LoBagola

So I just finished "Humor in The Fountainhead," from Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and its caused me to think some more about humor, a subject I hadn't given too much serious thought to. My purpose here is just to share some thoughts and hopefully hear others' thoughts on the subject.

In the essay, Rand is quoted as making the following two statements:





Upon first reading these, I found myself disagreeing strongly with both of them. My opinion is and has been that the ability to laugh at oneself demonstrates health and good-naturedness. In thinking about it, and reading through the essay and a few more of Rand's statements on humor, I find that these views are actually very easily reconcilable with my own. Consider this statement by Rand:



In the essay, Robert Mayhew distinguishes between benevolent and malicious humor. Benevolent humor is basically humor aimed at objects which deserve scorn and ridicule, while malicious humor is aimed at objects which deserve respect and reverence. Thus, benevolent humor belittles the metaphysical importance of bad things, while malevolent humor belittles the importance of good things. Now, humor which is aimed at one's own achievements, or more generally one's own positive values, is obviously malicious humor. Laughing at oneself in the sense of laughing at these things is indeed bad. However, in thinking about it, that is not at all what I picture when I think of 'the ability to laugh at oneself.'

Consider someone who slips and falls, or misspeaks in some absurd way, or makes an obvious error in a presentation. In all of these situations, I am inclined to think of the person who can 'laugh it off' as good-natured. I would contrast this with the image of the person who, when something like this happens, blusters and attempts to 'save face.' Obviously, this second person is primarily concerned with others' impressions of him rather than the actual error or accident. Such second-handedness is clearly not an appropriate attitude.

But what is the first individual doing? First of all, he is acknowledging the reality of the accident or mistake. Furthermore, he is (in Rand's characterization) belittling its importance by laughing at it. Self-deprecating humor, in this case, is not aimed at ones values, but rather at one's mistakes. This form of humor is indicative of genuine self-esteem; the person in question is acknowledging the reality of his own thoughts and actions (an essential first step for genuine self-esteem) and is able to casually dismiss errors with a laugh. There is no attempt to pretend for the sake of others' opinions that the error was not made; rather, it is acknowledged and then moved on from.

In my experience, the majority of instances of self-deprecating humor fall into this latter category of laughing off a mistake. Thus, while it is true that actually cutting oneself down with humor also undoubtedly occurs, the everyday understanding of 'laughing at oneself,' (at least what I think is the prevalent understanding of it) is a healthy practice, one which should be celebrated.

Anything automated is, of course, a difficulty to change. Assuming "you" have an evasion as part of your make-up, you have gone to a lot of trouble, mostly below your own introspective awareness, to strengthen the defenses around that evasion.

However, evasions do show up in one's feelings. They are an odd, nonsensical, exagerrated, etc. emotion or "sense of things," that occur whenever your defenses go into effect. They are an emotional or attitudinal bump in the road, and you can notice them if you spend some time trying.

Once you begin to detect these, you must practice "tough-love" on yourself, looking for the meaning of the emotion, then, the source of that irrational meaning. It takes great courage to ferret out a mistake in your thinking about yourself, life, the world, people, etc. Anything automatic will require, I firmly believe, bringing the roots into the light. Convincing oneself of what is true and appropriate, in contrast to the "evasion" will not do the trick. You have to understand it in all its specific meaning to you, put it into the situation in which it developed, and thus learn specifically, as concretely as possible, that it is all an error.

I realize I am talking about a somewhat different scenario than you described. I do so because I believe it is this sort of experience that affects one's psycho-epistemology. You know people who say, "Well, I'm certainly not going to argue the point," in a huffy voice, as if it were poor manners to discuss serious ideas. That attitude toward such discussions is defensive. That person (sounds like a woman to me) realizes, at some level, that she cannot defend her beliefs. She disdains arguments of any sort, they make her nervous and insecure, but not just because she's not good at arguing, but because such discussions would reveal her guilty secrets, her dogmatic beliefs, her pretenses, etc.

The only alternative type of psycho-epistemological variable I know of is when one accepts a premise that makes "you" a rationalist, intrinsicist, Platonist, nominalist, etc. These determine a style of thought that has, of course, serious limitations. It should be very useful to study each of these and related theories and become well-versed in recognizing errors of each sort. If you understand them, and recognize their manifestations, you should have no problem avoiding them in your own thinking.

I was a little reluctant to respond to this thread, as it was "cold." I'm glad it proved still of interest.

Mindy

I have a thought about what you bring up about principles. You credit principles with unit-economy ("crow") and with being able to anticipate the long-range effects, though the latter is conditioned by your concern for unit-economy again.

I would argue that their role in letting us know in advance what the character of possible effects would be is the primary use and value of principles. Aware of the fact that there are side-effects and future effects of our actions would leave us in a quandry if we had no guidelines to follow. How can we possibly know all of what will happen and/or be prevented from happening due to our choice?

Scientific principles generalize our experience with some particulars of a sort to new particulars of that sort. All of our productive efforts depend on this sort of knowledge. Moral principles especially are immensely valuable (of course.) Moral principles recognize human priorities, so they can assure us we won't "shoot yourself in the foot," while being otherwise efficacious in our efforts.

