John Allen Paulos in his book, Mathematics and Humor (U. of Chicago, 1980), writes that:
"Humor, let me reiterate, though it may use formal devices, depends ultimately on one's sensitivity to the interplay among various 'levels' of meaning. It is a very complex skill, this ability to distinguish levels of meaning, perceive their relationship, evaluate their relative importance given the context, then almost simultaneously form a global impression. Appreciating humor -- even recognizing it -- requires human skills of the highest order (level?); no computer comes close to having them" (50).
Humor requires a jumping between levels of meaning, layers of context, and between frameworks of understanding.
Paulos also writes, "The necessity of this psychic stepping back (or up) to the metalevel is probably what is meant when people say that a sense of perspective is needed for an appreciation of humor. It also explains why dogmatists, idealogues, and others with one-track minds are often notoriously humorless. People whose lives are dominated by one system or one set of rules are stuck, in a manner of speaknig, in the object level of their system. Whether they are political radicals mouthing some party line or bureaucrats blindly enforcing some set of petty regulations [or both?], they lack the ability to step outside themselves and their systems. Understanding a joke is a distinctly human activity and requires one to evaluate almost instantly the relative importance of its different parts, to compare meanings and shades of meaning, to perceive unstated relations and implicit ideas, and to put this all into an appropriate context in order to grasp the situation as a whole. These complex operations are all metalevel (or meta-meta-level) activities and are beyond the capabilities of computers and people who want to be computers" (27).
Paulos is a mathematician at Temple University in Philadelphia. This book was published in 1980. Have computers grown in their capacity to grasp humor since then? It was nearly thirty years ago when Paulos made this judgment. Does it still hold?
Paulos gives a spin on the first joke I had ever heard. It was told to me by my father in about 1962. My father also taught at Temple University (in Phys. Ed.).
"What's black and white and red all over?"
The answer "Newspaper," is probably one we've all heard.
Paulos writes, "M.E. Barrick (1974) has compiled a monstrously long list of answers to the above riddle that includes: a wounded nun; an embarrassed zebra; Santa Claus coming down a dirty chimney; a right-winger's view of an integration march; and a skunk with diaper rash" (26).
Amusing book, this. On the back cover is an ad for a book called Poetry and Mathematics. It is by a Scott Buchanan, and was first published in 1929. Sounds amusing, too.
Friday, January 30, 2009
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When I wrote this post originally I was thinking about what George Grady (mathematician) said when he said that if he were to try to create an equation for beauty he would rely on the work of randomness as an example to think about what beauty does.
John Allen Paulos is somewhat ad hoc in his relation to humor, but he is thinking along similar lines, and uses "catastrophe theory" as a parallel in chapter five. He argues that if a dog is about to attack, the dog will oscillate between fear and anger. If the dog is more afraid than angry, it will not attack. If it is more angry than afraid, it will attack.
Fight or flight is the dichotomy that a dog would be working with.
To laugh or not to laugh would be what the recipient of a joke would therefore be working with.
To find something beautiful or ugly would therefore be what the aesthete is working with.
But there is also indifference. Or more complex reactions. (Dogs don't go to museums to look at paintings. People do. If a blind man goes to a painting exhibit with his seeing eye dog, the seeing eye dog cannot help him "see" the exhibit. Why he's gone there is a mystery, but maybe just to be around other people, or maybe he's the father of the painter, and he wants to hear the oohs and ahs of the crowd, so as to celebrate his son or daughter's success, or perhaps sabotage it, depending on the father's relationship to his offspring?).
Paulos has neat drawings in his book which indicate curving plateaus of reception and arrows which indicate how we leap from one curved surface of reception to another (from a political to an aesthetic reaction, for instance).
Ugliness and beauty are two poles, but they probably don't completely cover the enormity of surface that an aesthetic reaction implies.
Is humor a simpler activity than is the discovery of beauty?
Are they linked?
The notion of the ethical underlying each thing may yet hinkmeister the reception of each one. For instance, if you were a Muslim, you might find Salman Rushdie's writings objectionable on the grounds that they attack Islam.
Certain Danish cartoons might also tend to color one's reception.
Nobody really bothers to attack Lutherans except Garrison Keillor, and his attacks are relatively sympathetic (one might even say that the attacks are actually appreciations, however backhanded they may seem). We are happy for any attention at all, wayward and minoritarian sect that we are.
But if you are part of the majority (Lutherans are part of the Protestant 'moral majority' and yet at the same time we have our issues with the Calvinists, who strike us as unbelievably funny at times, and thus we constitute a minority, a minority that is also conscious of its schism with the secularist elite, and the Catholic elite, with their Papal delegations in every community).
Thus we are almost constantly in a state of laughter.
Add to this my own central fact of being at least 49% surrealist in orientation, which in turns puts me at a striking angle to most Lutherans, who strike me as somewhat uproarious, and it puts me at a tilt with almost the entire world (I don't think there are any other Lutheran surrealists, as it requires church attendance -- as well as a deep and abiding interest in Philippe Soupault's surrealist lineage, which doesn't really exist).
We have almost no actual existence, since there is no one else to share our viewpoint, and thus, we are always joking to ourselves, in a world in which laughter is meant to be shared.
I had hoped through this blog, originally, to discover another Lutheran surrealist, but in four years, none have surfaced. I thought the Icelander might qualify, but he was secularist. The closest we've come are similar spirits in the Catholic tradition.
The growing body of "Lutheran" "surrealists" on this blog is actually therefore evidence of my growing alienation, accompanied by outbursts of inward laughter, somewhat like that of Hanson's or that of Monsieur Albert, but alas, also different. The Grady case may yet turn out to be a similarity, but we have yet to find another so like us that we are like two drops of water falling at precisely the same interval.
Isn't this the case finally of just about everyone, in that no two are identical, and we fall through space and time fundamentally alone?
Kierkegaard. Does he qualify? I move back and forth between acceptance and rejection of Kierkegaard.
In spite of his name, he didn't really attempt to protect the church.
I assume kierke is Danish for church, and gaard, Danish for protection, but I'm not sure of the latter instance.
He is a kind of Lutheran anarchist.
We were once anarchists, but have moved toward a modified liberal position, as in classical liberal.
No doubt we strike others as odd, just as others strike us as odd.
So, we're even.
We still have at least the laws in common.
Well, at least you've attracted an interesting little band of misfits with heart.
We'd make a good little league sports team, full of unique characters and in-fighting, but still with the guts and teamwork to overcome the evil, homogenous, wealthy kids with slick hair and the stoic coach.
If I ever become a working screenwriter and am forced to write a formulaic script about a ragtag sports team, I will base the characters on Lutheran Surrealism commenters.
Yes, we have a brave hearty group, and what point would there be in us all being identical? It would make a strange movie if there were 15 identical people writing on a blog, yes I agree, yes I agree, yes, me, too, up to the count of 15, to just anything that anybody wrote.
kierkegaard made a point of saying that christianity had become too easy for people
so then it was up to him to restore the difficult qualities
he turned for awhile to the trappists but finally thought diatribe was the answer difficult diatribe
maybe you haven't made lutherans surrealism difficult enough
if it were to become absurdly difficult perhaps more people would take an interest for it then would perchance resonate if you will with most inner human dispositons
do a year of posts which are only math problems
or grotesque unsolved mysterys
i think you're doing OK kirby it's hard to do stand up when everybody's sittin down yuck yuck
at their computer stations
life is more dream like than we generally like to admit
is it true it is catholic
is it beautiful it is catholic is it good it is catholic
c'mon everybody
let's do the twist
yeah
j
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