Last night six or seven of us had a virtual discussion, that is, via screen image we considered the function of humor, the role of laughter in the grand scheme of life.  The launchpad was the short story, The Jokester by Isaac Asimov.  The conclusion of our hour and a half rumination, — a good laugh, ranging from a belly guffaw, to a silent groan at a clever turn of phrase, is more important than any of us expected.  Is humor our life-line to sanity?  Since “the real” is a fabrication of the five senses plus the ratiocination of the mind, could humor be the most important illusion of all?  Homo sapiens, the bipedal mammal that laughs.  I do not know definitively what it is to be human.  I’ll settle on laughter though.    Laughter connects me with my fellows, and provides a lens to the wild-assed ride that we call “life.” 

Here are a few lines about the intersection of life and death and humor from Ray Bradbury.

 “And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Everyone must die.  There are no exceptions.  Would it not be a beneficent to die laughing?

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Maybe it is too soon, not enough lapsed time for perspective? Is there yet  enough distance to laugh about the Trump presidency?  I am not ready to laugh yet, laugh at ourselves for electing the clownish, failed casino magnate, bloviating-reality-show “celebrity” to be president of the United States.  I hope soon enough the nightmare will be behind all of us, our society “back on the rails,” responsibly making structural changes so that a Hitleresque strongman will no longer have such wide appeal.  Then I will be happy to laugh at us.  We need to laugh and never forget. 

I am reminded of the burning of the Reichstag in February of 1933, an assault by fire on what remained of Germany’s democracy.  The German people never had opportunity to laugh.  Only in retrospect can we know what events mean, what history is.

I post THIS VIDEO, a montage of the January 6th assault on our capitol building because we ought to never forget.  There is absolutely no guarantee that comes with this thing we call “life.”  We must “do the right thing” by one another, and then laugh.