Mindy

There have been huge improvements and changes in my life after having taken an interest in philosophy (primarily from Objectivist sources). Many of which i'm unaware but also many I am aware of. In some cases I know philosophy has affected me in a particular aspect of my life but I can't work out the exact connections.
 
Take this, for example:
 
Note: I don't know or necessarily agree with any of Nietzsche's ideas. I just like particular quotes and parts of his prose... like this one.
 
I'm convinced that the reason I love this quote so much is the same reason why I'm described by my closest friends (all of whom are new) as being extremely courageous. I don't mean this in the physical danger sense - I am just able to do things which petrify them - and actually, it's the simplest and least dangerous things! For example, start a conversation at a cafe with someone who I find attractive, and other things that I would just consider cultivating integrity. To me it's become a no-brainer, to them it seems admirably crazy - BUT it has everything to do with the reason for liking this quote and it has a lot to do with enormous improvements I've made in my life all-over.
 
However, there are some downsides. They result in me being upset and cynical over a lot of conversations and things I hear every day. Of course I don't seek arguments or expression of this frustration where it's not warranted (where I am not 100% certain I understand can articulate well why it's wrong). 
 
For example --
Watching the news and hearing people demand education pisses me off, watching the news and hearing that an assault occurred and that it was cowardly because the women was old. My frustration is not at the anger directed at the attacker, but the emphasis on it being cowardly because she was old. In m mind that is as if to say it's okay if you hit someone else just not an old lady. The act is disgusting full stop. Why are we qualifying it?
hearing people say "everyone creates your own reality", we "borrow from the earth".. (here I cannot say I understand property rights but I know something isn't right because borrow is a concept depending on property rights, man and a whole bunch of other concepts so to say your "borrowing from the earth" just can't be right BUT I cannot fully explain and understand why yet...)
I went to a leadership course and the guy running the course kept repeating things like "don't try and understand - just GET", "I'm going to tell you things which will come out hard like a rock"  (he takes a rock and smashes the floor) and "you shall receive them as foam" he takes out foam and plays with it between his hand. Even in the context of the activity this made no sense.
 
 
I'm trying to introspect but it's often quite difficult for me to work out why I feel a certain way.
 
if I had to guess what is the reason these things frustrate me so much is that I feel impotent to act against it, to protect myself from it, to protect others from it. When I first read philosophy: why you need it? it was the most incredible thing for me. I started reading everything by Rand like a nut. It just made sense, it was filling some kind of void I wanted to fill. In some cases things in her writing really frustrated me (EDIT: I was agnostic but I really wanted a god to exist - I found it comforting) and I tried to refuse to believe it or just make it work with the rest of the ideas I liked - but I kept at it and eventually the things that pissed me off no longer pissed me off. Anyway, the point is, when I show someone else her writing I expect the same reaction but people don't seem to care at all - so I feel like nothing can be done.
 
I'm trying really hard to understand develop a complete and solid understanding (I keep re-reading the introductory section of OPAR and now begun reading ITOE before moving onto ethics) but it seems like a very difficult task and I don't know something about hearing this stuff above all the time drives me crazy in a bad way.
 
Do you know what I mean? Is my anger justified? Did anyone go through something like this?

Think about it as a child discriminating entity, entity, entity, this entity again. The recognition this it is the same one, is the implicit concept "identity."

Dreams/hallucinations are not real because they are not the product of perception.  
 
As beings of a finite and fallible consciousness, it is not the case that we can always and immediately penetrate every deceptive appearance.  However, dreams do always end.  The fact that the passage of time is required to reliably separate dream from reality is not a defect.  Perception itself as a physical process requires time to elapse, and time is inherent in causality.  Consciousness requires time, it would be a demand for the acausal to demand consciousness never require time to discriminate between dream and reality.  

I used to feel this way a lot (still do, sometimes, but not nearly as much). It's a generalization that you're drawing from the only data you have around--the way you feel about your own activities. You're waiting for the activities to give you a feeling of purpose or satisfaction, and when they don't, you conclude that there is no purpose or satisfaction to be had, and it's all pointless.

The truth is, activities won't give you purpose or satisfaction, so suggestions on the nature of "go do something!" are, in a sense, futile. However, they do have positive effects in that they can help you find your own purpose and satisfaction in a secondary sort of way. A lot of people, when they try to determine what interests them, do this sort of self-meditation where they wrack their brains trying to find some a priori voice that'll tell them, "I love soccer!" or similar. The thing is, you aren't born with interests that are stuffed somewhere in your brain. You *develop* interests by doing things, enjoying them, doing them again, enjoying them more, etc. Most people generally do all of this while they're still young enough that they aren't consciously aware of the process, so when they get to the questioning stage (late teens early twenties), they already know what they like and what they want to pursue, so it's just a matter of examining their mental contents in an orderly fashion to decide which interest is the top interest.

