather than enhancing him.

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to have been “present in 59.3 % of the games”, where “[t]he abuser was the player character in 75 % of the games”.²³³ Were we to add Adler’s clinical claims about the largely “compensat[ory]” function of “[w]ar-fantasies” and “the many cruel daydreams which occasionally alternate with, or find a substitute in, fantasies about a person’s own painful suffering”, we should regard these unpleasant and/or rapacious imaginings as a sign of a more or less neurotically pacified society, along the broadly Freudian lines of understanding already addressed in Chapters 2 and 3 of Part 1 and Chapter 1 of this book, as well as the aforementioned Jungian intimations made by Phillips in her work on masochism.²³⁴ Such domineering, murderous, heroic, and/or barbaric flights of fancy, as Adler wrote, “as a rule indicate an actual feeling of weakness, and they are replaced in real life by timidity and shyness”.²³⁵ Sheep dream of being wolves, not wolves themselves.²³⁶ It may not be an entirely healthy scenario, but it is also one that, ordinarily, is devoid of actual bloodshed in the public sphere.²³⁷ Furthermore, in line with Hal-

233 Lankoski et al. (2023), 110. About these platforms, see also Swords (2020). Mentioning such a recent and understudied domain should make our book a tad less antiquarian. We know (some of ) our flaws. Additionally, the Finnish feminist media-studies professor Susanna Paasonen is the expert with the biggest number of publications cited in the bibliography of Lankoski et al. (2023, 121), hence establishing here a line of continuity. 234 Adler (1938), 247– 248; emphasis added. Jung (1960 – 1990, vol. 9.2, 20, par. 40) was certainly keen on the interpretation of our unconscious agency as largely compensatory. Additionally, Adler (1938, 12 et passim) hoped that the infusion of “self-love, and social feeling” into the psychic make-up of each person (e. g., during her childhood’s upbringing or adulthood’s psychotherapy) could reduce the cruel trade-off that is thereby at play. Horney (2000, 180; emphasis added) would also have subscribed to the possibility of a personal “healthy growth”, i. e., out of being “greedy, envious, cruel, and vindictive” (see also Horney 1939, 125 – 131). Freud and, in our estimate, Klein and Jung would probably disagree on how much this cruel trade-off can be so reduced. 235 Adler (1938), 248. The expression “as a rule” suggests a sizeable majority. Hence, a minority of active sadists and cruel offenders is likely to continue to exist, i. e., that well-known province of police forces, penal law, criminology, and specialised psychiatry that Foucault (1975), (1978), (1990), and (2006) studied extensively. As to Sade himself, Philip Kaufman’s 2000 drama Quills did a good job in juxtaposing the ‘wild’ pornographic creations of the Divine Marquis and his sorry condition as a powerless, long-time inmate in a psychiatric asylum. 236 Arguably, wolves dream of being sheep, as Phillips’ (1998) compensatory logic suggests. 237 We are assuming, of course, that Reich’s 20th-century hopes for a sexually revolutionised, liberated, and free-loving society are unlikely to ever materialise in toto, should any reader dream of such a possibility, which would challenge, inter alia, hetero- and homosexual monogamy, the extant legal bans on fisting, the theoretical bases of ‘sex-negative’ feminism, the cultural construct of ‘obscenity’, and God-only-knows how many other widespread views, ingrained social habits, and/or long-lasting taboos. That is, such that the “alternative lifestyles” studied in the 21st century by the late family-science US specialist Roger H. Rubin (2001, 711 et passim) would become commonplace

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lie’s study of the many paradoxes of cruelty, this scenario would be yet another example of how avoiding cruelty at one level (i. e., the socio-political one) must be obtained by pursuing it at another (i. e., the psychological one).²³⁸ Public wellbeing requires private ill-being. A sufficiently functional and peaceful society necessitates a modicum of cruel frustration and attendant neuroses, if not psychoses, which in turn engender cruel fantasies that cruel fictions and other ‘fetishes’ can purge or satisfy to a non-insignificant extent, though probably never to a complete or resolutive one.²³⁹ As Phillips penned in her open advocacy of “perversity”, Western “culture” consists also in “films, novels, plays, which give you a safe place in which to imagine living and dying differently from the way you are doing”.²⁴⁰ And a little more than that, in her case.²⁴¹ As logical and as plausible as all these considerations may sound to a psychoanalytically inclined reader, the extant clinical and empirical results must be taken nonetheless with a pinch of salt. First of all, fantasies are erratic; hence, there is no way to know exactly, for example, how many women make use of the cited lewd videogames so as to explore, experience, and perhaps enjoy their animus and/or masochistic side à la Phillips. Nor can we know with any exactitude what actually the players fantasise about by means of these games.²⁴² For the most part, we are confined to educated guesses about their inner life—or, given the paucity of studies

(see also McMurtry 1972, 587, for a critique of “monogamy”, which even “[t]he psychoanalyst traditionally regards … as a necessary restraint on the anarchic id and no more to be queried than civilization itself”). As to the absence of actual bloodshed, it is interesting to notice how R. Rubin (2001) suggested that most polyamorous swingers tend to be fairly standard middle-class citizens seeking an escape from what they must have been experiencing as repressive or frustrating social codes for ‘normalcy’. At the same time, he noted how little research was being pursued in these areas, for their “least comfortable” nature made projects about them unlikely to be funded, thus hinting at tacit perils for academic repute and careers (R. Rubin 2001, 724). 238 See Chapter 3 of Part 1. 239 See also H&C1 and Chapter 3 of Part 1 where we discussed the application of this Freudian—as well as Adlerian, Jungian, and Lacanian—realisation to the socio-political sphere, as presented especially by Deleuze and Guattari (2004), and where we mentioned the parallel one made by Derrida (2002), also on the basis of Freud’s oeuvre. Besides, if correct, Phillips’ (1998) Jungian approach indicates that the trade-off at issue applies also to an egalitarian and emancipated society. Everything casts a shadow; progress too. LVOA can then be of help so as to assess the shadows that are worth casting, at least in reasoned principle (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 240 Phillips (1998), 113. 241 Addressing fully lawful yet “far more physically damaging practices” than consensual “sadomasochistic sex”, Phillips (1998, 121) singled out the cases of “boxing match[es]” and “sex-change operation[s]”. 242 Lankoski et al. (2023) did not pursue any deep psychological scrutiny and merely mapped the emerging field. Online labels are then the mind’s nomenclature.

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on these phenomena, sheer guesses. Thirdly, whatever compensatory function fantasising about, say, being an archetypally or even parodically cruel alpha male may perform, the same survey reported that “in 25 % of the games the player character was the victim”.²⁴³ That is a high ratio, and it is likely to include very many male players.²⁴⁴ The traditional male gender roles qua protectors of the females and providers of the families are perchance too hard to kill or silence in toto, even in imaginary contexts. As to the fantasy “world of BDSM” that Phillips cherished and addressed, it is known to be itself “‘bottom-heavy’, where most men pursue the tole of submissive or ‘bottom’, rather than embracing a role in which they could act out as sexual aggressors”.²⁴⁵ Yet, this is a fantasy-world where actual flesh-and-bone people are involved, i. e., not totally imaginary persons, utterly fictional creatures, and madeup ludic circumstances.²⁴⁶ Thus, it is interesting to read that, even if pornographic videogames are not restricted by the same logics and rules that apply to erotica and pornography involving real people, who alone can be injured and must therefore be watchfully protected, there are nevertheless limits to what sort of unreal characters, scenes and stories can be portrayed.²⁴⁷ Consequently, as reported in the aforementioned recent survey, “sex with close relatives (mothers, sisters)”—which is a glaring and almost caricatural return of the most stereotypically Freudian repressed contents of the psyche—is to be reworded into sex with “‘landlady’ … ‘friends’ and ‘tenants’”.²⁴⁸ Similarly, it is interesting to realise that censorship and/or censorial aims, somehow, are able to reach even these minor and marginal aesthetic spheres and regulate them actively.²⁴⁹ Conceivably, such an eagerness and effective agency signal further, among other things, that imaginative and affective separation between reality and representation which literalist minds, whether religious or sec-

243 Lankoski et al. (2023), 110. 244 The literature on this specific subject is scarce, but there exists widespread expert agreement on the fact that, overall, online pornography is primarily made for and used by men, despite the growing participation of women. 245 Ley (2012), 191. 246 This penchant might also indicate the dominating roles that these BDSM practitioners still enjoy in real life. 247 See also Lunacek (2016). As noted, Klar (2013, 136) highlighted the “parodist process” that she claims to be central to “Japanese erotic manga”, i. e., the aesthetic basis and cultural precursor of the games studied by Lankoski et al. (2023, 104 and 119). 248 Lankoski et al. (2023), 109, who did not mention any parodic elements or humour. 249 See also Allison (1996) and Klar (2013). The censors’ aims might echo LVOA too.

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ular, seem decidedly unable to make, according to Hillman.²⁵⁰ Serious morals and serious minds, perhaps, do not play games.²⁵¹

3.4.8 Humour and Cruelty In Iceland, we have come to suspect that humour’s mock aggressions often play a similar function, granting us occasional ‘carnivals’ in which the normal rules of proper conduct are suspended so that some shadow-contents of our psyche can be freely expressed in the face of insistent and persistent mechanisms of instinctual repression.²⁵² After all, none less than Leacock identified the aforementioned transformation of the ancient cruelty into modern make-believe as “[h]umor” which, in this manner, “grew to turn on a contrast between the thing as it is, or ought to be, and the thing smashed out of shape and as it ought not to be”.²⁵³ In a nutshell, we have come to reiterate in our volumes an older conclusion that, among others, was reached in the 1970s by the late American literary scholar Leonard Feinberg, who spoke of “humor” as a matter of “aggression”, whether “obvious” or “playful”, and aimed at all types and varieties of possible targets: “hypocrisy” (e. g., “unexpected truth”); “inhibitions” (e. g., “sexual humor”); “propriety” (e. g., “scatological humor”); “the design of the universe” (e. g., “cosmic humor”); “everything” (e. g., “black humor”); “logic and order” (e. g., “nonsense humor”); and “conformity” (e. g., “word play”).²⁵⁴ (“Cruel/ty” proper being reserved by Feinberg to rather blatant cases of outright sadism in commonplace humour, e. g., the puppet “Punch”, most “practical jokes”, and the vast repertoire of “sick jokes”.)²⁵⁵ However typically superficial, effectively short-lived, and generally inconsequential, each feat of humour is, inter alia, a feat of rebellion. And whether or not it is just, justified, and/or justifiable, rebellion is inherently and anarchically aggressive. Either ‘up’ or ‘down’, humour punches at something and/or someone—always and necessarily. Its target can be literally anything and/or anyone: inveterate liars and

250 See Chapter 1 and, in addition, Paasonen (2019). 251 This being an attempt at producing a concise closing statement, not a scientific assertion. 252 We write “humour’s” instead of “cruel humour’s” because, as amply argued in H&C1 and, above all, H&C2, “humour” proper appears to be inherently cruel, more often than not, whether we are aware of this fact or not, i. e., whenever we choose not to care and/or simply accept humour as it is—its ‘bite’ having been internalised by us and by the people around us in an exemplification of Hallie’s “institutionalized cruelty” (see Chapter 3 of Part 1). 253 Leacock (1935), 11. 254 Feinberg (1978), 9, 27, and 75 – 183. 255 Feinberg (1978), 40 – 42 and 166 – 167.

