Why do we laugh? What is humor?

theory_and_history_of_humor.txt

>>9401581
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6USqt3HztA

Seems like a question for the great Sir Alain de Botton

>>9401581
Humor is meme and Meme is humor

>>9401581
Humor is tumor on eternal sadness of human's life.

>>9401581
Beautiful passage from Ouspensky, with Gurdjieff speaking, I always liked (the center in this terminology is the emotional center or thinking center in humans according to Gurdjieff's terminology, and in the end the higher emotional and higher thinking center; the two halves of the center are the positive and negative halves; the accumulator is where energy is stored to be used up by centers):

>Laughter is the opposite of yawning. It is not pumping in, but pumping out — that is the pumping out and the discarding of superfluous energy accumulated in the body.

>There can be impressions which fall at once on the two halves of the centre and produce at once a sharp ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

>Such a simultaneous ‘yes’ and ‘no’ produces a kind of convulsion in the centre and, being unable to harmonise and digest these two opposite impressions of one fact, the centre begins to throw out in the form of laughter the energy which flows into it from the accumulator whose turn it is to supply it.

>In another instance it happens that in the accumulator there has collected too much energy which the center cannot manage to use up.

>Then every, the most ordinary, impression can be received as double, that is, it may fall at once on the two halves of the center and produce laughter, that is, the discarding of energy.

>Both yawning and laughter are very contagious. This shows that they are essentially functions of the instinctive and moving centers. “Why is laughter so pleasant?” asked someone.

>“Because,” G answered, “laughter relieves us of superfluous energy, which, if remained unused, might become negative, that is, poison.

>We always have plenty of this poison in us. Laughter is the antidote. But this antidote is necessary only so long as we are unable to use all the energy for useful work.

>It is said of Christ that he never laughed. But there are different ways of not laughing.

>There are people who do not laugh because they are completely immersed in negative emotions - in malice, in fear, in hatred, in suspicion. And there may be others who do not laugh because they cannot have negative emotions.

>Understand one thing: in the higher centers there can be no laughter, because in the higher centres there is no division, and no ‘yes’ and ‘no’.”