Eeyore is a smart ass.  Well, a smart donkey really, but it comes to the same thing.  When asked by Rabbit what he was doing floating down the river, feet in the air, Eeyore gave the typical smart ass reply:

“I’ll give you three guesses, Rabbit.  Digging holes in the ground?  Wrong.  Leaping from branch to branch of a young oak tree? Wrong.  Waiting for someone to help me out of the river?  Right.  Give Rabbit time, and he always gets the right answer.”

When asked by Pooh whether he had been bounced into the river as a joke or an accident, Eeyore again gives a smart ass response:

“I didn’t stop to ask, Pooh.  Even at the very bottom of the river I didn’t stop to say to myself. ‘Is this a Hearty Joke, or the Merest Accident?’  I just floated to the surface and said to myself, ‘It’s wet.’  If you know what I mean.”

Sarcasm and satire go with pessimism.  They are part of the package.  At first its a temptation, then a habit, and finally an art form.

After having been introduced to Tao by Pooh, and to its finer points by Piglet, it has become clear to me that sarcasm and satire are inherently Taoist activities.  A thing which I never had suspected.  This is best illustrated by the following quote from the obscure but important Taoist sage Pun-tzu:

A farmer went down to his fields every day to work.  When the sun was high overhead he would stop work and eat his lunch under a large tree on the edge of his field.  As soon as he would spread out his lunch, a black bird would start to caw and scold and finally poop all over the farmer’s lunch.  This happened day after day, so finally the farmer went to a nearby city to get help.

He first went to a Confucian teacher and explained the problem.  The Master presented the problem to a class of his students and they argued the pros and cons of various solutions for hours.  Finally they told the farmer that he should cut down the tree.

The farmer was unwilling to loose such a beautiful tree which also provided shade for his lunch and afternoon nap, so he went to a Zen monk.  The monk responded with the following koan:

There was a fisherman walking along the river when a large fish poked his head out of the water and said, “If you are a fisherman I will eat you, but if you are not a fisherman I will eat your children.”  The fisherman replied.  “My wife ran off yesterday with the baker”.  The fish smiled and said, “Now do you understand?”  At that moment the fisherman reached Enlightenment.

The farmer sat with his legs crossed in front of the Monk and thought for a very long time.  Finally he said, “What does this have to do with bird droppings?”  The Zen monk reached over and picked up a large stick and hit the farmer in the back of the head.  “Ah, now I understand”, said the farmer and left.

So finally the farmer found a Taoist sage.  Warily, for his head was still very sore, he presented the problem to the sage.  The Taoist replied almost at once, “Eat your lunch somewhere else.”  The farmer went home and lived a happy and prosperous life.

Sarcasm and satire are a little like the Asian martial arts.  The secret is to use your opponent’s strength and rage against him.  When someone makes a really pompous, smug, or just plain dumb ass comment, there is always the perfect opportunity to deflect it and turn it against him.  Once you get the hang of it, it is easy.  Your smart ass replies just start to flow out of you like water almost without thought or willing.  They just say themselves.

And the opportunities, oh the opportunities.  All you need is a pompous, self inflated, self gratifying, self centered, mean, nasty, or thoughtless victim.  These days a lot of people qualify.  The most fun are the rich and powerful.  A smart ass reply to the CEO or even a vice president can make your day — and ruin your career.  In fact, if you care about your career you need to mind your tongue.  And whatever you do, never, never write sarcastic memos.

I learned this the hard way.  I had started up a group to target a new business opportunity and it was going quite well.  Too well, in fact.  As long as the business was not causing many problems or doing very well, everyone left us alone.  But once we started getting some success, the inevitable transfer from engineering to marketing came.  Now an Eeyore type has enough trouble anywhere in the business world, but waking up one day and finding yourself in the marketing department is a rude shock indeed.  So I wrote the infamous yellow tie memo, pointing out that the only real qualifications my new boss had to manage me were a blue suit and a yellow tie.  It was written in the finest satirical style and became an instant underground classic.  And, of course, made it impossible for me to work there anymore.  I don’t write memos any more.

My favorite targets are people who spend their lives asserting themselves.  Asserting yourself is too often simply another name for being domineering, pushy, and rude.  For assuming that you are better than anyone else and deserve special treatment.  Now there have always been these kind of people in any society.  The trouble with modern western society is that we have come to look on this as a positive quality.  We have chosen these people for our leaders.  We not only condone, but praise this type of behavior.  Business wants to hire managers and sales people who are aggressive and assertive.  If you don’t get the job because your not assertive enough, you can go into assertiveness therapy or take one of a thousand seminars.  Lots of nice people are turned into pushy bastards this way.

Someone asserting himself all over your lunch makes an ideal target for smart ass replies.  Often they are too caught up in themselves to really appreciate even your most clever responses.  However, they usually notice that you are not making the appropriate submissive gestures.  So if they can hurt you, one way or another, it is best to be quite careful.  With practice a really talented smart ass is able to subtly weave sarcasm into superficially submissive responses.  Since your assertive lunch partner will likely miss it entirely, this is merely a small private pleasure.  But it can help get you through the lunch.

Even when attacking someone who is being pompous or silly, don’t allow yourself to get pulled down to their level.  A good smart ass reply is like throwing a glass of cold water in their face.  It should get their attention and remind them that they are saying or doing something mean or hurtful or silly or dumb.  But it should not really hurt them.  If you start using satire to assert yourself and attack someone with the intent of really hurting them, you have missed the point entirely and become no better than your opponent.

Body language is sometimes very effective as a smart ass response.  A raised eye brow, a look of astonishment or surprise, or even a wry smile can effectively poke fun at many an over-inflated ego.  But there is a special danger in body language for pessimists.  It is pretty easy to stop writing memos.  In fact, you can go ahead and write them and then just tear them up rather than send them.  It is harder, but possible, to mind your tongue when the situation calls for discretion.  But controlling body language is all but impossible for me and many other pessimists.  What I think is usually written all over my face and this gets me in no end of trouble.  At least I recognize this.  I would no more attempt to play poker for money than try to make a living as a rock star.  But then a gambling pessimist is pretty much of an oxymoron in the first place.  Given our need to learn to control body language generally, using it for sarcastic responses should only be done with the greatest caution.

Or when you can’t help it.