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immaculate prophets; prudes and their taboos; social etiquette, common mores and commended morality; the frail façade of friendliness and optimism that most of us parade daily in public interactions; the same façade’s underlying litany of frailties and frustrations affecting our private lives; the rules of grammar and rational argumentation; and everything that counts as normal, correct, predictable, prescribed, pious, and/or proper.²⁵⁶ In a world where cruelty is wisely and openly condemned in so many public ways, the realm of humour, especially but not exclusively in its private forms, grants people some room to experience and toy with cruelty. This opportunity, as seen in Chapter 2, is of particular significance when facing other, probably worse, cruelties—and whether these are caused by nature, fate, some deity, or a much more prosaic relative, spouse, neighbour, colleague, adversary, or invader.²⁵⁷ Somehow, humour, especially in its commonplace forms, contains enough ‘steel’ of the same sort, i. e., it can counter cruelty with cruelty, parring at least some of the blows that we humans must inevitably suffer qua humans.²⁵⁸ Several experts have argued that commonplace humour was born in agonistic contexts of all kinds, such as taunting enemies, celebrating their defeat, duelling courtiers and peers in games of wit, and re/establishing hierarchies and pecking orders.²⁵⁹ When, which, and how much of such an ilk of humour we should use are, however, context-dependent questions which only an actual person can begin to assess, not to mention determine and deploy, in line with Polanyi’s account of human responsibility that was summarised in Chapter 4 of Part 1.²⁶⁰ What we do know, though, is that we all must use humour, sometimes, for the sake of psychic health.²⁶¹ However, we know as well that societal norms and standards are in a constant state of flux that produces many cruel ironies, some of which have been reported and discussed in our volumes, especially H&C2. Fallibility, in essence, is built throughout this process, as the many admonitions about humour seen in Chapter 2 of Part 1 and, even more so, the many historical reprisals against humour exemplified in Chapter 1 remind us of. No easy recipe is available. If anything, the survey of the many views on ‘humour’ and ‘cruelty’ offered in Chapters 2 and 3 of Part 1 tells a long tale of conceptual contradic-

256 We dealt with such rebellious characteristics of humour in both this volume and H&C2. 257 See also H&C1 and H&C2. 258 As discussed in both H&C1 and H&C2, psychologists have observed a common neurophysiological root for both laughter and tears as far back as Hartley’s 18th century. As to the inevitability of pain, see H&C2. 259 See H&C1, H&C2, and Chapter 2 in Part 1. 260 See H&C1 for a more thorough treatment of this subject. 261 We wrote “we all” for the sake of emphasis. There may be exceptions, i. e., pathological cases.

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tions, practical challenges, cultural complications, moral conundrums, personal crises, and socio-political concerns.²⁶²

3.5 Blinded by Light You are afraid to open the door? I too was afraid, since we had forgotten that God is terrible. Christ taught: God is love. But you should know that love is also terrible. —Carl Gustav Jung²⁶³

It may seem odd to group humour with unruly and controversial matters such as pub crawling, football fandom, or BDSM practices.²⁶⁴ In many respects, humour has been utilised, normalised, routinised, approved of, and widely accepted, far more thoroughly in today’s societies—especially in the Western ones that we, as authors of this volume, know best—than any such risky or risqué activities. And yet, first of all, we saw in Chapter 2 of Part 1 how none less than the noted 20thcentury French thinker Gilles Deleuze associated “humour” proper with psychodynamic “masochism”, making the latter a professedly instructive exemplification of the former.²⁶⁵ What is more, Deleuze’s association of “humour” proper with sexuality and, in parallel, the explosion of all fundamental structures of meaning, point both towards something very serious, philosophically speaking. We mean an onto-logically ultimate, emotionally potent, and intellectually unmanageable fountainhead of all that is and to which any signification, however partial, can be ascribed by human cultures, both at a collective level and at an individual one. It is as though, metaphorically speaking, Deleuze’s study of humour had opened two windows onto the Sun itself: hot, sometimes too hot, even scorching, and yet life-giving— i. e., if placed at the right distance from us. But also blinding, if too close, and equally the prime or perhaps sole instrument for making things visible to us.²⁶⁶ While Deleuze’s reflections on humour and the limits of communication revealed a fundamental springboard of language and linguistic effects, those on humour and the erotic art of masochism showcased an analogously fundamental basis of desire and libidinal affects. Whereas the former focussed on phonetic ar262 We discussed this issue extensively in both H&C1 and H&C2. 263 Jung (2009), 235. 264 Phillips (1998, 135 – 164) would not find it odd: her final chapter is a parallel rendition of secular masochistic practices and traditional Christian imagery and underlying notions, e. g., “the body of Christ”, “redempti[on]”, and “the martyr”. 265 See also H&C1. 266 We addressed in further detail Deleuze’s metaphysical insights in H&C2.

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ticulations and frail semantic conceptualisations, the latter focussed on physical attritions and frustrated sexual conceptions. Underneath both murky and chaotic realms, to which humour would appear to grant a somewhat fleeting yet intense and even cruel access, there plausibly transpires a powerful and dynamic field of being, capable of creation as much as of destruction.²⁶⁷ How to best describe and understand such an onto-logical realm is a philosophically daunting matter.²⁶⁸ The options are the most diverse. (1) It could be Schopenhauer’s Wille zum Leben, which was said to drive individual animals, especially male ones, to self-immolation for the unconscious sake of their species’ continuation.²⁶⁹ (2) Or it could be Nietzsche’s Wille zur Macht, which reflected, at least in part, the German thinker’s original take on his day’s controversial Darwinian themes.²⁷⁰ (3) Or it could be Bataille’s part maudite, which he depicted as a fundamental surplus-energy or quantum leading into all kinds of creative and destructive directions, inorganic as well as organic, and natural as well as cultural.²⁷¹ (4) It could be Jung’s “gods”, whose presence, potency, and pressures were said to be experienced psychically in sexuality as much as in spirituality.²⁷² (5) It might even be the ultimately ungraspable universal “order” set down by God’s “eternal Law”, which Maritain described oxymoronically as “cruel and saving” at once.²⁷³ (6) Or it could be the atheist Castoriadis’ ontological allegory for the basis of all that of which can be conceived, however imperfectly, by human beings, i. e., the “magma”.²⁷⁴ Blistering when active, then literally rock-solid when cold, yet capable of turning fluid and burning once more, generating new apprehensible forms as easily as old ones are annihilated.²⁷⁵

267 Hence also the ambivalent moral status of humour itself, which has been commended as well as condemned. 268 As seen in Chapter 2 of Part 1, Deleuze even hinted at this field as a vacuum of sort, i. e., perhaps illogically, non-being. 269 See H&C1 and H&C2. Interestingly, the paradoxical interplay of positive (e. g., procreation) and “negative” (e. g., “infertility and impotence”) “energies” of “sexual life” or “libidinal movements” was noted also by Benjamin (1999, 347) vis-à-vis Baudelaire’s “erotology of the damned” and the “cruel and ill-famed moments of desire”. 270 See H&C1 and H&C2. 271 See H&C2. 272 See Chapter 1. 273 Maritain (1959), 16. 274 See Castoriadis (1997b). 275 The inhabitants of Iceland are familiar with this geological phenomenon.

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Humour’s semantic paradoxes and its cognate sexual paroxysms are, in this perspective, indications of an infinite process in all of the main historical and philosophical connotations of the term “infinite” itself: indetermined, unlimited, ongoing, unfinished, inexhaustible.²⁷⁶ Let us recall once more Chesterton’s words about the curious connection between “humour” proper and the deepest matters that philosophers have kept investigating for centuries, even when knowing that no final and/or clear answer could be found: It is not children who ought to read the words of Lewis Carroll; they are far better employed making mud-pies; it is rather sages and grey-haired philosophers who ought to sit up all night reading Alice in Wonderland in order to study that darkest problem of metaphysics, the borderland between reason and unreason, and the nature of the most erratic of spiritual forces, humour, which eternally dances between the two.²⁷⁷

There are so many terms could be seen as plausibly applicable to the ontological ground that humorous activity can both reveal and hide: “Being”, “God”, “apeiron”, “energeia”, “the One”, “natura naturans”, “the Tao”.²⁷⁸ We, as authors of this volume, do not know which one would best apply. This plausible ultimate plane of existence, whence linguistic-conceptual organisation originates, may in fact be all of these things, none of them, or perhaps the ever-mutating underpinning process allowing for the existence of all such modes of being, as identified in all kinds of symbolic forms of expression and by the most diverse and prima-facie dissonant cohorts of human investigators: poets, theologians, philosophers, physicists, and humourists.²⁷⁹ 276 See Agazzi (2009). 277 Chesterton (1958), 26. In H&C1 and H&C2, we also discussed the Austrian-American sociologist Peter L. Berger’s (1969) stance, arguing basically that humour opens a pathway towards spirituality, since it displays our ability to conceive of perfection (i. e., how things should be) in spite of its absence in perception (i. e., how things really are). 278 One of the authors of this book studied in a high school run by Jesuits whose motto is “finding God in all things”. Funnily enough, though perhaps not entirely foolishly, we may have found God in humour, videogames, boozing, or even pornography and BDSM practices (see also Deida 1997 and Phillips 1998, as cited in Chapter 4 of Part 1). On a more serious note, it is interesting to observe how Jane (2022, 569) recovered an evocative simile used by F.B. Gray, stating that “laughter” is “like nuclear energy”. Figures of thought can help us figure out thoughts, perhaps, especially when they struggle with the inherent limits of our literal language games. 279 When writing “physicists”, we were thinking in particular of the scientific concepts for ‘basic’ or ‘fundamental forces’, i. e., electromagnetism, gravity, strong interaction, and weak interaction, and the attempts that have been made to unify them. We cannot offer any adequate account of this underlying ontology, to which the Deleuzian conception of humour alerts us, but merely make the readers aware of its connected conceivability. A thorough study of “humour” proper can lead to such deep- and far-reaching meta/physical issues too.

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Their combined voices, undoubtedly, produce a disquieting cacophony of sensitivities, approaches, hypotheses, specialised jargons, theories, and speculations. This cacophony being, in all likelihood, Western culture itself, if not humankind’s at large.²⁸⁰ While intuiting one and the same springboard of being and becoming, whence logic and language also arise, the aggregated picture resulting from the extant culturally sophisticated explorations of it resembles pretty much a kaleidoscope, if not something far more chaotic. And yet, all of these explorers are ‘looking’ at one and the same universe, albeit from different angles.²⁸¹ A subtle cruel humour characterises this metaphysical force, which teases us mortals with devious hints and direct glimmers, but resists definitive classification and diamantine explanation.²⁸² Cast in the pious and prudent terms of the Christian experience, Michael Polanyi recognised the frustrating, distressing, yet also slightly humorous colour of the religious believer’s conundrums, which further instantiate and reflect this incessant duality of intelligibility and unintelligibility rooted within the ultimate springboard of all meaning and being: [A]n eternal, never to be consummated hunch: a heuristic vision which is accepted for the sake of its unresolvable tension. It is like an obsession with a problem known to be insoluble, which yet follows, against reason, unswervingly, the heuristic command: “Look at the unknown!” Christianity sedulously fosters, and in a sense permanently satisfies, man’s craving for mental dissatisfaction by offering him the comfort of a crucified God.²⁸³

What then each person may decide to do in the face of such a paradoxical source of comfort, it is up to her—and it is probably a rather serious matter, whether she realises it or not.²⁸⁴ Shrouded in uncertainty and ambiguity, God may well be the

280 We address neither the issue of what a “culture” proper is supposedly meant to be like, nor the issue of which criteria are necessary and/or sufficient for something to count conceptually as ‘Western’ rather than something else. 281 As explained in H&C1, we regard our own research as part of an ongoing socio-cultural feat of exploration. 282 Fundamental metaphysical problems are still being debated today, despite millennia of philosophical study. Ever the investigator of all depths, Jung (1960 – 1990, vol. 9.2, 261, par. 413) suggested that a fundamental logico-mathematical order may subtend to extrospective and introspective analyses of the basic structures of matter and mind, i. e., respectively, subatomic physics and analytic psychology. 283 M. Polanyi (1962c), 212. 284 The existentially serious paradoxes of faith were discussed in more detail in H&C1 and H&C2.

