My response to a broken heart

My boyfriend broke up with my over email. Sad, pathetic, can’t believe at my age I have to still deal with this. But yet, after the initial sadness, almost in mere seconds, this classic Simpsons moment popped into my head. I sometimes wonder if humor really is a evolved coping mechanism, something that evolved to soothe over the horrors of other people, sex, and death. And a way to cope with undeniable cruel incongruity, the kind that Seneca tells us to make peace with (no wonder the Stoics have some sort of humor to them). Incongruity between the world of our dreams and hopes and the world as it appears to be needs to be reconciled at all costs. Quick: laugh before you jump out the nearest window! Someone you cared for more than yourself threw you aside like a Whopper wrapper?

Incongruity: love is valuable, precious, a gift

                         garbage: welp, the opposite.

Humor: being dumped like garbage on a whim.

Yet, this is sad, but also the formula for humorous incongruity?

Question: why are some incongruities funny and others are heart-breaking, and even more confusing, why are they sometimes both? Why do we laugh through/with the tears? I think I should seek some Hurley and Dennett for this question. To be continued after I get myself out of my sad person burrito. MST3K might be good help too.

 

Stoic Stand Up

http://dailynous.com/2016/09/13/teach-philosophy-comedy-clubs-guest-post-michael-connell/

The Stoic Stand Up

What is funny about nihilistic incongruity?

The Existential Crisis Meal

The Incongruity theory of humor is one of the more prevalent theories of humor argued for today, as it can do a lot of explanatory work in showing us why something arouses amusement.  We laugh when we are surprised when an action or item is out of place, is not in line with a perceived norm. It is not that we are amused because we feel superior to the object or person, but that we are in a state of delighted surprise. Researcher Peter McGraw says we laugh at incongruities that are not only surprising, but ones that are benign violations. An angry bear busting to a crowded lecture hall is incongruous with the norm, but hardly funny, as many will be mauled and injured. It is not benign, though it is a violation of the norm. But a streaker dashing at full speed into a crowded academic setting and then exiting is funny, because we know a streaker to typically not be threatening, but yet is still a violation of the norm. And not an extreme violation either. A streaker who does not dash but lingers for all to see in great detail? Now that would be too great a violation and cause the humor to drain (and the police to be called immediately).

 

But isn’t the incongruity of the world not being as it should, or life having no meaning, hardly benign and perhaps a violation that makes us wish there were some authority we could call help? Nihilistic humor might be a different kind of incongruity all together. Marmysz uses the term “nihilistic incongruity” to describe the way we are separated from all that” we most highly value”, the circumstances implied by the premises of nihilism.”10 And the true nihilist has a nostalgia, he claims, to this way of thinking. This could be what Gandhi means when he says Truth is the “atheism of the atheists”; that we are all still hungering from something real, true, and absolute. Even in our assertion of nihilism, we assert the value of absolute reality and truth, though we are unable to reach it. This is the foundation of the incongruity: our desire to have absolute knowledge of things of utmost importance, but the inability to achieve such knowledge. It is the position of Sisyphus. He must roll the boulder, but there will never be any objective meaning to the action.

How can such nihilistic incongruity be funny? Wouldn’t we just gnash our death and curse the demon that spoke such a terrible condition to us? But Nietzsche tells us to embrace what the demon tells us in an affirmative way. But how do we come to embrace or find humor in the state of nihilistic incongruity? This is where the difficulty truly begins for our laughter. Marymsz suggests that this nihilistic incongruity can cultivate a more full state of being, to aid to our pursuit of a full life. If we are to live free of nihilistic despair, we have to keep alive this longing for the absolute, he argues. We must keep the relationship with the idea of the absolute of something desired from a distance. But isn’t an unfulfilled desire far from funny? And isn’t the frustration of reason far from pleasurable, as anyone who has lectured freshman logic students is well aware of?

