"I would commit suicide without Humor." said Sage Gandhi. The old colonial days of India under the control of the Great Britain, the Indians had the feelings of their extreme fury, wrath, resentment, and distress, etc. against England.
Mark Twain said, "There is no humor in heaven." Conversely, the real world is Hell. Actually, since the industrialization of our society, our daily life has been flooded with and dominated by information, and is the contrary to the intended social life which we awaited; the machines which should improve our lives are becoming inconvenient to us-air pollution from vehicles that discharge of poisonous exhaust fumes, the increasing cumbersome of reprocessing the data gathered and processed, etc. - agricultural exploitation intended to increase the yield of grain is destroying ecosystems, and even contaminating drinking water.
In this monstrous and bizarre phenomenon that is our daily environment, we are spending our day talking and wrestling with the machines, and then wrapping up our daily work without a glance at each other all day long.
This bad daily environment and being worn to a frazzle by hard work, etc. cause people who feel annoyed and exhausted with them to bring about the phenomenon of being afraid of meeting others itself and then avoid meeting them deliberately [shunning them] on the pretext of their saving time and economical life.
As Mark Twain said, "The real world is Hell." We live in what we call the Age of Lost Humanity. Whenever we open our eyes, we see our living world filled with various problems, and annoyances repeatedly put to us here and there, and indeed it is fraught with dreariness, desolateness, and wilderness,' so to speak, we are really living in Hell. However, if we open our eyes more widely and see out our living world a little farther and think of it other way, we come to realize that this world is full of not only mysteries and charms, but great delight and joy which we can smile leisurely; that is, we come to know we are living in Heaven, not in Hell. It is the real world that only those living in the humor world can feel. If we have this viewpoint of our living world, we can't help laying the importance in acquiring humor sense in order to be out of living in Hell and to live in Heaven[in order to live in Heaven, not in Hell]. Unfortunately, we have no proper theory or study of good humor, however hard we may try to get humor sense. We have no studies whatever on humor in the over-all fields of society,' economy, and art, etc. Only in the field of analysis or criticism of literature works has humor been studied up to now. There are many anecdotes related to humor. One of them is: Although Herom·Ho-Heno-Lerrun might burst into laughter in his private life, he never did so in public life. Wearing a Kaiser mustache and fierce facial expression, he was well-known to the public, little is known about seldom laughing. "With this, Germany was beaten at war." said people. "At present as well as in the past Japan and Germany are facing the political difficulties because their people have less humor sense than the people of other countries. I firmly believe so." and also, "Dispatch the best five or six humorists in the world to the international conference and in that place entrust them with full powers[plenary authority] of an absolute monarch[a despot), and with this alone the whole world will be saved." said Lim A-Dang.
Seeing our life is a hard, routine one, the more such people are, the less harmonious our society is. Thus, laughter not is simple or meaningless, but contribute to building up wholesome aspects of life by improving and remedying our way of life.
There are a great many histories of humor and anecdotes of historical events related to the humor, but there is not a study on why these become and how we live a humorous and wise life. The end of this study is to establish the theory of humor and provide people with the opportunity to apply it to either the production of good works, or management, or building up good character in real life. To speak more concretely, what makes the readers deeply moved and the works become masterpieces when we are reading them? Do we know how to save our life when we feel threatened to be killed? In what wit do we get through serious crisis we face? How do we break the ice in the cold and awkward situation and get harmonious and peaceful atmosphere?, and so on. There has been no concrete and practical study on humor. The end of this study is to establish the theory of how to understand humor as well as laughter and wisdom.
Literature is the expression of feelings and emotions, and it represents how to express them by means of language. I can say humor as a part of literature is the art of speech; humor is an art, and an art is "aesthetic value pursuit"; therefore, how this aesthetic value in humor is represented in literature works is analyzed and then it lets the speaker have the desirable aesthetic feeling, and provides him with the theoretical foundation of humor and enables him to properly employ[use] humor whenever it is necessary to do in real situation. And I wanted to obviously formulate the notion of humor by identifying and examining the notion and aesthetics of humor which aestheticians have maintained so far. Thus, this study is arranged as follows;
First, I selected all the humors covered in the whole field of society to formulate the comprehensive theory of humor Second, I carefully examined the formation of these humors in what background, the notion, category, and character of them. Third, I presented the condition on what to do in order to create the humor, and explained the technique and limitation of it in real use. Fourth, I examined what function humor has and considered how to use it extensively. Lastly, I examined the position humor occupies[takes] in modern life and presented how practical humor will be widely used.
