Lighthearted Philosophers' Society Annual Conference

Yesterday and today, I had the privilege of attending the 13th Annual Lighthearted Philosophers’ Society Conference. It was in San Antonio, Texas, at the Menger Hotel which is allegedly haunted. I unfortunately did not have the opportunity to meet any ghosts–not even the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt. I did, however, have the opportunity to hear about some wonderful ideas that people have been working on in the philosophy of humor. Particularly, I was taken by  Chris Kramer’s reflections on cliché. Cliché, for the purposes of this blog post, refers to “an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being trite or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel.” Kramer called attention to George Orwell’s meditations on political language, and made a parallel between this kind of language and clichés: 

“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs.”

Kramer posits that clichés are among these “worn-out and useless” phrases. We all have experienced somebody confiding in us about the trials of life, only to punctuate the exchange with some well-known (but arguably empty) phrase like “But it’s always darkest before the dawn,” or “We aren’t challenged with anything we can’t handle.” When we do this, we are being not only intellectually lazy as Orwell suggests, but we are failing to communicate what we actually feel to those who seek our support and compassion. We are using the words of others in place of words that we could thoughtfully craft into an articulated thought which is not only meaningful, but personal and empathetic. 

The implications for an argument such as this are not trivial. Clichés appear everywhere. They appear in our writing, in our conversations with friends and loved ones, and in speeches made to us by political officials, among other places. And to be critical of them in this way would mean that we must concede the following: we do something that is both lazy and morally irresponsible every time we call upon a cliché when we lack anything original to say. Somebody who is skeptical of this might be so because this would require that we be “verbal saints,” so to speak. Our moral character would be implicated in our every speech act, and this is surely not what we want for ourselves. Nor does it seem that ethics should place this much stock in speech acts that cause no identifiable, traceable harm.

Being critical of clichés in this way also smacks of linguistic elitism. That is to say, we would hold everyone to standards of speech that seem realizable only for a few. For those who are members of communities that are characterized by their linguistic flourishes, truisms, and twang, happenstance predisposes them to moral dubiousness. Those who don’t learn to part ways with the aphorisms that they so heavily rely upon in speech, moreover, are on this ethical understanding of cliché made reprehensible in some way. At best, this view places on us magnificent demands as moral agents. At worst, this view is intuitively unsatisfactory.

For the duration of the conference, I became hyperaware of the extent to which I made use of cliché. I caught myself saying things like “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” “It ain’t over ‘till the fat lady sings,” and “Time is money,” and what’s worse–I said those things in dead earnest.

This brings me to my proposal for how we might go about saving clichés from Kramer’s damning charges, although saving them in a roundabout kind of way. Furthermore, I hope to provide insight into something that may clarify our understanding of what it means for something to be humorous. If not, I will gladly contribute to the mess that is the philosophy of humor. Max Eastman once described began his exploration of the concept of humor in the following manner:

“The first law of humor is that things can be funny only when we are in fun. There may be a serious thought or motive lurking underneath our humor. We may only be “half in fun” and still funny. But when we are not in fun at all, when we are ‘in dead earnest,’ humor is the thing that is dead.”

This is, on its face, intuitively correct. When you begin rattling off all of the attributes you disdain in somebody you know, and these professions are made “in dead earnest,” others are not likely to laugh. What you’re saying is not a joke, and thus deserves no compensatory laughter. There are, however, instances wherein one’s being in dead earnest is fodder for those who are more likely to detect humor. Every time I accidentally stepped into a cliché during this conference, somebody was likely to call me out and take great pleasure in doing so. They found humor in my earnest explication of cliché, and I eventually found humor in the situations once I was calibrated to sense them in fun.

Clichés seem to have a complicated relationship with fun. At times, they are playful and jovial. At other times, they do the heavy lifting in emotionally taxing situations. But this complicated relationship may be the very thing that saves clichés from the charge that they are dangerous and dumb. Though they are, at times, spoken in dead earnest, clichés are fun and accessible to all. They are bound up in our identities, and they allow us not only to make sense of ourselves but of others as well. And perhaps it is in this utility that we may assure ourselves that using clichés in conversation is ok. Kramer makes a convincing, yet flawed, case for the condemnation of cliché. But there seems to be potential for clichés to carry more good than they do bad. Whether or not they in fact do, I do not know. Only time can tell. Love is blind. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And, don’t forget: You can’t judge a book by its cover.