Epictetus, The Handbook 47: Right Respect

. . . Avoid raising men's laughter; for it is a habit that easily slips into vulgarity, and it may well suffice to lessen your neighbor’s respect. . . .

—Epictetus, The Handbook, Chapter 33 (tr Matheson)

Laughter is such a wonderful and frustrating thing, because as soon as I try to define what causes the joy, I have lost the very source of it. I’m reminded of Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations, when he asked what would happen to a game if you removed all the rules. Would it still be a game?

I sometimes laugh because I find something funny, but once I explain the joke it is hardly funny at all. Now I am stuck with trying to explain a spontaneous experience in a clinical manner. The Ancient and Medieval Four Humors help us to understand the root of all this, because we find reality amusing when it is exaggerated and grossly distorted, much like extreme physical features in a good political cartoon.

I will often laugh, however, not because something is humorous, but because I am nervous, because I am uncertain about what to do, because I have absolutely no clue what is happening, or because everyone else is doing it.

More importantly, I will sometimes laugh as a form of ridicule, which is a veiled expression of my own arrogance and power.

A legendary professor at my college was known for calling out young whippersnappers who were chuckling and guffawing behind their hands during his class.

He would ask them a simple question: “Are you laughing with me, or laughing at me?”

The inevitable answer, that of the bully who is really a coward, was “we’re laughing with you, Professor.”

“Funny, but I’m not laughing.”

I was once sitting on a park bench by my old elementary school, enjoying that last cigarette from a pack of Rothmans, and a car raced erratically into the parking lot.

A fellow rushed out of the car and tried the school door. I have no idea what he was thinking, but I suspected he was having a bathroom emergency, and it had not occurred to him that it was a Saturday evening. If he’d been a good Irishman, he’d have found a well-placed tree or bush.

As I looked back at the car, there was the lost love of my life sitting in the passenger seat, the one who had now refused to speak to me for four years. Instead of ignoring me, this time her finger was pointed straight at me, and she was laughing hysterically. I had seen that same laugh many times before, and it wasn’t pleasant.

I simply got up and walked away, uncertain about what else I could possibly do. The car sped off again. As I walked, I still saw that finger pointed at me, along with that broad dismissive grin.

The image of being mocked by someone I had once thought of as my best friend haunts me to this day.

Laughing is not always about sharing something funny, or enjoying a good time. Too often, it is about trying to hurt the very same people we ought to love.

Whether it is at the honky-tonk or at a fancy dinner, we are all tempted to use humor as an excuse to be important, and to make others feel less important. I often find that the most popular people are the ones that make everyone laugh, not because they are sharing something humorous, but because they are putting someone else down.

No man can show respect through the ridicule of others, and no man should expect respect from others through his insults.