i want to be a black person

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

yeah racist.

i know for sure that black people who live in west philadelphia (the ones who are poor) are very different from white people raised in suburbs (me).

i dont feel like this is a racist statement because if you dont agree, you have no clue what you are talking about.

of course!! we are not Genetically different. a poor black baby put into my family would be just as great if not better than me. (maybe not That great)

but the culture of poor black people, and i suppose, white people who are somehow assimilated into the culture, they just plain laugh harder than i do.

the reason for creating this thread is simple. ive seen them laugh harder than i ever have, at things that i would never consider laughing at. i remember working at the Quaker Information Center and a poor, weird-talking black janitor was talking to a woman-weird-talking-black janitor, and he was decribing a TV Commercial. there was a little surprise in the commercial. something about the car was funny and surprising. i had seen the commercial, and i thought it was creative, it was alright. i didnt laugh.

this grown man described the commercial Three Times. he said it once, and exploded into laughter before he finish. he started over halfway, between choked laughs, said it again. and after 15 seconds of laughing, he said it again, with a little more composure, and a Much Greater burst of laughter once he got it out again. and the two of them laughed and laughed and Laughed.

i started to say to myself “my god, you are so STUPID”, but long before i finished the first word, i realized that i was so incredibly jealous.

does anybody have a high iq? how often do you laugh? do you require a complex sequence of events ending in a completely unexpected resolution that illustrates some commonly overlooked social phenomena in order to laugh? i pity you. and i pity me. the simpsons, family guy, or curb your enthusiasm, coupled with liberal doses of marijuana are generally good for our disease.

i want to laugh easily. i want to laugh like the poor black man.

the question is this: does the poor black man laugh because he is simple, uneducated and therefore easily amused? or does he laugh because his laughter is a way to escape from the unbelievable, unimaginable pain that he constantly deals with?

does constant pain lead to an anxiousness to release that pain? or not necessarily release, but mask that pain? do they mask it from themselves? do they have a desire to laugh as often as possible? do they see a slight desire to laugh and jump on it as hard as they can? when they jump on it, does the recipient of their ‘joke’ also laugh, fueling their own reciprocating laugh?

i want to know the correlation between pain and laughter. if a person feels a lot of pain and posts here, do you laugh a lot? because i feel no pain, and i laugh rarely.

its called karma. and i have it. my life is good, but its stuck in the middle, and it goes nowhere. i wouldnt trade it for anything, but i dont think most people would, unless they dont fully understand what they are trading it for.

i dont think ive ever posted such a deep topic that has so many questions that can be answered. and its not freaking racist, black people in west philadelphia happen to have been segregated into their low income communities. and im saying that a large community of people who feel pain have a certain connection between eachother, and a certain, yes, lack of education (not innate stupidity) that allows them to laugh harder at things that i feel are overly simple.

i have more interest in laughter than any social theories, religion or physics

2

future man,

i don’t think that the fact that they see things funny that you don’t has anything to do with the color of their skin… it has to do with them having a better sense of humor.

really, some people just understand that the best way to deal with life is to laugh. i think poor people regardless of skin color realize this more than the well off though. Poor people are given the short end of the stick, either by choice or by not applying themselves or by knocking up their high school sweetheart.

Then there’s people like Donald Trump who focuses on making money.

Now ask yourself this, can you imagine donald trump laughing out loud?

3

Not Donald Trump, youre right, I have a hard time picturing him laughing histericly. But then I started thinking about famous people and who I could picture laughing out loud, and Hugh Hefner came to mind. Hes got it goooooooood… How can a man in his position not laugh out loud… Lucky lucky lucky man…

4

Laughter is a social thing.

The more median your intelligence is the more people you have on the level to share with.

If you really want to laugh you have to find someone to really connect with.

There is one girl a laugh around most. What do we laugh at? Not dumb commericals but weird little things in life. For instance minor logical errors in people’s thinking or an odd factual error. The truth is, the more intelligent you are the more things you will find to laugh about. But that laugh will only follow that knowing look exchanged with someone on par.

It’s joy when you find it.

5

That is true as well, the more in common you have with the common man, the easier time you’ll have laughing with the common man about stupid commercials.

I don’t know about that, can you imagine going up to a nude playboy model and laughing? Can’t imagine that’d land you in the sack with her.

