Joke

Don’t laugh when something isn’t funny.

Make the laughers uncomfortable if you can.

That is a small action that can stop hatred

from spreading, growing, and harming the innocent.

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Every laugh is a small vote for the kind of world we want.

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I once laughed too loudly at a joke that wasn’t funny. The timing was sharp, the delivery confident, and I responded like everyone else at the table. Only later did I realize that the punch line was at someone’s expense—someone who was absent. My laughter was thoughtless, and, in retrospect, indecent. I didn’t laugh because the joke was clever. I laughed because the situation was safe.

Laughter, it turns out, is revealing. You can polish a thought, but laughter escapes unedited. When I laughed at that cruel joke, I was siding with contempt. The fact that everyone else was siding with contempt made it easier for me to act contemptibly.

Shared laughter is a kind of intimacy. A private joke says: you and I see the world the same way. When the joke is affectionate, our laughter is an intimate appreciation that binds us together. But cruelty creates intimacy too. A laugh at others’ expense is collusion. It says: let’s agree to treat that one as lesser.

History shows how easily this escalates. Cruelty toward “the other” in the form of humor is a thin mask. The nasty songs, cartoons, portraits—“it’s only a joke” seeds the ground for exclusion and then violence.

This is true also in daily life. The witty colleague, the charming guest, the “funny” uncle can all lend a slick charisma to their contempt. Their jokes draw laughter because charm anesthetizes the conscience. “Relax, I was only kidding” they say if called on their insults.

But there is also laughter that liberates—the kind that punctures pretension, dissolves anxiety, or reminds us of our common ridiculousness. That laughter is grace. It expands the circle instead of closing it.

We must choose whether our laughter lightens or darkens the world. Cruel laughter makes inhumanity acceptable. Compassionate laughter strengthens decency. Every time we laugh, we tip the balance.

I wish I could return to that dinner table and withhold my laugh—or better, say, “That isn’t funny.” It would have been awkward, but important. To reject cruel laughter is to break its power. To make the jokester retreat to “it was just a joke” is to force at least a slight retreat. The darkness is pushed back just an inch. That’s not nothing.

We don’t often think of laughter as an ethical force, but it is. Every laugh is a small vote for the kind of world we want. That night, my laugh was a vote for a cruel world.

I intend to do better.