James E Hartley

Laughing at the World Around You

If you tell a joke and nobody laughs, was it still a joke?

How sure are you that your answer to that question is right? What is the definition of “joke”? That question broadens out. Does humor necessarily make you laugh? If you laugh, does that mean the object of your laughter is humorous?

It doesn’t take long to start thinking of examples of things we call humorous that do not actually induce laughter. Dark humor, for example, may not make you laugh out loud. That doesn’t bother us, we just say, “I am laughing inside,” which, when you think about it, is a rather odd thing to say. You actually don’t LOL as much as you LI. What is laughter? The definition of laughter is also rather tricky. Even if you spend a couple days puzzling this out in a hotel in Indianapolis, you may well still not have an answer.

So, let’s change the question: does it matter why we laugh? If you know anything about philosophers or the academy, it will not surprise you to hear that people have been wrestling with this question for a few thousand years. There are a surprising number of theories of humor and laughter. Enter Frank Buckley.

He begins his book The Morality of Laughter with an anecdote. The purpose of this anecdote is to explain why Buckley, a lawyer, is writing a book about laughter. As you read it, ask yourself: is this anecdote funny? Do you laugh at it? Is it appropriate to laugh at it? If Buckley told you this story in person, would you laugh?

This book had its origin in an elevator at the University of Chicago law school, where I was a visiting fellow. On the elevator with me was Nobel laureate Ronald Coase, a founder of the law and economics movement associated with that school and with the law school where I now teach. The elevator stopped on the way down, and a U. of C. fundraiser stepped aboard with a donor in tow. “This is Ronald Coase,” she enthused. “He invented the Coase theorem!” Smiles, and a shaking of hands all around. “This is Frank Buckley…,” she continued. And in the embarrassed silence which followed I resolved to have a theorem too.

Did you laugh? Whether or not you did, was it right to laugh?

One explanation of laughter is that it is the response to something really surprising. In this case, you pick up a book on laughter and read the story of how the author decided to write on the subject and it is nowhere even remotely the genesis story you were expecting. That is funny.

Buckley doesn’t like that explanation for laughter, though. In the book, Buckley argues that laughter is always an expression of superiority. The laugher is asserting superiority over the object of laughter. If Buckley is right, when you laugh at his story about how he came to write the book, it is an assertion of your superiority. Over what? Presumably over the fact that this lawyer thought he could write a book on laughter than would in any way compare to the Nobel-winning work of Coase.

Is Buckley right? His thesis has both positive and a normative components. He not only wants to assert that laughter is by definition an assertion of superiority, but also that laughter is a morally correct assertion of superiority. He does note that it is possible to accept the positive thesis but not the normative thesis. Oddly, however, I am not enamored with the positive thesis, but I think he is onto something with normative thesis. Perhaps you should now laugh at me.

Buckley’s argument for the thesis originally struck me a rather bizarre. He asserts his thesis, and then tries to knock down any competitors by showing that they do not account for every possible thing that people find humorous. There is shockingly little actual argument for or even exploration of his thesis. It seems like it would be a rather simple matter to knock down Buckley’s thesis using the same sort of arguments he uses to knock down all the competitors. Why isn’t Buckley’s argument stronger? Then I remembered why. Buckley’s academic training is in law. This is a legal brief. He is not proving the truth (read: innocence) of his thesis, he is just raising reasonable doubt about all the other possibilities.

Consider one of the assertions. “All deadpan humor signals the wit’s superiority over those who fail to get it.” Indeed, the highest triumph is when nobody gets the joke; then you get to feel really superior to everyone. That explanation of deadpan humor strikes me as wrong. Who wants to tell a joke that nobody gets? The alternative explanation is that deadpan delivery enhances a joke by making the audience discover the joke themselves. The audience gets that surprise of realizing “That was a joke!” This is why the deadpan joke may fail if the teller of it laughs when it is delivered. If the listener doesn’t get that shock of realizing it was a joke, it may remove the humor.

How do we resolve which theory is the better explanation? I have no idea. Laughter is a ridiculously complicated subject.

