The Sense of Humor and Celebration

Leonardo Boff

21/01/2008

Opinión

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Times are not good. Humanity is led mostly by negative and mediocre leaders. Almost all religions, including sectors of the Roman Catholic Church, contaminated by the cultural pessimism of the present Pope, are weakened by fundamentalism, arrogance and dogmatism.

In spite of that, is there still room for humor and a sense of celebration? I think so. Despite the existential absurdities, most people continue to trust the fundamental goodness of life. People wake up in the morning, go to work, struggle for their families, seeking to live with a minimum of decency (so exploited by politicians), and accepting sacrifice for values that really matter. What lies behind these daily acts? It is an affirmation, in an unconscious and pre-reflective form, that life has meaning; we accept death, but, as François Mitterand said as he was dying, "Life is so good!"

Some sociologists, such as Peter Berger and Eric Vögelin, maintain in their reflections that the human being possesses an unrestrained tendency towards order. No matter where human beings appear, they rapidly create an existential agreement with order and values that guarantee a minimally humane and peaceful life.

The intrinsic goodness of life is what makes celebration and a sense of humor possible. Through celebrations, be they sacred or profane, all things are reconciled. As Nietzsche affirmed, «to celebrate is to be able to say: that all things be welcome.» Through celebration, the human being breaks the monotonous pace of everyday life, stops to relax and to experience the joy of being, in friendship, and the satisfaction of eating and drinking together. In celebrations, drinking and eating do not have the practical finality of stopping hunger or thirst, but of enjoying the gathering and celebrating friendship. In celebrations, clock time is not important and to the human being is given, for a moment, the experience of the mythical time of a world reconciled with itself. This is why, enemies and unknown are alien to the nucleus of a celebration, because a fiesta supposes order and joy, goodness of persons and things. Music, dance, kindness and special clothing are part of the world of the celebration. Through such elements a human being transmits a yes to the world, and a confidence in its essential harmony.

From this last confidence the sense of humor originates. To have humor is to have the capacity to perceive the discrepancy between two realities: between brutal facts and dreams, between the limitations of the system and the power of creative fantasy. In humor there exists a sense of relief, facing the limitations of existence and even of tragedy. Humor is sign of the transcendence of the human being who can rise above any situation to its more profound and free state. This is why humans can smile and laugh at those who would limit them, at the violence with which they would try to force them into submission. Only he who is capable of making the most serious things relative, even when they are subsumed within an effective compromise, can have good humor.

The worst enemy of humor is the fundamentalist and the dogmatist. No one has seen a terrorist laugh, or forced a smile from a strict conservative Christian. They are usually so sad that they seem to be going to their own funeral. It is enough to see their contracted faces. It is not uncommon for them to be reactionary and even violent.

In the end, the secret essence of humor lies in a religious attitude, even though it may be forgotten in this irreverent world, for humor sees the inadequacy of all things in the face of the Ultimate Reality. Humor and celebration reveal that there is always a reservoir of meaning that still allows us to live and to smile. (Translation: Servicios Koininia)

- Leonardo Boff is a theologian.

https://www.alainet.org/es/node/125299