The contents of this study are included in the over-all fields of society,' politics, economy", etc. I chiefly used a philosophical and aesthetic approach to humor. I secondarily invoked managerial, historical, and literary one. I analyzed the existing materials of humor and was based on the researcher's "aesthetic experience." I set up the existing theories and presumed what has "aesthetic experience," if the researcher(or reader) felt it in his mind; I regarded the hypothesis(in fact, scholar's opinion) as being verified if he burst into 'laughter' or got wisdom after reading the materials of humor.
The results of this study are the following;
1. "aesthetic value" in humor, as Hobbes said, "is the joy of victory suddenly appeared." According to Justin, "Laughter bursts when both surprise and expectations run counter." Each scholar has his own notion of humor. They can't exactly define what humor is. That's the reason they have the unilateral viewpoint of humor. Due to this subjectivity of humor, the state of not defining these values makes humor.
2. humor is "the expression of aesthetic (mental) image."', in other words, among the objects of humor is represented what has aesthetic value revealed by the function of an aesthetic image. only an object having aesthetic value depending on what aesthetic value has, humor is made in various types.
3. because humor requires both instantaneousness and on-the-spot, it is required to make a thorough preparation for it in advance to be quick-witted. It is made to understand how to use good and proper humor whenever it is needed by presenting both apologue and application of the situation.
4. humor is the product created in the transferring of passive environment to active one. Though a humorist stand on the defensive, he must make an effort to change himself into standing on the offensive. That is because humorists must be passionate, active and positive ones.
5. because humor continues to be conflicting in itself and the movement·change in it is happening, wisdom can be obtained from changing the environment in another time or in another place.
6. because this world is dual one. the speaker can have another appearance and another idea when he speaks, he thinks conversly and get a hint from it and carries himself in the unilateral world which is cut and dried to dual world.
7. there is no unique or pure one in this world because it is entangled and complicated in organic form. Humor can be created when some incident is sometimes integrated or sometimes separated, depending on the situation.
8. because man, with their own values ?beliefs and so on, is an animal of mixed emotions, it is possible for the speaker and the hearer to use humor variously and numerously. While the hearer knows with the speaker's character and personality, and copes with the situation, the speaker can decide what humor to use, depending on the hearer's attitude.
9. humor is required to employ right humor to the situation because it is spontaneously created or made according to men's joy and anger together sorrow and pleasure.
10. humor is formed in the emotions and thoughts. When an emotion stands on the defensive, it occurs. we must control our emotions and must not get upset. Thoughts(wisdom) are made when we have latitude of mind and live in comfort. It is required to have it and live in comfort all the time.
11. humor is used for the function of both question-raising and question-solving. Humor can be used in the advertising for sales strategy. This humor can be presented at issue and product sales can be promoted. It is required to activate the function of humor and provide people a theorectical opportunity in the whole field of society, because the development of learning results in the improvement of life', this makes our living world bright, delightful, and smooth.
12. it is strictly forbidden to offend and hurt others on account of humor and get them in desperation. It is required to make an effort to have a right "aesthetic image." because hurting others can lead to the irretrievable social evil.
13. to cheat someone with humor or to manage to tide over crisis may bring about a rigid judgement in history. It is required not to invite such a case.
To sum up, humor cannot exist without our life of sensation. With humor, it enables us to judge things properly and understand how to find a way of life favorably. It is very important to enable us to make the most of humor, and lead us to live a wise life.
Nowadays information-communication and mechanization of society are overflown and it causes people not to have a talk with each other and destroy humanity almost irrevocably. In this social atmosphere, humor is more important and urgent than any other task to be solved.
I described the end and result of humor in a philosophical and aesthetic way. I dealt with so many areas of humor, but I felt the lack of enough time. I intend to develop the theoretical study of humor in the future if I have the opportunity. In other words, I didn't use and verify hypotheses of humor theory. This task remains to be solved in the future.