Today, we speak of silliness.
There once was a man who was very silly. There once was a woman who was very silly. Sometimes he was a wit; sometimes she was immature. And then sometimes he was immature and sometimes she was a rebel. Other times they both cried about themselves and their odd shape in the world and then other times they sighed with relief that they were alone in their incomprehensible comprehension. But a lonely world is always hungry and can devour the unwary which the silly invariably are and so at different times and in different ways they were punished for this quality.
Sometimes he was dangerous and sometimes she was insane, however, he was never called insane unless he was also large and unattractive. If she was large and unattractive her time being labeled insane lasted exponentially longer.
If he had a great deal of money and had the sense to keep it then his silliness was not perceived as a threat. But if he was handsome and silly (and not rich) this reduced his sex appeal to those who cared or rendered him harmless to neutral parties or even increased his desirability to those who feel threatened by too many qualities at once.
If she was lovely then her silliness was endearing; if she was rich and lovely then she was a divine seer, if she was rich but not lovely then her silliness was eccentricity. However, if her silliness was soft without sharp edges then relatives declared her insane and took her money. It was for the best they said, their best, but for the best all around. If no relatives existed, then managers, handlers, agents and/or lawyers step in and play the relative role.
The question was, is, -- could he, could she stop their silliness when they needed to? And if they could stop their silliness was it really Silly? If they could not stop their silliness at funerals and during sex or when operating on patients in the ER then flags were raised by the authorities. If they remained stalwart in their silliness when the authorities arrived silently, singly or in large numbers with a loud bang then the universe tipped. No one knows what to do with that kind of recalcitrant silliness. If supporters exist, will they be sucked into dire ramifications if they speak up in defense of such silliness? Careful consideration is called for; experience has shown that nothing dire is enjoyable unless one is a masochist but we are not speaking of masochism. We speak of silliness.
The fate of the silly is also affected by the presence of talent, but only talent that the society perceives as an asset. A well-known example of a silly talented man is Amadeus Mozart. Talented, silly (the infamous giggle) and yet look what happened to him. Talent is not an impenetrable shield. Nietzsche would have been considered silly but he was Austrian which is almost German and so his silliness must be a deep philosophical guise. This guise propped up his silliness until his use ran out and his insanity was declared soon after.
Long ago, if one had the money and time a man could search for a place that fit and where he was silly all alone and no one cared or maybe he was worshipped, but that is dangerous for old gods are routinely sacrificed for new gods so that is best avoided.
Silly Women (if they had money and power) have only had this freedom to travel to look for their true Silly home for a few generations. These silly women arose only from countries of money and power for only those countries seem to care if their rich powerful citizens of either gender exhibit the silly trait. Only places of force and rectitude believe that a line exists (invisible but theorized to exist by Kant) separating the silly from the non-silly. For a time after the fin-de-siecle, silliness was labeled hysteria, but that term faded from favor when the operations began.
Next time, we will consider whether the silly man or woman is still silly if they find a place that either accepts them or doesn’t comprehend the subtleness of silly versus non-silly behavior.
