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

The Meaning of Life 553Not all humor is malicious. Friends spend a good deal of time in playfulbadinage in which no one gets hurt; indeed, an evening spent laughingwith friends is one of life's greatest pleasures. Of course, much of thepleasure comes from disparaging people outside the circle, which reinforcesthe friendship by the principle that the enemy of my enemy is myfriend. But much of it is mild self-deprecation and gentle teasing thateveryone seems to enjoy.Not only is convivial humor not particularly aggressive; it's not particularlyfunny Robert Provine did something that no one in the two-thousandyearhistory of pontificating about humor had ever thought to do: hewent out to see what makes people laugh. He had his assistants hang outon the college campus near groups of people in conversation and surreptitiouslynote what triggered their laughter. What did he find? A typicallaugh line was, "I'll see you guys later," or "What is that supposed tomean?!" As they say, you had to be there. Only about ten to twenty percentof the episodes could be classified as humorous, and then only bythe most indulgent standards. The funniest lines in twelve hundredexamples were, "You don't have to drink; just buy us drinks," "Do youdate within your species?" and "Are you working here or just trying tolook busy?" Provine notes, "The frequent laughter heard at crowdedsocial gatherings is not due to a furious rate of joke telling by guests.Most pre-laugh dialogue is like that of an interminable television situationcomedy scripted by an extremely ungifted writer."How do we explain the appeal of the barely humorous banter thatincites most of our laughter? If humor is an anti-dominance poison, a dignicide,it need not be used only for harmful purposes. The point of Chapter7 was that when people interact with each other they have to choosefrom a menu of different social psychologies, each with a different logic.The logic of dominance and status is based on implicit threats and bribes,and it vanishes when the superior can no longer make good on them. Thelogic of friendship is based on a commitment to mutual unmeasured aid,come what may. People want status and dominance, but they also wantfriends, because status and dominance can fade but a friend will be therethrough thick and thin. The two are incompatible, and that raises a signalingproblem. Given any two people, one will always be stronger, smarter,wealthier, better-looking, or better connected than the other. The triggers