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From: beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (JB)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.jokes.d
Subject: Re: Some Quotable Quotes
Message-ID: <1645@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 12:15:34 EST
Article-I.D.: sphinx.1645
Posted: Fri Feb 14 12:15:34 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Feb-86 05:32:50 EST
References: <156@ubc-cs.UUCP> <131@midas.UUCP> <145@dg_rtp.UUCP>
Reply-To: beth@sphinx.UUCP (JB)
Organization: Wits' End
Lines: 43
Xref: watmath net.women:9019 net.jokes.d:1515

In article <145@dg_rtp.UUCP> throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP writes:
>> In article <156@ubc-cs.UUCP> andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews) writes:
>> >
>> >From _The Name of the Rose_, by Umberto Eco; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
>> >
>> >          "`...He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but
>> >     neither does he hate it.  Therefore, laughing at evil means not
>> >     preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying
>> >     the power through which good is self-propagating.'"
>
>> [stuff deleted by bdc]
>
>It seems to me that someone who finds much truth in the above quote from
>_The Name of the Rose_ is also a fairly humorless person. [...]
>
>The quote also seems patently false.  To take a stereotype, KKKers laugh
>at blacks.  It anyone under the impression that KKKers therefore don't
>hate blacks?
>
>And doesn't the above quote argue against (what I took to be) the intent
>of the original poster?  The original context was to show that humor
>directed agains women's issues can be hateful and harmfull (an
>oversimplification, but I think gets at the point).  The above quote
>says that humor is ineffective as a weapon, and blunts rather than
>creates hateful impulses. [...]

I don't much like the quote because it seems to imply that, in general,
hate is a good and useful thing.  Even when the hated is in fact horrid
and something that should be fought, hate itself rarely provides impetus
to fight it in an effective manner.  I hate, despise, thoroughly loathe
rape.  My hate tells me I should fight it by finding rapists myself and
either kill or crudely, painfully castrate them (the former only if I'm
in a comparatively sympathetic mood).  Only when I control my hate do I
realize that that is not a long-term effective way to combat rape.  The
hate isn't much help at all - in fact, it's rather self-destructive.

-- 

--JB         (Beth Christy, U. of Chicago, ..!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!beth)

"I once heard the remainder of a colony of ants, which had been partially
 obliterated by a cow's foot, seriously discussing the intentions of the
 gods towards their civilization."   -- Archy the Cockroach