The first is a form of courtesy, the second may lead to embarrassment... Audacious raillery is delightful: to stand it proves power. To show oneself annoyed causes the other to be annoyed... The most serious matters have arisen out of jests. Nothing requires more tact and attention. Before you begin to joke know how far the subject of your joke is able to bear it.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
There is an asymmetry in joking at others' expense: taking a joke well is courtesy and a show of strength, while making them is a risk that can turn on you. To stand raillery gracefully, to be teased and not bristle, proves a kind of power and puts everyone at ease; to show yourself annoyed only spreads the annoyance around the room. But making the joke is a different matter, because the most serious quarrels in the world have grown out of a jest that landed wrong, and you can rarely know in advance how much the target can actually bear. So the safer posture is lopsided on purpose: absorb raillery with good humour, and be sparing and careful about dishing it out. If you must joke at someone, first know how far they can take it, because the friendliest jest can start the longest fight.
Practice
- Take a joke at your expense with good humour; bearing raillery gracefully proves strength, while showing annoyance only spreads it.
- Be sparing and careful in joking at others; the most serious quarrels grow from a jest that landed wrong (maxim 228 warns against wit at others' cost).
- Before you tease someone, gauge how much they can actually bear; you rarely know in advance, and the misjudged joke is hard to take back.
Use this when
- Use the receiving side generously; absorbing raillery is cheap courtesy that buys goodwill and reads as confidence.
- Use the giving side rarely and carefully, and only where you genuinely know the person can take it.
Ignore this when
- Don't bristle at good-natured teasing; the annoyance you show becomes the annoyance others feel, and it reads as thin skin (maxim 155 saves real anger for real cause).
- Don't confuse this with tolerating genuine disrespect; bearing a joke is not the same as accepting an insult dressed up as one.
A picture of it
Ribbed by a colleague in a meeting, a manager has a choice in the half-second before he responds. The bristling reply is right there, and it would turn a light moment into a cold one and make him look thin-skinned. Instead he takes the joke, laughs, tops it at his own expense, and the room warms to him for it. Later, tempted to needle a peer the same way, he remembers the asymmetry and holds off, because he cannot be sure how the peer would take it, and the friendliest jest can start the longest quarrel. He absorbs freely and dispenses with care.
Take the joke, and think twice before making one. Bearing raillery shows power; the careless jest has started wars.