When Buckley turns to the normative part of his thesis, I found myself admiring the clever framework of his argument. I don’t think all laughter is an assertion of superiority, but some laughter, even much laughter, is about the antics or misdeeds or absurdities of others. Buckley sets forth a taxonomy of the seven virtues which laughter is meant to reinforce. Deviations from these virtues can occur from either a deficiency or an excess of the virtue. We laugh at either extreme.

Here are the virtues, followed by the effect of a deficiency or excess of the virtue:

Integrity (Hypocrisy; Misanthropy)
Moderation (Moral Sloth; Priggishness)
Fortitude (Cowardice; Foolhardiness)
Temperance (Greed; Excessive Humility)
Grace (Clumsiness or Gaucherie; Excessive Finesse)
Taste (Vulgarity; Preciousness or Camp)
Learning (False Pedantry; True Pedantry)

What intrigues me about that list is that if you wanted to craft a comic character, all you would need to do is pick one of those 14 things and amplify it.

To take an example, cowardice is not really funny. But it is easy to imagine a humorous account of cowardice: the stereotypical person standing on a chair screeching about the mouse or the person acting as if some totally innocuous act is the most terrifying thing in the world. Laughing at these things is indeed an assertion that cowardice is something which is morally blameworthy. But, does the humor work because laughter is the assertion the superiority of the laugher or because it is unexpected that someone would be that terrified of something that is not inherently terrifying?

While I am not persuaded by the details of Buckley’s argument, the general impulse behind the book is entirely correct. Laughter is a good thing.

Why laugh? It is a healthy way to get through life. After watching Dr Strangelove again recently, I realized why. The subtitle of that movie is “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.” The movie does indeed end with the nuclear annihilation of the planet. Is it a funny movie? I think it is quite funny, but there is truly nothing funny at all about the actual plot of the movie. So why the laughter? Well, what’s the alternative? Imagine we are all on the brink of annihilation and there is nothing we can do to stop it. What do you do? Well, you can worry. You can spend all your time worried about the fact that the universe is moving along outside your control and that other people are doing really foolish things to move us even further into disaster. But, what good is all that worry? Instead, why not stop worrying about the bomb and laugh?

Find the odd and surprising things in life and laugh. It is sure a much more pleasant way to go through life.

Third-Rate Heroes

Imagine a useless Superhero, that hero who shows up at the moment of crisis and you think, “Uh, not what I had in mind.” Yep, you just imagined Aquaman. The guy who can breathe under water and…talk to fish.

Quick, try to think of the crisis when you want Aquaman to come to the rescues. You fell off a boat into shark-infested waters? That is so low grade a crises, any superhero can get you out of that.

Aquaman has a reputation problem. He is, oddly enough, one of the Giants in the DC Universe. Part of the Justice League, no less. Yet, contriving plots where he has something to do means adding on an unnecessary underwater bomb or something.

He didn’t even have a particularly great beginning. The Submariner showed up in 1939 over at Marvel as the king of the seas. So, DC needed a King of the Seas, too, and Aquaman was born. But, while the Submariner was a gritty character, originally a villain who quickly became good, Aquaman was a guy in green pants and an orange shirt who called upon his “finny friends” to help rescue people from boats being sunk by Nazi submarines. It’s cute, like many a 1940s comic book. He even goes to college and reluctantly joins the swim team to help save the college from a mean alumnus who threatens to cut off funding if the school doesn’t win the next swimming meet! (Take note, you college graduates.)

But, once all the other superheroes started growing up and finding interesting things to do, Aquaman…well, there still was nothing for a guy whose biggest power is talking to fish can do. So, introduce Aquagirl and Aqualad and Aquababy! (No Joke. Aquaman has a son who is named Aquababy.)

Then you can feel the increasing desperation of the writers as Aquababy is killed off and Aquaman breaks with Aqualad and even Aquaman’s wife starts vanishing and turning against him. Ah, but he can still talk to fish!

You don’t have to take my word for it. In 1980, while fighting the bad guy of the day, Aquaman actually says this, spread out over a whole page:

Beaten? I know there are certain benighted souls who think I’m some kind of Third-Rate hero, scavenger—but I’d think that you—of all people—would know better!
But since you seem a bit confused—let me make this perfectly clear…
…I was in the world-saving game when people like Firestorm and Black Lightning were still in their Diapers…
I’ve worked Hard to earn the Respect and Trust of every living creature beneath the waves—and I take my job very seriously…
So get this through your head, punk…
I’m Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas…
…And I’m the Best!