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cruellest jokester of all.²⁸⁵ To apprehend and appreciate God’s ways, then, one may need an ample supply of humour.²⁸⁶

3.6 Laughing or Frowning at Darkness? [D]a mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo. —Saint Augustine²⁸⁷

All such Pindaric flights of the metaphysical intellect may seem ludicrous, excessive, and/or contrived. After all, as was also discussed in H&C2, when people talk about “humour” today, they hardly have logical, ontological, or theological conundrums in mind. Analogously, people seem rarely to consider in earnest which different standards of beauty, propriety, and taste may have applied or may apply. Today’s mutable and uncertain tacit rules are, for most of them, more than enough to go by—until something funny goes badly amiss and vocal, rabid accusations of “cruelty” start flying about. Perhaps a modicum of philosophical aloofness could reduce the sting that some people feel, while also making a counter-sting less likely to occur.²⁸⁸ As regards the apparent ‘normality’ of “humour” proper, it may be advisable not take today’s societies and their moral and/or aesthetic standards as the obvious or sole unit of measurement for human affairs at large, especially from an axiological perspective. The distant past may have grasped and institutionalised certain aspects of our life better than we do now.²⁸⁹ Or it may have not. Repeatedly, good ideas have been recovered from the past, and future problems may well show, in yet another crisis, how some of the most common current principles

285 Should we deny human freedom or turn it into an illusion (e. g., Hegel) or should we think of God as impersonal and possessing “an inflexible will, that no prayer can reach”, we would probably get “the false God of the philosophers … who sacrifices man for the cosmos” and blesses each and every “cruelty” (Maritain 1964, 191). 286 See also our reflections on Kierkegaard in H&C1. 287 “Give me chastity and continence, just not yet” (Augustine 1898, book 8, par. 7). Saints can do humour too. 288 The inherent ‘sting’ of humour was amply exemplified and discussed in H&C2. 289 Classicists and archetypal psychologists are likely to believe this point to be correct, and so do neo-pagans and new-age thinkers that try to recapture an allegedly lost harmony between humankind and the natural environment that, perchance, only Indigenous peoples still retain today. For recent examples of this effectively ‘backward-looking’ attitude, see, respectively, Rowland (2016) in psychology and Joy (2018) in anthropology. As to determining when our past should be our guide and when not, LVOA can be of assistance (see Chapter 1 of Part 1).

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were actually inadequate or ill-conceived. At the same time, some ancient, revered institutions have been abandoned for good, and there seems to be no valid reason to revive them in any form or fashion, e. g., a number of cruel penal institutions discussed in Chapter 1 here and also in H&C2. The matter, in any case, is far from settled and, in at least some cases, it may not be inherently simple to resolve. Some thinking will not do too much harm, we suspect. And it may even prevent some harm.²⁹⁰ Let us briefly consider a few points. (1) Historically, as repeatedly seen in this volume, humour and, above all, its audible and visible expressions were condemned most sternly as unholy and/or unruly on a great number of occasions. In some parts of the world, they still are, just like the other ‘extreme’ yet frequently permitted Western socio-cultural praxes for libidinal discharge with which humour has just been compared here in subsection 3.4. “Frequently” meaning ‘less-than-always’. Even the constitutionally liberal US, e. g., still have so-called “dry counties” which make boozing impossible not just de facto, but de jure. As to the seemingly odd yet consensual sexual activities that, as von Mises would have stated unthinkingly less than 100 years ago, some “perverts” appear to enjoy so much, they can still make life difficult for their practitioners, despite their apparent and often growing legal permissibility, e. g., with regard to child custody in divorce cases.²⁹¹ At a deeper level, whenever something is charged with libidinal energy, it can elicit interest as much as disquiet, disgust, and denunciation. As read in Chapter 3 of Part 1, Nietzsche implied that important truths can be found in deep, filthy waters.²⁹² Sade and Freud, just to name two recurring protagonists of the present inquiry, did plunge eagerly into such murky pools. And so have intellectuals as diverse as Jung, Hillman, Willis, and Phillips. Plenty of people, however, seem repulsed at the very notion of having to sully themselves in any manner or form.²⁹³ (2) Many people, including scholars, seem to easily and far-too-readily forget how deeply-felt and very vocal could and can be the concerned opposition to practices that, until not long ago, were condemned by all right-thinking and respectable

290 We rely on LVOA for the ultimate determination of harm, at least in principle. 291 See, e. g., the self-professed “kinky” activist Susan Wright (2018, 622), who addressed the current process of “de-pathologization of consensual BDSM” in the US. 292 Nietzsche (1911b), part 1, par. 13. 293 Perhaps the reader may be one such person. Or not. We cannot know that. Hence our warnings in Chapter 1 of Part 1.

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citizens who enjoyed the support of their time’s best-informed punditry and presumed science. Nobody worries much about masturbation any longer, for instance, in today’s Western societies.²⁹⁴ If anything, it is a common comedic trope, as exemplified in Federico Fellini’s 1973 movie Amarcord or in Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 Cinema Paradiso, both of which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Even so, in a partial echo of its negative past, a smattering of disruptive potential persists nonetheless. Thus, in a curious twist of irony, the late American sex educator Betty Dodson morphed these films’ comic scenes—both of which involve male adolescents masturbating while fantasising about their favourite female teachers and schoolmates (Amarcord), or watching a movie starring Brigitte Bardot (Cinema Paradiso)—into a shared comforting reverie for old-age women. In her publicly shared dream, the following explicit depiction should be broadcast on TV, so as to ‘revolutionise’ the still-common negative conceptions surrounding self-love and sexuality at large, not least in connection with people’s twilight years: My retirement fantasy, if it ever got aired on prime time, could change the image of old age. There are thirteen of us old folks living together in a commune. Every full moon we gather in front of the TV set to watch a new pornographic video of politically incorrect sex. After brewing a strong pot of tea, we plug in our vibrators and settle down for an evening orgasm. The rocking chairs creak, the vibrators hum, and occasionally one of us smiles and nods yes after a particularly good one.²⁹⁵

(2a) Masturbation used to be not only a minor and risible taboo or a funny source of mild embarrassment, but a sexual deviance about which scores of educators, physicians, and moralists had much to say.²⁹⁶ The great Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant, for one, rejected self-pleasuring most forcefully as a grave violation of human dignity, which is brought by the irrationally masturbating agent upon his/her rational, hence moral, self. The person’s failure is as momentous as it is disgraceful. As Kant wrote: “by [masturbating] the human being surrenders his personality (throwing it away), since he uses himself merely as a means to satisfy an animal impulse”.²⁹⁷

294 We thank Professor Mikael Karlsson for mentioning this particular case, which is most apropos in our volume, especially insofar as its present comical connotations clash forcefully with its cruel condemnations in the past. 295 As cited in Tooley (2022), 143; emphasis added. 296 See Laqueur (2003) for a comprehensive review of the history, pathologisation, and de/re-pathologisation of masturbation. 297 As translated and cited in Kerstein (2008), 213. The Bavarian historian Markus Meckl (2014, 662) is therefore correct in stating that “to read a bit more Kant and a bit less James Stuart

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(2b) Perhaps, Kant was still under the influence of a long-established JudeoChristian condemnation of masturbation.²⁹⁸ Back in 4th-century BC Greece, Diogenes the Cynic had no such qualms. Caught in the act on the public square of Athens, he famously replied, mixing different sorts of humour into one witty sentence: “If only one could put an end to one’s hunger by rubbing one’s stomach!”²⁹⁹ (2c) Yet these could well be “the deviant ways” and “wicked practices of the ancient Greek and Roman pagans” that today’s Western “disbelievers” try to “revive” and propagate, not least by way of “pornography”.³⁰⁰ This critical admonition being, at the very least, that which the US-trained physicist and prolific Salafi scholar Muhammad al-Jibaly wrote in our century on the subject at hand. The Muslim East, somehow, continues to worry about masturbation, despite the onslaught of Western secular expertise.³⁰¹ As al-Jibaly argued in a recent book on sexual ethics for Western/ised Muslims: Many Western behavioral and so-called social scientists, such as Freud, declare that masturbation is perfectly acceptable and has no harmful effects. Those ‘scientists’ have similar approaches with other sexual aberrations. Their misconceptions have poisoned the thoughts of most people in our time, have given them a deviant understanding of many aspects of human sexuality, and have made sexual aberrations – even the extreme ones, like homosexuality – acceptable by many people.³⁰²

Good Muslims, in al-Jibaly’s considered view, should stop “[l]istening to disbelievers’ arguments”, which can lead to justifications of

Mill” would be a better option for the self-declared anti-pornography “liberal” Abigail Levin (2010), insofar as the former Prussian ‘classic’ provided in his oeuvre a more substantive and adamant notion of “what kind of society one should achieve” than the latter English ‘classic’ did. 298 This ‘sex-negative’ tradition, according to two contemporary social scientists, endures in “the North American evangelical construction of female sexuality”, whence there ensues a “high propensity of religion to induce psychological distress among Christian women who watch pornography, masturbate, and engage in premarital sexual relations” (Stevenson and Hiebert 2021, 60). The pivotal theo-logical point at issue being: you suffer now in this finite life so that you may gain eternal post-mortem joy. Physical self-conduct is a matter of metaphysics. 299 As translated and cited in McManus (2016), 96. Once again, there arises the issue of self-sufficiency/seclusion. The line separating the two is not clear-cut. 300 Al-Jibaly (2005), 112. 301 Milder worries emerge also from the largely secular Far East. Thus, in contemporary Taiwan, the construction of emancipated, ‘sex-positive’ femininity can still be cast as “sex confessions” rather than as untroubled and enthusiastic joie de vivre (Wang 2021, 208 et passim). As to the “onslaught”, see, e. g., Boonin (2022), in which contemporary philosophers argue in favour of, inter alia, letting oneself be erotically objectified, masturbation, sex toys, sexbots, premarital sex, homosexuality, sex work, and technologically enhanced virtual sex. 302 Al-Jibaly (2005), 103.

