Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

The Meaning of Life 551The rest of Koestler's theory suffered from two old-fashioned ideas: thehydraulic model of the mind, in which psychic pressure builds up andneeds a safety valve, and a drive for aggression, which supplies the pressure.To complete the answer to the question "What, if anything, ishumor for?" we need three new ideas.First, dignity, stature, and the other balloons punctured by humor arepart of the complex of dominance and status discussed in Chapter 7.Dominance and status benefit those who hold them at the expense ofthose who don't, so peons always have a motive to mount a challenge tothe eminent. In humans, dominance is not just the spoil of victory in fightingbut a nebulous aura earned by a recognition of effectiveness in any ofthe arenas in which humans interact: prowess, expertise, intelligence, skill,wisdom, diplomacy, alliances, beauty, or wealth. Many of these claims tostature are partly in the eye of the beholder and would disintegrate if thebeholders changed their weightings of the strengths and weaknesses thatsum to yield the person's worth. Humor, then, may be an anti-dominanceweapon. A challenger calls attention to one of the many less-than-exaltedqualities that any mortal, no matter how high and mighty, is saddled with.Second, dominance is often enforceable one-on-one but impotentbefore a united mob. A man with a single bullet in his gun can hold adozen hostages if they have no way to signal a single moment at which tooverpower him. No government has the might to control an entire population,so when events happen quickly and people all lose confidence ina regime's authority at the same time, they can overthrow it. This may bethe dynamic that brought laughter—that involuntary, disruptive, andcontagious signal—into the service of humor. When scattered tittersswell into a chorus of hilarity like a nuclear chain reaction, people areacknowledging that they have all noticed the same infirmity in an exaltedtarget. A lone insulter would have risked the reprisals of the target, but amob of them, unambiguously in cahoots in recognizing the target'sfoibles, is safe. Hans Christian Andersen's story of the emperor's newclothes is a nice parable of the subversive power of collective humor. Ofcourse, in everyday life we don't have to overthrow tyrants or to humblekings, but we do have to undermine the pretensions of countlessblowhards, blusterers, bullies, gasbags, goody-goodies, holier-than-thous,hotshots, know-it-alls, and prima donnas.