That's all. (the end)
My investigations into humor have lead me to the conclusion that if there really were an alien from another planet forced to endure the conditions of modern society on Earth without having a sense of humor to process those challenges, he would have been more than just mildly confused. He would have gone mad. He might have tried to kill us. In fact it seems unlikely that civilized life could have ever existed had we not developed such a sophisticated ability to calibrate our emotional responses. Our ancestors survived because of their ability to ruthlessly hunt down prey and kill enemies, and now we are expected to take the minds and bodies we’ve inherited from them to sit in cubicles and wait in line at the bank and sit still at the dentist’s office. This progression would have been a lot more difficult if we hadn’t learned to laugh.
Pretty much every point made in this essay will be discussed in further detail before too long. If you’d like to keep up with those, you can subscribe to this newsletter or just visit back. These things always take longer than expected, so be patient!
In the meantime, if you’re looking to do some empirical research on the subject, here’s an experiment you can try on your own: Put out an ad saying you need volunteers for a brain scan. Tell people you’re looking to get a snapshot of a thousand random people’s brains. Get your volunteers under an fMRI machine and make a little casual small talk so they think everything is going okay. Then, at some point during the scan, make a serious face, squint, point to the computer screen, and mumble something to yourself about a tumor. Say it just loud enough that they half-hear it. Let them squirm and shift uncomfortably for a few moments, and when they ask you to clarify what you said, smile and say, “No, no, no, I didn’t say that. I said I got the idea for this experiment in an essay about humor.”
Thank you for reading.