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insanity and a clear deviation from the pure human nature. They include masochism (deriving pleasure from receiving pain), sadism (deriving pleasure from giving pain), enjoyment of filth (deriving pleasure from urine or other filth), and so on. A normal human being cannot imagine deriving pleasure from filth. This is only known to be the practice of pigs. Yet, it is shocking to learn that there are ‘sick’ individuals who do that.³⁰³

Rather than being “sympathetic with” such unscrupulous attitudes, which “point to the serious degree of corruption that the modern civilization has reached”, any such “major sin … deserves a most severe punishment”, according to al-Jibaly, including “the capital punishment of killing” in certain cases.³⁰⁴ Homosexuals living in today’s Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Nigeria are well aware of this cruel possibility.³⁰⁵ (3) That humour itself could then elicit comparable condemnation is, all things considered, not surprising. As amply shown in this volume, and especially in Chapter 1 with reference to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it is simply a fact. And the explanation for this fact is both elementary and complex, i. e., humour is—or can be experienced as being—cruel, also in the most profound and most piercing ways.³⁰⁶ Humour’s provocative cruelty is manifestly signalled by the responsive cruelty that it has been able to elicit, sometimes of the murderous kind, whether to any arguably balanced or apparently unbalanced degree.³⁰⁷ Laughing matters. People’s lives may depend on it. As our own study has been gradually unveiling, humour partakes of the stirring yet troubling elemental energy that arises even more forcefully from the ‘wild’ sexual practices approved, say, by the ‘sex-positive’ feminist camp, the proudly masochist Anita Phillips, or the prima-facie perplexing gay advocates of fisting. These libidinal activities, like laughter at large, are charged with the ‘untamed’ animality that civilisation represses most commonly and most forcefully.³⁰⁸ Revealingly, humour can easily lead, among other things, to unrestrained roaring, hooting, bodily convulsions, and baring of teeth, i. e., displays of our corporeal and affective animal nature.³⁰⁹ The same is true of sexual urges and erotic life, which may even encompass simmering signals of normally stifled blunt aggressive-

303 Al-Jibaly (2005), 103 and 112. 304 Al-Jibaly (2005), 107. 305 See, e. g., Gerber (2021). 306 Given its discursive nature, there cannot be cruel humour without a person finding it to be so. 307 As discussed in Chapter 1, assessing this un/balance is something that an actual person does in specific cases. 308 As noted, Eagleton (2019) compared humour’s psychic relief to the one obtained via orgasms. 309 See, e. g., Heller (2005).

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ness, e. g., biting, scratching, screaming, spitting, grunting, and frantic bodily frictions.³¹⁰ The living, naked, animated body and its inherent psychic energy transpire therein, and forcefully so. It may be embarrassing. It may be enigmatic. It may be exhilarating. Or it may constitute a philosophically significant epiphany.³¹¹ Once again, some individuals, groups, and/or cultures look at these manifestations of the ‘beast within’ with an approving eye or, as we are going to address, turn them into something cheerful and quite amusing. Other persons, groups, and/or cultures, instead, are thoroughly censorious in this regard and become unequivocally incensed whenever the same manifestations present themselves publicly, even in a purely fictional guise.³¹² (4) Humour is regularly associated to risky and risqué matters, whether in direct or vicarious form, including those listed in subsection 3.4 of the present book. (4a) Violent videogames offer plenty of opportunity for sheer sadistic laughter (e. g., when throwing prisoners alive into the fire and watching them burn, as can be done in Rockstar Games’ 2018 Red Dead Redemption II) as well as for humorous relief from all the violence (e. g., the comic Irish and French characters in the same game).³¹³ (4b) The same applies to the violent fiction that has been accompanying our civilisation since Homeric times. Even Dante’s Inferno, which is undoubtedly a severe circus of cruelty reminding its readers of the importance of seeking eternal salvation through the Christian faith, contains sparse comic moments, e. g., when the devil Barbariccia is described as farting loudly to signal to his peers that it is time to move on: Per l’argine sinistro volta dienno; ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno; ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.³¹⁴

(4c) For its part, alcohol is consumed as a liquid, i. e., as a humour, it is known to affect its consumers’ humour, and it has been called “laughing water”, among other things. Its relationship with commonplace humour, not least of the cruel 310 We presume our readers to be familiar with these phenomena. 311 Our account covered many different interpretations of this ‘revelation’ of the animated being. 312 See Chapter 1. LVOA can help to envision whether and when to be approving or not (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 313 One of the authors learned as much by watching his teenage sons play this videogame. 314 They turned onto the left bank; / but first each of them had his tongue between / the teeth, as a signal, towards their leader; / and he had turned his arse into a trumpet (Dante n.d.a., canto XXI, verses 136 – 139).

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sort, is both obvious and copious, and the consumption of alcohol has been repeatedly considered an important factor in commonplace humour’s own occurrence, whether appreciated or not.³¹⁵ (4d) Alcohol is also commonly associated with football fandom, which is known, when not notorious, for its unrefined humour, targeting shamelessly yet uproariously other fans, the players, referees, their hairdressers, physicians, parents, and other close relatives and associates.³¹⁶ (4e) As far as depth psychology is concerned, we know that Jung, representatively, thought of humour as an important human feature. Tellingly, he was prone to mention Schopenhauer’s Romantic claim that a sense of humour was the only divine quality in humans.³¹⁷ Similarly, Jung thought that a sense of humour in a patient greatly facilitated treatment, and he therefore spent considerable energy in ascertaining whether it was present in them. A person with no sparkle of this kind would be exceedingly difficult to treat, especially if she was psychotic. However, if she was psychotic but had a sense of humour, Jung would maintain that they could be kept afloat, even though they were incurable as such. In this connection, Hillman claimed “humor” proper to be central to Adlerian psychotherapy, i. e., that specific clinical approach which he termed [“]the Adlerian twist[“]. The shadow of weakness is not only moral, it is also humorous. The best entry into imperfection is humor, self-irony, dissolving in laughter, the acceptable humiliation that requires no after-compensation upwards. The sense of imperfection may be one way into communal feeling: another surer one is the all-too-human bond of the sense of humor.³¹⁸

Adler was neither exceptional nor eccentric, however. For one, there even exists a Handbook of Humor and Psychotherapy. ³¹⁹ For another, in the therapeutic setting, Viktor Frankl too stressed the “importance of introducing the neurotic to those character traits he so badly lacks—humor and calmness”, insofar as the former

315 See H&C1 and Chapter 2 of Part 1. 316 The authors of this book are long-time football aficionados and have been exposed to a great amount of uncouth humour in Italian and British stadiums, where a sort of Rabelaisian creativity can seize entire crowds. 317 On this and all other points about Jung in the paragraph above, see von Franz (1997). 318 Hillman (1983), 106 – 109. See also pages 112 – 116. 319 Fry and Salameh (1987). See also Sarink and García-Montes (2023) and Vanderheiden and Mayer (2021), chaps. 22 – 25.

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trait entails “the specifically human capacity for self-detachment” required by “the patient to put himself at a distance from the symptom”.³²⁰ (4fα) As far as sexuality is concerned, we must refer the reader to the copious observations accumulated in this volume with reference to the works of Hazlitt, Freud, Sontag and Harlow, among many others.³²¹ Commonplace humour and human sexuality go hand-in-hand under a humongous variety of circumstances, ranging from soldiers’ and sailors’ racy anecdotes to subtle innuendos in bourgeois comic operas.³²² Again and again, as the US-based political scientist Richard S. Randall wrote at the close of the Cold War period, “relief from the psychic tensions” arising from daily life calls for the recurrent mixing of humour and sexuality, e. g., “‘dirty’ jokes, erotic folktales, drinking songs, routines of night club comics, ‘smoker’ stag films, and the once-popular burlesque theatre” echoing in many varieties of his day’s booming “pornography”.³²³ In 20th-century France, Bataille similarly remarked: “One might just possibly consider the vogue of dirty jokes in our own day as … [a] custom [that] implies an inhibited eroticism turned into furtive sallies, sly allusions and humorous double meanings”, i. e., as a means of psychic relief for generally repressed sexuality.³²⁴ (4 fβ) On their part, the ancient Greek etymologies of “satire” (sátyros, i. e., the lascivous satyr), “comedy” (komos, i. e., merry-making, personified into Comus), and “gelastic” (gélos, i. e., laughter, personified into Gelos) and the Latin one of “humour” that opened Chapter 2 of Part 1 (i. e., liquid, especially with regard to bodily fluids) point towards: (4 fβi) half-animal libidinous drives (as visibly embodied by the satyr); (4 fβii) female-led orgiastic rites (both Comus and Gelos being cupbearers of Dionysus, whom the maenads aka “raving women” worshipped in their debauched bacchanalia); (4 fβiii) pathological guffawing or chuckling (“gelastic” being nowadays only a medical adjective); and 320 Frankl (1972), 195 and 224; see also 234 and 240, as well as Frankl (1978), 16 and 120 – 121. We discussed the notion of ‘distance’ in connection with the concept of ‘humour’ in H&C1. 321 See also H&C1. 322 We presume our readers to be familiar with them or, at least, the received views and stereotypes about them. 323 Randall (1989), 131. Artists seem to like toying with the porous borderlines separating these domains, e. g., the Tyrolean illustrator Milo Manara (see Borgomeo and Manara 2022), the European filmmakers Tinto Brass (see his 1979 historical drama Caligula and 2003 comedy Fallo!), Catherine Breillat (see her 1999 drama Romance and its 2004 sequel, Anatomy of Hell), and Lars Von Trier (see his 2009 horror film Antichrist and 2013 drama Nymphomaniac). 324 Bataille (1962), 113.

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(4 fβiv) sensuous corporeal secretions or “humours” proper, several of which play a crucial role in human sexuality and/or erotic practices—whether these practices are approved of or, as seen at point (2c) above, condemned as the swine’s sinful province and disgusting prerogative.³²⁵ (4 fβv) Indeed, laughing at the sheer naked body, in a rather tame acknowledgment of a person’s so-called “naughty bits”, is as old as Biblical wisdom.³²⁶ (We mean, of course, the chapter in the book of Genesis where Ham laughs at the nakedness of his father, Noah.)³²⁷

3.7 Cruel Humour, Class, and Swearing Sheep You don’t need any sense of humour in order to concoct new euphemisms, write “human” with the air of someone who has just uncovered a crime, or retrieve traces of aggressiveness in every corner of the language. It is more than enough to possess the obtuse creativity of those who invented expressions such as “difficult to serve” or “knowledge-base non possessor.” —Flavio Baroncelli³²⁸

Sexual terms, erotic subjects, and even the most oblique references to the libidinal sphere at large have known inconstant degrees of explicitness in Western humour, thespian comedies, and witty public discourses. Often, as also noted in this chapter, these torrid matters have found genuine room for something ampler than sheer survival solely in Bakhtinian carnivals, i. e., confined to special social settings, specific occasions and primarily fringe groups (e. g., BDSM devotees) and/ or lowly crowds (e. g., football fans).³²⁹ For all the democratic spirit of modernity, the demos’ actual vernacular and ordinary humour have been opposed vehemently by the educated circles, as recurrently attested in our studies, especially H&C1 (e. g., Addison, Hartley, and the selfappointed heralds of ‘true’ humour). Time and time again, these moralising literati and committed champions of social progress have pursued the admirable aim of ‘refinement’ in all aspects concerning “humour” proper, at least since Shaftesbury’s time.³³⁰

325 See, again, Florêncio (2020, title, 3, et passim), who reiterated the association with the swine by outlining in a positive light the so-called “pig” eroticism in the homosexual world. 326 Our readers may have just sensed an echo of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. 327 This being, at least, a common interpretation of the Biblical passage. 328 Baroncelli (1996), 57. 329 See also H&C1 and H&C2. 330 See also Chapter 2 in Part 1.

