Plato and a platypus walk into a bar11/23/2023 ![]() ∞∞∞ A Ninety-year-old man went to the doctor and said, “Doctor, my eighteen-year-old wife is expecting a baby.” The doctor said, “Let me tell you a story. Here’s another example of a philogag, this one a riff on the Argument from Analogy, which says that if two outcomes are similar, they must have a similar cause: (3) Just as Morty is about to open his mouth, Lou jumps out of the bed and says, “Before you say anything, old pal, what are you going to believe, me or your eyes?” ∞∞∞ Morty comes home to find his wife and his best friend, Lou, naked together in bed. What the philosopher calls an insight, the gagster calls a zinger. … philosophy and jokes proceed from the same impulse: to confound our sense of the way things are, to flip our worlds upside down, and to ferret out hidden, often uncomfortable, truths about life. TASSO: My dear Dimitri, it’s turtles all the way down! TASSO: Atlas stands on the back of a turtle.ĭIMITRI: But what does the turtle stand on?ĭIMITRI: And what does that turtle stand on? ∞∞∞ DIMITRI: If Atlas holds up the world, what holds up Atlas? I just don’t know where, and from which mosquito. I’ll confess that I’m not sure with whom I get to share this book for I mostly now feel like a nudist in a mosquito camp. I loved this book, and appreciate so much the clear explications of the various philosophic postulates coupled with a hearty chuckle. There are some who just don’t want to engage, and jokes/philosophies (and sermons) can frequently hit “too close to home.” Laughter is the result of the joke exposing the uncomfortable truths about life that we cannot frequently accept but by which we all live. The jokes are meant to disrupt and confound your categories, and it is that discomfort and dissonance that makes you laugh. Some comedians are lauded by one group and reviled by another for this exact same fact, that these modes of human communication and cognition are “truth-seeking.” The jokes are not to make you laugh, per se. Standup comedy exemplifies this truth explicitly. How a joke (or sermon) lands exposes the philosophical posture of the people to whom one is speaking. But it is also a helpful explanation for my mosquito dilemma, for every audience has subconsciously pre-decided whether or not they wish to be confounded. That is brilliant, profoundly insightful, and scratches the curious itch of my penchant for philosophic insights. …philosophy and jokes proceed from the same impulse: to confound our sense of the way things are, to flip our worlds upside down, and to ferret out hidden, often uncomfortable, truths about life. In my field of work, we have a saying, that “the audience is always sovereign.” This makes the authors’ introductory explanation, for me, worth the price of admission: In my public communications career, I have for years pondered the “communicator’s dilemma,” the phenomenon of the exact same words being received well by one crowd and being repulsed by another. I can’t wait to dive in, but I just don’t know where to start.” I have since stopped saying that joke, for in the religious circles I run in, beginning a talk on a religious/spiritual topic by gleefully mentioning a “clearly immoral activity” as nudism is, well, not a good idea. I once began public talks by saying, “I’m so excited, I’m like a mosquito in a nudist camp. What a fantastic, delightful, and fun read! ![]() Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar…: Understanding Philosophy-Through Jokes.
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