Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.
Interpretation
Irony serves a purpose in critical moments, but if overused, it can lead to complacency in unfavorable situations.
In this quote, Lewis Hyde suggests that while irony can be a powerful tool in addressing or reflecting on harsh realities, relying on it too heavily can result in individuals becoming comfortable in their constraints or unfavorable circumstances. People may begin to accept their limitations as part of their identity, mistaking the irony of their situation for genuine contentment, thereby losing the drive to seek change or liberation.
In practice
In a seminar discussing coping mechanisms, one could use this quote to highlight the dangers of irony in dealing with serious issues.
All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she has extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity.
Unlike the sale of a commodity, the giving of a gift tends to establish a relationship between the parties involved. When gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges.
Better to operate with detachment, then; better to have a way but infuse it with a little humor; best, to have no way at all but to have instead the wit constantly to make one's way anew from the materials at hand.
But neither money nor machines can create. They shuttle tokens of energy, but they do not transform. A civilization based on them puts people out of touch with their creative powers.
An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.
For the slow labor of realizing a potential gift the artist must retreat to those Bohemias, halfway between the slums and the library, where life is not counted by the clock and where the talented may be sure they will be ignored until that time, if it ever comes, when their gifts are viable enough to be set free and survive in the world.
Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people if they have uncultured souls.
At the core of every religion is the belief that we care for everyone....It's not too late to help a neighbor in need and to do it with the swiftness, expertise, generosity and love that resides in the best of who we are.
War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.
It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.
According to the estimate of a prominent advertising firm, above 90 per cent, of the earning capacity of the prominent nostrums is represented by their advertising. And all this advertising is based on the well-proven theory of the public's pitiable ignorance and gullibility in the vitally important matter of health.
Everybody who went to Vietnam carries his or her own version of the war. Only 10 percent engaged in combat; the American elephant, pursuing the Vietnamese grasshopper, was extraordinarily heavy with logistical support.
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