Everyone isn't like that, though. Some people, due to shyness, a compliant personality, whatever, arrive in their late teens early twenties still pretty much unformed. When they start examining themselves, all they find is a void waiting to be filled. They think there's something wrong with them.

There's nothing wrong with you, it's just that you hit the self-conscious phase before you had enough material to work with to form interests. So now, instead of having it happen more-or-less automatically as you grew, you're going to have to build them manually for yourself.

I found that a helpful first step is to say "my purpose, is to find a purpose". It won't fix things for you right away, but it does help to know that feeling no deep attachment to your few interests isn't some kind of hideous psychological flaw. But this statement that you have a purpose even if it isn't a single directed one can help you straighten yourself out.

So, step two is to figure out what will help you find a purpose. Well, clearly if you're going to develop strong interests, you need material to work with. So you need to go and consciously try things. Pursuing more of the interests you already have is good, but don't be afraid to try other things as well. Don't sabotage yourself by over-evaluating and trying to search for some kind of emotional spark WHILE you are doing them, though. You already have a mental habit of suppressing or repressing your emotional connections to people/things. The only thing that will happen if you try to analyze while you're doing is that you will suppress or repress whatever emotional reaction you DO have. So just concentrate on doing it instead of dwelling on how you feel about it. Later, after you've done it a few times, you'll start feeling either that you want to keep doing it, or that you'd prefer to stop. THAT's when you pull out the analysis. But it shouldn't just be a "what am I feeling about this" analysis, you need to ask yourself, "what about this is causing me to feel X"? Maybe you joined a band, you really like playing the music, but you just HATE the bass player so you find you don't want to go to practice any more because that jerk will be there harshing your groove. It's not that you don't "actually" love playing the music--it's that you want a different band. But, if he WASN'T there, you'd totally love to go play your music. Voila, you've discovered your full musical interest! NOW FIND A NEW BAND.

So, yes, you do need to make yourself do stuff. Don't ride yourself too much if you find it difficult, and definitely reward yourself for even the tiniest positive steps. Don't listen to people who tell you what you "ought" to be doing--if you don't know, yourself, they sure as hell can't know. And don't hassle yourself for being different or somehow less worthy than people who happened to pick up their interests more or less by accident when they were younger and not self-critical yet. Yeah, that way sure seems like it would have been a lot nicer, but at least this way you get to form your interests consciously. You won't have a mid-life crisis where you suddenly begin to question what the source of your interests really is. In a way, you're sorting out your mid-life crisis NOW.

And don't fuss yourself over not having friends or people to connect with. The problem is largely that you are currently lacking the kind of material that forms connections. The friends will come once you build up the material. There may not be many, but they'll be much better than the kind of friends you just fall into in high school. It's also not a sin to withdraw from your family. You're busy. You got stuff to build, and sometimes they try to "help" and don't help at all. So if you find them oppressive, tell them, as respectfully as you can manage, that they need to back off and let you do your buildin'. It'll probably be the nastiest, most awkward conversation EVAR, but they'll appreciate it that you told them what was up with you and you'll feel better about your relationship with them. And they may even back off. (Don't expect an instant fix--stay respectful and polite. Stick to your guns, but don't fire.)

To be clear guys I didn't intend not to care what others think. I just couldn't articulate my thoughts well. I very much agree that it's important, hence the post.



I emphatically agree. I came to this conclusion on my own while putting myself out of comfort zones. In some instances the fear is uprooted once you repeat something enough times, but in other cases I think there might be some deep rooted instincts or fears which can't be removed (e.g. for me approaching a stranger or group of strangers). But this is totally okay. It's what you do about it, not what you feel. At some point the fear also stops effecting you physiologically and mentally.


This was more symbolic or ritualistic for me. When I say ritual, I don't mean it in some magicla sense. It was just something with minimal risk and the gain was that I was conquering some fear of people laughing at me, or talking behind my back about how stupid I was - I will never see them again and don't care about them as far as my image goes. It was a spare of the moment thing when I was thinking about all the fears I've bean beaten up by, and all the missed opportunities. Obviously I wouldn't want to hurt anyone - and FWIW once I put my shirt back on I started a very interesting conversation with the man in-front of me - we discussed what I'm posting about here.

I've replaced this with a different ritual which is showering as usual, then getting out and putting on the coldest water. I tell myself it's pointless, silly, uncomfortable, scary... Repeat "I can't do it"... blah blah - these are the usual excuses I might make in an unrelated scenario. E.g. speaking out is pointless (I some how irrationally justify it). So once i've said these things I get in for a min or so and finish my shower. I don't know why, but it really helps me during the day when I'm pushing through new fears.

I'm certainly not a shy person. I just want to be much stronger. I want to choose who will be in my life rather than let other people choose me. A lot of my friends have just 'been there', but I don't think they suit my life/values/ambitions. I think chatting to strangers before was a little irrational, but now it's opened up a whole new world for me. It was actually all about my fear of being rejected, the maybe/possible/what if. It prevented me from making new friends in even the more conventional environments (class, clubs etc). Now, I can often make friends with anyone who appears to be interesting in the most random locations - and this had the added benefit of making the more familiar environments soooo much easier.