Marymsz states that “some sort of nonthreatening incongruity is involved in humor.” He argues that the thwarting of desire and reason can be experienced as pleasurable. But the premises of nihilism hardly creates a benign violation that is nonthreatening. Lack of objective knowledge and meaning does seem more malignant than benign. He goes on to defend the application of the incongruity theory to dark humor by pointing out humor’s ability to act as a defense, using Freud to strengthen his case. He states that humor helps us create a distance from the pain, much like when we face bodily pain and we cope by laughing and joking about it.  He says, “[w]hen we humorously reflect upon experiences that are otherwise painful, we reorient ourselves towards those experiences in such a manner that we gain a feeling of control and mastery over them. In choosing to view unpleasant situations through a humorous lens we demonstrate our own interpretational prowess, but also a rebelliousness against pain and misery.” One must imagine Sisyphus happy, and one must imagine Sisyphus laughing.

But do we choose a humorous attitude? How do we know when to laugh at pain and alienation from truth? Sure, humor can be a great palliative that makes the anguish go down and can give a way to cope with our human condition, but the main question still has not been answered. We know why we need humor, but we do not know how the incongruity comes to be funny is some cases but not in others. This has been the largest question asked of the incongruity theory of humor. Why are some incongruities funny and others not? McGraw’s Benign Violation theory addresses this concern well in some cases of humor, but fails to account for the nihilistic incongruity that we laugh at. Nihilism is not benign. Death and suicide is always a threat. So how can we laugh at this “incongruity” of a sweet colloquial statement and a nihilistic response in the comic? Of course there is incongruity, but not necessarily of the benign category. Perhaps we can swing between a world view where we have need for objective truth and the denial is not trivial but tragic, and a world where this tragic is now seemingly trivial and funny. But what causes this shift between the tragic and the hilarious?  

I will comment on this next time.

Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/485825878524936295/

What is nihilism? The quest for understanding dark humor begins here

Before discussing how humor can make the utmost horrible hilarious, we must define the nihilism upon which this humor is based. What is the kind of nihilism that one can find funny? John Marmysz in his wonderful book, Laughing at Nothing, writes that, typically, nihilists make three claims about the human condition. First, the nihilist will make a claim concerning the alienation in which we feel disconnected from other people and from the true being of the world. Second, the nihilist will make a normative claim that “this circumstance is other than it is ought to be.”[1] This means that we imagine that our situation could be different and better, that it could have been the case that we are capable of greater knowledge and understanding of the world. The last claim the nihilist will make is that there is, of course, no way out of this condition. There is nothing humans can do to see into the noumenal world, to find sure proof of God, to completely understand death and ultimate reality. Marmysz divides the nihilist into two types as well. A radical nihilist is a nihilist who still sees value in the absurd world, much like Sisyphus sees value in his absurd toiling. The radical nihilist refuses to accept whole-heartedly what their condition as it is, and rebels and imagines and fights for the world as they think is should be. Marmysz writes, “[w]hat distinguishes this post-nihilist” meaning the complete nihilist here, “from authentic nihilists,” meaning radical, “is a refusal to accept this world as being, in fact, worse than it should be. This world, rather, is the standard against which to measure all else.”[2] Those who are complete nihilists are those who have completely given up the idea of the world as it should be, have given up search for any positive alternative. He says this leads to a nihilist no longer really being a nihilist, but beyond it. Nihilism can only truly be nihilism when the higher, unattainable values, are still in place (though beyond human reach).

Thus, in this discussion of humor and nihilism, we must stick with the true nihilists, the radical nihilists. They are the ones that can still claim to be what they are, but also, can claim to have something left to joke about. If you remove the Ideal world and the sense of “something ought to be a certain way”, you remove the ability to arouse amusement completely. Most popular theories of humor rely on having an Ideal and something failing to live up to that Ideal as their foundation. The Superiority Theory of humor requires a subject or an object that does not live up to the ideal for us to be amused. We need a buffoon, as Aristotle states, that is not living to some Ideal mean, or lacking in wisdom. We need someone we judge lower than ourselves, lower than our expectations, says Hobbes. When Frank Burns on M.A.S.H. is pranked repeatedly by Hawkeye, Trapper, and Honeycutt, we laugh at Frank because he does not meet our ideal of what a wise military man (or human being) should be. We laugh at his ignorance, and in this sense of superiority (that we have knowledge of what a good military man should be), we laugh at his foibles and the pranks against him. Besides, he should know better.

