Not A Humor Blog

I just feel the need, once again, to point this out: this is not a "humor blog." Have I pointed that out before? Because it isn't! Nor is it a "comedy blog." If something's funny, maybe that's more down to your sense of humor. Which - hey! I'm not criticizing! I'm happy for whatever joy I can bring to the world. Various shapes and forms of joy.

But regardless. This is not a humor blog, and I'll tell you why: because when you think about it, humor is depressing.

Humor is the snap back of your expectations, from the stretch of a world that refuses to correspond. We laugh at the ridiculous difference between what we thought, and what is. We laugh at how obvious it seems, in retrospect. We laugh at how silly we were, not to see it coming. This is why a joke suffers on the second telling: no surprise, no expectation snap-back.

What's a mystery to me is why laughter feels good. Why what is ultimately a reaction to disappointment - of expectation, of preconception - feels good. Yes, I know it helps us cope. "We laugh so we don't have to cry." We laugh because we can, we're glad we can laugh because it does feel good - but why is laughter in us at all? Why does it help us? Why is this good-feeling, ticklish emotional release built into us, when the other animals don't seem to need the reflex?

Animals cope with their hopes being spectacularly dashed, just as we do. Animals survive their own ridiculous setbacks - which in a million You-Tube videos, we find just as hilarious as our own. Yet the animals, by and large, don't ever seem to see (or need) the joke. Why don't animals need to laugh, when their expectations upend? Surely fate is just as implacable and inconsiderate to schemes of mice as it is to schemes of men. But the animals, they just pick up and keep trucking. We sit back stunned and have an emotional reaction. Why do we need to do that?

I believe it is because we are fundamentally wrong about the world, in a really stupid and silly way, and animals aren't. An animal doesn't expect to be treated fairly by the world. We do. And every single time we're shown that well no, the world isn't fair - it strikes us anew, that old joke on us. It strikes us anew no matter how many times the joke's on us. We laugh to find we slipped back into expecting the world to be fair. We laugh because we haven't learned our lesson.

It is our reaction to this essential silliness and wrongness of ours, that is at the root of the laugh reflex. We are ultimately always and only laughing at ourselves. Of course sometimes we laugh at others in the predicament of having their own expectations comically upset - situations in movies, or on tv shows, or even in real life (but hopefully not right in their face!). But ultimately we are laughing because we know that we share the same basic expectations that we see so tragically and comically proved wrong. The joke could be on anyone, but the rimshot tolls for thee.

Well go ahead. Laugh it up.

I've learned my lesson and I can't laugh anymore.