On the Freedom to Be Silly
A healthy society must be able to laugh at itself. Not merely at its opponents, rivals, or abstract enemies,that is far too easy, and requires little courage,but at its own most cherished absurdities. There is a certain moral stamina in recognising that the causes, traditions, and convictions we hold most dear are, at times, tinged with elements of the faintly ridiculous.
The British, I think, have a particular genius for this rare art. Where else might one find the peculiar cultural reflex to knight a comedian or to seat a satirist next to a bishop on national television, permitting them to spar over questions of faith and politics while the audience sips its tea? It is an almost liturgical exchange, a kind of public theology in which laughter is not the enemy of belief but its occasional partner. This capacity to chuckle and still believe, to joke and still revere, is not a sign of irreverence but of confidence. We can bear to see our own institutions in a comic light precisely because we are not afraid they will crumble under the strain.
Laughter, you see, is one of the great pressure valves of freedom. It allows us to release the building steam of human folly before it bursts into something more dangerous. Satire and silliness are, in their own way, acts of public service,deflating pretension before it ossifies into tyranny. This is why despots have such a distaste for humour: the jest has a peculiar knack for pricking the overinflated balloon of self-importance. No authoritarian has yet devised a lasting immunity to the giggle.
And there is something else: laughter is a sign of trust. It signals that we can take a small social risk together. A shared joke,especially one aimed, gently, at ourselves,requires an unspoken compact: “I will let you see my foibles, and trust you not to exploit them.” This is not the brittle laughter of mockery, but the warm, disarming laughter that admits, “We are, all of us, delightfully imperfect.” When such trust evaporates, the laughter dries up.
This is why I say, if ever the laughter stops, beware. For a humourless people is a frightened people, and frightened people are dangerous custodians of liberty. They clutch their beliefs so tightly that there is no room left for breath, let alone for a chuckle. A society that cannot laugh at its own earnestness becomes prone to zealotry, unable to distinguish between genuine reverence and mere pomposity.
The truth is, playfulness is not the opposite of seriousness,it is its safeguard. A good joke does not destroy truth; it simply punctures the hot air that sometimes surrounds it. Indeed, I suspect that the more confident one is in the underlying worth of an idea, the more willing one is to allow it the occasional comic inspection.
If one wishes to see freedom at work, observe a public square where wit flows freely, where the high and mighty are teased, and where no one is so untouchable that they cannot be gently sent up for their odd hats or overblown speeches. In such spaces, liberty is not merely a constitutional arrangement; it is a lived mood, a temperament of open-hearted conviviality.
Of course, humour has its limits. There is a cruelty masquerading as comedy which corrodes rather than strengthens trust. But the solution to that is not to banish humour altogether,rather, it is to cultivate the subtler, more generous forms of laughter that unite rather than divide.
The late theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once remarked that humour is a prelude to faith, and laughter the beginning of prayer. I think he was onto something. To laugh at ourselves is, in a way, to acknowledge our smallness, our fallibility, our need for grace. A society that can do this publicly, in the company of strangers, is one that has not lost sight of its humanity.
So I leave you with an invitation: When was the last time you laughed at something you care deeply about? Not in scorn, but in affectionate recognition of its human texture. And what might happen if your deepest seriousness were tempered, here and there, by a little play? You might just find that the thing you love is stronger, not weaker, for having survived the gentle trial of your own smile.