Insert Cringe. I thought about analyzing all the ways that passage is cringe-inducing, but, well, it is just too depressing.

Alas, that was Aquaman’s high point. Soon thereafter he got a makeover to look more rugged…kind of like Jason Momoa. Then he lost his hand and started wearing a hook. Then he got a water hand instead of a hook. Then nobody was paying any attention to the fact that the issues just turned into lots of pretty underwater pictures.

So, what do we make of Aquaman? Well, despite the fact that we are the benighted souls who think about him as a third-rate hero, he has been continuously in print for 75 years and is still a part of the Justice League and recently got a high-budget feature length film. He even has a book praising his longevity: Aquaman: A Celebration of 75 Years. So, how does a guy like Aquaman do this?

Curiously, Aquaman is the Superhero who is most like the rest of us, the not-so-super types. Sure he has powers you don’t have—he can talk to fish!—but then you can do lots of things Aquaman can’t do. Imagine, for a second, that you are a unique individual who can so some things really well, but other things you can’t do at all. How should you live your life? Be like Aquaman!

What does Aquaman do? He sees things in the world which he can fix, and he does his best to fix them. He doesn’t spend time lamenting all the things he can’t do or all the problems he would be useless in solving. He just doggedly, unrelentingly, and unhesitatingly looks for things that need to be done and does them. Issue by issue of the comic book, you can laugh at the silliness of Aquaman, but issue by issue, you can’t help but admire the guy. Sure he is a third-rate hero, the scavenger of the Super-Hero World, but he is exactly what you would be like if you were in the Justice League.

The moral: imagine you live in a time when everything around you seems like chaos and there is absolutely noting you can do to fix all that chaos. (Really, try to imagine living in a time like that.) Now channel your inner Aquaman and ask what small thing you can do today to make the little corner of the world in which you swim just a bit better. You can do that. You can do that today.

Jeeves for President

“Modern Age is pleased to offer some relief that nonetheless has a measure of relevance. We asked some twenty of our friends and contributors to weigh in on the best choice for president—but not the best choice on the ballot this November. Instead, we asked them to choose the best character from all of creative literature for the role.”

An interesting exercise. The answers they got were a nice range of amusing to head-scratching, but that is part of the fun. George Bailey from It’s A Wonderful Life was a pretty good choice. (Curiously, Jimmy Stewarts’s more obvious role, Mr. Smith, did not get picked by anyone. Go figure.) Both Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were chosen. From the Great Books, we get Cordelia, Odysseus, and Ignatius Reilly. Cult Heroes Frodo Baggins, Leia Organa, Ron Swanson, and Vito Corleone all made the list. Clever choices all.

Joseph Bottum came the closest to getting the right answer when he took the opportunity to channel Bertie Wooster who selected Monty Bodkin. That is exactly the sort of bloke Bertie would choose. But, Bertie is, shall we say, perhaps not the most perceptive chap.

None of the 20 contributors got the right answer, however. Step back and think about it and you too will realize, there is truly only one choice for President. Jeeves.

Now it is obvious why Jeeves did not immediately spring to mind. He is, after all, a gentleman’s gentleman, the behind the scenes, never ostentatious, easily forgotten figure. For the same reason, we do not generally go to the servant class to find our leaders. Servants are followers, not leaders, right? Do not let appearances deceive you.

Suppose there was a problem needing to be solved. A big problem. A tricky problem. Bertie Wooster has problems all the time. From “Episode of the Dog McIntosh”:

[Wooster] “Snap into it, then, without delay. They say fish are good for the brain. Have a go at the sardines and come back and report.”
[Jeeves] “Very good, sir.”
It was about ten minutes later that he entered the presence once more. “I fancy, sir –”
“Yes, Jeeves?’
“I rather fancy, sir, that I have discovered a plan of action.”
“Or scheme.”
“Or scheme, sir. A plan of action or scheme which will meet the situation.”

