Live? Laugh? Love?

It’s been a while, but I’ve had some more thoughts that might be worth writing down. There are of course greater things going on in the world that I could be discussing right now, but I lack the words or the perspective to do them justice. My current thoughts are in relation to the old topic of free speech, which I’ve discussed multiple times before, but more specifically about laughter, humour, offense and happiness.

The first thing to say, of course, is that humour is incredibly subjective; more so perhaps than any other area of expression. What one person finds funny, another finds utterly boring, or perhaps even offensive. Just within one individual, what they might find amusing in one mood is distinctly unfunny in another.

That caveat aside, I think there are some things worth saying. This is all brought about by the news stories in the last couple of weeks about former actor and failed politician Laurence Fox. While being interviewed on GB News, he made some extremely misogynistic remarks about a female journalist, and was roundly criticised from all sides.

He has, perhaps predictably, dug his feet in, complaining about his treatment and the imfringement of his free speech, and blamed the too-easily-offended and the world at large. One of the things he said though, struck me as revealing.

"I realise that the new woke world is low and laughter and high on offence..."

What this tells me is that Mr. Fox has failed to understand something; he has failed to understand that it is possible to laugh without laughing at someone. It is possible to tell a joke that doesn't have someone else as the butt of it. It is in fact possible to be happy without knowing that someone else is miserable, and possible to experience joy without making someone else sad.

Mr. Fox's words brought to mind a couple of lines from a poem I read years ago (and which a bit of Googling has informed me was written by Brian Jacques of ‘Redwall’ fame):

Bullies never smile, they sneer.

Bullies never laugh. They jeer.

In the case of Fox and the many people like him, they seem very apt. However, if anyone ever dares tell them that they are bullies they (someone ironically) become very offended and bewail modern peoples' lack of good humour.

There is this persistent idea that there is something humourless, po-faced and deeply un-fun about modern discourse. Individuals like Fox and certain tabloid newspapers complain of ‘politically correct kill-joys’ or ‘woke snowflakes’, the ‘professionally offended’ who can’t bear to hear anyone say anything mean about anyone without clutching their pearls and 'cancelling' people left and right (but mostly right).

I have said before that I believe nobody has the right not to be offended, but that everybody has the responsibility not to offend, or at least not without very good cause. Offense can be an important tool for shocking us out of our apathy, but that’s very different to being the butt of a mocking joke. Laughter is a blessing, but there is such a thing as cruel laughter, and cruelty is always to be opposed.

Sometimes one hears people complain that ‘you can’t joke about anything anymore’. This is patently untrue, but the idea that people are more humourless or more easily offended is, I think, incorrect.

Something has indeed changed, but it’s not that people are less inclined to laughter and more inclined to offense. People have always been offended, they’ve always been hurt, they’ve always felt insulted and belittled. What has changed is that they now have the confidence to say so. We have this idea that people ought to be kind to each other, and when they’re not, we express our disapproval through our words and our wallets.

It is, of course, possible to laugh at someone in a way that isn’t mean-spirited. One can (and should) laugh at oneself, and you can invite others to laugh with you. But that’s rather the point. You can join in the laughter when someone laughs at themselves, and do it in a way that is good-natured and kind. We can find humour in each other’s flaws and foibles without mocking or belittling them or the person themselves.

Humour is subjective, but if you can’t laugh without laughing at someone else, if your happiness is predicated on making others miserable to make yourself feel good, then you’re a poor excuse for a human being. I can only hope that one day the jeering is entirely drowned out by the warm laughter of those who take delight and joy in each other’s differences, not use them as an excuse for cruelty and mockery. The quality of the laughter will be better, and because we are all laughing together, there will be so much more of it to enjoy.