The Wit’s Guide to Skepticism
Or, old dogmas, new tricks
If you raise both eyebrows, you’re shocked. 😲 If you lower both eyebrows, you’re suspicious. 😠 And so, by the transitive rule of eyebrows, one-up/one-down means you’re halfway between shocked and suspicious, which means you’re skeptical.🤨
“If seeing is believing, some skeptics wouldn’t look.”
— Laurence J. Peter
To parse the links between wit and skepticism, please pass the salt. Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, said Joseph Addison. To be skeptical, you take things with a grain of salt. But take too much of it and you end up with high blood pressure.
“One should strive to combine the maximum of impatience with the maximum of skepticism, the maximum of hatred of injustice and irrationality with the maximum of ironic self-criticism.”
— Christopher Hitchens
Who in our era has combined skepticism with wit like Christopher Hitchens? His deep distrust of religion combined with his politely vicious verbal dexterity made him a late-career superstar. But then, the one big thing he had zero skepticism about was George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, despite his advice to “recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows that he is right.”
“You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.”
— Dorothy Parker
These days, it makes sense to be a skeptic of skeptics: Are they really unsure? Waiting for all the facts? Just asking questions? Or are they dogmatics in skeep’s clothing? Consider the climate skeptics who are funded by the fossil fuel industry. Maybe they do have legitimate doubts, though maybe the size of those doubts is directly proportional to the size of their subsidies from the Society of Petroleum Industry Leaders (SPILL).
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
— Upton Sinclair
The single historical figure who best represents the value of skepticism is Edward Topsell, a 17th-century English cleric most famous for his 1609 book The History of Four-Footed Beasts. This zoological tract is upfront in its methodology: He doesn’t claim to have “related all that is ever said of these Beasts, but only so much as is said by many.” If he lived today, he’d be the guy who’s constantly forwarding stories he hasn’t read.
“It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.”
— Ambrose Bierce
Among Topsell’s choice nuggets of passed-down wisdom: Weasels give birth through their ears, apes are terrified of snails, chameleons survive on air alone, and dragons hate the taste of apples and lettuce. And of course there were unicorns, manticores, and the fearsome lamia, a beast that was one-third goat, one-third bear, and one-third comely maiden who would “lay open their breastes, and by the beauty thereof, entice them to come neare to conference, and so having them within their compasse, they devoure and kill them.” Be skeptical of the lamia!
“To the naive, skepticism often seems malicious perversity: ‘Only some secret enemy in the inward degenerate nature of man,’ said Topsell, ‘could lead anyone to doubt the existence of the unicorn.’”
— Bergen Evans
Move over, Chekhov’s gun
I’m pleased as spiked punch to announce that Anjali Chandrashekar will be September’s Riposte Card artist. Anjali is an Indian cartoonist and illustrator based in New York, and I commissioned her based on seeing this single cartoon of hers in The New Yorker:
To ensure you get the original piece of postcard art she’s created for Get Wit Quick — as well as the previous six stellar Riposte Cards! — subscribe today.
Quote Vote
“I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.”
— Wilson Mizner
Education! Such a valuable thing, especially when it gives children something to do all day!
That was Issue No. 217 of Get Wit Quick, the newsletter that gives birth through its ears until otherwise informed. Did I really write a book called Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting? If so, why haven’t you read it? And how do we know tapping the ❤️ below even does anything?
Thanks again for my morning chuckle, and I really loved that fitted sheet cartoon when I saw it. Reminded me of once standing outside my campus office, with two other highly educated female professors, discussing the best way to fold a fitted sheet! One of them insisted they had the perfect method, which resulted in a perfectly folded oblong. I was and still am highly skeptical, and I follow the - roll it up in a ball-school of folding!