6

skythe, youre right, it has nothing to do with the color of their skin, but their Community. but i also believe that it has something to do with the level of their education, and the level of education of their peers.

when i talk to the girls that i like, the first thing that they say about me is my sense of humor, because it is apparently awesome. but then again, i am as selective as a beautiful genius can be. so i dont know what normal girls think. so heres some self aggrandizing, if you havent already labeled it:

but its very simple, i say the opposite of what they expect. its hard to think of an exact example, but lets say i have a clear opportunity to tell them that they are pretty, “oh i know i dont wear makeup usually but…” and ill say “yeah your fucking ugly” but only if they are really pretty.

thats a bad example and ive never said it because thats a delicate topic and all girls think that they are ugly so they wouldnt get it, but thats my sense of humor. and it works when making other, similar jokes.

the sense of humor that i am ‘deriding’ is based on repeating the things that have been seen on tv. i mean, tv comes up with some good jokes, dont get me wrong.

but never, ever, would i ever, EVER repeat a tv joke to somebody who isnt interested in what i have to say. to repeat a tv commercial as a piece of conversation is like vomiting into my girlfriends face, right after i ate some spicy chili.

BUT! you are correct, my sense of humor is VERY VERY flawed.

those of us who have this “SOPHISTICATED” sense of humor, where we can only make fun of things that are rarely made fun of, or we can only say things that are rarely said, we have a DISABILITY!!!

i will now dub it the “intellectual laughter disability”

isnt it hard for you to laugh involuntarily? what about when you are alone? do you EVER laugh when alone? if so, id like to know how.

and of course, it has absolutely nothing to do with the color of their skin. the thing is, in the 1950s, our american real estate agencies decided to prevent these black people from moving into suburban or any rich areas for the simple reason that a neighborhood containing black people in the 50s would decreases the property value, due to the prevailing racism of the time.

its a fact, i saw a video provided to me by a history teacher with a mission, who happened to be black. dispute this? anybody? real estate discrimination in the 50s? no.

and that is what has led to the current schism in america (coupled with, of course, schools funded by property taxes, what an embarassment!).

the blatantly obvious schism. and i mean, im sure that there must be some white people somewhere who fall under the same category as “ghetto black west philly man”, but seriously, until you live here, you dont know how schismatic it truly is. these black people are truly schismed. and different. not inferior, if i am ever able to fix my brain so that it can be like theirs in this way, i will fix it.

but if i were them, i would just want to leave, simply because i want to change the world. but that sounds horrible. and its not a part of this thread.

thats what im saying. the more pain you feel = the harder you laugh. and i have no experiments to prove this except for my own experience with poor (coincidentally black) people. and also myself, very very lucky. not just rich lucky, exactly balanced between rich and normal. few laughs.

i also think a rich person will try to laugh uncomfortably when he thinks he is supposed to laugh. he will force it because he knows that is the socially acceptable thing to do. ive seen this uncomfortable forced laugh once, this is very speculative. i would like input on this. this is the nature of this theory. this is why i want serious input. ahem, SERIOUS input.

im very glad to hear this, because i completely disagree.

i pity these logical errors. i had a friend who came up to visit me, and she could NOT STOP whispering into my ear all of the flaws that she found with everything everybody said.

and i was like ‘i know dude, lets help them’ and she just wanted to laugh, and had no pity.

this is most definetely a huge insult, but dont take this any differently than my previous insults of the urban poor, but that shit aint funny.

but i know its funny to you, and i couldnt be more happy, no, jealous, that you found somebody who agrees that its funny.

so apparently i can now classify the kinds of humor into three categories: repeating dumb shit you see on tv, making fun of idiots who say dumb shit, and the recognition of broad social phenomena that is flawed (which i hope to myself that i can classify myself into as superior, but probably cant).

i can laugh at any of those three, but i will guarantee a laugh at the third. and, without a doubt, i cant say that i am above what you describe, lostguy, dont get me wrong.

wait, definetely dont get me wrong: when i was with that girl i described, i was right there with her, laughing at all those losers. until she wouldnt fuck me, then i suddenly rose above her. slut.

ok, so a whole new point has come up as i stream my drunken consciousness, your humor is a product of who you are delivering it to! …to some extent. i would not respect an honest person who honestly laughed at my recital of a commercial. but i remember making fun of people at that particular party with the slut. i kind of laughed, but i would have preferred the social commentary kind of laugh. but i definetely laughed when she did.

so laughter is communication. upon typing that, i remember a nat geo documentary about laughter which had this same thesis. it did experiments with people and found this same thing. when people are alone, they laugh less, and when surrounded by others, they laugh much more. im sure we have all felt this. upon learning this thesis, i thought back and realized it was very true.

if you think somebody agrees with your laugh, and moreso if you see that they do agree with your laugh, you will laugh much harder. and im sure that contributed to the black janitors laughs. but i am still wondering if his ineducation was the cause of his ability to laugh at his simple source.

and now for something completely different

here is the big lesson that many of we ilp nerds need to learn:
if you are a “dork” “nerd” “loser” and nobody respects you, watch out for this particular body language!!!:::::
when you laugh at a tv show, do you look around at the other people in the room to see if they are also laughing?

if you do that, seriously, nobody who is “cool” or “confident of themselves” will be your friend. it is one of the BIG signs of insecurity. this belongs in another thread, but i just want to get my public service announcements out as often as possible.

