Re: Mind's Eye Re: Humour

Or in Allan's words: "we are all full of hot air and release it quickly.  that is part
of what make ME so good,"

2012/11/24 Molly <mollyb363@gmail.com>

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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