Batek people describe their many laughter taboos with utmost seriousness, and in ethical terms of good and bad. Despite this, people often get it wrong—sometimes laughing all the more when the taboos forbid it. Because laughter can be ambiguous and impossible to control, being wrong can be accepted without the need for discussion or reflection. People thus act autonomously while holding deeply shared ethical orientations. Here, ethics can be both culturally predefined and shaped by individuals, as when it comes to laughter people draw on individual and shared concerns in an ad hoc, flexible manner. Laughter's tangled contradictions thus demonstrate that people's understandings of being “good” are mutually implicated with their understandings of what it means to be a person in relation to others. [laughter, egalitarianism, taboo, ethics, hunter‐gatherers, Batek, Malaysia, Southeast Asia]

中文翻译：

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当你不该笑的时候

百特人用严肃和认真的道德态度来形容他们的许多笑声禁忌。尽管如此，人们常常会误会它—禁忌有时甚至会更多地嘲笑它。由于笑声可能含糊不清且无法控制，因此可以接受错误而无需讨论或反思。因此，人们在保持深厚的道德观念的同时自主地行动。在这里，道德规范既可以在文化上预先定义，也可以由个人来塑造，因为在笑声中，人们以临时的，灵活的方式吸引个人和共同关注的事物。因此，笑声中纠缠不清的矛盾表明，人们对“好人”的理解与他们对一个人相对于他人的意义的理解相互牵连。[笑声，平等主义，禁忌，伦理，狩猎采集者，百特，马来西亚，东南亚]