BY SEAN WALSH

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes” – Ludwig Wittgenstein. *

“Man is the only animal that laughs…for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be” – William Hazlitt.

We have been told that it would be unfair to take any pleasure in the pretzel-shaped contortions of the Labour nomenklatura as it tries to band-aid this bewilderingly vast collection of self-inflicted wounds. Why? Because it has been transparent regarding the hypocrisy and followed the rules when it comes to the concert tickets, free clothes, £18m penthouse revision hubs, hospitality boxes, Buddy Holly spectacles and other essentials.

Remember this then: if you ever decide to mug someone be sure to offer your victim some ID. This will ensure that no offence has actually been committed.

It won’t be the hypocrisy that kills off this ragbag of mirthless mediocrities posing as a government, but it might be the ridicule it suffers as a result. Laughter is an effective weapon when wielded against the puritan class, whose zeal when it comes to cancelling our pleasures is matched only by its enthusiasm for maximising its own privileges. Why useful? Because the Yvette Cooper types have no comparable weapon of their own. The autocratic left –like its right-wing cousin- has no sense of humour, at least not about itself.

Laughter is rarely discussed by professional academics. This is strange because the phenomenon of humour raises questions which should be of interest to many different disciplines. These include cultural history, metaphysics, ethics, political theory and even artificial intelligence.

The capacity to be amused seems to be to speak of the uniqueness in kind of the human person, compared to His other creatures (as Hazlitt points out). And when we meet someone who lacks this ability, we sense in them a certain incompleteness of soul as well as of character. A sense of the funny and the absurd seem to be essential ingredients in a life lived well.

So, what is humour and why does it matter?

Here’s an example, from the 1990s “sitcom about nothing” Seinfeld. There is an episode in which Jerry discovers that his dentist has decided to convert to Judaism, “for the jokes”. Jerry takes offence at this, not as a Jewish person, but “as a comedian”.

The gag is typical Seinfeld: a well-crafted, self-referential exercise in distraction. And Jerry is right to be insulted, because you cannot be absorbed into the rich traditions and specific practices of Jewish humour via an insincere and casual change of religious affiliation. Jerry’s reaction is funny and serious at the same time.

And what is essential to the joke is just this element of distraction. Comedy runs on misdirection and surprise. To the extent that philosophers have bothered with theorising about humour the following is the closest to a consensus view: that amusement is the pleasurable recognition of thwarted expectations. You expect things to go one way, they end up going another, either through Providence or (in the case of a joke) by the design of humans. In certain contexts, this is pleasant.

This is an admittedly brief and schematic presentation of the views of (among others) Kant, Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard. It is an historical and cultural curiosity that the most plausible writings on humour – of all things- should originate in Germany and Denmark.

This might be an explanation of the seeming joylessness of the autocratic left: that it takes no pleasure when things don’t run according to plan because it is affronted when its expectations are scuppered by the alternative blueprint of Fate. When God laughs at the hubris of the Left its instinct is not to laugh along, but to affect outrage. What the Seinfeld gag shows –that the funny and the serious can commingle- is something that the autocrat never seems to get. The Party, the ideology, the rigidity of the historical process – these things are too serious to be laughed at, surely?

But they are not, and as Chesterton reminds us:

“Laughter…unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes people forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.”

We know that tyrants and autocrats are suspicious of laughter. And it is not by chance that those Hitler “Downfall” parodies are so popular. A dictatorship always signals its own absurdity, and therefore its own vulnerability at the hands of the skilful satirist. But that is not the only reason for the suspicion. Laughter is a building block of empathy which in turn is a useful corrosive when it comes to unchaining ourselves from the intrusions of the State. A shared sense of humour encourages attachments between people and reminds us that we have loyalties which supersede any we might owe to ideology or government.

You might have noticed that I am being particularly harsh about the Left. I have a good reason for this: left wing comedy is not just crap – it’s no longer comedy. It has become tick-box Establishment-sanctioned rigged theatre for the unthinking and the complacent. Its purpose is no longer to appreciate a shared humanity, but to lazily renounce those who think the wrong way.

You see this most recently in the juvenile japes of the Led by Donkeys cretins, whose schtick seems to consist of one joke, on repeat. There is an ethical problem with the practical joke in general – that it requires a victim and is therefore, prima facie, an exercise not in humour but dehumanisation. To put it in Kantian terms, the practical joke is always in danger of treating its object not as an “end in himself” but merely as a “means” for the enjoyment of others.

Which is not to say that the practical joke can never be funny, just not in this case. The Led by Donkeys thing is one idea which has been recycled on many occasions, when one would have been more than enough. In art, there is a word for that: kitsch. Like the dad dancing at the wedding, LBD has ceased being entertaining and has now become just embarrassing.   

So perhaps I should conclude with a word of advice to Liz Truss: next time you are confronted with this sixth form stunt don’t leave the stage. Remain seated and laugh along with the rest of them. The Left won’t get that, and you’ll really wind them up.

Sean Walsh is a former university teacher in the philosophy of mind. That was a while ago – but he keeps up with the subject. 2015-2017 he was slightly homeless. He now writes and is the very proud father of a wonderful child. He is grateful for everything he has.

^{*Wittgenstein did really say that. History records its gratitude that this dour genius, who was not himself given to smiling, did not attempt to write it himself.}