At Wed, 10 Feb 1999 10:40:57 -0800 (PST), you wrote:
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>On Wed, 10 Feb 1999, Craig Dolan-Betney wrote:
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>> Can humour be a symptom of cognitive dissonance?
>>
>> --Craig
>> (this list is giving me more memes than I realised :-)
>
>The amusement reaction seems to be a reaction to certain kinds of
>cognitive dissonance. Small children are amused by simple dissonance;
>adults grow to appreciate resolvable dissonance (jokes that make sense
>when you think about them another way, or make the necessary leap). Not
>that adults can't also appreciate simple nonsense.
>
>--Eva,
>who wrote a paper on humor in college once. It wasn't funny at all.
Humor is a criticism. We laugh at something because it has gone wrong, for instance, a person behaving like a thing (running into a door - inertia).
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher