Do People Laugh At the Things That They Fear Most?

I think it's a shame that people can stoop to the lowest levels simply to cover up their fear, without any regard for other peoples feelings. That site where people are making fun of Terri is very cruel to anyone who has loved ones who are in similar tragic situations.

If my actions hurt others, I don't do it. Fear is something we all share and have to deal with and it's no excuse to hurt others.

Montana- I feel for what you are going through with your relative. There is a lot of "stuff" out there that would be hurtful to one person or another. As individuals, we have the right to pick and choose what we read. I took one look at the site, and found it extremely gross. It was my last look.

I think that if you gave me ten minutes, I could come up with a long list of links that would offend one person, or one group or another. So what? No one forces me, or you, to look at something which offends us.

The difference was, that the picture of Terri was constantly on TV, magazines, and the newspapers. Unless we were hermits, there was no way to avoid it. I do believe that people becamed so inured to that picture, that the only way to let off steam was to make fun of it. Nice? no. But certainly understandable.

You are confusing letting off steam with making an improper mockery of someone else's tragedy because you lack empathy.

I understand what Phoenix is saying but I think that it doesn't justify what these people are doing.

Their laugh doesn't sound like an anxiety laugh. It just sounds like a laugh.

superjuly- I am not even attempting to justify what the people who created the site did. I was simply attempting to understand it, ad part of a larger tendency of people to laugh at what they fear.

I used the Schiavo site as an example. This thread is NOT about Terri. We have pleanty of those on A2K. What I am attempting to discuss is whether people allay fear an anxiety through humor, which at times, can be gross humor.

Well, in most workplaces dealing with the more awful aspects of human existence there is a lot of black humour - not at all necessarily about or at any of the people, but certainly a definite somewhat manic and dark humour. It is, indeed, in my view, a classic defence - and good in its way, as long as it does not dehumanise and such. Then it is a sign of burnout.

Of course we laugh at what we fear.

Sure, and then, some people laugh at another's tragedy just because they aren't very sensitive and don't much care.

dlowan- I can remember a time when I did not know whether I was going to survive or not. I went to the cemetery with my husband where we had our plots. I checked out all the stones, and insisted that I wanted a certain kind of stone, even down to the style of engraving.

The entire tone of that afternoon was playful, and funny. I ran from one stone to the other, and threatened to "haunt" him if he did not get me what I wanted. We giggled and laughed the whole afternoon.

At the time, I was staring death in the face. The way that I coped with it was to make a huge joke out of it.

A not uncommon symptom of senility is an inappropriate little giggle or humorous snort. As the world becomes incomprehensible, the afflicted react with an I'm-in-Charge sort of chortle.

On a different tack, but definitely related, consider the words that we use
perjoratively, to insult, and in jokes. If we think about it, the vast majority of insult words in so called, "dirty jokes" relate to sexual and eliminative functions, and it's accompanying physical properties.

I don't think that this is a coincidence. At this stage of our evolution, many people are still in awe of their capabilities as human beings, and IMO, therefore afraid of them.

I spent a number of years as a member of and supervisor of a child protection team whose primary function was doing investigations of sexual/physical abuse of children, we were on duty 24/7 and were subject to call by law enforcement as well as hospital personnel (and others) and dealt on a daily basis with horrendous situations. One xmas eve our team of eight members were sitting in the "break room" at our office when some state legislators did a walk through (I suppose to see if we were "earning our keep") the team was composed of 3 men and 5 women average age in their early fortys and the men were playing cards at one table while the women folk had the "annotomically correct dolls" used for interviewing young children on a table doing "nasty things" as the legislators walked though. one of the woman at the table looked up at the serious big-wigs and said "hey mister, wanna play dolls?". People cope with whatever means they have available.

Phoenix' thesis is true to my experience. I have also seen evidence of Noddy's "chortle" (a reflection of one's will to power in the face of decline).
One must admit, Dys, that the doll joke was so funny that it was worth saying, no matter how bad its taste or consequences. One problem that extremely witty people have is an inability to restrain their tongues when a very funny opportunity for tasteless humor presents itself. It's almost a shame to pass up a fleeting opportunity to create humor. It's almost as if the value of humor trumps all others.

Animals don't laugh--but the gods do.

It is a defense mechanism that many people use. When you get caught in a situation that is uncomfortable you feel trapped. It is a natural reaction to laugh or giggle. Is it "morally right"? Maybe not but it is human. And it doesn't mean you have no empathy. It means you are unable (and yes, sometimes unwilling) to deal with the very serious situation.

It goes along with the "you're kidding right?" that many people ask after given bad news. Of course they aren't kidding...it's sort of in poor taste to imply that someone would kid about death or some other tragedy.

Brandon, personally I think you are making way more of this than you should.

People are people and generalizing that all people who laugh in uncomfortable situations are un-empathetic is just silly.

Bella Dea- Agree. IMO, people who criticize and denigrate people who laugh in emotionally uncomfortable situations are the ones with the lack of empathy. Each person handles upset in different ways. Laughter and black humor is very common, in emotionally charged situations, and in no way indicates that the person laughing is necessarily unkind or unempathic.

Bella-Dea said:"People are people and generalizing that all people who laugh in uncomfortable situations are un-empathetic is just silly."

To be fair, I do not think Brandon was condemning all who laugh in uncomfortable situations - just some - when he considers them to lack empathy and care. And some do.

This Schiavo case appears (in a way unfathomable to outsiders such as myself) to have touched on some deep part of the American psyche - sort of like, in a different way, the Azaria Chamberlain case did in Oz.

Laughter is a culturally based thing too - it was a very sore point for European origin staff when I worked in a Chinese restaurant that, at least for the mainly Cantonese origin kitchen staff, an injury suffered by a fellow worker was a source of loudly expressed hilarity.

To us this was absolutely horrible - and it didn't seem to work well for the injured person (you can imagine the nature of some of the injuries - working with red hot woks and those damn cleavers!) - who would be suffering and also trying to laugh. But it was not evidence that the Chinese staff were unfeeling (though some of them were - just like some of the Oz staff).

Personally, I have very black humour - though I couldn't go to the doll level! But there is a sometimes felt need to shock the outsider, the person who is not an initiate of the rites of horror, no?

I have learned simply to shut up about work stuff except to work-related friends. They can't take it. Not the humour - the horror, to which they are not accustomed. (They are doubtless accustomed to their own, though - one, for instance, is a work place injury investigator - he gets to go to where people have been horribly injured - very fast, hopefully before the company has had a chance to rush in the safety stuff that was lacking before the accident. I could not do that.)

But, as I said before, humour is a basic ego defence mechanism.

but do they laugh at our expense?

As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods, they kill us for their sport. King Lear

laughing at yourself is a good defense against anxiety; laughing at others could be schadenfreude.

yitwail - That might very well be a part of it, but a very human part. When a person is on the road, and there is an accident, why do you think that there is so much "rubbernecking"? IMO, part of the fascination is the feeling, "Thank goodness, it wasn't me"."

I believe that is is not exactly pleasure that one takes from the misfortunes of others, but the ability of living through the experience vicariously, while being personally unscathed.

P32890, there is that too. something like the enjoyment you get on a roller coaster, perhaps, although i'm too old for that now; but this isn't a perfect analogy, because roller coasters are make believe and accidents aren't.