Inner-space part 3- Laughter, our natural defense against bullshit.

So, as I showed in part 2, survival begets deception, deception begets lies, lies beget bullshit.

But then, eventually, bullshit threatens our survival.

So, the survival value of bullshit cancels itself out.
Yet we're still here, alive.
So, we must have evolved a defense, a check at least, against bullshit.
We did.

"Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them--and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon--laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution--these can lift at a colossal humbug,--push it a little-- crowd it a little--weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand".

-Mark Twain.

How right he was.

But what is laughter?

Well, let's wind it back, like I did for bullshit.

In fact, let's wind it back, to the birth of bullshit.

To when our primate ancestors started getting results from their bullshitting, and started pushing members of the tribe around.


There must have been someone there saying the Emperor had no clothes.

I learned that fable in 2nd grade.
One of the few useful things public school taught me.
Funny, they tell that story, then they proceed to weave the invisible clothes for the rest of the 12 years...
But I digress...

Well, what is calling the emperor out, but a simple observation?

And what is observation, but the most primal function of our brain's sole purpose, but to take in, and process the environment around us?

Observation proceeds the roots of bullshit.

And of course, observation came along for the ride, and aided bullshit.
It's how bullshit was decided on.

But more observation caught out bullshit.

And then observation beget criticism, and criticism beget jokes, and jokes beget laughter.

So, observation, jokes, ridicule, mockery, laughter, became tools in the whole competitive drive in the human animal.

But...whence laughter?

Well, what is a laugh, but an expulsion of joy?

And whence the source of that joy?

Recognition.

Recognition of a primal truth.

Just as we're wired up to experience joy with reproduction, the intelligent brain is wired to experience joy when cracking open a problem, and getting at the nut of truth.

It must be an extension of further back, of cracking open real nutshells for food.

And what is cracking open a nut, but a problem?
And all problems are worked out with the brain.

So pleasure and survival traveled along together in evolution.

And evolution inevitably enlarged our brains.

Hence observation, then jokes, then laughter.

A joke is a guided missle that hits that pleasure/recognition button, and thus why humor, and thus laughter, is merciless to bullshit.

So humor is literally our natural immunity against bullshit.

It's the anti-virus.

Twain knew it.
Twain was the first standup comedian.
His "lectures", were standup comedy.
Hence the Mark Twain Prize for standup comedy.

Read your Twain, kiddies, especially you gloomy-gus teenagers, he'll save your sanity.
Particularly his essays on the human condition, and especially his stuff on religion.

Wish someone had pointed me towards the right books when I was in high school.
Damn.

Anyhoo, in his day, Twain was called "The American Voltaire".

So, let's wind it back to Voltaire.

Read your Voltaire, kiddies, it's good for ya.
And as you read, especially "The Philosopher's Dictionary", you can easily imagine that stuff being said onstage.
It's a standup comedy routine.
He was the original.

Now, it's my point of view, that philosophers like Voltaire are society's true superheroes.

And that's a view that was shared by the thinkers of the enlightenment.
Seriously.

Voltaire was a pen name.
It represented both voltage, like electricity, but also volitile, like an explosive chemical reaction.

So...it's exactly like if someone today had put out books under the name "Captain Proton", or "Doc Awesome".

He was a superhero.
It's there in the name, it's been under your nose.

Western civilization as you know it, was founded by Captain Awesome.

And that's no over-estimation of the role of a philosopher in society.

All the armchair war hawks wave their pricks around that liberty comes from military strength, and gun ownership, but without the philosophers, they'd have no field to play their little game on.

And yes, firemen, and rescue workers are heroes, but without the society that was built on the ball field, that was laid out by the philosophers, again, they got no role, no nothing.
Can't build a fire department with no society, can't found a society without thinkers.

Now, let's skip ahead just a little bit, to a contemporary of Voltaire, who like Twain, was compared to Voltaire, and was called "the British Voltaire".

Thomas Paine.


Oh yeah, my main man.
Got all his works linked on the blog.
Here's that link again.

Read, children, read.
Devour.

Especially "Common Sense", and "The Age Of Reason".

It's impossible to overestimate his importance to the American revolution, and to the formation of the ideals of our founding documents.

As far as I'm concerned, no Paine, no America.

So, fast forward back up to Twain, and the progression goes, Voltaire, Paine, Twain, and then Twain puts his stuff in the format of lectures that beget standup comedy.

And indeed, what is a smart standup comedian, but a standup philosopher?

So, I lump good standups in with that league of superheroes.

And one I'd easily put up in that tier, George Carlin.

Now, I didn't get into Twain in high school, sadly, but Carlin saved my sanity when I really needed it.
I credit him with saving my life.
I was on the verge of some kind of self harm, if not suicide in my early 20's, and his concert "Back In Town", just bullet riddled all the bullshit that was frying me.

That will always be my favorite concert of his.
It's a treasure to me.
It's why I have it in my profile under "favorite movies".

And it's only fitting he posthumously recieved the Mark Twain Prize.

Dammit, I miss you, George.

Anyhoo, after finding him, and becoming a huge fan, then I stumbled on through word of mouth on the internet, and the magic of Napster, Bill Hicks.

Ahh, Saint Hicks.

Another dead hero.


I think he was poised to be the next big thing in comedy.
Easily poised to be the succesor to Carlin.
But alas, cancer took him from us.

We got some good guys, Patton Oswalt, Lewis Black, but..not Carlin level.
Or Hicks.
Well...I dunno, Carlin kinda passed the torch to Bill Maher, Carlin loved him...but...eh..I dig Maher, but the next Carlin, no way....

Anyway, forgive this self-indulgent stuff, back to the science and history lesson....

Okay, so there's some overlap between standups, and philosophers.
But wind standups back in history, and you've got comedy in it's purest form, the clown.

And standups of any calibre, be it the philosophical kind like Carlin and Hicks, or the lame "how about airline peanuts, what's up with that?", types, and everything in between, qualify as clowns.

Wind it even further back, and you get the Jesters.


Now, if you went back to those Medieval Jesters, their jokes were probably wretched, BUT, one thing they had in common with the comedians of today, is they were given licence to send up the king.

They were the only ones in a society allowed to tell truth to power.

And, the modern incarnation of that would be something like Colbert at the Press Corps meeting.


Now, let's wind laughter all the way back.
You can bet the first thing to be laughed at was probably either misfortune, or a fart.
I'm going with farts.

Now, there's nothing political or philosophical about a fart, but it's leveling.

And I think that leveling factor is not only humbling to pretense, and power, but it tells us how we're all alike, and helps bring us together.

That leveling humor, what some call "base", and "childish", that's the core of that "how about airline peanuts?", humor.
And there's a place for that.
Some are better at crafting that than others.
Replace peanuts with Hot Pockets, and you've got Jim Gaffigan's shtick, and I like Jim Gaffigan.

Anyway, that's why I find humor to be so important, and that's why I find philosophical comedy to be heroic.

I once got into it with this goddamned Randroid woman at WF, and she stuck up her nose, and said she only considered rescue workers and the like to be heroes, and sneezed at the very notion I could possibly find George Carlin to be a hero.

(Yet another reason I find Randism to be a poisonous and joy-killing philospophy)

I wanted to vomit, and almost wrote most of what I've written here in response,...but it wouldn't have done any good.

You don't debate stupid people.
Does no good.
Better to mock.
And throw tomatoes.
And laugh.