Mind's Eye Re: Humour

Over here, social workers have taken kids off foster parents because
of their membership of UKIP - a party that shares the desire of 65% of
the population to leave the EU and restrict immigration. You have to
laugh - or cry!

On 24 Nov, 21:38, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Morecambe and Wise with Mum and Dad at Xmas perhaps.  Laurel and
> Hardy.  Many other popular comedians are more likely to make me weep.
> I never liked Chaplin (actually thinking Hitler more of a comedian
> than 'The Dictator') and we had Cannon and Ball here who hit a nerve I
> don't like.    I can laugh with some of the ostensibly more vicious
> types like Bill Hicks and Frankie Boyle.  Police and army culture
> reveres tough, sadistic humour with self-depreciation thrown in.
>
> I'm against speech crime but it's also clear not everything goes.  I
> don't agree with the Greek split - it's from Stanford EP - suspecting
> humour is closely linked with breakthrough thinking (though not the
> same) and unseating the biological trance of hierarchy (The Name of
> the Rose).
>
> The SEP article concludes:
>
> Along with the idealism of tragedy goes elitism. The people who matter
> in tragedy are kings, queens, and generals. In comedy there are more
> characters and more kinds of characters, women are more prominent, and
> many protagonists come from lower classes. Everybody counts for one.
> That shows in the language of comedy, which, unlike the elevated
> language of tragedy, is common speech. The basic unit in tragedy is
> the individual, in comedy it is the family, group of friends, or bunch
> of co-workers.
>
> While tragic heroes are emotionally engaged with their problems, comic
> protagonists show emotional disengagement. They think, rather than
> feel, their way through difficulties. By presenting such characters as
> role models, comedy has implicitly valorized the benefits of humor
> that are now being empirically verified, such as that it is
> psychologically and physically healthy, it fosters mental flexibility,
> and it serves as a social lubricant. With a few exceptions like
> Aquinas, philosophers have ignored these benefits.
>
> If philosophers wanted to undo the traditional prejudices against
> humor, they might consider the affinities between one contemporary
> genre of comedy—standup comedy—and philosophy itself. There are at
> least seven. First, standup comedy and philosophy are conversational:
> like the dialogue format that started with Plato, standup routines are
> interactive. Second, both reflect on familiar experiences, especially
> puzzling ones. We wake from a vivid dream, for example, not sure what
> has happened and what is happening. Third, like philosophers, standup
> comics often approach puzzling experiences with questions. "If I
> thought that dream was real, how do I know that I'm not dreaming right
> now?" The most basic starting point in both philosophy and standup
> comedy is "X—what's up with that?" Fourth, as they think about
> familiar experiences, both philosophers and comics step back
> emotionally from them. Henri Bergson (1911 [1900]) spoke of the
> "momentary anaesthesia of the heart" in laughter. Emotional
> disengagement long ago became a meaning of "philosophical"—"rational,
> sensibly composed, calm, as in a difficult situation." Fifth,
> philosophers and standup comics think critically. They ask whether
> familiar ideas make sense, and they refuse to defer to authority and
> tradition. It was for his critical thinking that Socrates was
> executed. So were cabaret comics in Germany who mocked the Third
> Reich. Sixth, in thinking critically, philosophers and standup comics
> pay careful attention to language. Attacking sloppy and illogical uses
> of words is standard in both, and so is finding exactly the right
> words to express an idea. Seventh, the pleasure of standup comedy is
> often like the pleasure of doing philosophy. In both we relish new
> ways of looking at things and delight in surprising thoughts. William
> James (1979 [1911], 11) said that philosophy "sees the familiar as if
> it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar." The same is
> true of standup comedy. Simon Critchley has written that both ask us
> to "look at things as if you had just landed from another
> planet" (2002, 1).
>
> One recent philosopher attuned to the affinity between comedy and
> philosophy was Bertrand Russell. "The point of philosophy," he said,
> "is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating,
> and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe
> it" (1918, 53). In the middle of an argument, he once observed, "This
> seems plainly absurd: but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must
> learn not to be frightened by absurdities" (2008 [1912], 17).
>
> I laughed a lot more reading Lyotard's 'Libidinal Economy' - rather as
> I might chuckle along with a Tom Sharpe farce.  I'm not sure what
> makes me laugh until it does.  The ideologies through which people
> live lives often does, but this is without joy.
>
> On 24 Nov, 19:40, Molly <mollyb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I have seen it used recently as an ineffective cover for a badly
> > positioned provocative argument. "I was only kidding, she doesn't
> > understand my humor..." not hard to see through and not inspiring
> > confidence.  The dance of the fool.
>
> > Kind humor, irony, absurd, surprise are more my style than sarcasm or
> > more aggressive humor that derides or shames.
>
> > There is no denying the biochemical rush that comes with laughing
> > oneself to tears, and the joy that comes with sharing such a moment.
>
> > On Nov 24, 1:51 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > While there is only speculation about how humor developed in early
> > > humans, we know that by the 6th century BCE the Greeks had
> > > institutionalized it in the ritual known as comedy, and that it was
> > > performed with a contrasting dramatic form known as tragedy. Both were
> > > based on the violation of mental patterns and expectations, and in
> > > both the world is a tangle of conflicting systems where humans live in
> > > the shadow of failure, folly, and death. Like tragedy, comedy
> > > represents life as full of tension, danger, and struggle, with success
> > > or failure often depending on chance factors. Where they differ is in
> > > the responses of the lead characters to life's incongruities.
> > > Identifying with these characters, audiences at comedies and tragedies
> > > have contrasting responses to events in the dramas. And because these
> > > responses carry over to similar situations in life, comedy and tragedy
> > > embody contrasting responses to the incongruities in life.
>
> > > Tragedy valorizes serious, emotional engagement with life's problems,
> > > even struggle to the death. Along with epic, it is part of the Western
> > > heroic tradition that extols ideals, the willingness to fight for
> > > them, and honor. The tragic ethos is linked to patriarchy and
> > > militarism—many of its heroes are kings and conquerors—and it
> > > valorizes what Conrad Hyers (1996) calls Warrior Virtues—blind
> > > obedience, the willingness to kill or die on command, unquestioning
> > > loyalty, single-mindedness, resoluteness of purpose, and pride.
>
> > > Comedy, by contrast, embodies an anti-heroic, pragmatic attitude
> > > toward life's incongruities. From Aristophanes' Lysistrata to Charlie
> > > Chaplin's The Great Dictator to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11,
> > > comedy has mocked the irrationality of militarism and blind respect
> > > for authority. Its own methods of handling conflict include deal-
> > > making, trickery, getting an enemy drunk, and running away. As the
> > > Irish saying goes, you're only a coward for a moment, but you're dead
> > > for the rest of your life. In place of Warrior Virtues, it extols
> > > critical thinking, cleverness, adaptability, and an appreciation of
> > > physical pleasures like eating, drinking, and sex.
>
> > > Much humour is cruel - but try and read cruelty in to 'Doctor, doctor,
> > > I've lost an electron'.  'Are you sure'?  'Yes, I'm positive'.
>
> > > What do we think humour is?

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