A joke is a joke is a joke...

There is truth in jokes. That’s what makes them funny. In jest nothing is sacred, especially not yourself. This is a bit of an extreme stance when criticizing something can get you killed, so there is a fine line you must walk. I’ve never thought of myself to be a particularly funny person, though I’m fascinated and delighted by those who are. The reason I hold them in such a high regard is that a funny person can show others something they didn’t know about themselves in a way that doesn’t seem demeaning. They can point out the disastrous absurdity of a situation and make you laugh at it. In the face of danger, they make people laugh without fear.

I tend to come across as a bizarre, paranoid, freakish individual when I’ve shown people facts that scare me, so I’ve learned to try and play it cool. You wait, and you wait, and when something strikes your fancy you poke it. You think about it, you think about it again from the exact opposite viewpoint, and you boil a situation down to whatever observed yet incomprehensible insanity is at play. Then you express it in any medium that you can, in a way that will make people laugh. That is the end goal for those that do it well. Not to oppress, but to inspire.

Comedy isn’t for everyone. If you can’t laugh at yourself or something you hold dear, then don’t listen. The comedian has perhaps a greater responsibility, because if you can’t make a joke about something without being incendiary, oppressive, or hateful, then you likely don’t understand the subject enough to make a joke about it. I believe if you are going to use comedy to bring a truth to someone, you must understand them, and use baby steps. If you offend someone outright you will make them feel as if they are being oppressed, especially if they already feel that way.

The Charlie Hebdo attacks in France shocked the world. Sony being hacked because of a movie shocked the world. Frankly it didn’t shock me. When you go out of your way to upset people who are power-hungry or violent, expect a backlash. They are obviously two very different scenarios, but they are similar in that they started as comedy. So in order to learn from our mistakes, let’s examine these scenarios.

Seth Rogen wrote a comedy about two idiots trying to kill a dictator. To most people, including those under his rule, Kim Jong-Un represents greed and abuse of power. Most citizens don’t have the resources to hack a corporation, and most citizens probably wouldn’t have the political motivation to stop the movie anyway. Therefore it was likely someone with a good deal of status and power that wanted to stand on the side of their leader that orchestrated the hack. This particular someone is currently benefiting from a great deal of corruption, and while they should be given the benefit of the doubt that they were brainwashed to believe it isn’t so, they should be set straight.

The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo printed a picture of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, which is considered to be offensive to most Muslims. The practice isn’t specifically forbidden in the Quran, though there are books of supplemental teachings that forbid visual depictions of the prophet. The issue didn’t escalate until an inflammatory Dutch cartoon depicting the prophet was released in 2005. Protests and violence began to break out over the cartoon in 2006 when Muslim leaders began condemning the cartoons. 

Islam stresses that the prophet was a man, not a god, and idolatry leads to worship that no man deserves. If idolatry is what Muslims are worried about, creating a depiction of the prophet that is defaming him obviously wouldn’t go over well as a joke. If you remind yourself that Muslims face discrimination all around the world and just recently Muslim women lost the right to wear Hijabs in French schools, you certainly wouldn't forgive the killers, but you might sympathize with the frustrations of Muslims living in western society.

Killing people or censoring their speech isn’t a great way to warm them up to your way of life; neither is insensitivity to important cultural differences. While so many of us were concerned with our western ideas being attacked, a village known as Baga in Nigeria was being demolished. Believed to be the work of Boko Haram, the death toll is still unknown, though it is thought to be around 2,000. This attack is assumed to be politically and economically motivated using religion as legitimization, as Boko Haram has been on a land-capturing campaign for months.

If it didn’t happen on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I’m skeptical if the mainstream media would have talked about the attacks in Nigeria at all. I heard about it from an independent news source within a day, and a part of me believes that internet outrage over the lack of coverage is the only reason that it is receiving some screen time on networks now. This is the same group that was responsible for the kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian school girls a few months ago, and that story didn’t receive any coverage until the internet erupted. I only mention this to stress that we can’t forget there are other instances of violence happening every day all around the world, and often times they have more to do with economics and politics than ideological differences.

It isn’t horribly difficult to find world news if you know where to look. However, major media coverage of places and stories that people don’t know anything about can lead to stereotypes and a one dimensional view of a region. The evil or struggle in a region is not the only aspect of it. The culture must also be considered to understand human life in a region, and even still an individual is not shackled to the influences of their environment. No individual should be judged simply by where they are from, and one sided views of the world contribute to these misunderstandings.

Viewing the earth as a whole is difficult, but not impossible. Everything you do has impacts on your environment and other people, sometimes people on the other side of the planet. We are connected because we are all humans that live on the same planet, but true respect and understanding requires acknowledging cultural differences. Good and evil come hand in hand wherever you go; you can’t have one without the other. There will always be minor disagreements, and there will always be great existential conflicts of morality. What matters is how we deal with them, and making each other laugh is a good start.