History of Humor Writing, Pt 2

For today's Good Humor Monday in the Writing Essentials Group, we pick up where we left off in our lesson on the history of humor writing.  In the previous lesson, we learned how a lowly caveman made history with the first ever written depiction of humor.  Today, we learn how humor may have spurned the intellectual development of primitive man.

Pt 2: Humor's vital role in the evolution of humankind

Humor writing progressed very little for the next 30,000-ish thousand years.  The lack of progress, though partially due to the lack of written language, was mostly the result of primitive humans' lack of a developed sense of humor.  The sense of humor is a complex brain function and an obvious sign of higher intelligence.  To this day, people with highly developed senses of humor are revered members of society and are treated with the utmost respect and free cars, but it hasn't always been this way.

Since their primitive brains were wired toward the survivalist instincts of finding food and shelter, very few prehistoric humans had the mental capacity for the concept of humor.  That's not to say that there weren't any humans with the cognitive ability to comprehend humor.  There were a few, but as was often the case the humans capable of understanding humor often found themselves as outcasts in early society.  After all, they were the only ones who laughed when the tribal leader stepped in a giant pile of mammoth dung. 

Dejected because of their lower class designation, humor cognitive humans became quite bitter, and from this bitterness came the world's first use of sarcasm.  Rather than laugh when the tribal leader stepped in the pile of dung, the humor cognitive humans responded with derisive praise.  Because their tribal brethren lacked the ability to understand humor, these subtle jabs at the tribal leadership went unnoticed and unpunished.

It didn't take long for the early humor cognitive humans to figure out how to use their newfound sarcasm skill as a weapon.  Their primitive counterparts lacked the ability to comprehend the sarcasm in statements like "yeah, you can definitely eat fire.  It's quite tasty", "Oh I'm certain there aren't any bears in that cave!" and "Is that water safe to drink?  You mean that stagnate pool of water? The ruddy colored one with the rotting bison carcass festering in the middle of it?  Is that the one you're talking about? Oh definitely, drink up champ!"  This resulted in much laughter on the part of the humor cognitive humans and much dying from their primitive, non-humor counterparts.  Charles Darwin later referred to this phenomenon as sarcastic selection, a process by which one group of a particular species act like jerks to another portion of their species resulting in a dynamic shift in evolutionary progression. 

As humor cognition became more of a dominant trait over the course of the next millennium, humans abandoned their nomadic lifestyle (I mean come on people, what's with all the moving?  Am I right?) and developed permanent farming settlements.  The number of sarcasm victims decreased over the generations, but not because there weren't any more humorless humans running about.  The numbers were thinned out a great deal, but humor cognitives lacked the follow through to drive the humorless to extinction.  As is often the case with humor cognitives, they tired of the joke and moved on to new forms of humorous expression.  The advent of the sedentary lifestyle led to the invention of doors, and as a result the humor cognitives became infatuated with knock-knock jokes.  This allowed the resurgence of the humor deficient into early human civilizations and once again pushed the humor cognitives to the fringes of society.

The course of human history has been shaped by this constantly shifting balance of power between the humor cognitive and humor deficient, and it continues to this day.  As the humorless would build up a society, the humor cognitive would eventually knock it down with there humorous quips and jabs at the establishment.  As always the humor cognitives would lack the follow through to rebuild, thus leaving it to the humorless to handle that process.

Where does the balance lie now in this power struggle between the humor cognitives and the humor deficient?  It's hard for me to say.  But there's one thing that I know for certain:  you see that water?  It's totally safe to drink.