— Hannibal Rising

It is not simply that people nowadays care about appearances more than before, it is that beyond appearances there is nothing. They are nothing more than the sum of their masks: remove the mask and you'll see another one, like layers of onion that you keep peeling until you reach the core. Then you'll be caught by surprise, because the core is not even rotten, it's empty. Perfect bodies and empty spirits.

Describing them as actors would miss the point, because actors have a life beyond the stage and a face behind the mask. Mannequins would be a better term.

Freud and Humor:
Freud thinks of the humorous attitude as a kind of defensive mechanism, and in fact as “the highest of the defensive processes.” In displacing the psychic energy naturally summoned for one affect into the service of another, humor allows us to guard against depression and despair in the face of the necessities of nature. Humor empowers us to resist what reality tells us it is hopeless to resist against.

In the humorist, Freud claims that we find an Ego that forsakes the “reality principle” in favor of the “pleasure principle,” and in so doing approximates the processes involved in psychopathology. Humor understands reality, but refuses to be constrained by it. Instead, it strives for pleasure, even in the face of overwhelming circumstances. In refusing to suffer in the face of adversity and demanding pleasure from the world, humor rebels against the natural order of things, liberating one from the chains of nature. In these ways, Freud considers humor a form of neurosis.

— Laughing at Nothing

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Selena Gomez also suffers from the disease (lupus nephritis) and had to undergo renal transplant.

For in laughter all that is evil comes together, but is pronounced holy and absolved by its own bliss; and if this is my alpha and omega, that all that is heavy and grave should become light; all that is body, dancer; all that is spirit bird—and verily, that is my alpha and omega: Oh how should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Socrates, constantly aspired toward the ideal without ever resting in the arrogantly complacent belief that it had been reached.

— Laughing at Nothing

A humorist possesses a precious and praiseworthy talent. It is a talent with which civilized societies have at times been uneasy, however. In making the world comedic and a matter for joking, the humorist has been called not only a fool, but also a dangerous influence upon the masses. Comedy, jokes, and humor are potentially subversive tools that, in their power to make the dangers of the world look small, also have the power to overthrow and destroy the serious spirit of reverence that tradition and authority have bestowed upon our leaders and social institutions.
Its power to bring all that is serious and threatening down to earth makes it both the perfect weapon against arrogance and the perfect tonic for the oppressed.

— Laughing at Nothing

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But methinks I hear the philosophers saying ‘tis a miserable thing for a man to be foolish, to err, mistake, and know nothing truly. Nay rather, this is to be a man.

— In Praise of Folly

I wish to stress that the humorous attitude is not simply a passive reaction to the world’s stimuli. It is, rather, a talent or a capacity for reinterpretation. The humorist, upon encountering an incongruity, demands of it that it make some contribution to the enjoyment of life.

Of course, just as a person can be overly serious, so too may a person be insufficiently serious. A person incapable of seriousness is just a buffoon who refuses to think things through or to deliberate over consequences and implications. However, a humorous attitude is not the same as an attitude lacking in seriousness. It is, rather, an ability to see things within the context of multiple perspectives. Humor, as Bakhtin has pointed out, in its fullest sense “purifies and completes”our seriousness rather than denying it.

Human dignity, it seems to me, is not so much a matter of what we accomplish successfully, but of our willingness to continue striving toward what we think is good and worthy. In remaining dissatisfied and discontented with the world as it is, the nihilist retains a strange sort of rebellious, heroic, and admirable dignity.