Dialectics of bullying

One famous writer said the other day that mockery is the only pleasure available to ignorance. If we accept this thought for a moment, then we must conclude that this is not just the most primitive, but also basic pleasure, and more and more refined, even intellectual pleasures - a refined, removed mockery. By the way, Freud, in his treatise “Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious,” came to a similar idea, saying that humor is originally laughter at exposure—the laughter of the biblical Ham. You may not accept this idea, but - continuing the thought of refinement and sublation - humor and the deepest philosophical and scientific ideas have something similar. The funny, the deep and the interesting are subject to the same formula - this is all, as a rule, an unexpected “bringing together of distant concepts” (as M. Epstein put it in the book “On the Interesting” - the most convincing demonstration of the least probable). By the way, there is also a similarity here with nudity: funny and interesting is what you want to open your mouth and point your finger at.

But is there a moment of “bringing the distant closer together” in mockery? Yes, because to mock means to treat a person in a way that he (and others) do not expect to be treated. In this sense, mockery and bullying are always unexpected; they mean a violation of some conventions. Dehumanization is the miraculous transformation of a person into a non-person - isn’t there a moment in this very concept of “bringing together the distant”? It is precisely because of the need for a moment of surprise that mockery of an ancient slave is apparently impossible - in any case, ancient sources, having left us information about the most cruel treatment of slaves, do not extract from this cruelty either eroticism, sadomasochism, or almost anything of the plot. And Thomas Mann speaks beautifully about this side of mockery - surprise and bringing the distant closer together - in Doctor Faustus. The devil there, describing hell, explains that respect for the phrase “You cannot, you cannot do this to your soul” ends there. Yes, the “soul” - like “man” (especially “women and children”) - is something, the very status of which constitutes some kind of moral and legal protection, but of course not in a situation of mockery.

And then the devil in Mann speaks about the pleasure of mockery: “Don’t forget about the monstrous moans of voluptuousness, for endless torment, which does not meet with refusal from the tormented, which knows no boundaries, such as collapse or fainting, degenerates into shameful lust, which is why people with some intuition talk about “the voluptuousness of hell.” This is due to the element of ridicule and great outrage contained in torture; this hellish bliss is tantamount to an arch-pathetic mockery of immeasurable suffering and includes in its attributes vile gestures and foal laughter.”

Thus, mockery and humor are still brought together here; this, however, is a well-known thing - let us remember about the slaps in the face of clowns, about the troubles experienced by the heroes of old comedies and humorous Renaissance short stories, on whom pots of sewage are regularly poured. Well, then the devil in Mann speaks specifically about “far-out concepts”: “Simply put, its whole essence, or, if you like, its whole salt, lies in the fact that it provides its inhabitants with only a choice between extreme cold and heat, from which granite melts; they rush with a roar between these two states, since the opposite always seems like a heavenly delight, although it immediately becomes unbearable, and, moreover, in the most hellish sense.”