I’ve been wondering a lot about absurdism in humour. There are people who laugh when they see something disastrous happen, like a man reflexively trying to stop a cement truck from tipping and getting squashed dead. Or a recent news story of the only fatality in a school bus crash: it was an observer who got hit by a vehicle as he ran across the highway to see if the kids were ok. A lot of the time this laughing response to a disaster is interpreted as schadenfreude, but a good portion of the time I believe it’s absurdism.
We try so hard to have agency, to do something, but the World doesn’t give a fuck. You have two choices when shit goes so wrong: you can wail about the unfairness of it all, or you can laugh at the absurdity of our efforts in the face of the colossal chaos of it all. The laughter is stronger.
It’s interesting to me that some cultures seem to have absurd humour baked in. The Aussies and Kiwis seem to have it. They just make jokes about and laugh at the most horrific situations.
Yeah, I’ve heard you can either laugh or cry about the vicissitudes of life. I’ve always preferred to laugh, which doesn’t always go over well when people around you choose cry.
Oh, this brought me back to when I was in a psychiatric clinic as a teenager and I reacted like that to something, and this one girl with borderline was just about ready to kill me…
I mean, Absurdism can (to a degree) take you from depressed to content. It obviously can’t help with the actual chemical imbalance sort of depression that drugs can fix, but it sure can help with that good ol’ existential dread.
It’s been a staple of my mental health for decades, though the drugs certainly help. SSRI’s for me, but whatever works for you.
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