More on Humor

An acknowledgment of the ongoing persistence of our frailties is, after all, the central groundwork for all comedic expression.... We need a sense of humor. Without it, we lose the ability to criticize ourselves. Seriousness, after all, can be an excruciatingly inhumane taskmaster. Its vision is very often too small. It doesn't want to know, for instance, that the person disagreeing with us or whose very existence offends has, as it turns out, a really nice smile. It doesn't want to hear that a Samaritan would do a thing like that. No time for it. We have to keep an eye on seriousness. It can make us treat people very unkindly. As Percy says of sentimentality, it leads to the gas chamber. Seriously.

--David Dark, Everyday Apocalypse