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3.7.1 For the People, But Neither by the People Nor of the People The demos may be acknowledged, respected, cherished, loved, perchance worshipped, for the ‘great unwashed’ might even be the destined protagonists of a better world to come. We can mention, e. g., Jesus’ blessed poor—whether financially (e. g., Luke 6:20 and 18:10 – 14) or in spirit (e. g., Matthew 5:8 – 12)—and Marx’s and Engels’ revolutionary proletariat, whom the Bolsheviks wanted to make the new rulers of Russia.³³¹ However, the demos is also to be wisely led, more or less gradually improved, carefully supervised, and, most certainly, neither allowed to speak too frankly nor given free rein in laughing matters. Priests, nuns, bishops, Protestant reformers, a revolutionary vanguard, or the One Party are therefore needed to bring Heaven onto Earth or, at least, avoid the unleashing of Hell thereupon.³³² In the absence or aid of such benevolent shepherds, serious thinkers, responsible academics, and other well-meaning intellectuals have repeatedly stepped in. Qua self-styled enlighteners and educators, these sheepmen and sheepwomen have therefore continually tried to manage—as capably and as effectively as they could —the collective menagerie, so that the ewes, rams, pigs, lambs, hens, horses, and other beasts should be duly kept from running amok, stray from the flock, and/or wreaking havoc of the most ungainly and uninhibited sort. See, e. g., James Beattie in the 18th century, William Hazlitt in the 19th, Jean Harvey in the 20th, and Simon Critchley in the 21st.³³³ Unsupervised and unguided, according to the ever-present chastisers of public mores and the indefatigable champions of better ones, the demos will inevitably show its unruly and misguided face as vulgus, i. e., it will have to be thought of invariably as ‘mob’, ‘mass’, ‘rabble’, ‘horde’, ‘plebeians’, ‘peasants’, or ‘plebs’. Citing Victor Hugo, even the Marxist Horkheimer stated: “laughter always contains an element of cruelty, and the laughter of crowds is the hilarity of madness”.³³⁴ Commoners are not to be trusted, not even by communists.³³⁵ Democratising sexual representation and self-representation, as seen in Chapters 1 and 3, has led to more than a fistful of scandalous activities in cyberspace

331 See Chapter 1. 332 Ditto. 333 See H&C2, Chapter 2 in Part 1, and Chapter 1 in this book. The references to a collective menagerie and domesticated animals are meant to recall Orwell’s (2014) 1944 satirical novella about Soviet history, Animal Farm. 334 Horkheimer (1947), 117; emphasis added. 335 Adorno and Horkheimer (2019) even worked on a new, updated version of The Communist Manifesto.

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or other shared spaces, i. e., not just scurrilous language, however uttered in jest. Unlike the spice, humour must not flow.³³⁶ If anything, it requires a nozzle or a faucet so that it may be effectually controlled. Indeed, insofar as decency or decorum are deemed worthy goals, there may be plausible reasons why certain animals ought to be more equal than others.³³⁷ Or, at least, some better-informed people did and do think this to be the case, even if the same people may describe themselves as staunch advocates of “liberty” or “freedom”, i. e., the liberal slogans par excellence. ³³⁸ In the turn-of-the-century liberal camp, Baroncelli was academically alone and humorously unique in saluting the strange, sentimental, solecistic, and silly personal messages of eternal love, deep affection, candid interest, and good wishes that were being published by the Italian newspaper Il Secolo XIX. ³³⁹ In his view, these naïve yet sincere messages by ordinary people for ordinary people were a form of “social progress”, i. e., a token of the growing democratisation of public self-re/presentation or “self-replication”, which had been traditionally the exclusive privilege of the literate elites.³⁴⁰ Had Baroncelli lived to witness them, perhaps he might have even welcomed and certainly joked about the bizarre videos circulated by the proud fistees that were discussed in Chapter 1.³⁴¹ In the sexual sphere too, in fact, there has occurred a palpable process of democratisation of public self-re/presentation (or self-replication), whether in good or bad taste. Thanks to the internet or because of it, boasting openly one’s great feats of eroticism and/or musing unashamedly on one’s own sensuous accomplishments are no longer a singular prerogative of the educated members of the privileged classes, e. g., Catullus, Boccaccio, Aretino, Casanova, the Marquis de Sade, D’Annunzio, Anne Desclos, Colette, or Anaïs Nin.³⁴²

336 The implied reference is to Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic Dune. Our readers should know at least its movie adaptations. 337 Again, we are implicitly referring to Orwell (2014). 338 See, e. g., our discussion of Shaftesbury H&C1 and Chapter 2 of Part 1. 339 Baroncelli (2009), 145 – 149. Solecisms can be mistakes in grammar as well as social etiquette. 340 Baroncelli (2009), 148. LVOA may help understand whether progress or regress occur, at least in principle. See Chapter 1 of Part 1. 341 No disparagement is implied. Simply, as already explained in H&C1 and H&C2, sexual customs as such are an easy target for commonplace humour, which thrives all the more when the customs at issue are unusual. 342 We presume our readers to be familiar with at least one or two of these Western ‘scandalous’ classics. On our part, we do not know enough about John Cleland’s family origins to warrant his inclusion among the cited authors.

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3.7.2 Fuck It! Class divisions and issues of class, or lack thereof, endure nonetheless. Tellingly, as we discussed in H&C2, the refined academic elites of today’s secular and largely liberal West can still be easily disturbed by uncouth words per se (e. g., “fuck”, “cunt”, “dickhead”, “cum”).³⁴³ Such a cathectic immediacy is revealing of the class reversals that commonplace humour can establish, however fleetingly, as well as of the deep-reaching and diffuse censoring forces of social opinion that were examined in Chapter 1.³⁴⁴ Words can have a psychosocially overwhelming affective charge per se, apparently, even when, as in the present scholarly study, they are plainly and emphatically abstracted from any aggressive pragmatic context.³⁴⁵ Discussing ill-mannered expressions has been very much apropos in our research, which inevitably required, inter alia, to: (1) deal with common linguistic means of cruel offense, especially if frequently associated with acts of ridicule, mockery, parody or derision; (2) exemplify adequately these means of cruel offense, at the very least in a censored form; and (3) reflect candidly on them, following reason wherever it may take us.³⁴⁶ As despised or as despicable as they may justifiably be, these means of offense do matter in connection with ‘humour’, ‘cruelty’ and, at times, both concepts at once.³⁴⁷ For instance, they matter in connection with liberalism, whose humorous cruelties and cruel humour have been important subthemes in this volume. Most curtly: “Take away the right to say ‘fuck’ and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government.’”³⁴⁸ In the US, the 20th-century Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce built much of his career—plus his enduring reputation qua champion of free speech

343 In our prose, we made repeatedly use of “cum”, but in Latin, i. e., meaning ‘with’, not ‘semen’. 344 Physical responses are most telling: falling off the chair, turning red in the face, but also grinning and laughing. 345 It should be self-evident that no offence whatsoever is meant by our mentioning, exemplifying, quoting and/or debating cruel means offence, not least alleged humorous ones. Given the current public sensitivities discussed by Kipnis (2017), we must be redundant on this point (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 346 See, in particular, the subsection on insults in H&C2. 347 See, e. g., Jane (2022, 561 – 562) being “left… in stitches” by the cruel yet strangely creative “rancid sprays of gendered abuse” that she encountered in her research, even if her “laughter” left “[s]ome of [her] feminist friends and colleagues… disconcerted by [it] and even disapproving of [her] laughter.” 348 Lenny Bruce in Anderson’s 2005 documentary film “Fuck” as cited in Schmidt (2008), 195.

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as much as qua foulmouthed satirist—by playing with and around such nominally “cruel” means of offense or, perhaps, just by playing havoc with his audiences.³⁴⁹ Arguably, today’s Chris Rock, Sacha Baron Cohen, Roberto Benigni, Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, Pieter-Dirk Uys, and Dave Chappelle could be considered his un/ worthy spiritual grandchildren.³⁵⁰ It should be self-evident, moreover, that no offense has ever been implied by our study of such means of offense. Our aim, as was also explicitly stated in Chapter 1 of Part 1, has always been the pursuit of broader and deeper understanding. Regrettably, misunderstanding can arise nonetheless. In bad faith, of course, insofar as twisting someone’s words can be a way to twist his/her arm too.³⁵¹ But also in good faith, and whether left or right on the political spectrum. In any case, unbridled cathexis can be found anywhere, psychologically speaking, i. e., wherever and whenever someone loses control.³⁵² Prickly resentment, powerful rage and punishing rancorousness are also not partisan, confessionally and ideologically speaking, as shown more than abundantly in Chapter 1. This is why we penned the present concluding note, which reiterates some of the opening warnings made in Chapter 1 of Part 1—as well as several observations on cruel mockery via commonplace humour that were accrued throughout our volumes.³⁵³ Somehow, touching upon sensitive issues can lead to unpleasant and/or unjustified contrary reactions.³⁵⁴ Some of these reactions, in turn, can be quite cruel, as seen especially in Chapter 1 of this book. Lenny Bruce candidly reported on this matter: “I satirize many subjects that are particu-

349 Bruce (1974), 15. See also Bob Fosse’s 1974 dramedy Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffman. 350 We leave the assessment of their un/worth in the hands, hearts, and minds of our readers. Personally, we do not like them all equally. Yet this Polanyian “personal coefficient” is exactly the issue here (see H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1). As the English-literature expert Alison Ross (1998, 4) observed: “Your reaction will depend partly on your attitude to the subject – you might object to jokes about women or feel offended by cruelty or crudity in humour.” 351 In the realm of scholarship, this cruel feat is often performed by taking words out of the original context. 352 We italicise “-one” to emphasise the “personal coefficient” at play (see H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1). 353 See especially Chapters 2 of Part 1 and Chapters 1 and 2 in this book, plus H&C2. 354 The main point of the present exercise has been to reveal the cruel humour and humorous cruelties within our seemingly emancipated and pluralistic Western world, so as to point in the direction of the seething psychosocial forces characterising such combinations of humour and cruelty, and, in keeping with H&C2, so as to stress the plausibility of a tragic worldview of human existence. Taking side within each highlighted controversy was not our chief aim, for doing so would have disrupted the tensions that we aimed at showing.

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lar sacred cows … some people who are involved emotionally with the subject I’m satirizing just get bugged, get verbal, and some get physically violent.”³⁵⁵ Even if proverbially light-hearted and jovial, humour is no assured protection. You may be merely pulling someone’s leg, talking tongue in cheek, and yet s/he can kick you in the teeth in all soberness and without mincing the matter. Witty figures of speech or thought will not shield you from disfigurement or assault. As Baroncelli jibed while writing, among other things, about the worrying trope of cruel violence against prostitutes in German TV police dramas: “[S]ome people, when they feel surrounded, persecuted, oppressed by sons of whores, sooner or later vent their rage at whores. There’s always someone who takes metaphors literally.”³⁵⁶ Additionally, the present lengthy note aims at anticipating and countering, as far as this is possible, the inexorable irony inherent to all forms of censorship, even when well-meaning and perchance expected in today’s self-aware Western academia. In modern psychology, Hillman observed this peculiar phenomenon with respect to “the tin fig-leaf or small piece of cloth” covering the pudenda of neo-/classical statues and Christian crucifixes, “closing off the literal and opening into the imaginable, the implied, sparking the fervour of fantasy”.³⁵⁷ The forbidden fruit, somehow, is believed to be or experienced as being tastier than the permitted one.³⁵⁸ Exemplarily, strange amateur videos of anime characters that would seem to be uttering the so-called “n word” have been known to circulate on popular websites such as YouTube.³⁵⁹ As bizarre, bonkers, juvenile, sick, inappropriate, indecent, insulting and/or intolerable as they are likely to come across to our readers, these peculiar racist internet concoctions are but a contemporary and somewhat tamer reiteration of the emotionally laden mixture of erotic titillation and verbal trespass that was already at work, much more patently and potently, within Sade’s

355 Bruce (1974), 117. 356 Baroncelli (2009), 126; emphasis added. 357 Hillman (1995), 60. This passage was cited already in the footnotes of Chapter 1 of Part 1. 358 Proverbial wisdom describes this fruit as being sweeter, and it also teaches that the neighbour’s grass is greener. 359 See TheBroJose (2019). Japanese falls outside our area of linguistic competence; hence, we do not know what they actually state. Still, it is worth noting how, despite their innocent appearance and unlike most Western cartoons and comics, Japanese anime have a complex aesthetics and a rather baffling psychological association with extreme behaviours, illicit longings, lost memories, and ancestral imaginings. As the Japan-based Gustavo Pereira Portes and Edward Haig (2013, 248) wrote about their prolonged exclusion from Brazil’s cultural mainstream: “Anime … was kept for many years at the fringe of ‘culture’ as a genre either too childish or too violent and pornographic.” Ironically, the origin of the anime tradition may be the very Western animated Jewish flapper girl Betty Boop (see Holberg 1999 and Leskosky 2022).

