Inessentials

Here is a passage I came across during my day job as a scholar of early modern philosophy. It is taken from Francis Hutcheson, the influential eighteenth century thinker. He briefly discusses the nature and usefulness of the sense of humor. It’s from his lecture notes, which were later published as a textbook. (Translated from the Latin by Michael Silverthorne. Full text available here.)

By the aid of these senses, then, some of the things that happen to us appear delightful, fitting, glorious, and honorable to us, while others seem vile and contemptible, and we may discern yet another reflexive sense: a sense of things that are ridiculous or apt to cause laughter, that is, when a thing arouses contrary sensations at one and the same time. In the case of men’s intentions and actions, bad behavior that does not cause grievous sorrow or death gives rise to laughter, because there is some dignity in the very name of man because we have a certain opinion of his prudence and intelligence, whereas bad behavior that leads to serious pain or death rather excites pity. In the case of other things, we are moved to laughter by those which exhibit some splendid spectacle at the same time as a contradictory image of something cheap, lowly, and contemptible. This sense is very beneficial, whether in increasing the pleasure of conversation or in correcting men’s morals.

Much of what he says here about the ridiculous and contradictory is a fairly standard theory of humor that dates back to Aristotle. What I find intriguing is that last sentence.

We can all agree that having a sense of humor is beneficial because it increases the pleasure of conversation. But how exactly does a sense of humor “correct men’s morals”? I suspect he is referring back to his earlier point that we laugh at bad behavior (short of death or “grievous sorrow”), which serves as a corrective to bad behavior. Basically, when we laugh at louts, they are shamed into acting better.

Going beyond the text, this passage got me thinking about the role that a sense of humor has in living a good life. I’ve long thought that a sense of humor (both the ability to laugh when appropriate and to make others laugh) is an important character trait. But it is not a virtue that is developed on its own. As Hutcheson reminds us, our sense of humor influences our other character traits. For instance, being able to laugh at our foibles gives us a healthy distance that can encourage us to improve them.

But I’m still wondering if a sense of humor improves us in other ways. How does being able to laugh and make others laugh improve our other character traits? Is a kind person made more kind by having a sense of humor? Is an intelligent person made more intelligent or better demonstrate that intelligence when they have a sense of humor?

I presented a paper in applied ethics at the Sport and Society Conference cosponsored by St. Norbert College and the Green Bay Packers, probably the first collaboration between a professional sports team and a college or university. There were a variety of interesting talks, roundtables, and presentations.

I’m providing a link to my paper which asks the question “Is Team Loyalty a Virtue?”[PDF]. My goal was to ascertain whether the loyalty of a sports fan to a particular team is justifiable. The paper is still (in my estimation) only about half worked-out. Surprisingly little has been written on the subject, so a lot of what I was trying to do was just lay some groundwork. The paper, as it is now, is really a suggestion for what it would take to show that the loyalty of a fan to a team is virtuous.

Anyways, enjoy, and feel free to leave comments below.

Community has a well-earned reputation for mixing in lots of meta-humor into its character humor and one-off jokes. A lot of the humor comes from seeing how the writers play off sit-com clichés. When done properly, it adds a layer of sophistication to the show that I find very compelling. A show won’t survive long just doing that; it still needs characters we are interested in or stories we find compelling. In its first season, Community has done this remarkably well, incorporating nearly every kind of joke you could ever want in a sit-com.

We can appreciate those jokes about television (directed at itself, at other sit-coms, or recently at Glee), and it can lead to us thinking of Community as a smart show, one that it takes attention, background knowledge, and intelligence to watch. But I want to highlight a different way that Community‘s creators express and expect intelligence in their show. Here’s an exchange from last week’s “Modern Warfare,” an extended parody of action films.

The dialogue I want to draw your attention to is not the characters’ awareness of clichés and how they see themselves against those clichés. It’s the following.

Britta: “You’re right, you know. I am a phony. I try to act compassionate because I’m afraid that I’m not.”

Jeff: “Oh, please. I invented phony.You care about people. I accuse you of faking to convince myself that I’m not such a jerk.”

Britta: “Jeff, you help people more than I do and you don’t even want to. You’re not a jerk; you’re fine.”

There is a sophistication to this exchange that I really appreciate. Britta expresses a profound insight about herself: that what looks like compassion is actually rooted in a fear of being uncompassionate rather than a true benevolence. Jeff dismisses her worry because, as a phony, he recognizes what phoniness is and can see it in other people. Those are two really insightful observations for characters to make, and it takes an awareness by the writers of who these characters are and an ability to verbalize it without sounding pompous or distracting from the mood of the show. That is really smart writing.