Problem solved in ten minutes. This is not an isolated case, of course. Over and over, when Wooster runs to trouble, Jeeves calmly finds a way out of the sticky situation. That is what you want in a President, isn’t it? Pick a major international crisis and imagine Jeeves at the table where people are frantically looking for a solution. How long will it take him to find the solution that leaves everyone happy and thinking the solution was their own idea? Twenty minutes? Thirty? Sure, maybe some problems will take a day.

But, Jeeves is not merely an inactive advisor. He has an agenda. He never fails to implement it. From “The Spot of Art,” Bertie has just finished telling his Aunt Dahlia that he cannot join her on her yacht because he must stay in town to woo the girl he wants to marry, an artist who just completed a rather garish portrait of Bertie.

Aunt Dahlia laughed. Rather a nasty laugh. Scorn in its timbre, or so it seemed to me.
“I shouldn’t worry,” she said. “You don’t suppose for a moment that Jeeves will sanction the match?”
I was stung.
“Do you imply, Aunt Dahlia,” I said – and I can’t remember if I rapped the table with the handle of my fork or not, but I rather think I did – “that I allow Jeeves to boss me to the extent of stopping me marrying somebody I want to marry?”
“Well, he stopped you wearing a moustache, didn’t he? And purple socks. And soft-fronted shirts with dress-clothes.”
“That is a different matter altogether.”
“Well, I’m prepared to make a small bet with you, Bertie. Jeeves will stop this match.”
“What absolute rot!”
“And if he doesn’t like that portrait, he will get rid of it.”
“I never heard such dashed nonsense in my life.”
“And, finally, you wretched, pie-faced wambler, he will present you on board my yacht at the appointed hour. I don’t know how he will do it, but you will be there, all complete with yachting-cap and spare pair of socks.”
“Let us change the subject, Aunt Dahlia,” I said coldly.

Of course Aunt Dahlia is entirely correct. Now, if we are going to have a President with a plan who will never fail at implementing his plan, it is worth considering the man’s objective. What does Jeeves want? Civilized behavior. He abhors the vulgar and the uncultured actions of people for whom the triumphs of civilization mean nothing. It you are tired of social media spats and reality TV, then who is more likely to revive a spirit of decorum in the land?

How does Jeeves perform these amazing feats? Therein lies the ultimate reason you should vote for him. From “Jeeves and the Song of Songs,” Aunt Dahlia and Bertie have, once again, asked Jeeves to cut a Gordian Knot:

Aunt Dahlia blew in on the morrow, and I rang the bell for Jeeves. He appeared looking brainier than one could have believed possible – sheer intellect shining from every feature – and I could see at once that the engine had been turning over.
“Speak, Jeeves,” I said.
“Very good, sir.”
“You have brooded?”
“Yes, sir.”
“With what success?”
“I have a plan, sir, which I fancy may produce satisfactory results.”
“Let’s have it,” said Aunt Dahlia.
“In affairs of this description, madam, the first essential is to study the psychology of the individual.”
“The what of the individual?”
“The psychology, madam.”
“He means the psychology,” I said. “And by psychology, Jeeves, you imply –?”
“The natures and dispositions of the principals in the matter, sir.”
“You mean, what they’re like?”
“Precisely, sir.”
“Does he talk like this to you when you’re alone, Bertie?” asked Aunt Dahlia.
“Sometimes. Occasionally. And, on the other hand, sometimes not. Proceed, Jeeves.”

The psychology of the individual. Jeeves is not someone sitting on high ignoring the way we all think. He taps into the latent desires of the person and finds ways to speak to their inner soul. Want someone to sit down with Congressional leaders and hammer out important legislation? Jeeves is your guy.

What kind of person would you like for President? How about an always calm and collected intellectual who never sees the limelight but is perfectly happy to be the servant of the people? How about the person who is always the cool head in a crisis and finds a solution satisfactory to all the parties involved? How about a keen judge of character? How about the man who will nudge this land into a more civilized state, where people act in highly cultured ways?

It really isn’t a contest. Jeeves would be the best President ever.

