TSL Chapter 11 -- The Causes of Human Laughter

Overview

The Patient is laughing it up with his new skeptical, blasphemous friends cuing Uncle Screwtape to tackle the causes and utility of human laughter, itself. He finds a four-part taxonomy from the least useful (in damning people) to the most-useful:

1. Joy
2. Fun
3. the Joke Proper
4. Flippancy

Joy is pure love of life (maybe with an actual joke or funny saying as a pretext for laughter). It's useless for the damning.

Fun is a slightly less pure form of Joy -- it arises from the "playfulness" instinct and can be used to divert humans from their responsibilities, but is otherwise not very demonic: it tends to promote virtues rather than vices.

The Joke Proper can be somewhat useful: people can tell dirty jokes (the term Screwtape uses is "indecent or bawdy" proving that while devils may enjoy tempting humans to be vulgar they decline to be so, themselves). More-so, it can be used to cover for bad behavior -- cruelty, cowardice, or other vices. A clever human will pass off such actions as "a joke" and find them both guiltless and shameless (i.e. socially acceptable).

But the big money's in Flippancy, which I would call "Irony" is almost a worldview in itself and aims skepticism and contempt at virtue itself. In finding virtue and authenticity funny, Flippancy becomes an armor against God.

Literature -- The realism, dignity and austerity of Hell

Hell takes itself seriously and has a good deal of pride in its appearance (maybe explaining why Screwtape is such a prude). We've seen this before in asides where Screwtape complains about God's love of humans and his creation of them as half-spirit / half-animal abominations he calls "amphibians." God has no Pride, does not hold himself above the mortal realm (or at least not with the contempt the Devils feel for it), and in doing so offends the demonic hosts.

I like this. It feels very much right -- and works with a worldview that could be aware of God while setting themselves against Him.

Theology / My Reaction

Save the Hipsters?

I don't have any idea what the Bible says about flippancy / irony. I suspect that it wasn't a huge deal back then and might not have rated highly in terms of warning people. That said, I believe it's corrosive and I think the description of it as "armor" is dead-on.

In my experience, people use flippancy defensively -- to distance themselves from others and proactively shield themselves from criticism (I'm not uncool -- I'm making fun of people who think this is cool).

According to the media, this is a problem of epidemic proportions in the population known as "hipsters." I doubt this is the truth, because it's the sort of thing the media is awfully bad at getting right, but I can believe that irony and flippancy and finding virtue and authenticity laughable is bad for one's soul.

So save the hipsters, I guess?

I was just joking!

I'm also down with CSL / Screwtape on this one. You're too sensitive / I was just joking / etc. excuses nothing. If I do something that's hurting someone, even if I sincerely didn't mean to, I need to cut it out and I should consider an apology: if, upon reflection, I should have known better, they're owed one.

If I keep doing it, I'm being an ass.

This goes for things covered as jokes, but also goes for non-joke politically-incorrect terminology. And yes, that may mean that I'm held hostage in my right to tell the kinds of jokes I find funny in mixed company or whatever, but if I'm more worried about my rights to tell The One About the Pizza, than how the people around me feel then I'm back to being an ass.

It's my right to be an ass -- I have freedom of the speech and everything -- but if I'm concerned about my Immortal Soul, I probably shouldn't be screaming about my entitlements.