Comedy, Schacenfreude, and Morality

[caroljane]

When I first read Rand's novels as an earnest teenage Rand-seeker, the only parts that made me laugh were not intended to be funny, and yes Ayn, I felt guilty about laughing at them.

Couldn't help it though.

This is no way in disrespect of Rand or her philosophy. or her novelistic skills which are considerable. The Bible has also had me roaring in the aisles at times, and I have said so to my cousin the Rt. Rev JL Matheson who agreed that it has its funny side.

[caroljane]

What is the German word (or words) that cover the English hubris? To my usage, schadenfreude is less deplorable when the suffering is due to hubris. But that is just me.

Hubris is the latinized spelling of greek word. English is composed of words "borrowed" wholesale from other languages including greek, latin, german, yiddish, spanish, japanese, chinese and many others. Shakespeare once wrote "the Greeks have a word for it...;" and English speakers replied "they sure do, and we are going to make it OUR word too..;."

Ba'al Chatzaf

I have a lot of hubris. I did something really, really hubristic right here on OL and nobody even noticed.

[caroljane]

Yes, we've borrowed the word like other useful ones to express embarrassing, or self-pitying feelings, or mawkishly sentimental emotions and so on. English grabs every word, plagiarizes without shame from other languages, to continue to own every word in the world, a million and counting.

The richness in vocabulary of the English language is awesome indeed.

I veritably "fell in love" with English from the moment I heard my first English word as a kid. To this day, that love has remained as 'passionate' as ever.

I don't really know why that is so, but quite a few non-native speakers of English seem to feel the same way.

Despite the irregularities in spelling, where pronunciation and orthography often don't match; despite certain grammatical intricacies (like for example the many forms in which the future tense can be expressed), and despite its many other 'subtleties', English...

This is a good example of the benevolent universe, X. Without those things you name above, I would never have been able to earn a decent living.