Laughter and Liberation by Harvey Mindess

Author:Harvey Mindess [Mindess, Harvey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351509640
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

“And when we land, I’ll knock your ##**!! block off!”

*Max Eastman, The Enjoyment of Laughter, Simon and Schuster, 1936.

Freedom from Egotism

Our sense of humor, we have seen, spans the most contradictory qualities we possess. It extends from nonsense to wisdom, from refinement to vulgarity, from benevolence to cynicism. Its essential dimension, however, ranges from the most degrading experience we are capable of inflicting on each other to the most beatific attitude we are capable of attaining in ourselves. It ranges from humiliation to humility.

Few human experiences are more devastating than being ridiculed. To be the butt of contemptuous wit is always a painful blow. It is designed to make us feel less than worthless, for derisive laughter suggests that we are not just deficient in some basic virtue but that our deficiency is not even worth taking seriously.

If we imagine ourselves the recipient of Dorothy Parker’s observation on another woman writer—” In her latest novel, she reverts to tripe” —or Alan King’s description of his doctor—“He specializes in eye, ear, nose, throat, and wallet” —we may approximate the feeling of being skillfully mocked. If we recall times when we made fools of ourselves in front of people we were hoping to impress, we may remember the sour taste of humiliation. In either case, we must see that coming off cheap or stupid or selfish when we are trying to look our best is guaranteed to lay us low.

It may seem like belaboring the obvious to ask why this is so, but scrutiny of well-known facts sometimes results in deepened insight. The data before us suggest that being treated as trivial or inconsequential is far more damaging to our self-esteem than any experience we can name. It appears, therefore, that above all else we need to matter: to be taken seriously for better or worse.

Our egos require it. Our pride, our conceit requires that other people look on us as important, that they treat us with respect. Otherwise, we are afraid we amount to nothing. But need it be so? Is it really necessary to be taken seriously to feel worthwhile? Is it not possible to accept oneself and one’s life in the absence of appreciation by others?

Some people appear to have done it. They may be few and far between, but here and there a human being seems to have dispensed with pride, relinquished his ego, and attained that state of being we call humility. The attainment is so elusive, however, that it is difficult to find living persons whose characters may be taken as cases in point.

Let us turn, therefore, to literature. Dostoevsky’s Alyosha Karamazov, Cervantes’ Don Quixote: each embodied, in his way, a distinct strain of humility. In our own time, two famous literary figures exemplify two very different ways in which this attitude can be attained. Camus’ Meursault, the hero of The Stranger, may be taken as an illustration of the humility of alienation; Salinger’s Seymour Glass, who appears or is mentioned in several stories,* may be seen as an example of the humility of mystical communion.

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