Philosophers, going back to #Plato and #Aristotle, have observed a link between #comedy and #cruelty. In the seventeenth century, #ThomasHobbes pegged #laughter as the companion of scorn. He framed #humor as an act of self-aggrandizement premised on the debasement of others.
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Coach Pāṇini ®
in reply to Coach Pāṇini ® • • •Eventually, philosophers arrived at the superiority theory of humor, according to which every joke is, at its core, a hostile attack designed to affirm the comic’s dominance and assure the subjugation of its target.
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#Plato #Aristotle #comedy #cruelty #ThomasHobbes #laughter #humor #philosophy #jokes #comic #dominance #subjugation
Coach Pāṇini ®
in reply to Coach Pāṇini ® • • •Most people value humor. It provides relief from life’s hardships, drudgery, and setbacks. But laughter performs serious social and political work, too. It produces new lines of solidarity, but it also reproduces borders between us and them. Laughter is a sudden, spasmodic expulsion air, but, at the same time, it is adjacent to other, more concerning practices of expulsion and denigration. It can be something sweet or cruel, depending on the power dynamics that surround it.
- Alexander Karn
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Rob 🏳️🌈 RMiddleton.Art
in reply to Coach Pāṇini ® • • •good stuff to think about.
I've been thinking lately about a study on marriages that finds the predictor of divorce is when there is contempt between partners. Disagreements can be numerous yet tolerable when love is abundant. If contempt develops between the two, they no longer see themselves as on the same side. I think this relates to humor — laughing with vs laughing at. And I think of how this relates to US politics.