I was reading this story the other day by Isaac Asimov. Don’t recall the title of it but it was about Multivac and a scientist feeding some jokes into Multivac in order to find out the importance of humour. It got me thinking. Why DO we smile anyways? I can see no reason other than to feel happy or cheer up. I mean take me for example. You won’t ever see me without a smile on my face. In fact, I’ve written this far and that’s the 9th grin no tenth grin that’s crossed my face. Weird! SO, why exactly do we smile? More importantly what makes us want to cheer someone up to bring a smile to their face? I guess it’s because we feel good. I mean aside from the scientific benefits of it viz. the exercise of about 40 odd muscles in and around your mouth….
Think of the different places we choose to smile. When we hear a joke be it a PJ or a whopping great joke we tend to smile and in some cases if the joke is really good, we burst out laughing. In fact there are many people who are addicted to jokes, such as myself. I’m a grade A jokester and cant resist a rib tickler! Ample reason to join a group on Facebook that deals exclusively with jokes! But what’s the purpose of a joke? Just to make humans smile! So, smiling is pretty damn important if people go to such lengths for it. (By the way grin count is up to 13 now!). Then again, jokes aren’t the only things that make us smile. When we pass an exam or beat the living daylights out of a really hard bit on a computer game or just listen to our favourite tracks we smile. We smile when we see something beautiful, when we see something that we wanted to happen happen. We smile at almost every inconsequential thing in our lives & at almost every moment of our lives. We smile in company of our friends, we smile when we are at peace and can’t help thinking that that old chap Browning was right when he said that “God’s in his Heaven and All’s right in the world”. When we recall a memory from our past like a tiffin fight in the 3rd grade we smile. So, I think I’m justified in saying that smiling is more than just a little twitching of the jaw; it’s a BIG way of expressing your innermost feelings. It’s the best way to say you’re happy.
So, back to that story by Asimov. As I was saying, this scientist feeds 4 jokes into Multivac and asks it to analyse them thoroughly. His aim is to find the origin of jokes. When other people learn of this they all think this scientist has flipped. But then Multivac gives them his conclusion. Jokes are from outer space. To quote “of extra-terrestrial origins”. Then, Multivac drops the bombshell. It appears that these aliens have decided that the people know too much for their own good and have obliterated humour and the capacity to understand it from the minds of humans. The last line of the story is
“I know that if I ever hear a joke again, I won’t laugh”.
And I’m not laughing either. Just think for a moment about this scenario. What would happen if we woke up and found that all the humour in the world was gone? Would we shrug it off and continue as before? Could we continue as before? No more smiles all just zombies with the same expression on their faces? Tell me, what would you do if you could never smile again? Would you be able to think clearly?
I know what I would do, I would walk to the middle of a highway during rush hour traffic and just wait there for someone to put me out of my pain….because that’s the reason we smile isn’t it? To forget our pain?
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