Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." I'm sure we all heard this line chanted in a sing-song voice on the playground as kids. But even in elementary school, the saying was far from true. Because words hurt, and they often hurt more than sticks or stones.
As a child, the hurtful words came in blunt statements. At that age, we hadn't grasped the concept of hiding our true feelings behind cleverly disguised masks. But soon after, we developed one of the oldest defense mechanisms in the book-sarcasm.
According to Merriam-Webster, sarcasm is "a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain." This means that by definition, sarcasm is meant to hurt others. It is meant to express our true feelings in a form that can be passed off as humor.
A friend of mine likened sarcasm to drinking. She asserted that just like we blame a stupid behavior on being too drunk to know any better, we point out flaws in others by claiming that we were just being sarcastic. My friend noted that often, we attribute actions that we would be too shy or scared to do sober to being drunk because inebriation excuses our behaviors. In the same way, she explained that asking a person offended by sarcasm why he can't "take a joke" provides an easy way out; sarcasm allows us to say things that we think are true and claim that they are nothing more than humor.
But what does this say about our generation, our university culture, our society that we find cutting others down to be so funny? Why are we the kind of people that choose to boost our images of ourselves by damaging the reputations and the feelings of others?
Perhaps we live in a world of dark humor because we live in a troubling world. We make jokes about situations that are far from funny so that we can pretend that the world we live in is a little bit better. Things like eating disorders, racism and mental disabilities are serious issues that aren't at all funny-unless we, for better or worse, making light of them.
Even if you have never talked about a serious societal issue in a sarcastic or joking manner (which is the case with very few of us), I would put money on the fact that we have almost all used a phrase like, "That's so gay," or, "You're retarded," at least once in our lives. Since when are homosexuality or mental deficiency negative qualities that are acceptable to pick fun at or incorporate into casual vernacular? Moreover, I bet plenty of us have told a blonde joke or made a racist or sexist comment to get a rise out of a crowd. Comments such as these cause us to regress, even if for just a moment, into a state in which physical appearance is a person's most important feature or white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males are allowed to subjugate the rest of society.
The scariest thing is that we don't just use sarcasm to make light of social issues or stereotypes on a broad scale. We use mean humor frequently and almost unconsciously in such a way that it personally affects friends and acquaintances-the people we see and interact with in our daily lives. I was in a friend's room with a group of people this past weekend, and the majority of the statements at which individuals in the room laughed were sarcastic punches taken at another person in the room. From a woman's sexual behavior to her inability to keep a secret, nothing was off limits.
The problem we face in such situations is that we never seem to think about how it feels to be the brunt of a sarcastic assault. With regard to sarcasm, the Golden Rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is rarely followed. As long as we are not suffering the attacks, we feel pretty good about ourselves. Most of us have been the butt of a mean joke at one time or another, but when we're the ones talking, the ones seeking attention, we seem to forget our past pain. In fact, the more that people laugh, the more likely we are to use cruel sarcasm, all the while never thinking about how it feels to be mocked.
If we're not careful, the end result of our sarcastic society will be that we will end up desensitized to others' feelings even more than we already are. Just as we seldom flinch at the saying, "That's so gay," it is very possible that phrases mocking an increasing number of affiliations and orientations will sneak into our everyday vocabulary. And even if they don't, every time we make a sarcastic comment about another person, we will further remove ourselves from being a society in which people honestly care about others.
As one of my best friends in high school replied to me each time I made a sarcastic comment, "Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit." If this is indeed the case, we smart Duke students should strive to adopt a humor that is more befitting of our intelligence-a humor that does depend upon degrading others.
Sarah Hostetter is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Thursday.
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