pulling-another's-leg kind of humor will make certain members of the species more attractive to potential partners. general social humour helps in keeping communities occupied just like social sorrow(lamentation etc) and makes them stick together by creating a space to project (imagined?) common ideas, experiences and reactions. raunchy/steamy etc humor helps diffuse the tension b4 the actual consummation of the mating ritual. obscure humor helps grad students write obscure theses. and of course similar arguments will hold for most emotions/feelings like sorrow, indifference etc. as we evolve we tell ourselves there is more to life than mere survival and try to find reasons that will prove our hypothesis is true. so we invent such shared social ideas because when it boils down to the individual it is difficult to say honestly we do more than survive or there is any other purpose.
yhac: I disagree, actually. If one buys Thurber on humour ("humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility"), it may exist as a mechanism to stop feeling bad about something and start being able to laugh about it (reduction in pain) while not forgetting the episode (reduction of repetition).
But that sounds like an evolutionary psychology argument, which I have a history of disliking most of the time, so take it with a fair bit of salt.
@SVR: what do you disagree about? laughter having an evolutionary reason? your comment seems to suggest an evolutionary/psychological reason for humor to exist, so are you saying there is a reason for humor but not laughter?
@nicetry: laughter->happiness->emotion. There are evolutionary reasons for emotions in general. I don't see any reason for happiness and therefore, laughter, to be special cases. Also, my prev comment should be corrected to read "..for laughter to exist, among social species. That should..develop"
@yhac: This is what I disagree with: "I don't think so". It seemed like that was the answer to "is there a evolutionary reason for humor to exist?". I think there is... But I have no comments about laughter :)
8 comments:
Ahem, what is humour?
I don't think so, but I'm sure there is one for laughter to exist. That should be enough for humor to develop, among social species.
yhac: can you elaborate on the reason for laughter to exist .. i mean do you know of some concrete reason or r guessing that there should be one?
pulling-another's-leg kind of humor will make certain members of the species more attractive to potential partners. general social humour helps in keeping communities occupied just like social sorrow(lamentation etc) and makes them stick together by creating a space to project (imagined?) common ideas, experiences and reactions. raunchy/steamy etc humor helps diffuse the tension b4 the actual consummation of the mating ritual. obscure humor helps grad students write obscure theses.
and of course similar arguments will hold for most emotions/feelings like sorrow, indifference etc. as we evolve we tell ourselves there is more to life than mere survival and try to find reasons that will prove our hypothesis is true. so we invent such shared social ideas because when it boils down to the individual it is difficult to say honestly we do more than survive or there is any other purpose.
yhac: I disagree, actually. If one buys Thurber on humour ("humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility"), it may exist as a mechanism to stop feeling bad about something and start being able to laugh about it (reduction in pain) while not forgetting the episode (reduction of repetition).
But that sounds like an evolutionary psychology argument, which I have a history of disliking most of the time, so take it with a fair bit of salt.
@SVR:
what do you disagree about? laughter having an evolutionary reason?
your comment seems to suggest an evolutionary/psychological reason for humor to exist, so are you saying there is a reason for humor but not laughter?
@nicetry:
laughter->happiness->emotion. There are evolutionary reasons for emotions in general. I don't see any reason for happiness and therefore, laughter, to be special cases.
Also, my prev comment should be corrected to read "..for laughter to exist, among social species. That should..develop"
@yhac: This is what I disagree with:
"I don't think so". It seemed like that was the answer to "is there a evolutionary reason for humor to exist?". I think there is... But I have no comments about laughter :)
Heh, now we sound like we're writing reviews :P
"laughter->happiness->emotion"
i dont believe there are good reasons for emotions either :-)
http://nicertry.blogspot.com/2005/07/emotions-are-not-natural.html
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