I am reading Man’s Search for Meaning, and the author speaks about how even in the concentration camps, where death and suffering is shoved in your face, the prisoners still joke and try to make the best of a truly horrific situation. I guess humor has evolved as a sort of coping mechanism, and as a method of keeping sane.
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. It’s very powerful and raw.
To add to this, there’s a great section in Man Without a Country by Vonnegut where he talks about his approach to humor, and he mentions the time he was in Dresden during WW2 as a prisoner of war, while it was being bombed.
True enough, there are such things as laughless jokes, what Freud called gallows humor. There are real-life situations so hopeless that no relief is imaginable.
While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.” Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it.
Well said. Agree wholeheartedly.
I am reading Man’s Search for Meaning, and the author speaks about how even in the concentration camps, where death and suffering is shoved in your face, the prisoners still joke and try to make the best of a truly horrific situation. I guess humor has evolved as a sort of coping mechanism, and as a method of keeping sane.
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. It’s very powerful and raw.
To add to this, there’s a great section in Man Without a Country by Vonnegut where he talks about his approach to humor, and he mentions the time he was in Dresden during WW2 as a prisoner of war, while it was being bombed.
A bigger part of the section here: https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/bookworm/kurt-vonnegut-1/excerpt-from-a-man-without-a-country