By Jack Canfora
Apologies for my absence. The good news is my online theater company, New Normal Rep, starts streaming today and runs through April 4th (www.newnormalrep.org) The first play is mine! Help me fill the gaping hole in my psyche that only the approval of strangers can fill!
Forgive the plug, but that’s also why I’ve been absent for so long. working the play – a drama, but hopefully a funny one – also got me to thinking about the importance of humor and laughter, especially in dark moments. Which led to some reading, which led to this blog thingy.
If you’re ever in the mood to find nothing funny ever again, you don’t have to subject yourself to Holocaust footage, or read about the Slave Trade, or, God forbid, turn on cable news. Even Nazis, for all of their dehumanizing cruelty, proved an occasional source of humor, as Mel Brooks made a fortune proving time and time and, perhaps one time too many, again.
No, if you really want to divest your soul of any humor or capacity for laughter, just read philosophers trying to dissect humor. I double dog dare you. Plato, it turns out, wasnt a fan of, well, fun. And he was not alone. The list of great minds who have tried to forensically examine our capacity for laughter only to end up like those chimps braying incomprehensibly at the obelisk at the start of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is legion. However, for sheer, weaponized, eat-your-angst-ridden-vegan- heart-out-Morrisey level of humorlessness, Thomas Hobbes is tough to beat. Hobbes tackled the phenomena of humor with all of his trademark intelligence, insight, and gang-rape level of sunniness. Thomas Hobbes, it turns out, was a laugh riot, once you realize most riots end in blood, chaos, and trauma.
As he once put it, “Laughter…is caused by observing the imperfections of other men. And therefore much Laughter is at the defects of others.” In other words. A lot of humor is based on cruelty. And to this Colossus bestriding the Enlightenment, I can only offer a humble but heartfelt: well, duh
Yes, of course much laughter is based on the idea of “Thank God it’s that guy and not me!” But I challenge you, not so gentle reader, to think of many things in this world that aren’t. To view humor in those terms is to miss the point. It’s like looking at the Sun and focusing entirely on the fact it causes melanomas and provides Florida with so many electoral votes. In defense of the Great English Thinker, he was man of many gifts, but looking at his mug of ale as half full was not one of them, hence his pithy, nihilistic gem, “Life is nasty, brutish, and short.”
Yes: OK, fine, Life can be all those things. And humor is often cruel. But my God, who’d want to go a day without it? Who could?Someone once gave me an invaluable piece of advice: plastics. No, that Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate. No – someone once said to me:never spend a minute more than you need to with someone who can’t laugh at themselves.
If music moves us because it perhaps expresses something we have no words for, then let it be equally said that humor and laughter bind us because it reassures us that, despite all evidence to the contrary, we’re never as alone as we think we are. The world is indeed sometimes as Hobbes described it. The world is also contains The Brandenburg Concerto, gelato, Side Two of Abbey Road, Jane Austen novels, puppies, and the cool, seamless poetry of Mariano Rivera’s whip-like delivery to home plate. It’s home to countless, small flowers struggling and blooming through imperceptible cracks in asphalt. Most importantly, the world also contains laughter. Hobbes termed laughter a “Sudden Glory,” but, as only a philosopher could, he didn’t mean it as a compliment. Will it forever mar my reputation reputation if I refer to one of the most important philosophers in Western political thought as a bit of a dick? Oh well, too late.
The idea of joy being an unalloyed good seemed to elude him, just as unalloyed joy too often eludes most of us. Certainly, it glides beyond my grip like mercury more days than I can count. But, every now and then, a bit of it catches on the edge of a laugh. So let me make the rather obvious but apparently philosophically radical proposition that laughter is not only good, but necessary. I urge each of us to be unashamedly greedy in our pursuit of it. And while we’re at it, let’s try to recognize each other in our laughter. Let’s try to recognize ourselves. That truly would be a sudden glory.
Follow me on the Twitter and Instagram mechanisms @jackcanfora
Keep up with my online theater company here: http://www.newnormalrep.org
My other blog: http://www.thewritingonthepaddedwall.com
Great post. Pity those who have no sense of humor.
I’ve picked up a lot from Stafford Beer, who coined and frequently used the term POSIWID (the purpose of a system is what it does) to refer to the commonly observed phenomenon that the de facto purpose of a system is often at odds with its official purpose. In an address to the University of Valladolid, Spain in October 2001, he said “According to the cybernetician the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment or sheer ignorance of circumstances. He was a deep thinker with a humorist approach to serious issues.
So exciting! 💯 I just clicked follow on Instagram and Twitter. Looking forward to more
Thanks so much!
I think seriousness comes with planning. Therefore, to lighten life up, taking each moment as it comes would help–a lot. Humor is not one of my strong aspects. That doesn’t help in times like we’re facing these days. The less planning of my life I do, the easier it is to find something funny in my days.
Sense, nonsense and near beer
“never spend a minute more than you need to with someone who can’t laugh at themselves. “ OMG, YES. Then again, that’s why my family hates me.
Laughter is imperative; be it gentle, with gusto, at someone else’s expense or with just plain, good old fashioned manic hysteria (my favourite).
The ability to laugh at ourselves and life is a sanity saver.
Congratulations on getting your theatre company up and running, and kudos to you for spending all that time writing and getting the play ready to run!
In response to the rest of the post, we’ve got to be able to laugh at ourselves or else life will slip down that dangerous slope towards darkness and no return.
Keep on keeping on being awesome. 😁
Thanks so much: you too! Be careful out there!
“someone once said to me: never spend a minute more than you need to with someone who can’t laugh at themselves.” My sentiments exactly. Can’t stand when people take themselves too seriously. It’s like, for the love of all that’s holy, laugh!