comedy maps to Alison Gopnik’s The Gardener and the Carpenter, in which she argues that being a good parent is about being a “gardener,” and nurturing children as a plant with the right air and soil, etc. (I should note that I love the gardening half of the metaphor, but I don’t think the other half is right: carpentry seems to me to be an artisanal trade, which requires a sensitivity to materials similar to gardening. ”Ĭomedy is also a crucial survival strategy as a parent. Humorlessness should be grounds for dismissal.
I suspect that the people who last the longest, who continue to be trustworthy, are people with a sense of humor.Ĭamille Paglia: “ Comedy is a sign of balanced perspective on life and thought. You can’t make anybody laugh unless they want to. One of the things that Native American culture understands and we probably don’t is that laughter is the only emotion you can’t compel. It allows you to laugh at yourself and say when you’re wrong. If I had to pick one reason, it’s because I have a sense of humor. Gloria Steinem, when asked why she’s lasted so long: Sometimes, some of the things that sexist men do just deserve to be laughed at.” Mary Beard: “A bit of outrage is good, but having your only rhetorical register as outrage is always going to be unsuccessful. Every time we see the left or any group trying to move forward politically in a radical way, when they’re humorless, they fail.” I’ve been struck in recent years by how many activists and writers - especially women! - emphasize the importance of a sense of humor for survival.īell hooks: “ We cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor. Ian Svenonius on rock and roll as a form of comedy, and what happened when it lost its sense of humor: /JKROEaBQ90 Giving ourselves over to open-ended and improvisational activities, like music, art, gardening, etc. So how do we get into the comic mode? In the third edition of the book, published in 1997, Meeker argued that play was the quickest way in. A chance at survival that, in Meeker’s words, “depends upon our ability to change ourselves rather than our environment, and upon our ability to accept limitations rather than to curse fate for limiting us.” Comedy, like scenius, gives all the characters in the story a surviving role and a chance to live to see another day. Our world is an ecosystem in which our only real chance at survival as a species is cooperation, community, and care, but it’s being lead by people who believe in an egosystem, run on competition, power, and self-interest.Ĭomedy and scenius show us a way forward. scenius, with one being a egosystem and the other being an ecosystem. Upon reading this, I was immediately struck by how well the tragic and comic modes map to Brian Eno’s concept of genius vs. It permits people to accept themselves and the world as they are, and it helps us make the best of the messes around us and within us.
Its mode is immediacy of attention, adaptation to rapidly changing circumstances, joy in small things, the avoidance of pain wherever possible, the love of life and kinship with all its parts, the sharpening of intelligence, complexity of thought and action, and strategic responsiveness to novel situations. Meeker proposes an alternative for surviving our disastrous times: the “comic mode,” inspired by comedy:Ĭomedy is not a philosophy of despair or pessimism, but one which permits people to respond with health and clear vision despite the miseries the world has to offer. Our civilization has been built on the tragic idea that we can bend nature to our will, the result of which has been complete ecological catastrophe. I heard about the book years ago in an essay by Mandy Brown, whose wonderful website, A Working Library, has several posts about it.Īs Brown notes, Meeker argues that Western Civilization is mostly founded on the “tragic mode,” inspired by the great tragedies in which a “larger-than-life character attempts to bend the world to his (and it’s always his) image.” The character’s success “is also his undoing,” and tragedies end in bloodshed, death, and a funeral of some kind. One of the most intriguing and helpful books I’ve read all year is Joseph Meeker’s The Comedy of Survival, first published in 1974.
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