That's Funny

Canadian humor appeals to me more than any other for some reason, probably because of my family background and my experiences in Canada, and because of its special interweaving of French, British, USA, native and other cultures. Here is Jim Carrey being very Canadian:

This topic of humor is actually a much more central issue for us than physiological, physical, neuron-based, biochemical psychology gives it or can give it. Wise, observant people have long noticed that humor is one of the distinctive, uniquely human characteristics. Traditional philosophers recognized that there was something about laughter that was crucial to our identity and being.

My favorite philosopher held that humor was just one more consequence of the ability to put one's self in the place of an other, to see things from an other's point of view. He said that when we are taking the other's point of view, and thus become aware of both our commonality and difference, there is a release of tension and worry.

Here is a classic performance by Foster Brooks, playing at being a drunk, roasting Don Rickles, the Beast of Beverly Hills:

Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679

Old Thomas Hobbes often had a pithy way with words in expressing the dominant philosophy of the last three or four hundred years, so congenial to materialist science. He defined laughter as “those grimaces most incident to the idle and unemployed.” The natural state of human beings was a war of all against all in which there are "No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The only hope for escape from that condition was a contract with a giant of “terror,” a “Leviathan,” - both Hobbes' words - who would keep everybody in order. He said just before his death that “I shall be glad to find a place to creep out of the world at.”

I find myself laughing as I read that. I understand the point of view and that it is widespread. I've sometimes felt that way myself. The funny thing is that there is clearly something missing in it - love - and a larger view to be taken.