7

… and all this time, i thought that you were black… man, why would i do that? … are you sure that you’re white?

8

Samuel Clemens once said that every laugh is rooted in pain.

9

Future man

This has to be your finest post to date.

Laughter - you laugh when something unexpected happens, that’s like relieving the stress from encountering the unexpected. once you have read many books, you know a lot of things, and less and less things surprise you, you see through things. People used to make me laugh, now I make them laugh. :slight_smile: humour is a sign of intelligence. you obviously have higher intelligence than the black janitor.

another thought, “winners are grinners”, everyone including the black janitors want to win, so maybe they are pretending to be winners to get the respect they do not deserve.

EDIT: I smiled at this “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die!”

10

Schopenhauer thought that black people laughed like this because they are stupid and need to fill their time with nonsense. I’m not sure that this is true though.

I work in Philadelphia in the Northern section by Lehigh Ave. Soon I will be working in the West. Anyway, I have found that I greatly prefer working with black people as they are not as edgy and perfectionistic as white people. White people seem much more cranky, self-centered, and aggressive than black people. Even educated black people are much more mild than the white people that I know. I have never seen a black coworker flip out like a white one will. Meanwhile, my black clients are usually very open to reason and common sense ideas. However, white people will very stubbornly cling to ideas even if they are bad just because they thought of them.

I have a very high IQ and I tend to find absurdity, word play, irony, or what I call human folly to be amusing. As you said, I do not find jokes to be humorous. However, I suppose that they should be, as they are jokes, but I still don’t like them. I prefer wit.

Anyway, maybe the lack of perfectionism is what makes black people laugh more easily. They are not thinking like snobs and saying to themselves that I am not going to laugh at that.

Also, Philly is a pretty uneducated town. Many of my clients have never heard of half the words that I use. I’m talking simple words here. So, I would bet that the more complex your vocabulary the more complex your humor potential is. Vocabulary helps to expand concepts and the more concepts that you have the more there is to laugh at.

It really is a good question though.

11

Yes, FM showing his touchy-feely side. I like it when he is not being…well…emotive. :stuck_out_tongue: Love your thread, FM.

Anyway, picking up on what Adlerian just said:

True. Though I wouldn’t attribute this characteristic only to black people, I find that when people are less focused on themselves and more on what’s going on around them, they (or we) become more relaxed and able to recognize the truth of the joke. I once saw an interview of a professional (stand up) comedian, and he said that we laugh at the joke because we recognize something that is true of the human situation. Of course, there is such a thing as “sarcastic laugh”----and this is different, this is actually annoying and oftentimes offensive.

And then there’s the fake laugh, people laugh just to join in, and/or not to offend the person/comedian delivering the funny line. Don’t know. But I find that real, hearty laugh does something physiological to us. Our sides hurt from laughing and tears well up even. This is a real laugh.

12

FM

one question, when you say, “I want to be a black person”, do you mean you want to be a black man or woman?

13

How do adds appear at the bottom of the page that have to do with the thread? That’s amazing marketing! Paranoia inducing too.

14

If your talking about the ads above?.. when you place ads with google, you state which keywords you want the advert to appear with.

I don’t want to hijack this thread so if you want to be paraonoid go to:
ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=144376

15

There are these adds at the bottome of the page that have to do with being funny and we were talking about being funny, however, the thread is not titled in that way. How, do the adds “know” it’s amazing.

16

mmmm… it might be a local targeting because I aint got nothing at the bottom?

But either way, they don’t just work on web/page/forum titles, they work in various ways but the most common one is: when a certain percentage of words (in relation to the total) contain a keyword or assocated words eg. laugh (or associated words like laughter/laughing, fun/funny, game(s), joke(s), etc) are used, then the advert for “laugh” will be triggered.

The algorithms are more complex than this… for instance, if the words are emphasised (bold, large, italicized), they are given more importance, but online marketing is basically built on keywords.

