I laugh because I must not cry

You may have noticed that whenever there is a tragic event which doesn’t involve murder, people are quick to make comedy out of it. Whether it's a person getting into an accident, an assault, a person getting embarrassed or an unfortunate event which shows the incompetence of authorities, random people all over the internet are quick to make comedy skits out of these events. The most notable of which is the infamous Chris Rock and Will Smith slap, It seems like the turmoil of one person makes for the laughter of millions of others. This in and of itself isn't done out of malice, but I feel it undermines the bigger problem because we tend to ignore the issue which is right in our face in favor of a quick laughter. This is made all the more egregious when you consider developing countries, where such problems I wouldn't say are more important, but are definitely more impactful.

When you look at countries in Africa and you observe all the problems and difficulties they are going through, and for those problems to be made out into comedies really undermines the importance of the issue. To the person making the comedy this might seem like bringing awareness and bringing happiness in a moment of distress, but to the person watching the comedy subconsciously this tells them that this isn't that serious. Definitely comedy is one way of communicating and passing out information in a very digestible way, but let's not forget it often makes light of the information which is sent across.

Unfortunately, I can't say I wish people didn't make comedy out of such situations because the human mind can't sustain being sad for an extended period of time. There are just so many things going wrong and if we had to be concerned about each one of them then on a daily basis we are going to be worried all the time. We will end up crying day after day minute after minute and the more things we take seriously the less impactful our actions are going to be because we can be serious for just so long. That's why this quote makes a lot of sense “I laugh because I must not cry”, there are just so many things to cry about.

Our tears are very limited, but we have an infinite amount of laughter.

We can laugh all day we can laugh all week we can even laugh all month and why not all year, but we can't do the same with crying. That's really what it comes down to, doing the next best thing to crying so that you don't go insane, or you don't lose the impact of your concern. Empathy is a very limited feeling, it runs out really easily, especially when it's done in a monotonous way.

When you look at the news there is no shortage of “breaking news” there is always something going on, always a problem around the world, always an issue that goes on, always something we have to deal with, always an information we have to be concerned about and all of this is just so overwhelming, that's why news I believe has become so stale and depressing. I wish there was a better way we could communicate such issues to bring them to light and address them, but so far comedy seems to be the best way we can make sense of it all.

How about you, what do you think? Is it okay to make fun of tragic situations, and do you think they will come a time when even murder wouldn't be the line.

Let me know in the comments section below

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