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Philosophy of Comedy

I am a fan of standup-comedy. Often it feels superficial, good for a laugh and to forget, Some of these jokes, really tap into the deep parts of the philosophy. If you would not agree with me, I suggest you to read the book, "The plato and platypus walk into a bar" which is written to understand philosophy through comedy. But the cornerstone for this article is a saying of a famous comedian in one of his interviews, targetted at wokes culture. It is suttle as he did not mention the name 'wokes' directly. And he said something like following


"I do not agree with anyone saying my jokes are offensive. Jokes are not offensive. I agree that is someone's openion. You can have an openion the joke is offensive, and that is agreeble. How sad to live a life that you are offended each and every time your personal openions are ignored?"


philosophy of comedy
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Philosophy of comedy

So you may ask, what does this has to do with mindfulness? Anyone with a rational mind would agree what Comedian says is true. It is obvious a joke can be both, hilarious to someone and not so to the other. Someone can get angry while others laugh. Often it happens most of the jokes are like that. And we can go deeper than this to understand fundamental nature of a value of anything through a joke. Like comedian says, joke is just a bunch of words. And the value of the joke is given by the one who hears it. In our own mind we give a value to it, after we hear it, either laughing about it, or being offended. And fundamentally it is our openion.


The question is, whether this is true for everything?


Wokes culture and climate change.

Now we have seen that a joke is just words without inherant value. We can look at the climate change. You are worried about climate change right? When people protest against fossil fuel burn, and global warming, there is tendancy to support. Even if we cannot do anything we would support their openion. Have you ever asked the question why? Why are we bother about the global warming?


Philosophy of comedy
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If we look the earth in a geological timescale, there have been times, the earth has been warm, a hot malten rock. And there has been times, the earth has been frozen for thousands of years in an ice age. And this pattern has been alternating. There had been times the sun is blocked years and years straight, because of the dusky clouds from the volcanic eruptions. These are still climate changes. Obviously nobody cared, right? Animals surely died. Nobody cried when dinosours were wiped out of the earth surface. If we look at this great extinction, I would say even climate activists would be happpy that they are wiped out from earth. Otherwise humans would never come to be. So, I can see the our protests on climate change is little clouded by our greed to stay existing.


Its not only climate change, everything seems to have a value or no value depending on someone's openion. And the when the group get's bigger we cannot simply disagree and move on. Hence, there are cultural differences, regional differences to our values. However, nature seems to be valueless anyway. This is the fact which was discussed in the most valueble thing in the world.


You may see, the fact is true for Jokes

It is true for beauty, value of a pot and plastic.

It's our mindfulness to see it, whether applies to other parts of life.


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