The morality of making fun of others

What is your moral code, I know what mine is.

ASCII, apparently.

were are not responsible for other people choosing to take offense, getting their feelings hurt. The individual whom has learned to navigate life has learned to laugh at themselves, at their faults and shortcomings. Laughing with them is a service to their well being. Those who have not learned to laugh at themselves should learn, and since pointing this out to them is in their best interests it can be fine to laugh at someone even if they are not evolved enough to find the joke funny.

For the sake of simplicity, let's just say that it is always wrong for one to cause harm to someone intentionally, or to act in such a way that one creates a substantial risk of harming someone. If I make a joke that I know or should reasonably expect will harm someone, then I act wrongly by making that joke. So, for instance, if I make a joke that mocks a specific person to someone who I know is a relative or close friend of that person, and I know or strongly suspect that my joke will gravely offend the person to whom I'm telling the joke, then telling that joke would be morally wrong.

True enough, but you choose to make the jokes that might cause those people to take offense. If you have no concern about causing offense to others, then you should have no problem making jokes that cause them to take offense. On the other hand, if you do have a concern about causing offense to others, then it really doesn't matter if those people have a lower threshold for offense than you do.


Yeah right, you're just performing a public service. How's that working out for you?

I'm not trying to start a pissing match, this is a genuine question. Does that mean that you would find it acceptable to tell a joke mocking someone if you were assured that the person to whom you told the joke was neither a friend nor a relative of the subject of the joke?

Not if the joke is intended to lower its object in the esteem of the one to whom
the joke is told.

Well, that's more or less my own take, George, and although it may have been as clear as mud in what i wrote, i think i explained that--i was interested in Joe's answer to this question. I just hope he doesn't think i'm trying to ambush him--there's no judgment implicit in the question.

That was just an example. The general rule is: "If I make a joke that I know or should reasonably expect will harm someone, then I act wrongly by making that joke." That rule, in turn, is premised on an even more general rule that it is wrong to harm someone intentionally or to act with the reasonable expectation that harm will be inflicted on someone.

OK, that's reasonable, too. I kind of thought that was your position, but got confoozled by the explanation. I usually operate on that premise--on those occasions upon which i'm actually paying attention to my motives. I consider it a form of enlightened self-interest, as much as i do a moral position.

That a Latin rule, not an English one, Contrex.

Has anyone addressed the use of making fun of others as the only way to vent one's antipathy towards another group? I can think of some Irish putting on a phoney English accent, or some Jewish people talking like the Nazis in an old WWII black and white movie. If it is therapeutic, and functions like a catharsis, perhaps it is acceptable. God knows the British and old Nazis have a good level of self-esteem usually, to weather the mocking.

There isn't much I won't laugh at...the things I can't/won't laugh at are very specific things, and really don't come up that often. When I was younger, I was terrible...the only way I can explain it....when Andrew Dice Clay came along, I thought I had found a long lost brother.

With me, it's more a matter of timing, not comedic timing, but the timing of events in my life....when my grandfather died, and for eh...perhaps a year afterwards, there were certain things I just could not laugh at. I can't say what those things were, but I got the same queezy feelings from {un}said jokes as I did from watching a "zombie" movie where people are climbing out of the grave.

I was watching a movie once with a friend, and in the movie they made a stroke joke, which was lame, but funny...and I really let out a howl....looked over at him and he had a stunned look on his face....one of disbelief of what he had just heard. His grandmother had...maybe a month before, had had a very serious stroke, which she never recovered from...and spent the last two weeks of her life in the hospital.

Whenever I pop in for a vist at a friends house, I often get a request for a story, or a joke....one night I walked into a house of very cheerful, already laughing people {drunk} so any joke would have done, but I decided to tell one of my favorites...it's an old one, and I'll give the short version....the husbands voice is my version of Walter Brennon, stuttering....usually that alone is good for a giggle...and I'll leave out the stammer til the puncline.

A newlywed couple rent the honeymoon sweet at the local motel....shortly after checking in, the clerk gets a frantic call from the groom...."Get down here quick, and bring some rope, and a sharp knife" The clerk runs down to the room, and finds the bride writhing and thrashing naked on the bed....."My wife has severe epilepsy, help me tie her down".....When she is secured tightly to the bed, the groom begins to strip off his cloths...."Sir, what are you doing"...."W-w-w-when I get on, you c-c-c-cut er loose."

I had never met my friends sister in law until that night, and after we all laughed, and I told a few more....they introduced us, then informed me that she suffered from epilepsy, and had stuttered as a child. I was very embarassed, but she laughed the hardest...and said she was finally glad to meet me. After that night I tended to lean more toward the stories....I still can't tell that joke without thinking about that night.

I had a guy at work tell me one, it's probably the worst joke I've ever heard, and I told him if he ever told me a joke like that again, I'd knock his ass out....I was not kidding.

What's the hardest thing about eatin bald pussy....trying to get the diaper back on after you're done.

It's there, just invisible....highlight it, if you want to read it.....when he told me this, I had a brand new baby daughter at home....otherwise, I might have just said...oh...that's horrible.

Neat trick on the highlight. Lemme see how I can use it.

For standup comedians, it's all fair game: rape, AIDS, dead people, ect. If you don't like it, don't go see them. And for me, I'm not offended by any kind of humor, really. Making fun of others is fun. But personally I'm not going to go and tell the really crass jokes I know to my mom or friends I know who won't appreciate them.

So I guess there aren't any kinds of jokes or humor that's "wrong," but if I'm the one telling them, I try to be wary of who's in earshot.

As far as someone saying "this kind of humor is ok, but this isn't," is very self-righteous. I can appreciate someone not enjoying a joke on a particular subject, but that doesn't make it wrong.

And yes, there's different psychological reasons people laugh. I have a book "comedy writing secrets" written by a comedy professor, and yes, people laugh because it makes them feel superior in certain situations(Jerry Springer with the trashy people), uncomfortable, surprised, or because they're part of a group who is also laughing.

ya, very coooool.

I like your post, doo hoo. My sentiments exactly.

coolness

If Rush Limbaugh--a very dangerous man--should die from whatever is causing his current chest pains, I will welcome a funny joke at his and his dittoheads' expense in the same spirit that I welcome Mel Brooks' humor about Hitler. It's all about values.

Thanks for sharing yours with us.

Are you or any member of your family retarded?