| | Greetings.
I merely wish to say that I have never disagreed more with any other SOLO article. If this is the avowed "spirit of SOLO," I certainly do not represent it, and am proud of the fact. Now, hollering obscenities back and forth is considered "joie de vivre," and filosofy is to be reduced back to the bog of the primeval, to warrantless exclamations by those who do not care for its "finer, academic facets." Filosofy is an academic discipline, and ought to be elevated to the level of a genuine science in methodology, terminology, and the characteristic effort and personality required to grasp it. If one seeks anything less, one has come to the wrong field!
The responses are even more alarming. Ms. Vera S. Doerr posts a statement which effectively claims that emotions are valid tools of cognition, and and Mr. Alec Mouhibian condemns some of Rand's most pivotal insights concerning the distinction between humor and sacrilege. These comments make me wonder whether SOLO represents Objectivism, or Rothbardianism. As I wrote in my critique of Rothbard's "Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult:" http://solohq.com/Articles/Stolyarov/A_Critique_of_Murray_Rothbards_Sociology_of_the_Ayn_Rand_Cult_(Part_2_of_3).shtml
What is Humor and What is Sacrilege?
"Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It's simple. Tell them to laugh at everything. Tell them that a sense of humor is an unlimited virtue. Don't let anything remain sacred in a man's soul-and his soul won't be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man. One doesn't reverence with a giggle." So declares Ellsworth M. Toohey, the arch-collectivist from Rand's other literary epic, The Fountainhead. Humor within certain bounds can be employed as a means of comprehension or enjoyment. An innocent joke, a paradox, a satire sharpen an individual's reasoning ability while amplifying his rightly gained pleasure. Humor can be employed to expose the horde of fallacies, buffooneries, and hypocrisies plaguing modern society, and is thereby a potent educational tool. However, humor must not be employed to sneer at a man's self-image, at, in Rand's words, "the sacred temple of his soul," his genuine ambitions, his sense of life, and the joy that he takes in living by principle and practice. This is the difference between a laugh and a giggle. A laugh is the call of a giant, resonating with an ecstatic appreciation of his own existence. A giggle is the buzzing of a pest around the giant's head, in preparation for inserting a stinger where it hurts, the most sacred reaches of a man's mind.
Rand had always advocated a human being who is radiantly happy in his productive endeavors, and used humor without abusing it. But what says Rothbard? In reference to the incident wherein a newlywed couple sought inspiration from the pages of Atlas Shrugged, "wit and humor, as might be gathered from this incident, were verboten in the Randian movement. The philosophical rationale was that humor demonstrates that one 'is not serious about one's values.' The actual reason, of course, is that no cult can withstand the piercing and sobering effect, the sane perspective, provided by humor. One was permitted to sneer at one's enemies, but that was the only humor allowed, if humor that be." What "sobering and sane effect," Dr. Rothbard, is derived from renouncing one's guiding principles, one's tools for living, with mocking contempt, from posing not an open intellectual challenge to another's values (assuming one disagrees with them, which, Rothbard, to an extent, does) but an underhanded, contemptuous "low blow" to any dignity and esteem? How can renunciation of all principles and all of the elevated faculties of man in favor of a giggle be considered "sane?" It is such only to a perceptually-bound mind embracing the side of the mind/body dichotomy that repudiates all consistency and integrated living.
Do you really wish to reconcile Objectivism with the doctrines of Ellsworth Toohey?
I am not against an occasional earnest laugh, but such a laugh bears its significance precisely by the fact of its rarity. It is one of the most powerful emotional expressions available to man, and, if used to respond to a trifle, what is left to address the genuinely great and radiant events of one's life? A belly laugh is akin to a chocolate cake, quite fitting for an extraordinary occasion, but highly dangerous to consume too frequently.
I am
G. Stolyarov II
Editor-in-Chief, The Rational Argumentator
Proprietor, The Rational Argumentator Online Store
Author, Eden against the Colossus
Chief Administrator, Chicago Methuselah Foundation Fund
 
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