It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

The line mocks performative or self-harming displays of mourning—tearing out one’s hair—as irrational because they do nothing to change the cause of grief. The implied ethical stance is broadly Stoic/Academic: sorrow is natural, but indulging it through futile gestures compounds suffering without remedy. By reducing the act to an absurd outcome (“baldness”), the saying uses humor to reframe grief as something to be managed by reason and proportion rather than amplified by dramatic self-punishment. It also hints at a social critique: public rituals of lament can become empty conventions that substitute for genuine consolation or constructive action.