From "Humor Neutral: Post-Modernism, the Prisoner and the Construct of Culture":
In a post-modern society many people cannot see humor unless they are primed to see humor. Humor comes from the deconstruction of the constructed: that is, the expected must necessarily lead into the unexpected. However, these people do not trust in their own experience of the unexpected: as such, need cues from the surrounding culture that humor is about to transpire....
The prisoner does not expect to find his cell door unexpectedly open: is this random articulation of chaos, or is a joke being played on the prisoner? Ensconsed in deprivation, the prisoner is not conditioned by the immediate culture to expect comedy: extrapolate this condition to the politically correct society and it is no surprise that many find themselves Humor Neutral...
Laughter can signal many things, one of those being oppression: laughter intended to coerce by implied societal force. Those who experience oppression cannot experience humor without the consent of their oppressors: as such, societal survival again requires the adopting of the Humor Neutral persona...
To laugh at perceived power implies the receipt of permission: this permission is often conveyed by non-verbal signaling. Those outside the prevailing culture may not be conversant with these non-verbal cues, and -- as such -- consciously decide to not open themselves publicly to laugh in error...
Humor Neutrality-as-Defense Mechanism is necessarily a response to the deconstruction of Western mores and paradigms: when the prevailing societal values cannot be trusted, then the society's cues to humor must be viewed in distrust, also: this onset of the suspicion of humor becomes the axis on which societal input is received...
Obviously, suspicion then leads itself to Humor Neutrality: the Self is not to be trusted with such decisions of observation as related to comic intent versus comic correctness. This distancing of the Humorous Self thus invades all aspects of the person, and all of their subsequent societal interactions. Indeed, the acceptance of such can lead to a wider acceptance of a sense of conspiracy, to be found where humor is not...
I am Laslo.
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