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in/famous porno-philosophical novels.³⁶⁰ These, as discussed in H&C1, combined sexuality with blasphemies directed, primarily, at Catholic targets which and/or whom Sade loathed to the extreme, e. g., the Church of Rome, Holy Virgin, Prophets, and Bible.³⁶¹ As also shown throughout the chapters of this book, physical and linguistic vulgarity, not least when they are dressed as commonplace humour, do allow for considerable psychic release.³⁶² Much alleged civilisation is built, as we have seen, upon the continued repression of that which would generally be spontaneous, even if nauseous on more than a few occasions.³⁶³ As a result, in a further twist of cruel irony, vulgarity has been deemed to be beneficial to some people’s health and overall wellbeing, just like humour.³⁶⁴ Swearing, in other words, can be good, at least for the person who swears, whether in good- or ill-humour— and even when the swearing is cruelly worded and/or aimed at other people, as noted in Chapter 2.³⁶⁵

360 Unlike Sade and his Enlightenment brethren, contemporary Western society and academia seem rather keen on regulating language on moral grounds (see, e. g., Asim 2007). This being the peculiar domain of political correctness that Baroncelli (1996) explored at length and, while sympathetic towards the notion that we ought to try to be kind to one another, also ridiculed for its paradoxical outcomes, cruel ironies, and involuntary comicality. As seen, Kipnis (2017, 1 – 2) echoed him in recent years in the name of “irony” itself. 361 As seen in H&C1, Sade rejected all moral codes and religions, especially monotheistic ones. Also, the reader should recall how blasphemy was a punishable crime in Sade’s France. 362 This point was addressed also in H&C2. Here, let us remark on the fact that merely listening to an impropriety can produce relief. This too, significantly, is a known psychological mechanism that has repeatedly been exploited by notoriously foulmouthed comedians, e. g., Lenny Bruce, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and Billy Connolly. 363 We are thinking here primarily of bodily functions, which are possibly the first instinctual behaviours to get trained and, in the process, repressed and psychopathologised, especially according to Freud’s line of study. 364 See, e. g., Byrne (2017). 365 The 2016 “Nosedive” episode of Black Mirror (2011 – 2019), which was a dark-satire TV series mixing science fiction and social commentary, offered a splendid artistic example of the genuine psychic release that many people experience by using coarse language. In the episode at issue, vulgarity had basically been banned by making all self-respecting citizens participate in a system of mutual online voting eerily akin to Facebook’s “like” option for all posted materials. The result was a stultifying and hypocritical community of carefully worded and seemingly polite self-restraining conformists. In the end, the female protagonist, after a long series of embarrassing and humiliating accidents, lands into prison and accepts gladly the status of social pariah so as to be able to utter swearwords which are, by that point, a ‘forbidden fruit’ whose taste could not be any sweeter. At the same time, she had ipso facto become the sad and sardonic proof that if people’s main aim in associated living is to keep up appearances, the very same people can get easily kidnapped by those appearances (see also H&C2).

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The picture can become even more complex if we take into account the broader life-enabling, aesthetic-affective properties of swearing, which can plausibly turn into a form of art. This notion may sound absurd, prima facie. Yet it has been intimated and frequently exemplified by none less than Billy Connolly.³⁶⁶ And as it was observed long ago by the 20th-century British WWI veteran, poet, and classicist, Robert Graves: “Frequent swearing, then, is often, no doubt, the accompaniment of debauch, cruelty, and presumption, but, on the other hand, it is as often merely what the psychologists call the ‘sublimation in fantasia of a practical anti-social impulse’; and what others call ‘poor man’s poetry.’”³⁶⁷ The ambivalent joys of talking ‘dirty’, then, are not something that belongs to the sole sphere of erotic practices, as emphatically exemplified by the Marquis de Sade’s blasphemous libertines, or as musically rendered by Lucille Bogan in her racy blues songs during the 1920s and 1930s.³⁶⁸ Passionate authenticity and individual subjectivity may sometimes call for adroit cursing, especially in working-class settings, in a representative and expressive continuation of a time-honoured tradition of popular jocularity of which the likes of Rabelais, Bakhtin, and—as seen in detail in Chapter 1—Cavanna have long been aware and most appreciative.³⁶⁹ At the same time, other individuals, groups, and authorities, especially though not exclusively from self-perceiving ‘superior’ layers of the extant social hierarchy, have proven more than ready to condemn such commonplace humour.³⁷⁰ Dropping a foulmouthed comic bomb can even cause the resentful victims of the perceived vituperation to throw a real one at the originator.³⁷¹

3.7.3 Gentlemen, Please! Sadism itself may be good for the sadist. Someone or something must therefore stop him/her from doing that which s/he would relish. A fortiori, conscience, the

366 See, e. g., B. Connolly (2009). 367 Graves (1927), 41; emphasis added. 368 In common parlance, of course, the sexual connotation of “talking dirty” is the expected one. However, it should be noted that the most common Anglophone profanity is a combination of vulgarity-cum-sexuality: “fuck”. 369 See also Chapter 2 of Part 1. 370 See Chapter 1 for examples of extreme negative reactions. 371 See Chapter 1 on the ethical complexities of homicidal responsive cruelty and H&C2 on the empirical corroboration of the jokesters’ exculpatory claims that they were, in fact, “only joking” or “kidding”.

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super-ego, written laws, and/or unwritten ethics find their deepest raison d’être in troubling phenomena such as these, i. e., in conspicuous life-disablement.³⁷² Sheepherders, in parallel, find out that they have a job to do, after all. The reader might be honestly surprised to find the rationale for moral restrictions and legal prohibitions coming back at this late stage in the book, especially after presenting in the previous subsections several examples—and attendant justificatory reasons—for allowing the ‘free play’ of our routinely repressed instincts. Such a free play, though, was never meant to be absolute. Quite the contrary. The free play at issue was meant to be an exception to the established norm which consists, ultimately, in enduring structures of and for psychic repression that embrace most people throughout most of their lives, starting from infancy itself. This necessity is built in the very nature of our psychic ego-formation and viable socialisation, since we must force an original nucleus of infinite desire to adjust to a finite reality allowing for an even more finite satisfaction of desire. Such being, at least, the dismal yet important implications of Freud, Jung, and, notably, the variously Freudian post-modernists and feminists that were encountered in section 3.1.4 in Part 1 of H&C3 and beyond, i. e., Deleuze, Castoriadis, Derrida, Sontag, and Phillips, just to mention a few.³⁷³ Hence, there results as well the never-ceasing psychosocial tension that we explored in detail in H&C2 with regard to humour itself. We mean the cruel dilemma of knowing or not knowing when to loosen the screws of neurosis- and psychosis-inducing repression and when to tighten them instead—and how much to do either thing. Play areas, wherever they may be, have boundaries. Yet these boundaries are not always and necessarily clear ones. Just the opposite: they are tacit, more often than not. Consequently, we mostly learn about them by bumping into walls, falling into ditches, stepping into the fire, or meeting a chastising hand.³⁷⁴ Even on the basis of our cherished LVOA, no trenchant, well-defined, and universally applicable explicit rule can be found—not by the two of us, at any rate.³⁷⁵ Too many particular factors, specific to each involved individual and individual set of circumstances, are, funnily enough, at play. Decisions have to be made in concrete contexts by real people who can only extract so much guidance and insight from whatever uncontroversial empirical data may have been accumulated by the social scientists up to that point, if any—and if known, understandable, accessible,

372 See our short outline of LVOA in Chapter 1 of Part 1. 373 See also H&C1. 374 It may be of some interest to reflect on the somewhat Freudian fact that, in English, “to play” used to mean “to engage in sexual intercourse”, especially of an illicit nature, as still indicated by the phrase “to play around”. 375 See Chapter 1 of Part 1.

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or even relevant.³⁷⁶ Plus, of course, whatever abstract life-enabling principles of goodness, justice, wisdom, virtue, and healthy conduct that the same real people may be lucky enough to possess, e. g., religious injunctions, ethical maxims, official laws, exemplary paragons, psychotherapeutic guidelines, and constitutional provisions.³⁷⁷ As we stressed repeatedly in H&C2, errors can and will be made. Humour is not devoid of pitfalls. Far from it. More cruelty, ironically, may then ensue thereof, despite the noblest intentions and the most transparent processes of moral, theoretical, political, and/or legal deliberation. Cruelty can be the child of well-meaning parents. As seen, even eager liberal and reforming philosophers such as Hallie and Shklar were frank about this sore point. The Catholic Chesterton was aware of it too, despite his characteristic jovial mood and confident outlook. Not to mention more pessimistic thinkers such as Leopardi, Nietzsche, Cioran, or Kekes. Life is not easy at all. Not even in the realm of “humour” proper. Cheap laughs can come at an exorbitant price. Life, truly, knows how to be cruel. ³⁷⁸ At the same time, as Hallie and Hillman acknowledged, it is equally true that Western societies, in their long history, have been able to intervene and reduce considerably, if not even eliminate altogether, deeply entrenched life-disabling cruelties in a number of major public institutional settings, e. g., the eventual worldwide abolition of slavery in the 20th century and the regulation of the garment industry in 19th-century Britain.³⁷⁹ Lecky, Leacock, and Shklar were especially positive in this respect. Hillman too sounded a moderately optimistic note in this regard. Not to mention the champions of the European Enlightenment that are still remembered and celebrated as the veritable protagonists of much historical progress. Therefore, there is hope as well.³⁸⁰

376 As Wittgenstein (1989, proposition 6.52) famously mused, we may even find the solutions to all possible scientific problems, and yet remain with all major questions about how to conduct our lives cruelly unanswered. 377 Again, these cruel dilemmas were anticipated in H&C2. As to the complete structure of moral deliberation, R. Allen (2014) would add the habitual dispositions of the person’s heart and mind, who then strives to make use of the available data and principles. The present volume, however, is not the right place to address this topic as well. 378 See H&C1, H&C2, and especially Chapter 3 of Part 1. As seen Rosset added a further cruel irony to the picture: life’s cruelty must be endured and even embraced, if we want to obtain any gratification whatsoever before dying. 379 See Chapter 1. 380 Whether or not hope is the cruellest of human frailties, as ancient myth suggested, we do not discuss it here.