What stops Jeeves from being President? (Well, aside from the inconvenient facts that he is British and fictional.) Jeeves would never run for President. People complain a lot about why we never see candidates with culture and intellect, and the exercise of imagining Jeeves as President reveals why we get the candidates we get. It isn’t being President that is the problem. It is what is involved in running for the office. Nobody like Jeeves would ever spend years on the campaign trail.

Nonetheless, you can join me in the Official Jeeves for President campaign. At a minimum, it might get more people reading Wodehouse, and that is a Goal Most Worthy.

Check Your Temper

“I beg of you, before you utterly
destroy us and exterminate our family,
check your temper.”

That is Chrysothemis talking to her sister in Sophocles’ Electra. (Grene translation)

Is it good advice?

Electra has a problem. Her father, Agamemnon, was murdered by her mother, Clytemnestra, and her mother’s lover, Aegisthus. How should she respond? The whole play is watching Electra try to sort out that question. She is angry and wants revenge on her mother. But, is that really the right way to go here?

Chrysothemis provides the first contrast. If your mother murders your father, on whose side do you stand? Your living mother’s or your dead father’s? What is to be gained by siding with your father? You do have the rest of your life to lead; alienating your mother, the queen, is hardly the way to go. Right?

Then Clytemnestra herself provides the next part of the puzzle. Her husband Agamemnon had murdered their oldest daughter in order to help his brother get back his wayward wife. He sacrificed their daughter on an altar. Now ask yourself, can you really forgive Agamemnon for that? Why would Electra side with the murderer of her oldest sister? Why would Electra expect her mother to just welcome her father back home?

And then, a messenger shows up with the shocking news shows that Electra’s brother, Orestes, has died. (Don’t worry, he isn’t really dead…but Electra believes the report.) Orestes was Electra’s hope for getting revenge. And now he and all her hopes of vengeance are dead.

Put that all together and you have the recipe for showing that Electra needs to set aside her grievances and get on with life. She doesn’t have to swap birthday cards with her mom, but she can at least show enough restraint to get married off to some nice guy from elsewhere in Greece and have a few kids of her own and do her best to make sure none of them are murdered by her husband.

But Electra does not do that. She cannot. The crimes are too great for her to set them all aside. So, when Orestes does show up, she plots with him to kill their mother and her (the mother’s) lover.

The question: When are the crimes so great that the right response is to revolt? I think we can all agree that we should suffer the many minor wrongs in life. Someone annoys you in line at the grocery store and the right response is not to slaughter them at the register. You let it go. But, are there things which are too egregious to ignore? Electra thought so. The American colonists also certainly thought so:

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States….We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States

So far, so good. Both the Declaration of Independence and Electra are dealing with crimes which cannot be overlooked. Revolution in the one case and matricide in the other are perfectly reasonable responses to those atrocities.

Should we use these things as role models for our own lives? Here is where Electra becomes an interesting play. The arguments in favor of forbearance are strong, but Electra is not persuaded. It is entirely possible throughout all of this to have much sympathy for Electra. She is wounded, deeply, and all these rational reasons to ignore those wounds may well not convince you any more than they convince Electra.

The play does not end with Electra deciding to conspire with her brother to exact vengeance, however. It ends with the murders. And when Aegisthus is being murdered, we get this exchange:

Aegisthus: This is my end then. Let me say one word.
Electra: Not one, not one word more,
I beg you, brother. Do not draw out the talking.
When men are in the middle of trouble, when one
is on the point of death, how can time matter?
Kill him as quickly as you can. And killing
throw him out to find such burial as suit him
out of our sights. This is the only thing
that can bring me redemption from
all my past sufferings.

To fully appreciate how shocking what Electra just said is, recall that Sophocles was also the author of Antigone. In that play, Antigone is the heroine, arguing against the cruel villain Creon, who left her brother’s body unburied in the fields where the dogs would eat it. In Antigone, we are meant to be shocked that Creon would be so awful as to leave bodies unburied, a horrible violation of Greek norms. In The Iliad, for example, in the midst of a decade long battle, the warring armies take breaks from the fighting so both sides can recover the dead and properly bury them.

Yet, here is Electra, that person with whom you might have been sympathizing, becoming a cruel monster.