17

heres some wild, unfounded speculation regarding the uptightness of white people, and how they flip out more than black people.
(dammit whats that vocab word: “their _____ to flip out” it reminds me of ‘propensity’, but its not. so frsutrating)

anyway, if you will all recall my alien rescue analogy of being a gamma(a worker is genetically designed to fit, a la huxleys brave new world)

the world ends in nuclear holocaust, the few remaining survivors, including you, are rescued by superior aliens and put to work in their factory doing the easiest, lowest paying job. it is challenging and not boring for you, but it is not challenging and very boring for your alien coworkers.

you know that no matter what you do, you will never be promoted. or if you are, it will be great and unexpected. you do not expect to be treated better than you currently are. your alien coworkers all think to themselves that they ought to be promoted.

when you or a human coworker mess up, its ok, you expect to. youre doing your best and youre not in a job that you feel is below your full potential. you understand that you are where you are going to be forever.

when the aliens mess up, they are much more upset about it because they know that if they just worked more perfectly, the higher ups would recognize the skills that they have. when a minor, and supposedly careless, setback hurts their chances of this happening, it is much more painful for them. because they do not feel like they are working to their fullest potential, and for this reason they feel like they, and the people working for them, should be operating perfectly.

the white people are trying to get promoted or be more succesfull because they feel that if they arent, they will feel that their luck is working against them, preventing them from achieving their highest goals, which are very high.

the black people were either born into poverty, or were raised by people who were. as bad as it sounds, their aspirations probably dont include billions of dollars and world domination. they are happy with what they got because they see that they have done better than people who start out the way they did. even if they dont get promoted to the top or make millions.

this is kind of taking a turn all of a sudden. i wanted to say that the bottom rung black people are more elaxed because they know that they are where they will stay. (not because they know they are inferior, they just know where their education and society has and will place them)

the white people have no such limitations. any suburban white person will not be prevented from making millions by his education or society, and we all know it. therefore, if we fail, it is much more painful.

since white people were given resources that allow them to succeed, not succeeding is more painful than it would be if we had not been given those resources. thats why we yell more.

i never tried in high school, barely tried in college so far. smoked about two pounds of weed, sold a lot more than that out of my dorm, should have gone to jail for failing drug tests if not for the wonderful chemicals at drug stores, a whole bunch of stupid stuff that should have ultimately led to my painful death long ago. and im about as succesfull as most other people who tried to get where i am about a million times harder.

and i could not be more relaxed. im lonely, i dont like my friends. i sit around and drink alone most weekend nights. and yet, since i know i am at a place above where i should be according to my life choices so far, i am very happy. and i cant remember the last time i was angry or sad. im annoyed that its difficult to solve the little problems i have, but the emotions that usually accompany such annoyance just arent there. i dont feel like i have earned a solution to the problems that i face, so it doesnt bother me that i dont have them.

if i worked very hard and didnt get what i felt i deserved in exchange for that work, this annoyance would build up those emotions. and thats why frustrated white people yell. they feel theyve worked hard enough to deserve more than they have, therefore annoyance causes emotion.

when a black guy gets a job that is better than what his parents had, and he knows he worked about as much as they did, he will be getting what he feels he should be capable of getting. even if he thinks he can do the job of his boss better, he knows that americans are still racist, he was still educated in a city, and plenty of other people who did exactly what he did in his life are a lot less lucky.

i know that virtually everybody who did what i did in life (without a ridiculously unfair brain to back them up) are now failures. and they should be, as should i. but im not. and i couldnt be more relaxed about anything life throws me.

18

The reasons that you mentioned are the reasons why I believe there are less black serial killers than white people. It seems like the serial killers that I know about and have met always think that life should have worked out better for them or that they should have been a star. Black people seem like they are happy if they just have a job.

Meanwhile, many white people come from years of capitalist culture, which is very elitist in nature. It’s not just very elitist, it is elitist. Worry about who is the best and all that makes people dislike each other, their job, their, car, their place, and everyone esle’s stuff.

Black people have almost never been involved in capitalism, except as victims of it, and historically come from a tribal culture. Perhaps they have a communist mentality and are living in a capitalist system. In fact I know many black people that love the idea of communism.

Anyway, since you live in Philly I almost want to suggest getting together, but am afraid that I would get arrested hanging out with you. Scale back on those drugs baby! Take it from me, you do not want to go to jail.

Anyway, I can understand the drugs though. Philly is pretty depressing isn’t it.

19

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

-Friedrich Nietzsche