Your complimentary articles

You’ve read one of your two complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

You can register for a free account to have four complimentary articles per month. We will occasionally email you a newsletter, from which you can unsubscribe at any time. We do not sell personal data or otherwise disclose personal information to other organisations.

Poetry

It’s Just A Joke

by Christine Jefferys

So, the other day I told a joke
Which they said wasn’t woke:
I thought, ‘It’s my right to speak my mind.
Even if it’s not completely kind!’

When does banter go too far?
Do we need a Comedy Czar?
The absurd, the dark, or satire,
If someone laughs, does it matter?
Before we cancel in great amounts,
Is it only intention that counts?

It isn’t just humans; as far as we can tell,
Primates are wired to laugh as well.
Science and philosophy theorise,
Is that always necessary or wise?

Is comedy just a form of recreation;
Or solace in an awful situation?
A way of building connection;
Familial bonds and affection?
An antidote to power and vanity;
An excuse to indulge profanity;
Or a confection of surreal insanity?
A way of diffusing spite and hate?
Is its absence a psychopathic trait?

Therapeutic or subversive,
One thing’s for sure, it’s not coercive.
And though it may well be anti-hierarchic,
Plato was wrong to dismiss jokes as anarchic.
Releasing endorphins, a neurological hit
And a wondrous addition to our human toolkit.

Christine Jefferys is a founder member of the lively Monday Philosophy Club (MPC) in Wilmington, Kent: cejefferysmondayphilosophyclub@gmail.com.