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3.8 The Humorous Cruelty of Living What cruelty is there in denying to a man that which he did not or could not desire? —Miguel De Unamuno³⁸¹

As to determining on every occasion what exactly each of us should hope for and how s/he can argue for it convincingly so that everybody gets on board with him/ her—or even how to get there effectively—difficulties, delusions, disputes, divisions, disgraces, and doubts are bound to re-emerge and trouble us, as well as all kinds of puzzles, predicaments, pratfalls, pains, pressures, and even paradoxes, by which so many philosophers have been fascinated.³⁸² Life’s tribulations end only with death, if they ever do.³⁸³ Sometimes the whole experience can be most taxing, if not unbearable. It is the Jungian shadow of living and, if we are decent persons, doing good. A cruel irony, in point of fact.³⁸⁴ Human history keeps unfolding, as a result, in its interminable cycles and variations, with its sorry and somewhat farcical load of broken promises, unintentional blunders, absurd outcomes, outright failures, pious cruelties, conscionable horrors, and countless minor laughing matters. ³⁸⁵ These last items can, every so often, make some of us a little merrier, including many a black sheep in the collective menagerie.³⁸⁶ There might even be a snake or two, such as those who specialise in the dark arts of life-disabling cruelty and exploit humour for their own dark ends.³⁸⁷

381 De Unamuno (2018), 163, discussing the crying infants in Hades depicted in Virgil’s Æneid. 382 See H&C1. 383 The afterlife, if it exists, could be even worse. 384 See also H&C2. 385 As discussed in H&C2 in connection with the dark genius of Dostoyevsky, another cruel irony lies underneath the occasional respite that humour can provide us with. By temporarily reducing the weight of life’s numerous pains and sufferings, it also gives us an apparent reason to go on despite the desperate circumstances with which we may be presented, and it may therefore limit the will to truly change one’s own sorry state of affairs. As a result, more pains and sufferings will follow. Humour, in the end, is cruelty’s friend. 386 LVOA may help discern which behaviours to encourage and which ones to discourage (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 387 The ensuing sentence explains which kind of snakes we were thinking of: the Western icon of evil and cruelty.

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3.8.1 Back to Adam and Eve Leaving such disturbing reptiles aside, we might want to conclude by considering briefly how the Biblical book of Genesis describes God instructing Adam and Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Doing so would cause them death and a loss of innocence. The story has been interpreted in many ways by many clever people. One way is to look at it as relaying the essence of the human condition. That is to say, that having the only brain within the animal kingdom that is sophisticated enough to realise that it will eventually perish along with its shell, it is then knowledge that robs men and women of their innocence and fills them instead with existential dread. In short, gaining the awareness of life’s inherent cruelty. To become aware of yourself and consequently of your own mortality is the price that we humans must pay for our intelligence: homo sapiens ergo sufferens. ³⁸⁸ As a matter of fact, all such pain notwithstanding, most of us tend to keep the chin up (most of the time) and soldier on towards the inevitable conclusion. And it is not like the journey is smooth and filled with joy. On the contrary, plenty of Western philosophers, as amply shown in Chapter 3 of Part 1, have remarked on the litany of worries and woes awaiting each and every one of us. We all know that people and events will cause us terrible and unpredictable grief along the way.³⁸⁹ Besides, as Hallie had duly categorised it, cruelty can not only be called “human”, but also “natural”, i. e., caused by the very cosmos that we happen to inhabit. As stated earlier, there are at least two well-known significant and well-established strategies to endure these ominous conditions: spirituality and humour.³⁹⁰ The former normally requires a lot of effort and work, but even so, it is not likely to weather all the storms of life consistently. Jesus Christ himself lost his faith, albeit temporarily, while suffering on the cross. The latter, on its part, requires less effort, although its effects may be superficial and short-lived, according to many noted accounts (e. g., Freud’s, as addressed in Chapter 2 of Part 1). Despite its limitations, humour persists as a common method of dealing with life’s trials and inconsistencies, as amply shown in Chapter 2.³⁹¹ By reducing the

388 Sufferentia indicating patience, endurance, grimacing acceptance. Also, since there exist competing versions of “homo patiens” in philosophy, logotherapy, and medicine, we preferred avoiding this lexical alternative. 389 Again, “we all” is an expression of emphasis, not a scientific universalisation. 390 The complex relationship between spirituality and humour was addressed amply in our previous two volumes. 391 See also H&C1.

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significance of existence in general and of self and other people or events in particular, humour can still offer solace from, if not even acceptance of, our sorry fate. On the flip side, being able to make other people or oneself look insignificant is, potentially, a life-disabling weapon. Humour, in this way, can even align us with those cruel animal propensities whence, according to some authors, it is said to have originated in the first place.³⁹²

3.8.2 Back to Personal Responsibility When, how, and in which sort of humour each of us should engage is, in any case, too context-specific an issue for us, qua authors of the present volume, to be able to offer any universal guideline or easy recipe. Some controversial issues in our societies and lives are controversial for a good reason, i. e., they are inherently complex, uncertain, demanding, and/or aggravating. The sort of focal critical analysis that these issues engender necessitates countless tacit subsidiary details that vary enormously and crucially among the different living persons at play, who approach these issues under highly specific sets of circumstances, not least those that go to make each person the specific individual that s/he is.³⁹³ The subsidiary details that could be mentioned in this connection are legion.³⁹⁴ They comprise, e. g., religious beliefs, imaginative empathy, political affiliations, repressed longings, ontological assumptions, childhood experiences, teenage traumas, social milieus, and the received views that one is too afraid of challenging and/or even admitting to oneself.³⁹⁵ As we have already stated in several footnotes, the in-depth study of humour and cruelty has taught us a major lesson in epistemic humility. ³⁹⁶ Some readers may find this attitude to be unsatisfactory, unfocussed, or even a dismal token

392 See H&C1, H&C2, and Chapters 2 and 3 of Part 1. 393 As Jane (2022, 579; emphasis in the original) concluded: “individual practice is all I can do”. 394 See M. Polanyi’s from-to phenomenology in H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1. 395 Ditto. For instance, one of the present authors deems, among other things, actively cruel humour to be sinful because of his Catholic beliefs. Personally, i. e., as explained in Chapter 4 of Part 1, he thinks that faith cannot be genuinely inspired by reason alone. Hence, he claims as true the notion that such beliefs cannot be universalised and applied to people who do not share the spiritual insights and intimations of the heart making him hold on to his faith. One thing is the fiduciary embrace that M. Polanyi (1962c) taught us about (see, again, Chapter 4 of Part 1). Another thing is to tell other people what they should do. At best, we can only state this: any chosen option, if genuinely good, is bound to be comprehensively life-enabling (see Chapter 1 of Part 1). 396 This ground for epistemic humility was addressed extensively in H&C2.

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of intellectual cowardice, but we regard it as a courageous act of philosophical candour, especially at a point in history when nearly every new academic book is loudly pitched as “ground-breaking” or “revolutionary”.³⁹⁷ More modestly, as we mentioned in Chapter 1 of Part 1, we can refer our readers to LVOA, i. e., for the sake of retrieving clear axiological coordinates that could help them to cast some light on these controversial matters, although primarily in reasoned principle only. Even then, in fact, each reader must strive to apply these coordinates in actual practice as s/he responsibly interprets them for the rest of humankind, i. e., with universal intent and, again, under unique sets of circumstances.³⁹⁸ Not to mention how frequently, throughout our research, we ended up hitting the walls that each and every academic discipline entails, whether openly and frankly or not. For instance, we encountered: the meticulous methodological self-confinement of the natural sciences; the competent and confident spiritual superficiality of sociology; the over-intelligent unreality of orthodox economics; the unresolved hypotheticality of religion; the cacophonic theoretical plurality of psychology; and the profound self-pulverising rationality of philosophy.³⁹⁹ Fallibility, frustration, and failure persist qua tangible challenges, concrete eventualities, and plausible outcomes for each and every living person, no matter how hard one may try to get to the bottom of things, even in the seemingly lighthearted domain of humorous conduct. Serious scholarship, then, can only be worse. Moreover, as we discussed in H&C2 with regard to the Spanish Inquisition and Chapter 1 with regard to the Kouachi brothers, some of the most terrible and most devastating atrocities can be perpetrated in the name of goodness and in good conscience. Life’s cruelty, once more, signals its baffling presence by way of its pervasive and subtle irony in all kinds of human endeavours, errands, efforts, and errors.

397 We are being only moderately hyperbolic. And, ironically, frequent revolutionary occurrences would probably make us blind to their revolutionary character. 398 See H&C1 and Chapter 4 of Part 1. 399 Qua adherents of the last two disciplines in the list, we are especially attuned to their respective “walls”.

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Index Addison, Joseph 4, 155, 187, 263, 332 Adorno, Theodor 87, 106, 130, 158, 291 f., 309, 333 aggression, aggressiveness 105, 112, 187 f., 194, 211 f., 236, 239, 253, 257, 291 f., 303, 314, 318 alcohol 139, 183, 216, 218, 270 f., 289, 293 – 296, 329 f. Alighieri, Dante 87 al-Jibaly, Muhammad 104, 327 f. Amir, Lydia 23, 71, 176, 186 f., 193, 247, 260, 266, 269, 271 anaesthesia of the heart 1, 156, 206, 217, 238, 240, 253, 255, 269 anthropology, anthropological 65, 121, 167 f., 324 Aquinas, Thomas 20, 22 f., 173 Arendt, Hannah 30, 58 Aristotle 20, 81, 173, 187 Attardo, Salvatore 169 Augustine, Saint 17, 324 Bakhtin, Mikhail 268, 294, 339 Baroncelli, Flavio 91, 98, 103, 105, 118, 125, 129, 132, 135, 145, 153, 166 f., 169 f., 255, 288, 301, 332, 334, 337 f. Barry, John 114 Beattie, James 1, 4 f., 7, 11, 155, 218, 265, 333 Beccaria, Cesare 14, 38, 161 f. Benjamin, Walter 27, 131, 321 Berger, Peter L. 322 Bergson, Henri 39, 51, 54, 120, 156, 240, 253, 269, 272 Bierce, Ambrose 1, 224 Billig, Michael 54 bisociation 105 Bolshevik, Bolshevism 26, 28 – 33, 97, 131, 138, 152, 168, 333 Buddhism 14 f., 18, 30 Calvin, John 23, 105, 148 Canetti, Elias 49, 100, 113, 277

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111256108-007

capitalism, capitalist 28, 30 f., 34, 36 f., 40, 43, 46, 50 – 52, 61, 65, 67, 97, 121, 130 f., 204 carnival, carnivalesque 19, 54 f., 212, 268, 284, 293 f., 297 f., 318, 332 Carroll, Lewis 322 Cassirer, Ernst 115 Castoriadis, Cornelius 29, 36 f., 50, 52 f., 56, 61 – 64, 67 f., 121 f., 130, 133, 210, 287, 321, 340 censorship 29, 69 – 72, 86, 101, 110, 118, 134 f., 153, 255, 269, 286, 288, 291 f., 310, 317, 337 Chaplin, Charlie 56, 63 Chappelle, Dave 9, 116 f., 119, 336 Charlie Hebdo 143, 146 – 152, 154 – 160, 162 – 165, 170 f., 328 Chesterton, G.K. 22, 26, 28, 31, 45, 56, 60, 68, 108 f., 112, 115 f., 136 f., 146, 159 f., 168, 232 f., 238, 247, 259, 279, 322, 341 Chomsky, Noam 81, 111, 140 Christianity 16 – 20, 23, 26, 60, 147, 159 f., 165, 301 – 303, 306, 323 Christie, Nils 55 Cioran, Emil 9, 214, 274, 341 Collins, Randall 168, 272 colonialism, colonial 45, 166 communism, communist 27 f., 52, 60, 132, 135, 145 corporal punishment 6, 12 – 14, 26, 66, 160 Critchley, Simon 155, 333 daemon, demon, demonic 75, 281 dancing 15, 23, 25, 70 f., 84, 286, 294 – 296 darkness 279, 288, 290, 303, 324 De Beauvoir, Simone 93 Deleuze, Gilles 55, 316, 320 f., 340 Derrida, Jacques 61, 316, 340 De Unamuno, Miguel 342 Diderot, Denis 168 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor M. 62, 75, 107, 342 Duchenne, Guillaume 205 Dworkin, Andrea 78 f., 81, 97 – 99, 127, 306, 312 – 314

