Topics Ethics

Question Is it morally right to make fun of someone I don't even know because it's funny? The person doesn't know they are being made fun of and they most likely will never find out they were being made fun of, so, their feelings aren't in jeopardy and it's entertaining for me.

Accepted:
February 14, 2008

Comments

Although the issues aren't exactly the same, you might want to take a look at Peter Smith's answer to question 2012. The fact that someone doesn't know they are being mocked or deceived doesn't imply that they aren't harmed. True, if they never find out, then their feelings may not be hurt (though see what follows), but many people -- I'm one -- find the thought of a life in which they are blissfully ignorant of how badly people think of then quite a bit less desirable than one in which they know what people really think.

Now of course, it's not an all or none affair. Human nature being what it is, my profession being what it is, and having a certain sense of my own quirks, I'm reasonably confident that some people make fun of me behind my back. (I would hardly be the first teacher in that position.) This doesn't bother me, since I'm non-neurotic enough not to think that most people look at me that way. In particular, I think I have a reasonable idea (no doubt not completely accurate) of how the people whose opinions I care about most think of me. If I'm wrong, of course, I may never know. But in that case, I think that would be a misfortune.

But now let's turn things around. How would I see myself if I realized that there's someone I constantly mock behind his back? I think that would make a meaner, sadder, smaller person than I aspire to be. I don't want to be the sort of person who takes pleasure in looking down my nose at someone else. The people I know whom I most admire and most aspire to be like don't do that. They're less likely to see the mote in the other's eye while missing the beam in their own.

And if I'm the sort of person who's inclined to mock others behind their backs, how sure can I really be that my mockery won't harm them -- directly, by getting back to them and hurting their feelings, or less directly by affecting the way others treat them? If I'm indifferent enough toward them to take pleasure in laughing at what I see as their stupidity and shortcomings, how likely is it that I'm really taking the care that would be required to insulate them from my attitude?

There's a certain crude utilitarian-style outlook according to which all pleasure counts on the plus side of the moral equation; it's just a matter of what the sum comes out to be. But that's a disputable view. To take a much more clearly malignant case, if I take pleasure in inflicting pain on underserving victims, my pleasure makes things worse overall rather than making them less bad than the torture by itself would be. Or so it seems to me.

There are few of us who've never gossipped nor bad-mouthed others behind their backs. And we may be especially likely to do this in a case of the sort you have in mind: one where we don't even know the person. It's a common human failing, and so long as it's not habitual nor truly cruel, it probably counts as at worst a venial sin. But it's not a desirable way to behave all the same.