Is that what happens when revenge and revolt sit deeply in your heart? Is that what happens when you lose perspective and decide that the wrongs exceed the bounds of tolerance? Is the temptation to become as bad as the villain the inevitable result of succumbing to temptation of revenge? Electra doesn’t answer those questions, but it does a wonderful job raising them.

Little Odious Vermin

“But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

This saith the King of Brobdingnag in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

That is not a very flattering thing to say about humans. The evidence?

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”

And, that is not the worst thing said about humanity in Gulliver’s Travels.

In the popular imagination, Gulliver’s Travels is a kid’s story about a man who stumbles upon a land of really small people, the Lilliputians. It’s a tale of many charming moments watching little people tie Gulliver down with a zillion little ropes or Gulliver eating whole miniature sheep in a single bite. There is even a cartoon version from 1939 with a benevolent Gulliver and endless little people acting in ways that would make a 4 year old laugh. That cutesy version of the story is surely why my 5^th grade teacher told me I should read the book. It is safe to say that I had absolutely no idea what was going on when I tried to read it, though I was surprised to find out the tiny people are only the first part of the book. In the second part, Gulliver ends up in a place with Giant people. I don’t think I got to the crazy scientists of the third part or the horses in the fourth.

Far from a book for children, Gulliver’s Travels is one of the most vicious attacks on humanity ever penned. It gets called a satire a lot, but that raises an interesting question about satire. Is satire amusing? Parts 1 through 3 of this book have some amusing bits, but by part 4, it is just plain vicious. Is that still “satire”?

The book ends with Gulliver unable to stand even the sight and smell of people. Gulliver is rescued and brought home by one of the nicest people you will find in literature, Don Pedro, a truly benevolent Good Samaritan. Gulliver cannot tolerate being in his presence. Gulliver gets home after years of exile and cannot bear to be near his wife and finds it revolting that he actually fathered children. Gulliver is not the misanthrope with a heart of gold or with some amusing peccadillos. By the end of the novel, Gulliver has learned to hate people, all people. If you buy the argument of the book, you might just hate them too.

It is a brilliantly seductive argument. The book does not start out in total misanthropic rantings. In the first episode, we look at all the antics of the little people, running around fighting about how high heels should be or which end of the eggs should be cracked. So silly, these little people and their pathetic little attempts to feel important. If the book ended there, it would have been a pleasant enough tale, letting us bask in the glory of knowing that while others worry about silly little things like whether it is bread or flesh, we are enlightened enough to know that much of what passes for human strife is over small things. It is fun to look down on the rest of humanity as being a bit silly and misguided.

Then we get to book two, and we lose our comfortable condescension. Now Gulliver, and by extension all of us, are the little people, and everything we do, not just those debates about eggs or bread, is awful and full of vile passions and motives. That is the source of the quotations that opened these reflections. It is hard to argue that history is not “a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”

But it is not all bad, obviously. We have done some good, right? Look at science! It is amazing what we have accomplished through science. And then we get to Book 3, and we meet the society of scientists, both physical scientists and social scientists.

Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad, ordered a tailor to come next morning, and take measure for a suit of clothes. This operator did his office after a different manner from those of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant, and then, with a rule and compasses, described the dimensions and outlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in six days brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my comfort was, that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded.

The social scientists are no better in their attempts at designing the perfect society. It is all just a heap of absurdities.

Had the book ended there, Gulliver’s Travels would have been a remarkably thought-provoking book. Book 4 is where it turns into a work of pure genius. Gulliver finds himself in a land where horses are the enlightened, cultured beings. The humans, called Yahoos, are truly the most revolting animals you can imagine. There is no redeeming quality in the Yahoos; even the wise and benevolent horses start wondering if it would not be better to just exterminate the Yahoos. Gulliver, speaking up in defense of these creatures who are biologically akin to him, suggests that killing all the Yahoos is unnecessary since the same end result could be achieved by castrating all of them. Yep. That is Gulliver rising to the defense of humanity.

As Gulliver’s host observes, the human society from which Gulliver came is comprised of “a sort of animals, to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us…”

There is no cheerful ending to the travels, no moment of heart-warming reconciliation and a desire to do better. Just pure unadulterated misanthropy.

