In times of crisis, we need solace. Dark humour offers that. But it also helps us to criticise the sources of crisis and to find community with others who share our perspective.
Dark humour is about things that violate and threaten our beliefs about what a good and decent life is like, ideally free from pain and suffering, without human fragility, boundaries and evil.
Indeed, a sense of humour can be a moral virtue, argues Associate Professor of Philosophy Mark Alfano - up there with courage, patience, and self-control.
In his paper, Having a Sense of Humour as a Virtue, published in the Journal of Value Inquiry, Alfano explains: “A sense of humour is a virtue because it answers to universal human needs.”
A sense of humour helps people cope with hardship, he says.
“It helps them connect socially to others, bonding selectively with those who share their values. It has the power to enhance or inhibit the emotions of amusement, contempt, trust, and hope when they are deficient or excessive.”
Many philosophers ignore humour as a moral virtue, says Associate Professor Alfano, because it doesn’t seem to hold as much weight as do morals such as courage or honesty. Yet humour is a trait we particularly value in others.
What humour says about us
Through laughter we learn about ourselves and other people, he says.
“Laughing (or not laughing) at a piece of humour tells you what you find sacred and profane. Likewise, when you find another person laughing (or not laughing) at humour, that tells you what they find sacred and profane.”
Coping strategy: Associate Professor Mark Alfano, pictured, says laughter helps us cope with hardship. Image: Michael Amendolia
To the extent that we want to connect with other people who share our values, he says, laughter is a great tool for sussing out potential partners. Having a matching sense of humour is a really good indicator of shared values and perspective.
“But having a sense of humour also enables us to see things from another’s point of view. We don’t want to hang out with clones of ourselves. Instead, we want to be with those who have their own unique perspective but who can also adopt ours, temporarily and empathetically.”
To be without a sense of humour is to lack a capacity for perspective-taking and for taking oneself less seriously. At the extremes, humourlessness borders on idiocy, arrogance, or blinkered narrowmindedness.
Memes for our times
Where would we have been without the black humour of social media in recent years? Without Sarah Cooper on TikTok and Twitter, lip-synching to the banalities of Donald Trump; the myriad memes that made the coronavirus pandemic more bearable; the “praise” for ScoMo’s work ethic in taking on six jobs when, as PM, he secretly held five ministerial positions?
Having a sense of humour enables us to see things from another’s point of view.
“Social media prioritises short-form humour in memes and similar content in contrast to the longer-form humour of stand-up comedians like Eddie Izzard and Hannah Gadsby. Social media forces the humourist to get to the point quickly,” says Associate Professor Alfano.
Not all joke memes are shameless; some even aim to induce shame. Consider a recent riposte from The Onion (an American satirical news source). In response to school shootings and the move by the US Congress to restrict access to TikTok, The Onion quoted a fake influencer saying: “Hopefully someone uses TikTok to kill a bunch of schoolchildren so it becomes one of those things we’re not allowed to legislate.”
Says Alfano: “This is about as dark as it gets, but the point is to cast shame on the American government for its ongoing neglect of the problem of gun violence.”
Being “inappropriate” isn’t just a 21st century thing, he says.
“In Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 BC) the women go on a sex strike until the men stop warmongering. It’s a laugh riot. Humour has always crossed boundaries, and always will.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a professional comedian before he was the President of Ukraine, unapologetically uses irony and sarcasm to bolster the spirits of his compatriots and to generate international support for the Ukrainian people and simultaneous condemnation of Russian aggression.
A sense of humour, he has said, is a powerful weapon that helps to reveal deep truths in an accessible way.
The wise and the woke
There’s almost always an element of cruelty in humour, says Associate Professor Alfano.
“Somebody has to be the butt of the joke. This is how humour relates to contempt. In mild cases, we make fun of our friends and loved ones, or ourselves. In harder cases (of the kind Zelenskyy has employed), we mock our enemies. When they have it coming, there’s nothing blameworthy in the humour. Indeed, it can even be admirable.”
Whereto humour in a woke world? “Worries about cancel culture can be overblown. The term is used to refer to everything from criminal prosecution of a rapist like Harvey Weinstein to flash-in-the-pan social media disapproval of various celebrities and nobodies.
“Humour has always had the power to offend. It’s a risky endeavour. But this is nothing new, and lots of what gets condemned by so-called cancel culture is not risky humour but outright crime.”
Moral virtues help us to govern our emotions, live a flourishing life and be better people. Alfano has come to agree with Dr Oliver Curry, a researcher at the University of Oxford, that what unifies a swag of seemingly disparate virtues (among them altruism, compassion, fairness, generosity, tenacity, trustfulness, and valour) is that they all — in the right social context — foster co-operation.
A sense of humour elicits and directs amusement, and a dark sense of humour elicits and directs humour in the context of suffering, fragility, finitude, and evil.
A sense of humour — light or dark — may help to conjure up hope when it is desperately needed. One of the debilitating aspects of dark times is that they can leave us bitter and hopeless. In this context, despair may sometimes involve a failure of imagination. Dark humour in dark times can counteract this failure.
Mark Alfano, Associate Professor of Philosophy, is co-author with Mandi Astola and Paula Urbanowicz, of Having A Sense of Humour as a Virtue, published in The Journal of Value Inquiry. He is also the editor of The Moral Psychology of the Emotions, a series of books published by Rowman & Littlefield.