But then it gets better. Britta recognizes a distinction between a person who has positive character traits (e.g., a compassionate person who wants to do go for others) and a person who produces positive consequences (e.g., a jerk who actually does good for others). Britta recognizes that the character traits, intentions, and desires that make a person a good person are not always correlated with actually doing good. On the other hand, there are people who are able to do a great deal of good that don’t have a great character. For example, Richard Nixon has done more good than most people who lived in the 20th century. It doesn’t follow that he had a morally praiseworthy character; he probably didn’t. It also doesn’t follow that he didn’t do a great deal bad, as well. He certainly did. Jeff, through elements of his personality and his position in the group, is able to do a lot more good for the study group (and the community college) than the person who is dedicating her life to doing good. That doesn’t make Jeff the better person, just the more powerful one.

One thing that Community has done a great job of this season is tracking Jeff’s reluctant immersion into the group. Positioning himself as an outsider who in the pilot claimed that he was a moral relativist who doesn’t care about other people to a group-member willing to make sacrifices (that he doesn’t fully understand) for the sake of others.  This can only be achieved when you create really complex characters, and the writers have a really firm grasp on them and the intelligence to draw out of those characters compelling stories and sensible dialogue. What makes Community the smartest show on television isn’t (just) all the self-referential humor, it’s also the ability to articulate very finely the social interactions of these complex characters while exploiting the backdrop of a community college to draw out interesting ethical and socio-psychological insights.

And it’s funny.

Some spoilers for Terminator Salvation, but it’s not like you were going to watch it anyways

Terminator Salvation fails for a number of reasons. It’s about 30 minutes too long, and all the dullest, most senseless, least compelling sequences come in the second half of the film, leaving the viewer with a sour taste. That’s a shame only because there are some pretty nice action set pieces in the first half. But what stands out about the film is its ham-fisted attempt to reflect on the classic science fiction question, “What makes us human?”

You see, in Terminator lore, machines are bad and humans are good. So when Salvation attempts to break new ground, it does so by introducing a character that is partly human and partly machine. This is then supposed to provide a philosophical quandary both for hybrid (“what am I?”) and for those who interact with it (“what is it?”). (Apparently this has become the standard fourth-film-in-a-franchise question, since Alien: Resurrection posed the same question, but with alien-human hybrids instead of machine-human hybrids.) Perhaps in more deft hands this could have been an interesting question for a film. Instead, it is in the hands of McG (Charlie’s Angels, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle), the pens of John D. Brancato & Michael Ferris (Surrogates, Catwoman), and the grunting of Christian Bale (Reign of Fire, Newsies).

Not having anything interesting to say about the interactions of humans and machines, the filmmakers decided to blow stuff up. Personally, I am in favor of blowing stuff up on screen. It’s fun to watch. Maybe not in the second hour, when the filmmakers have lost track of who we care about and why, so we have no reason to root for any of these characters to survive. We just hope our bladders survive the two hours it takes to finish the film. But not content to blow stuff up, McG, Brancato, and Ferris also decide that they should say something. This is a science-fiction film, after all, and therefore must have pretenses to philosophical navel-gazing.

So here is what they do. They create a character that is partly human and partly machine. Half the film’s heroes argue that the hybrid is fully human, and the other half argue that the character is fully machine. Apparently, the writers decided that there would be added emotional resonance if every person in the film was an idiot. This is called “screenwriting.”

As a philosopher (yes, I really do have a postgraduate philosophy degree), one thing I try to do in exploring difficult questions is start with the facts. Applied to this film, in wondering what we should think of a human-machine hybrid, and important fact to consider would be this is a human-machine hybrid. Apparently, this never occurred to anyone involved with the making of this film. They decided that it is much more interesting to ask “Is it fully human?” or “Is it fully machine?” In other words, they could never reach the part where they actually do some philosophical reflection, because they are too stupid to acknowledge the single most basic fact that the entire film is built around. Somewhere between deciding to make a film that introduces a human-machine hybrid and actually making that film, they lost track of that single basic idea.

Now, it would be wrong to say the movie fails because of some intellectual fault in the film. As an action spectacle, this film fails because it is boring. But sometimes boring science fiction films can be saved by the interesting questions they address. This is why we still watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris. And it is also why you should watch Moon, the low-budget space flick that nobody saw last year. Better acting, a more compelling plot, and an interesting question at the center (albeit one that is raised to explore psychological and emotional elements rather than strictly philosophical implications). While I don’t think Moon is an excellent film, I can guarantee that you won’t leave it with that gross, McG-y taste in your mouth.