Just Kidding
by Peter Tim (April 2018)
“I was just kidding!” … “I was only joking!” … “What? Can’t you take a joke?” These are often the excuses given when someone takes offense at being verbally attacked and the attacker, who may or may not have been “joking,” wants to avoid blame. It’s an easy out since the victim isn’t bleeding and the source of the insult or ridicule “wasn’t being serious.” One of the first things we teach children is that “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” Nevertheless, insults and ridicule do hurt. They are — almost always (though with the universal qualifier “depending” — intended to hurt. At the very least, they are intended to assert social dominance.
The biological process of natural selection makes it easy to understand why this is. In the struggle for survival and reproductive success, even among cooperating members of a tribe, both are enhanced for individuals with higher social status. Of course, the same process also selects for one tribe wiping out another other tribe in the next valley and stealing all their stuff for the same reason: it improves the attackers’ chances for survival and differential reproductive success. Likewise with infanticide, as long as the victims are not closely related. The Bible, despite its many obvious defects, remains a good record of these ancient values and practices. It may at first seem outlandish, but there is this connection between aggressive humor and violent aggression. The one is nonlethal behavior among members of a community and the other is potentially lethal action against outsiders.
So what has changed? Why, from our vantage point in the 21st Century, are these biblical precepts and practices — often pointed out by atheists — understood to be so loathsome and barbarous? Why does aggressive joking tend to be questioned and critiqued even when — perhaps especially when — the targets are of lower social status and so “deserve it?”
It has been a long process. At one time, “just kidding” was the only way to call attention to the failings and faults of those enjoying higher social standing. Ancient writers such as Aristophanes, Seneca the Younger and Petronius made effective use of satire to do this. Indeed, all humor was then regarded with some suspicion, in part because of its potential to be used aggressively. People like to laugh. But few like to be laughed at.
It seems that humor, like other human interactions, has been domesticated. Humanity went from being a social species organized in scattered small tribes to nations and empires with rulers who understood that people were more valuable alive and contributing to an active economy than plundered and dead. Now we have become a hyper-social species that is highly and intricately organized on a global scale. Not just the people in the next valley but even those on the other side of the world have become important to the survival and success of the whole civilization. No one should be thought of as truly an outsider. Importantly, those with high social status depend on and are benefited by the happiness and efforts of those of lower status. And they don’t want stupidity and short-sightedness to spoil things. Curiously, while those with higher social status possess greater wealth and may enjoy better health, even those with lower social status in the 21st Century enjoy greater health and longevity than those of higher status in the past. In addition, higher status individuals in modern times tend to leave fewer offspring than those of lower status.
The point is that joking is an important element of the human condition. But it is sublimated aggression. Like other important elements of the human condition, humor figures in the distinctly human way of living and flourishing. Yet jokes that come at the expense of others, that have the effect of imposing social dominance through ridicule and embarrassment, are not “just kidding.” Of course, humor that calls social hierarchies into question, such as satire, may be a very good thing. But it, too, is not “just kidding.” Rather, it serves an important purpose in encouraging thinking and progress.
Whenever it is said that something is “just kidding” or “only joking,” the truth is that something more is going on.
