My dawning mind: Polyglots, Marxist mirth and further thoughts on satire.

Jokes can be made out of love or malice, but every joke is a weapon – even a love-tap. Who is satire’s victim? At whom is the weapon aimed?

Photo by: Mike Mozart

I’ve been chatting on Facebook this early morning with Sindre Paulsen, a young man in Norway who inspires me simply by breathing: I love knowing that he’s there, steadfastly chipping his way out of Plato’s Cave. And if you want to meet exclusively brilliant people, filter for folks doing philosophy in a tongue learned in school, not at home.

As part of our conversation, I ended up writing three raucous jokes about Marxism, and I’ll share them with you here, by way of Twitter:

I’ve known for years that satire is evil, but I only this week figured out why:

1. Everything that is decried as being “as addictive as cocaine!!!” is actually an habituated evasion.

2. Satire is the habituated evasion of the biological (and, hence, moral) imperative either to fight or to flee existential peril.

3. Ergo, satire amounts to dancing with the devil: Quarrying your own eventual homicidal extermination for your immediate, temporary amusement.

Jokes can be made out of love or malice, but every joke is a weapon – even a love-tap. Who is satire’s victim? At whom is the weapon aimed?

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