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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Surprise, fear, and ruthless efficiency...
Philosophers have come up with a variety of theories about why people laugh. No one reason explains it. It seems to be a combination of relief, feelings of superiority, absurdity, and playfulness. I've always thought no matter what other reasons exist for laughter, it is very often a release of fear. Laughter is a sort of dissociation from your fear, a spontaneous recognition that something awful has happened -- to the other guy! Not you. Phew! Your relief releases a giggle fit as Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe poke each other's eyes out; you guffaw as Monty Python's Black Knight stumps about on his newly amputated legs.
What makes that funny?
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Pssst...wait! Shhhh! We have to be quiet... I've got to say something while I have the chance, quick before we begin...please keep this on the lowdown. My life depends on it!
I was up all night trying to come up with a theme for this Morning Open Thread and still haven't got anything. Shhhhh! The pressure is on... I'm at the end of my rope, because the readership of MOT diaries are really scary people... I think they might have their own secret militia group, and I know they're reading stuff off my computer. One of their crew, I'm pretty sure, drove past my house late last night, real slow, headlights dimmed... I'm panicked. I still don't have a theme, and they know it.
How do they know? I've been hiding in my closet with my laptop for hours.
They're about to come in so I have to make this quick: Help me! I need a theme, fast. These are really dangerous people and if I don't have a theme that gets them commenting about the weather and their dogs and their latest vacations, I don't know what they'll do... you'll probably never see me again. Anything, really! I'm desperate over here.
Shhhh! They're coming...
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Surprise, fear, and ruthless efficiency...
Is it funny because it's true? Because it's absurd? Is it funny because it's an awful thing to imagine and we're relieved that it isn't really happening to us in the here and now?
I'll try to walk you through the associative thinking that led me to ask these questions... I was looking for a theme for this morning's MOT and it occurred to me to look to history; what has happened in the past on this date, April 8? I did a google search and there on some random internet history page I read that Ponce de Leon first set foot on the new land of La Florida on this date in 1513. Further research lands Ponce de Leon near the Florida Keys on April 2. Which was it? The internet is frustrating that way.
But it was around this time of year, in 1513, that Florida was claimed in the name of "The Catholic Kings," Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille. The notion that Ponce de Leon was looking for a "Fountain of Youth" was really just a marketing ploy. Spain wanted to settle the place, fast, before the French could take it, so it circulated embelished stories of gold and jewels and magic waters and slaves for the taking. Give us your veteran Soldiers of Fortune, your hyper-religious mercenaries, your cut-throat marauders yearning to be free...
These were incredibly brutal people, alive during an incredibly brutal era:
Everywhere in sixteenth-century Europe, it was assumed that religious unity was necessary for political unity, but only in Spain was there such a sense of urgency in enforcing religious conformity. Spain's population was more heterogeneous than that of any other European nation, and it contained significant nonChristian communities...
The Inquisition, a state-controlled Castilian tribunal, authorized by papal bull in 1478, that soon extended throughout Spain, had the task of enforcing uniformity of religious practice. It was originally intended to investigate the sincerity of Conversos, especially those in the clergy, who had been accused of being crypto-Jews. Tomas de Torquemada, a descendant of Conversos, was the most effective and notorious of the Inquisition's prosecutors...
In the exploration and exploitation of the New World, Spain found an outlet for the crusading energies that the war against the Muslims had stimulated...
Tomas de Torquemada, thought to be personally responsible for the deaths of some 2,000 Spaniards, was still in control of a powerful Spanish Inquisition, granted independence from papal oversight, when Ponce de Leon landed on the shores of Florida. Spanish Catholicism was quickly exported to the New World. Over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, 150 Spanish fortress-missions were built in
La Florida where the Timucua, Guale, Mocama, and Apalachee natives were interned and inculturated. A University of Florida
website blithely summarizes:
"Especially noteworthy is the role the missions played in converting the Indians to Christianity and making them loyal subjects of the Spanish Crown so they would labor in support of St. Augustine's colonists."
I shudder to think what conversion of these "slaves for Jesus" entailed.
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I'm thinking about all this and I still haven't decided on a theme for this morning's MOT. I feel overwhelmed. This is turning into a grueling research project. Should I simplify and just focus on a historical narrative about Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth? Should I hone in more on the Jesuit order and their role as conquistadors? Or should I write about the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition in general? Why do I feel this sense of forboding over the current spate of attempts to thrust RFRAs in our faces? What next?
I do a quick google search of "the Spanish Inquisition," and the first three hits are a Wikipedia entry, a "How Stuff Works" page ("How the Spanish Inquisition Worked" -- very useful tips), and a Monty Python video of their famous "Spanish Inquisition" skit. Really not helping. I could click on links all day. The internet is frustrating that way.
I'm confused. Should I laugh, or cry, or be angry, and stay hiding in my closet? None of this is funny at all. Humor is completely inappropriate. But I've run out of time and the MOTley crew has arrived now... and here I sit with the conquistadors of Florida and the Spanish Inquisition and Monty Python all trying to fit into the same MOT theme. It's just not making any sense. Please don't disappear me.
This is all I got -- just a couple of thoughts for the day: Why do people laugh at awful, scary things? Does laughing help us forget to be afraid?
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Surprise, fear, and ruthless efficiency...
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Grab your cup and pull up a chair.
What's on your mind?