When it comes to nihilist humor though, the joke of ignorance is on all of us. We all suffer the human condition the nihilist speaks of. Reality, God, meaning, absolute truth? That is something we all are ignorant of, so in no way can we laugh at one person failing to see ultimate reality or failing to have a water-tight sense of meaningfulness. No one can be placed in a lower position to laugh at, so the Superiority theory cannot account for our mirth in the face of nihilism. We are all the butt of its joke; we are all buffoons to be laughed at, such as in this comic pictured here, in which an alien outsider sees our attempts at meaning and understanding as sheer foolishness and ignorance, worthy of comic mockery.[3]

A better theory of humor can help us make sense of nihilist humor, and that is the incongruity theory of humor. Because true, radical nihilism itself is rooted in an incongruity (the world is not congruous with how we think it should be), this theory of humor might be key to explaining why many of us are amused by dark humor. I will comment on this next time.

 

[1] Marmysz, John. Laughing at Nothing. 71.

[2] 76-77

[3] http://smbc-comics.com/ visited August 11^th 2016

Why? Dear God, WHY?!

Image: http://9gag.com/gag/aRVvevy/you-doing-ok

This blog will be a blend of coming to terms with our sick sense of humor (well, most of our senses of humor)through philosophy, narrative, media, and science. As I learn more and dig deeper into the murky waters of the dead baby jokes, cancer boy, and Hitler.

If anyone has told you “you shouldn’t laugh at that,” or said “dude, man, that’s dark” , this blog will be for you. I want to laugh at death, hopelessness, and nihilism. Come, laugh with me.

I lecture in philosophy and humanities in Houston.

My dog hates me, but she’s old, so don’t worry about it.

___________________________

“There’s no god so why not worship our smokehouse brisket? You’ll literally get the same results.” Nihilist Arby’s (@nihilist_arbys)

Did you laugh at this statement pulled from the (in)famous Nihilist Arby’s Twitter feed? I know I sure did. I laugh at nearly every Nihilist Arby’s Twitter post, and so do many of my friends. The death or absence of God, from the futility of action, to the meaninglessness of life, Nihilist Arby’s creates jokes about all the existential horrors that many thoughtful individuals are plagued with. But what could possibly be funny about the futility of life? Why did I just laugh when Nihilist Arby’s announced that soon we would return to the void from whence we all came, my entire being annihilated and purposeless (but enjoy Arby’s, because why not?)? In this paper, I will attempt to explain how it is many of us come to laugh at comedies like Daria, Nihilist Arby’s and Nihilist Memes, Rick and Morty, Rodney Dangerfield, Louie CK, and many others, that routinely point to the misery, the conceptual and social isolation of existence. Serious philosophers such as Sartre and Camus spoke on these topics as well, but Sartre wished that we do not laugh at our human condition, but meditate and think upon it. He didn’t forbid laughter on the subject, but it was not his primary aim in writing works like Nausea (which can hardly be called humorous). The aim of nihilistic comedians and comedic works is to provoke an amused response, be it outright laughter or quiet mirth. While Kierkegaard does occasionally beckon us to laugh at our absurd condition, it is not his primary goal. He is not found in the comedy section of the bookstore. We are supposed to laugh, though, when the cartoon character Daria states, “Life sucks no matter where you are, so don’t be fooled by location changes.” So why do we laugh? And perhaps more importantly, why do we have amusement at nihilism/nihilistic statements at some times and pain and angst at other times? Why is a pointless death funny at one time, and depressing at another? In this blog (for now), I will explore nihilism and incongruity in attempt to explain nihilistic humor’s power as the spoonful of sugar that makes the anguish go down.