Laughing in the New Year

Today finishes the first week of 2022. “Happy New Year,” I’ve been bidden all week, as you no doubt have been as well. We’ll see how that goes, though happiness is notoriously hard to define. It is why the Declaration of Independence wisely proclaims only the right to pursue happiness, not attain it. Happiness in general is a lot for which to ask – maybe too much. It is probable that a constant state of happiness is unattainable. Even Dr. Breuning in her self-help book 14 Days to Sustainable Happiness: A Workbook for Every Brain warns of the biological necessity of contrary states. The body’s feel-good chemicals, she says, “are designed to do a job, not flow all the time.” Accepting feeling bad now and then, rather than trying to correct the feeling by interventions that provide short term relief but long term harm, is part of her definition of “sustainable happiness.” We can, however, she tells us, escape ruts of feeling generally miserable (whether or not in 14 days) and that is something. So, by happiness she means something more like contentment than giddiness.

We certainly have moments of giddiness though. On the first day of January I giddily laughed at the cat. He leapt from the floor with an intent to land on the counter but had forgotten the sink was located at the spot he had chosen. He jumped back out of the sink with a feline “I meant to do that” insouciance. Laughter is a pretty good indication of at least momentary happiness. Humans are famously the only animals that cry, probably as a social display adaptation; other animals do have lacrimal glands, but they just keep the eyes moist, not express emotion. But what about laughter? We are less alone on that one. An article in Bioacoustics last April claimed that at least 65 mammal and bird species laugh. Their definition of laughter is broad. It includes the voiced pants that lots of mammals make as a social indicator of play – as when two dog pals are roughhousing but not seriously fighting. Human laughter is thought ultimately to have evolved from this, but some argue it is qualitatively different. Great ape laughter, unsurprisingly, is the closest to our own.

Whether there is a qualitative difference depends in large part on whether other animals have a sense of humor. This in turn depends on how you define humor, which is tricky. “Enjoying an outcome contrary to what is expected” is an old definition of what is funny, but it has obvious flaws: you can know the “Who’s on first” bit by heart – no surprises – and still find it funny. Nietzsche’s surmise (copied by Freud) was that humor is sublime cruelty. This unpleasant definition has stood the test of time better. Even puns, after all, are painful. Humor is “sublime” to the extent it is life and friendship affirming: good-natured teasing, for example, shows a confidence that the person is strong enough to take it with equal good nature. It is to this extent respectful. (Trouble can occur – as it can with roughhousing dogs for that matter – when one or the other party doesn’t recognize where the line is between play and serious aggression.) We even can laugh at our own pain – at the cruelty of life as it is – which is a self-affirmation. Support for this view (though often reluctant) is found in much modern research. Sadists, of course, dispense with the sublime part – hence the “evil laugh” of storybook (and real) villains. But even the best of us laughers apparently indulge at bottom in Schadenfreude – just more obviously on some occasions than others.
 
If our great ape relatives are amused at existential ironies they keep it to themselves. They would laugh at the cat though. They do appreciate pratfalls and will laugh at them like any human, so I think it is fair to say they have a sense of humor though it lacks subtlety. Typical chimpanzee humor is swatting another chimp with a branch and then running away laughing to indicate he is just playing around. It’s a risky prank. Just as not all humans can take a joke, not all chimps can either. It’s probably not a stretch to suppose some other animals are jokesters, too.
 
So, 2022 started for me with at least one laugh. That’s at least a dollop of happiness. I’ll see what I can sustain for the remaining 11+ months, and will try to keep any cruelty on the sublime side of the line. Heh, heh.
 

Beau Brummels – Laugh, Laugh (1964)