Moloch walks into a bar...
Five gratuitous jokes, with footnotes.
A serious and good philosophical work could be written that consisted entirely of jokes.
- Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
Joking is no laughing matter, but the post I’m writing on averting the end of the world will take a little longer to finish, so here’s some light relief that should be intelligible, if not funny, to readers of The Joyous Struggle.
Humour is a serious issue. No, really. Humour is absolutely crucial in staying alive to the world, to resisting persecution, to building alliances, to staying sane, to remaining human. Every time we laugh we have stepped out of a structure of some kind, whether conceptul, cultural or political. So much of humour is subversive in spirit, and in a good way. In a non-trivial sense, humour is liberating.
So when it comes to references to cultural renewal, prefigurative culture, existential creativity and so on, we would expect new forms of humour to be part of that, perhaps even new genres of humour. And if we want to buck the cultural trend towards addiction and slop, perhaps there is a place for humour that is not immediately accessible and does not do well in short video formats. Such humour will be a art form and an acquired taste, but might be all the funnier for that, for those who take the time to understand the contexts and patterns and contentions in play to ‘get it’.
It occurred to me recently that I’ve never dared to try to create a joke. And just last night I figured, why not try? I haven’t yet dedicated any time or training to this, so what follows are the first five jokes that came out of my head based on some of my recent work. I notice they are all a little koan like, pointing beyond themselves. If readers throw me pelters, I’ll desist, but if you see the promise of the approach, I might try to improve these, and create a few more.
I don’t expect many readers to laugh at what follows, I hope the attempts at least evoke some curiosity. I’ve stuck with one particular genre of joke - the barman response, to help me understand the relationship between form and content better. For those who are interested, I offer some contextual explanations and further reading in the footnotes.
So here goes. I am not saying they are good. The question is whether they have potential. And if not, can you do better?
Metacrisis and Polycrisis walk into a bar.
The barman says: Get out! For crises, we have a strict one-in-one out policy.1
Weltschmerz walks into a bar.
The barman says: I need to see the camera you’ve been travelling with, please.
Weltschmertz says: Sorry, but these days nothing comes into view.
The barman says: You have my sympathy, Weltschmerz, but I can’t serve you unless you have a Weltanschauung.2
Moloch walks into a bar and orders a glass of Malbec.
The barman says: Get out, we don’t do child sacrifice here.
Moloch says: I just want some sacraments.
The barman says: But aren’t you a demon?
Moloch says: Yes, but I’m in therapy now.
The barman says: Oh, I see. And how is your father?3
The cosmic intertidal zone walks into a bar and asks for “a glass of aqua vita.”
The barman says: I can see you with my heart, but how do I know you’re over 18?
The cosmic intertidal zone says: Over 18? I’m 24 and 48.4
Anima Mundi, Axis Mundi, and Unus Mundus walk into a bar.
The barman looks them over and says: What is the world coming to?
Anima Mundi says: Alas, the world has lost its soul.
Axis Mundi says: Alas, the world has lost its centre.
Unus Mundus says: Alas, the world has fallen apart.
The barman says: Well, it sounds like you all need a drink. What can I get you?
Anima Mundi says: आकाश.
Axis Mundi says: ῥύαξ πυρός.
Unus Mundus says: Coffee.
The barman says: Coffee? Sorry, we don’t serve coffee.5
I am not sure if any of these are actually funny, but it was fun to try. I welcome suggestions on how to improve these fledgling attempts, or indeed similar jokes of your own.
See you next time.
Jonathan.
As some readers may know, I am strongly of the view that it is more helpful to characterise the global predicament as a metacrisis rather than a polycrisis, and that this distinction actually matters. They both entail many crises though, so the joke is a play on the fact that there are two of them, while each of them is plural in a different way, so it’s not clear exactly why they are being asked to leave, and if the idea of solitary crises even makes sense any more. For more details see: Prefixing the World.
Weltsmerz means “world pain” in German, and refers to our emotional response to the state of the world. Weltanschauung means worldview. The joke plays on the idea that one of the sources of our world pain is the lack of an adequate world view.
One of the posts here I am most proud of is Moloch in Therapy. and the joke plays on the possibility that Moloch’s father is actually God. Here’s an extract:
Therapist:…I am mostly in listening and learning mode, but just so I can understand you better, please tell me a little about your parents.
(…)
Moloch: Well I’m an Orphan, if that helps. God was like a father to me, until he wasn’t, and then he decided to become his own son, so that he could be a father to himself. It’s all a bit convoluted, and I had to watch all this unfold up in heaven, and yes I was jealous. I got the bastard eventually though. We pinned him to a cross, but it was a kind of trap, apparently. Not the end, after all. And here I am, in therapy.
Therapist: And your mother?
Moloch: I’m not sure you’ll understand.
Therapist: Try me.
Moloch: A longing. An absence. An awareness that I need a mother’s love more than anything else in the world, and since I will never have it I want to scream and howl like a wolf for the lack of it. I have so many fathers, an infinity of absent fathers, but no mother at all.
Aqua Vita, the water of life, is another name for Whisky. There is a fascinating metaphysics/cosmology based on the density of spirit, in which human existence is mostly ‘World 48’, where we are not entirely free, and ‘World 24’, where we are, with a different kind of time and causality. That 24/48 interface is ‘the cosmic intertidal zone’. The diagram below give the jist, and please see my post on Cynthia Bourgeault: Put the Mind in the Heart for details.
This joke should probably end after the second line, but hey ho. In case you are wondering, these terms refer respectively to the soul of the world (anima mundi), the centre of the world (axis mundi), and the ontological unity of the world (unus mundus). The idea of Anima Mundi is mostly from classical philosophy, including Plato, and it’s about the notion that the world has a soul. The idea of Axis mundi is that the world has a centre. It’s bit more analytical, about the fulcrum on which the world turns. And the idea of Unus Mundus is that there is ultimately only one world, as theorised by Jung and Pauli. I encountered all these terms while reading for my recent post on the Perspectiva site called “Make Consciousness Great Again”. As for the punchline, the world soul asks for ‘Akash’ in Sanskrit, the most subtle of the elements and a lesser known fith element that is most soul-like or even a kind of ‘chora’ in Platonic language; Axis Mundi asks for flowing fire (lava) in Greek to allude to the notion that the centre moves and being like water and fire, is somewhere everywhere. The joke is that the barman seems to have no problem with either of those metsphysical requests, but, as is often the case in pubs, he can’t do coffee…
I'm laughing. Keep going
Laughed out loud, with a lovely hint of surprise / delight, at the first. Appreciated all. Perhaps there's a new post coming... Make laughter (comedy, huour, playfulness etc.) great again!