Ironize the Edifice

“Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!” ~Nietzsche

“Ironize the Edifice” is one of those deliciously ambiguous phrases that sounds like it came out of a Nietzschean fever dream after too much black coffee and Schopenhauer.

Well, yes, but it is so vital, so paramount, that it needs to be pronounced. Perhaps even pontificated. Why? Because otherwise, we are left with rusty armor, dull swords, and bent spears. Otherwise, our wisdom decays. Our humor atrophies. Our humility sours into hubris.

The ability to ironize the edifice is the ability to sidestep certainty and comfort and the hubris that can come from lazy contentedness. It’s going full-fledged Monty Python on “the meaning of life”. Irony becomes a bridge between serious mortal angst and humorous amoral laughter. This bridge is less a climb onto a summit and more a game of Hopscotch into absurd awareness.

As Max Planck said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Here, shooting oneself in the foot is a must. You cannot nail down a foot with a hole in it. And so you are free to keep climbing, or keep falling, whichever you need to keep the cycle going. Because keeping the cycle going is all that matters. Staying ahead of the curve is the only path that doesn't become a cage. The only way forward is to remain ahead of the curve—every other path eventually turns into a prison. Ride the bleeding edge or become another dead and blooded thing the edge leaves behind.

And yet, even this edifice should be ironized. To ironize the edifice of “staying ahead of the curve” is the ultimate staying ahead of the curve action you could take. The moment you turn “staying ahead of the curve” into an identity, a moral virtue, a lifestyle brand, or — god forbid — a new spiritual posture, you have already fallen behind the only curve that actually matters: the one that curves around every attempt to stay permanently ahead.

To ironize even the edifice of staying ahead is not just clever meta-one-upmanship. It is the only move that keeps the game honest. Because, if you stop ironizing it you become the new dogma.  

I

f you ironize everything except that one posture, you become the new sacred exception. If you ironize the ironizing itself in the next breath, you’re still playing the infinite regression game, just with more steps.

The only semi-stable position left is something like: “I am currently pretending that staying ahead of the curve (including this very pretense) is important, while simultaneously reserving the right to laugh at the whole ridiculous costume (mask, armory) at any moment.” That laugh is the only thing that never gets fully captured by the curve. So yeah, declaring “even this edifice must be ironized” is probably the closest thing to genuine ahead-of-the-curve behavior that exists.

Until someone writes the even more annoying next line: “And yet, even the ironizing of the ironizing of staying ahead must itself be ironized.” And the whole hall of mirrors starts laughing at itself in an infinite regression of absurd irony. For Irony is the guardian of intellectual oxygen.

The ultimate litmus test: how lightly (and royally) can you laugh at the whole philosophical game? As Nietzsche said, “I would really allow myself to order the ranks of philosophers according to the rank of their laughter — right up to those who are capable of golden laughter.”

Or, even more directly, as Denis Diderot said, “The first step toward philosophy is incredulity.”

The most literal architectural definition of ironizing the edifice is to take the biggest, most pompous, most self-certain structure of belief/ideology/institution you can find and simply have a laugh at it. “Golden laughter”. Toss it into an SNL skit. Prop it up in a Rick & Morty cartoon and poke fun at it. Fill it up with helium, and when it gets too big for the room, pop it with the needle of your satire.

The ironizing gaze is often more structurally devastating than any manifesto or Molotov cocktail.

Just be sure to also have a laugh at having a laugh lest the hubris of your humor become the cross you inadvertently bare. Go meta if need be. Elevate yourself above the battlefield of your own self-inflicted irony. Non-attach yourself from yourself. Build a very impressive philosophical edifice and then, the moment it starts feeling solid or sacred or “finally, I got it”, you immediately turn around and ironize your own cathedral. You melt down your own golden idol into a puddle of fool’s gold. You transform the altar into a punchline. You recognize your “feet of clay.”

This way, the edifice is never allowed to forget that it is, after all, still made of language, ego, pattern-seeking meat, and cosmic LARP (live-action role-playing). The edifice is never more than procrastinating rusty armor. The edifice is always illusory invulnerability. And only the deeply humorous and lovingly ironic nod has the power to strip the “Emperor” of his clothing. Thus, revealing the power of absolute vulnerability.

Because once the illusion is seen with humor rather than horror, the armor doesn't need to be dramatically torn off. It simply stops mattering. It becomes a funny old costume you can finally hang in the museum of your former self. It becomes a worn-out mask, an uncouth truth.

Absolute vulnerability isn't achieved by courageously ripping the armor off. It's achieved when the costume becomes so transparently ridiculous that wearing it any longer would be the truly embarrassing thing.

The lovingly ironic nod is a wink at the abyss. It’s a wince with a humorous twist. And it is perhaps the most efficient spiritual weapon ever discovered. For it disarms without fighting. It undresses without violence. It reveals the emperor, the tailor, the audience, and the concept of power itself, all at once, as merely one big hilarious costume party. It’s all pretense and hard makeup. It’s all masks masking themselves. It’s all beautifully absurd and terribly funny.

And that’s okay. All the more reason to satirize, to ironize, to weaponize humor and use it to pierce the through the heart of God.

Image source:

Astronaut by Kacper Kieć GfX

About the Author:

Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.

This article (Ironize the Edifice) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.