Poor David’s Almost Humanist Almanack

At some point during the elliptical installments known as the Covidian Almanack, I must have registered my view of the phrase “in these uncertain times.” Most things made repellent by repetition attract the gimlet eye of the Almanack, so it is a safe bet that this empty phrase has come up for scrutiny somewhere in the memory hole corpus.

However, during my campaign to rid us of poxic phraseology, I’ve observed a phenomenon associated with certainty. Whatever topical subject you choose – and there is a smorgasbord of choices – certitude is almost always accompanied by humorlessness. So closely coupled are these qualities that I think it should be defined hereafter as The Kipp Disorder, picked up by the popular press and parroted – with unleavened utter certainty.

TKD applies for now to a limited number of people, while the rest of us mush on with as much good cheer as we can muster. For the afflicted, though, Mildred Ratched seems like the life of the party.

Is TKD, like the dreaded COVID, which, I am told, destroys our ability to taste and smell, gnawing away our sense of humor? Can face-mask zealots have a good chuckle at their certainty that the sieves either prevent human destruction or warrant tea-party tantrums? Can today’s observers of the kultursmog find some measure of levity in being lectured in oppression by overpaid, undereducated athletes or in the daily antics of a coarse reality-show commander-in-chief? If the preceding questions cause a noticeable increase in heartrate and an urge to post vitriolic comments, it is possible that good humor has taken leave and TKD has set in.

And may God bless you; progress is often achieved by fervor rather than humor. For every Torquemada under the bed, there is a Professor Martin Ludher prepared to advance the cause of progress. Neither fellow known for their lightheartedness.

A liberal serving of humor in convulsive times is not without merit, though. Not long after Professor Ludher completed his anguished campaign to reform the Catholic Church, the unusual Frenchman Francois Rabelais dedicated his satirical book Gargantua with this poem:

Dear readers, who this book may read,
Let ev’ry worry slip away.
There’s neither scandal here, nor creed,
Nor any illness to allay.
It’s true there’s no perfection here
For you to note – except for laughs,
Which are my only theme, I fear.
So, noting the gloom each reader mostly quaffs:
It’s best of laughter, not of tears, to sing,
For laughter is the proper human thing.

Gargantua urinates on Paris and drowns 200,000 people, by the way, giving psychologists and English professors 350 years’ worth of material to analyze. But it remains funny, despite the analysts. And Rabelais retains a fondness worthy of the adjective Rabelaisian, referring to a style “distinguished by exuberance of imagination and language combined with extravagance and coarseness of humor and satire.”

Topps, the first name in baseball trading cards, issued a collector’s card featuring Dr. Anthony F. Ouchey, throwing out the first pitch of the truncated major league baseball season. F. Ouchey uncorked a 20 mph fastball that landed down and in – about 15 feet wide and 15 feet short. The $10 F. Ouchey card is Topps’ best seller, achieving a record-high run of 51,512 cards. Later, the newly famous physician encouraged Americans to wear goggles and/or face shields.

To halt the spread of TKD and restore a sense of humor to the land, developing an aptitude for less certainty has high potential. Henry Louis Mencken, to whom everyone should return regularly in any times – uncertain, unprecedented, unpredictable or otherwise – laid it out splendidly:

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.”

 This leaves plenty of room for a snicker or two, or even a mirthful demeanor ( of which HL Mencken is a marvelous example ). It usually takes me until December to trot out one of my favorite biblical quotes, but in an unprecedented year, it is wise to recall that “a merry heart doeth good like medicine.” The good, the proper human thing, in this case, is a reduction in incidence of The Kipp Disorder. Scolding, hectoring, disturbing, destroying, boycotting, demanding, correcting, enforcing, mandating, rioting – all begone! In their place, welcome uncertainty and a merry sense of humor.

With our new F. Ouchey goggles on, the opportunities for mirth are limitless.