Is this book true? Therein lies the first challenge. Reading through the book is one long exercise of thinking that while humans are bad, they could be worse, only to get a few pages further along and realize they are in fact worse. It’s almost like humans bear the unbearable stamp of original sin.

The bigger challenge is what to do if you accept that this portrait of humanity is even reasonably accurate. Gulliver becomes a raving misanthrope. Is that the only option? Is it even possible to look humanity square in the face and say “Even though you are vile, I will love you anyway”? Let’s hope so.

Who Then is Free?

When I was growing up, I heard a lot about the advantages of living as a free people in a free society.

Freedom is Good. Who would argue with that? Who would argue for the benefits of being a slave or a prisoner or under the thumb of a tyrannical government?

Curiously, however, the one question which was never raised in my youth was what “freedom” meant. Or as Horace asks in his second Satire, “Who then is free?”

It seems like an easy question in the dialogue. The slave, Davus, asks that question of his master, Horace. Softball question, right? Obviously Horace, the master, is free and Davus, the slave is not. But, in five quick pages, that answer is shredded.

Who then is free? The wise man, who is lord over himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor bonds affright, who bravely defies his passions, and scorns ambition, who in himself is a whole, smoothed and rounded, so that nothing from outside can rest on the polished surface, and against whom Fortune in her onset is ever maimed.

If you were like that, you truly would be free. Davus then asks Horace (and implicitly you, Dear Reader): “Of those traits can you recognize any one as your own?”

That is a devastating question. As Davus proceeds to show, his master is very much the slave of his passions, constantly afraid of losing his comfort or his mistress or his fine food. Davus notes, “You cannot yourself bear to be in your own company, you cannot employ your leisure aright, you shun yourself, a runaway and a vagabond, seeking now with wine, and now with sleep, to baffle Care.”

Things haven’t changed at all, have they? Here is Josef Pieper, a couple of thousand years after Davus: “Leisure is only possible when a man is at one with himself, when he acquiesces in his own being, where the essence of acedia is the refusal to acquiesce in one’s own being.” We are so busy, so filled with the worries of the world, we suffer from acedia, sloth, because we are not in control of our own lives. Pieper again:

No, the contrary of acedia is not the spirit of work in the sense of the work of every day, of earning one’s living; it is man’s happy and cheerful affirmation of his own being, his acquiescence in the world and in God—which is to say love. Love that certainly brings a particular freshness and readiness to work along with it, but that no one with the least experience could conceivably confuse with the tense activity of the fanatical “worker.”

This portrait of the person who is free is jarring to the modern ear. We think of the freedom which could be bought by wealth, the ability to buy whatever you want, but do possessions bring security? Do people with extensive security systems around their houses sleep free of the fear that caused them to install the security system in the first place? The correlation with the defense mechanisms we all put up against the world is obvious: how free are you when you live a life constantly worried that people will find out what you are really like?

Who then is free? A pair of literary examples is illustrative. Take Game of Thrones. (Did you see that coming? If so, you are officially a GoT nerd.) Davos Seaworth is nothing other than the stand-in for Horace’s Davus. He is a man who is completely at home with himself, despite being totally subservient to the ruler of the moment. Who is more free: Davos or Stannis? Not even a contest. [Curiously, my quick Google search did not reveal any places mentioning what is surely the source of Davos’ name. Is it possible that the type of people who make Game of Thrones fan pages do not read much Horace??]

An even better example from literature: Jeeves. Indeed, it would be harder to imagine a more perfect representation of the free man. Jeeves is a servant, a gentleman’s gentleman, but this is quite easily the best summary of his character I have ever seen: “The wise man, who is lord over himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor bonds affright, who bravely defies his passions, and scorns ambition, who in himself is a whole, smoothed and rounded, so that nothing from outside can rest on the polished surface, and against whom Fortune in her onset is ever maimed.” Absolutely perfect.

Want a role model for living a free life? Want to get rid of your anxieties and the passions to which you are a slave. Well, read more Wodehouse! Study Jeeves.

In doing so, in thinking deeply about your life and the needless anxieties and passions which enslave you, you will of course be following the advice of another, who noted, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” If you want to be free, if you want to be like Davus or Davos or Jeeves, it is hard to think of a better place to start than this:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.