414

Index

Eagleton, Terry 328 economics 34 – 37, 41 f., 44, 50, 53, 58, 62, 64 – 67, 78, 81, 104, 123, 167, 345 Eco, Umberto 21, 28, 45, 50, 55, 133 Eichmann, Adolf 58 epistemology 36, 203 Erasmus, Desiderius 17 ethics, ethical 19, 67, 100, 327, 340 ethology 18, 159, 169, 297 feminism, feminist 77 f., 80, 82, 94, 131, 161, 304, 310, 313 – 315 football 244 f., 291, 297, 320, 330, 332 Foucault, Michel 56, 83, 99, 117, 120, 315 Francis, Saint 20 – 23, 40, 60, 142, 160, 171 Fredrickson, Barbara 174 – 176, 271 f. Freud, Sigmund 7, 83 – 85, 87, 102, 118, 123, 132, 161, 218, 223, 227, 236, 253, 260, 262, 267, 282, 288, 296 f., 303 f., 306, 310, 315 f., 325, 327, 331, 338, 340, 343 Galbraith, John Kenneth 34 – 41, 46 f., 49 f., 53 f., 65, 67, 86, 93, 105, 117, 120, 123, 127, 134, 137, 139 – 141, 269, 289 gender 13, 78, 86, 88, 94, 97, 99, 101, 112, 130, 137, 161, 188, 209 f., 213, 226, 244, 257, 281, 294, 305 f., 311, 317 genocide 1, 17, 139, 143, 259, 270 Gestalt 170 Guattari, Félix 316 Hallie, Philip 32, 59, 61 f., 65 f., 94, 107, 158, 164, 192, 220, 245, 270, 279, 313, 316, 318, 341, 343 Harlow, Harry 331 Hartley, David 4, 10, 94, 97, 155, 173, 180, 187, 218, 263, 304, 319, 332 Harvey, Jean 7 – 9, 127, 155, 164, 188, 192, 280, 333 Hazlitt, William 5 – 7, 10, 158, 306, 331, 333 hermeneutics, hermeneutical 16, 88, 103, 165 Hillman, James 1, 53, 84 – 88, 100 – 102, 104, 106 f., 110, 112 f., 117, 120, 122 f., 150, 267, 281 f., 287 f., 296, 303 f., 306 – 313, 318, 325, 330, 337, 341 Hitler, Adolf 63, 87, 112, 164, 262 Hobbes, Thomas 111, 168, 220

Hood, Edwin 106 Horkheimer, Max 85, 130, 301 f., 333 hormones 179 f. Hugo, Victor 333 humanism, humanist 301 Hume, David 159, 166, 169, 265 Hutcheson, Francis 180, 187, 263 incongruity theory 243 irony, ironic 6, 36, 39, 41 f., 50, 52, 57, 64 f., 67, 77, 79 f., 85, 91, 101, 105 f., 108, 111 f., 114 f., 125, 131, 136, 141, 145 f., 153 f., 157, 166, 169, 222, 249, 257, 260, 273, 279, 307 f., 326, 330, 337 f., 341 f., 345 Jesus Christ 16, 22, 343 Jews 141, 147, 166, 264 f. journalism 116, 150, 308 Jung, Carl Gustav 83 f., 86, 100, 125, 141, 183, 223, 235, 266 f., 273, 279 f., 282 f., 286 – 288, 292, 295 f., 298 – 304, 310, 315, 320 f., 323, 325, 330, 340 jurisprudence 58, 162, 313 Kant, Immanuel 100, 118 f., 143, 172, 326 f. Kekes, John 92, 94, 130, 341 Khomeini, Imam 11, 70, 72, 104, 143, 166, 306 Kierkegaard, Søren A. 272, 276, 301, 324 Kipnis, Laura 3, 77 – 79, 83, 95, 113, 122, 129 – 134, 137, 268, 289, 293, 296, 335, 338 Kolnai, Aurel 259 Kozintsev, Alexander 107 f., 110, 127, 271 Krichtafovitch, Igor 202 Leacock, Stephen 60, 64, 97, 155, 157, 164, 168, 223, 291 f., 318, 341 Lecky, William 104, 162 f., 275, 341 Lenin, Vladimir 27, 29, 52, 152 Leopardi, Giacomo 9, 42, 147, 214, 229, 236, 272, 274, 341 libido, libidinal 83 f., 92, 102, 153, 295 – 297, 299, 307 Locke, John 34, 111, 149 Lorenz, Konrad 169, 297 Luther, Martin 22 f.

Index

Machiavelli, Niccolò 159, 168 MacKinnon, Catharine 76 – 79, 81, 87, 97, 127, 312 Maritain, Jacques 32, 143, 157, 275, 321, 324 Martin, Rod 177 – 182, 185 f., 189 f., 194, 202, 209, 250 Marx, Karl 29 f., 33 f., 41, 49, 57, 65, 133, 145, 250, 333 masochism, masochistic 55, 66, 87, 286, 296, 313 – 315, 320, 328 McElroy, Wendy 79 – 81, 97, 106, 123, 304, 311 f. McMurtry, John 28, 43, 46, 49 f., 52 f., 59, 63, 115, 133, 135, 140 f., 159, 168, 197, 312, 316 Merleau-Ponty, Marcel 29 Mill, John Stuart 9, 44 – 46, 49, 57 f., 64, 75 f., 101, 111 f., 120 – 122, 132, 152, 268, 327 Mini, Piero 36, 46, 49 f. Montaigne, Michel de 3, 27, 76, 111, 169, 260 More, Thomas 16 f., 22, 34 f120 Morreall, John 10, 15 – 18, 20 – 23, 25, 28, 147, 172, 186, 213 f., 260, 269 f. mutilation 156 myth, mythic, mythology, mythological 80, 93, 128, 292, 307, 341 neurotic, neurosis 9, 11, 110, 308, 330 Nietzsche, Friedrich 8, 22 f., 84, 91, 125, 159, 184, 196, 268 f., 272, 307, 310, 321, 325, 341 Nonsense, nonsensical 218, 318 Ogien, Ruwen 90, 113, 290 Ortega y Gasset, José 276 Orwell, George 26, 88, 122, 152, 333 f. Pareto, Vilfredo 32, 36, 62, 67, 81, 83, 102, 124 f., 131, 140 f., 228, 243, 301, 309 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 2, 132 f., 137 penal 71, 104, 161 – 164, 279, 315, 325 phenomenology 203, 344 Phillips, Anita 87 f., 296, 311, 313 – 317, 320, 322, 325, 328, 340 physiology, physiological 173 Pirandello, Luigi 2 f., 11, 113, 155, 178, 268, 302 Plato 128, 187 poetry 70, 98, 339

415

Polanyi, Michael 36, 43, 78, 80 – 82, 88, 100, 102 f., 127 – 129, 159, 169, 199, 203, 266, 268, 319, 323, 344 political economy 42, 45, 58, 62, 64 politics, political 34, 41, 44, 69 f., 80, 87, 98, 135, 138, 140, 147, 214, 283 polysemy, polysemic 87 f., 173, 266 Popper, Karl 65, 132, 291 private property 27, 40, 42, 53, 60 Protestant 10, 21 – 26, 80, 147, 166, 333 psychiatry 79, 282, 302, 314 f. psychoanalysis, psychoanalytical 32, 118, 236, 281 psychology, psychological 45, 81, 106, 134, 174, 176, 183, 188 – 190, 194, 199, 205, 267, 273, 281 – 283, 287, 290 – 292, 298 f., 302, 306, 309, 313 f., 323 f., 330, 337, 345 punishment 11, 13 f., 16, 18, 21, 23, 60, 64, 70, 104, 162, 165 f., 328 Puritanism, Puritans 7, 23, 25, 76 f., 79, 88, 101, 130, 305 Rand, Ayn 158, 184 Raskin, Victor 169 relief theory 243, 246 Renaissance 4, 19, 22, 25, 49, 67, 72, 286, 292 rhetoric, rhetorical 53, 74, 84, 94, 103, 249, 251 f., 254 Rorty, Richard 37, 42, 90 f., 100, 112, 127 Rosset, Clément 196, 247, 269, 275, 341 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 62, 133, 168 Russell, Bertrand 28 – 33, 36, 52, 72, 100 f., 131 f., 170, 299 Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von 314 Sade, Marquis de 2, 27, 91, 93, 123, 159, 161, 169, 256, 269, 298, 315, 325, 334, 337 – 339 sadism, sadistic 12, 25, 253, 255, 286, 313 f., 318, 328, 339 Santayana, George 91 Satan, satanic, satanism 1, 30 satire, satirical 1, 3, 6, 9, 101, 108, 151 – 154, 157 f., 178, 260, 283, 331, 338 scepticism, sceptical 100, 111, 124, 169, 283 Schadenfreude 295 Schopenhauer, Arthur 3, 6, 9 – 11, 42, 102, 155, 178, 214, 321, 330

416

Index

self-censorship 34, 88, 118 – 120 Seneca, Lucius A. 20 Shaftesbury, Earl of 4, 7, 34, 80, 101, 155, 158, 190, 194, 211, 223, 260, 332, 334 Shakespeare, William 90 f. Shaw, George Bernard 5, 12, 172 Shestov, Leo 24 Shklar, Judith 341 Simpson, James A., 105, 118, 153, 244 Smart, R. Ninian 28, 31, 34, 146, 279 Smith, Adam 6, 35, 38, 42 f., 45, 48, 59, 62, 64 f., 67, 73, 95, 142, 159, 166, 300 socialism, socialist 27, 29 f., 34, 41 sociology, sociological 34, 36, 81, 149, 345 Socrates 140, 169, 260 Sontag, Susan 77, 83 f., 101, 242, 288, 331, 340 Spencer, Herbert 223 Steele, Richard 4, 147, 263 subjectivity, subjective 92, 99, 130, 339 subsidiary details 169, 195, 244, 268, 303, 344 superiority theory 10, 17, 236 Swabey, Marie Collins 5 Swift, Jonathan 277

tacit knowing, tacit knowledge 278 terrorism 27, 44, 148 f., 162, 166 theatre 3, 5, 9, 23, 28, 70, 139, 142, 144, 292, 331 theology, theological 10, 17 The Spectator 4, 6, 49 tickling 15, 49 Tolstoy, Lev N. 56, 58 torture 2, 26, 49, 104, 157, 162, 168 trauma 71, 217, 220, 232, 235, 242, 258 f., 282, 344 true humour 2 f., 11, 178 Veblen, Thorstein 35, 37 f., 67, 130, 137, 141, 169, 291 Vico, Giambattista 66, 163, 277 videogame 93, 126, 286, 289 – 292, 314, 316 f., 322, 329 Voltaire 39, 68 f., 111 f., 141, 166, 172, 226 Willis, Ellen 77 – 79, 85, 87, 92, 95, 97 – 99, 109, 125, 127, 296, 304, 306, 309, 311 f., 325 witch 23, 112 f., 166, 281, 307 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2, 202, 341