Hi all,
On Wed, 13 Dec 2000, in the digest, Robert A. Fink wrote:
> ...
> and neither did I object to humor, as long as the "humor" was not
> sexist, racist, ageist, or otherwise inconsiderate of others. Humor does
> not have to be hurtful to others in order to be "funny" ...
As much as I tend to agree with Dr. Fink, the text quoted
above reminded me of a passage from one of my favorite books:
Stranger In a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlen
Part Three: His Eccentric Education
Chapter XXIX
Location: San Francisco Zoo
Premise: Mike, the human raised by Martians, has never laughed.
(Read the word "grok" as "understand very thoroughly.")
------------------------------------------------------------------
... They stood in front of a cage containing a family of ca-
puchins, watching them eat, sleep, court, nurse, groom, and swarm
aimlessly around, while Jill tossed them peanuts.
She tossed one to a monk; before he could eat it a larger male
not only stole his peanut but gave him a beating. The little
fellow made no attempt to pursue his tormentor; he pounded his
knuckles against the floor and chattered helpless rage. Mike
watched solemnly.
Suddenly the mistreated monkey rushed across the cage, picked
a monkey still smaller, boweled it over and gave it a drubbing
worse than the one he suffered. The third monk crawled away,
whimpering. The other monkeys paid no attention.
Mike threw back his head and laughed -- and went on laughing
uncontrollably ... continued to chuckle, laugh aloud, chuckle
again, while she wiped his eyes, all the minutes it took to get
home ...
... "Mike, what happened?"
"Jill ... I grok people! ... Come here ... put your head on
my shoulder and tell me a joke."
"Just tell you a joke?"
"... Tell me a joke I've never heard and see if I laugh at the
right place. I will, I'm sure of it -- and I'll tell you why
it's funny. Jill ... I grok people! ... They laugh because it
hurts ... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurt-
ing ... That poor little monk."
"Which one, dear? I thought that big one was just mean ...
and the one I flipped the peanut to turned out to be just as
mean. There certainly wasn't anything funny."
"Jill ... Of course it wasn't funny; it was tragic. That's
why I had to laugh. I looked at a cageful of monkeys and sudden-
ly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things
I've seen and heard and read about in the time I've been with my
own people -- and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laugh-
ing."
"But -- Mike dear, laughing is what you do when something is
nice ... not when it's horrid."
"Is it? Think back to Las Vegas -- When you girls came out on
stage, did people laugh?"
"Well, no."
"But you girls were the nicest part of the show. I grok now,
that if they had laughed, you would have been hurt. No, they
laughed when a comic tripped over his feet and fell down ... or
something else that is not a goodness."
"But that's not *all* people laugh at."
"Isn't it? ... find me something that makes you laugh, sweet-
heart ... a joke, anything -- but something that gave you a belly
laugh, not a smile. Then we'll see if there isn't a wrongness
somewhere -- and whether you would laugh if the wrongness wasn't
there." He thought. "I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll
be people."
... Doubtfully but earnestly Jill started digging into her
memory for jokes that had struck her as irresistably funny, ones
which had jerked a laugh out of her:
"-- her entire bridge club." ... "Should I bow?" ... "Neither
one, you idiot -- *instead*!" ... "-- the Chinaman objects" ...
"-- broke her leg." ... "-- make trouble for *me*?" ... "-- but
it'll spoil the ride for me." ... "-- and his mother-in-law
fainted." ... "Stop you? I bet three to one you could do it!"
... "-- something has happened to Ole." ... "-- and so are you,
you clumsy ox!"
She gave up on "funny" stories, pointing out such were just
fantasies, and tried to recall real incidents. Practical jokes?
All practical jokes supported Mike's thesis, even ones as mild as
a dribble glass ... What else? The time Elsa Mae lost her
panties? It hadn't been funny to Elsa Mae. Or the --
She said grimly, "Apparently the pratt fall is the peak of all
humor. It's not a pretty picture of the human race, Mike."
"... I had thought -- I had been told -- that a 'funny' thing
is a thing of goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the
person it happens to. ... The goodness is in the laughing. I
grok it is a bravery ... and a sharing ... against pain and sor-
row and defeat."
"But -- Mike, it is not a goodness to laugh *at* people."
"No. But I was not laughing at the little monkey. I was
laughing at *us*. People. And suddenly I knew I was people and
could not stop laughing ... things that *do* happen on Mars
which we laugh at here on Earth aren't funny because there is no
wrongness about them. Death, for example."
"Death isn't funny."
"Then why are there so many jokes about death? ... death is so
sad that we *must* laugh at it. All those religions -- they con-
tradict each other on every other point but each one is filled
with ways to help people be brave enough even though they know
they are dying." ...
------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not much of a jokester myself -- I don't laugh a lot. I
try to use humor when I teach in the classroom -- I'm not very
good at it; people tell me my humor is dry.
Every time I read the passage above, I pause to think if I can
remember something that I thought was funny that didn't contain a
"wrongness" somewhere in it. I have not been successful. And,
for the most part, I tend to agree with the character Mike above
in that almost every joke I can think of or that I have heard was
sexist, racist, ageist, or otherwise inconsiderate of someone or
group of others.
It seems to me that humor almost always is hurtful to someone,
somewhere, some place, some others, or something. And, it is
'funny' -- it makes us laugh -- to help us deal with the pain
that would otherwise occur.
Just some off-topic food for thought. And, as I have been
known to say here and in other forums, may you always grok in
fullness ...
Bill--
...who thinks that life is a yo-yo and mankind ties knots in the string.
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