Humor on High and Low Levels

Humor is essential to a full and happy life. It is a reliever and relaxer of pressure and tension, and the saving element in many situations. But there are different kinds of humor, some sincere, some completely unacceptable. There is delightful, wholesome humor that heals and helps the spirit and gives a lift to life. There is giddy, trivial humor that produces light-minded laughter⎯the vacant and inconsequential kind. There is evil humor, grim humor, humor that embarrasses and humor that is cruel, unkind. There is humor that is unclean, and has no place among considerate people or in decent society. There is an account of a man who cautioned a speaker against telling off-color stories, because, said he, “There are ladies present”⎯to which someone said that there were also gentlemen present. The assumption that something suggestive, low minded, or unclean is all right in one kind of audience but not in another, is a questionable assumption. Anything filthy or unclean is wrong in any audience. One of the frequent and unfortunate mistakes that some speakers and performers and masters of ceremonies make is assuming that they should degrade themselves and their audience with suggestive, unclean stories⎯stores that are filthier than they are funny, to the embarrassment of every decent-minded person. Even when suggestive and unclean humor gets a laugh, it is more likely the laugh of embarrassment, rather than of genuine amusement: embarrassment for the poor judgment of him who has gone so far as to forget decency and good taste; for him who goes below the level of what is clean, to what is supposedly clever even if unclean. We lower our own level and contribute to the downpull of young and impressionable people when we use unclean, low minded humor in any part of any proceedings, in public or in private. We may well be grateful for the gift and blessing of kindly, wholesome humor, which adds a wonderful lift to life⎯and grateful for the man of clean mind.