Comedy has always been used to influence opinion. Satire and wit serve to exhibit intelligence and bolster respect for the comedian. A jaded discontent on the part of a comedian taps into the restlessness of youth and challenges flawed power structures. In exchange for being receptive, audiences receive a laugh, and a pleasurable listening experience. It's a powerful medium for information delivery.
This form of delivery has most often been used to poke fun and reveal the ridiculousness of behaviors, traditions, and social mores. In short, comedy improves society by breaking it down. Comedies like George Carlin mock religion, Lewis Black pokes fun at politicians, and Jim Gaffigan gets a chuckle from the horrors of food addiction. Until recently, moral guidance has been left to its traditional sources: religion and its ministers. Things are changing.
Analysis of life, healthy doses of fatherly advice, and exploratory spiritual sketches on the meaning of life are among the newest developments. Unlike traditional moral guidance, behavior and language are shallow indicators of moral principle. Comedians understand this with their colorful language and perverse descriptions. This seems to be in line with the realizations of many liberated ex-religious. Leave puritanism to fossilized Quakers and Christians who, without the 10 commandments would apparently forget how to behave and eat each other alive. Purity and wellness are not as simple as doing and saying the right things. Like this post, many comedy sketches are just vague attempts at progress; abstracts, but who really has the answers anyway?
Bill Hicks:
"The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go
on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are.
The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills,
and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a
while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to
wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people
have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry;
don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those
people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him
up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my
family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we
always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice
that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's
just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice.
No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love.
The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns,
close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.
Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride.
Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and
instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the
world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being
excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer,
forever, in peace."
Louis C.K.:"I'm bored" is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you've seen none percent of. And even the inside of your own mind is endless. It goes on forever inwardly. Do you understand? Being the fact that you're alive is amazing, you don't get to be bored."
[On suicide]
"I got my reasons to live, I've worked to figure out what they are, and I'm not just handing them over to you.... If you wanna tap out 'cuz your life is sh*t, ya know what, it's not your life, it's life ... Life is bigger than you, if you can imagine that. Life isn't something that you possess, it's something that you take part in."
[On work and fulfillment]
What are some of your favorite comedian quotes?
