Adequation to the Realm of Meta-Comedy

Jerry Seinfeld has been popping up everywhere in order to promote his new film. From the interviews I've seen, he's become quite philosophical about comedy, even touching on the transcendent realm of metacomedy. This prompted me to read the book Seinfeldia, in which the author says that in school Seinfeld even

saw geometry class as training for comedy; a good joke, he felt, had the same rigorous internal logic as a theorem proof. 

In a recent interview with Bari Weiss, he talks about how comedy penetrates the banal surface of reality:

The thing that you are incredibly fortunate enough to have if you spend your life in comedy... the gift that you were given, is you see through the surface of everything -- everything.

"Life itself"

is so peeled away of the surfaces, and the gauzy, phony planes of existence that most people deal with and on... Everybody else is like eight layers of fake cream and veneers of waterproof woodcoating... that's where most people live. That's why they come to see a comedian. How do they know these things? 

Is the source of comedy a kind of Platonic realm from beyond the cave? Whatever the case, it seems that comedy arises in the tension between appearances and reality, or between immanence and transcendence. 

It also seems that comedy -- like the knowledge of truth and perception of beauty -- is a kind of adequation to transcendental reality. It's funny because it's true. Which in turn must be why, as Wittgenstein remarked,    

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

This being the case, why has no one yet written one? I suppose Dávila did in a way, composing a lengthy monologue consisting of 10,000 rapid fire gags and one-liners. Truly truly, he is the Rodney Dangerfield of metaphysicians. 

As you know, I've been rummaging through the arkive in search of an implicit book contained therein. But maybe I'm looking for the wrong thing. Maybe it's all been an endless monologue consisting of a lot of metaphysical yucks, the yucks being for their own sake. 

It reminds me of what Seinfeld said about his endless pursuit of humor: he compared himself to a woodchuck. Why does he chuck wood? Because that's what he does.

Likewise, what does Bob do? He writes posts. Why? Because that's what he does. Like this one from four years ago:

Now, deep -- that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about psychology that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But then again, maybe that's why I found the field s'durned innarestin'.

In any event, "deep" isn't necessarily synonymous with profound. One can be deeply confused, or maybe you don't pay attention to the liberal media. For it is written: Confused ideas and murky ponds seem deep (Dávila).

Moreover, Profundity is not in what is said, but in the level from which it is said. At the same time, The depth of an idea depends on the capacity of the listener.

Putting these three together, we see that there is a true and false depth, and that depth not only transmits a content, but is a kind of form, such that that depth must call out to depth, so to speak.

While this may at first sound novel -- or worse, original -- it is actually quite mundane and experience-near. There are credentialed morons who know more about quantum physics than we ever will, and smelly Walmart shoppers who know more about the soul than the physicist will ever even suspect. Which is why there is infinitely more wisdom at a single Trump rally than in the entire Harvard faculty lounge. For

Great stupidities do not come from the people. They have seduced intelligent men first.

Indeed, if you've spent any time in college, you know that A high I.Q. is indicative of distinguished mediocrity, and that The learned fool has a wider field to practice his folly. The institution of tenure is a way to transform idiocy into a permanent instead of temporary condition.

Now, back when I was in grad school, I began to have my suspicions, although who was I to question the basis of an entire discipline? 

Nevertheless, I couldn't help noticing two things: first, that a discipline is defined by its object, and that psychology didn't have one. For example, any introductory course will acquaint you with all the major theorists and theories of psychology. But if psychology is a thing, there shouldn't be wildly divergent opinions about the nature of its object.

Analogously, if you study physics, you don't begin with a survey of all the various disputed and discarded theories about the nature of physical reality. Rather, a mature discipline converges on a unity of both object and method.

So, the first thing I noticed was that psychology was and is pre-paradigmatic. It's not so much that the theories disagreed with one another, but that there was no agreement as to the object of psychology. Is it behavior? The brain? The mind? The unconscious? Attachment? Affect? Neurobiology? Neurochemistry? At least we can agree: it can't be the soul, because there is no such thing.

What about morality? Is this totally subjective, or is there objective good and evil? Does human development have a telos, or do we make it up as we go along? Is there such a thing as human nature, or do we define ourselves by our arbitrary choices? Do we even have choices, i.e., is there such a thing as free will? If so, what is it and how did it get here? By virtue of what principle can freedom even exist?

Etc. The second thing I noticed is that there is no objective way to choose between these 238 theories to guide one's life -- and the life of one's patient client consumer of mental health services. 

So, on what basis do we choose? It occurred to me that we choose based on "what works for me." Being that clinical psychology isn't just a discipline of study but a "healing art," one will pick the one through which one was "healed."

Healed of what? Let's just call it "pain," which covers a lot of territory.

We're almost out of time. But as usual, I see that Dávila was here before me. For as he observes,

The great imbecilic explanations of human behavior adequately explain the one who adopts them.

Guffah HA! This explains a great deal, not just with respect to psychological theories, but vis-a-vis every theory that pretends to be comprehensive. I believe Nietzsche said something to the effect that philosophy is just autobiography in disguise. 

This would explain why feminists are feminists, why Marxists are Marxists, why atheists are atheists, why critical race theorists are critical race theorists, ad nauseam. The theories explain them -- or rather, help to manage their pain -- but they do not explain us. 

And yet, so many of them want to force us to live under their theories, when all we ask is to be permitted to live in reality. For us, it is painful to even contemplate a life confined to their absurd little ideology. 

But has anyone anywhere ever been healed -- made whole -- by ideology? Or is an ideology one of those phony planes of existence, one of the eight layers of fake cream and veneers of waterproof woodcoating? Whatever the case, it is why ideologues are never funny, except unintentionally. It's why they are in urgent need of treatment -- by a professional comedian. 

I suppose we will know they've been cured when they can appreciate their own absurdity and laugh at themselves just as hard as we are laughing at them.