Time is a Funny Thing

Hot, Cold, Bitter, Sweet, Bright, Dark, Funny - not the names of dwarves from some weird version of Snow White, but examples of concepts that we all agree exist, and loosely agree on their meaning, yet vary wildly in how we define them and examples of each that we can give.  What is Hot and what is Cold is not something that has any standardized definition.  10 degrees Celsius for example will feel cold to anyone who ordinarily lives in a temperate climate, whilst those who are used to living in sub-zero temperatures will view that as very warm.  Where I grew up in the UK for example, the low 20s in Celsius is considered a typical hot summer's day, yet there will be people from countries that experience tropical heat who consider that to be a cold winter's day.

Bitter and Sweet are more apparent as examples of concepts that are open to interpretation, and are perhaps examples of concepts where we recognise conditioning as influential in determination of the experience.  Most people have a basic understanding of a palate and the expression "acquired taste" with some level of understanding that certain things will vary in extremity based on what you would normally eat.

Bright and Dark are perhaps the simplest examples of experiences that fluctuate over short periods of time.  When we go to bed at night our rooms are dark, our eyes adjust to the low light levels and we eventually adapt to the ambience, to the point where switching on a light can be blinding to us.  The very same light at other times of the day doesn't cause the same reaction, because it is not the extremity of the light but the shift that determines our reaction.

However the concept of humour is perhaps the most notable of the seven listed above.  The most notable in that there's very little you can do to predict whether someone will find something funny or not.  There are stereotypes you can try and fall back upon, that certain economic classes, or races, or genders, or sexualities et al, would find certain types of humour funny.  The reality however is that in every example given there is always deviation and there is very little you can do in advance to prepare.  Comedians who are versed in their craft often talk about "reading" a room, where they choose not to judge in advance what an audience will find funny but instead react to the audience on their night, finding their "level" and knowing where they can and cannot go in terms of whether a joke will land like a lead balloon or go down a hit.

The thing I find interesting about the fluidity of humour is not just the fact that the exact same conditions can produce two people with wildly different sense of humour, but the fact that those two people will not likely conform to the same "triggers" for lack of a better word, throughout their whole lives.  What they find funny at 10, 20, 40, or 80 years of age, is also fluid.  That makes me wonder what in our lives today will we look back on in the future and laugh at?  How extreme will that juxtaposition become?  Are we destined to find the most extreme flips from something you should never joke about becoming something hilarious, or vice versa, with things being hilarious today that we will look back on with horror?  I'm reminded of some of the TV shows from the 20th Century that would never get commissioned today out of the cultural disparity of our past and present.