CSotD: Friday Funnies: The Getting of Wisdom
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Friday Funnies is supposed to be a refuge from ponderous significance, but we'll start and end with wisdom today and I hope sprinkle in a little more throughout.
After all, humor is derived from wisdom, in that you have to know how things work before you can appreciate seeing them twisted.
This includes understanding that wisdom is, in its best forms, collaborative rather than competitive, but that this Existential Comics is essentially correct.
Reading the entire thing should crack you up and put you in the right frame of mind for laughing at the rest of this stuff.
Though it's certainly possible to possess so much wisdom that you can't get the point of a simple joke.
I puzzled over this Brevity for several minutes, wondering why Dan Thompson would build a cartoon around Gary Bell, who was an excellent pitcher with, yes, a good curve ball, but who was better known for his fast ball and who retired half a century ago and has not made the Hall of Fame, mostly because he spent his best years in Cleveland.
I think he retired before Dan was even born, much less old enough to be watching the sport and, anyway, it was an awfully obscure reference that I don't think anybody would get, and … what?
Oh.
Well, that's quite different.
And speaking of things from a half-century ago, this Non Sequitur drew a memory of when, after two years of living first in a single dorm room and then alone in a small apartment, I found myself in a house in Boulder with, when I moved in, about 12 other people and, by summer's end, around 30.
At our first House Rap, somebody went after me for being snobbish and unfriendly because, when they walked into the room, I didn't look up from my book and say anything.
I'm not sure you had to stop reading and say "hello" to anyone in college, since reading was central to the whole college thingie, but it certainly wasn't on my solitary radar.
But, once aware, I adapted and, after awhile, stopped reading and writing in the livingroom and, when I craved solitude, went to the walk-in closet of which I had the loft.
Colette and Vern had the floor. I certainly didn't get any reading and writing done when they were home, but that's not only a story for another day but perhaps one we'll just not tell at all.
However, there surely was a lot of conjugatin' goin' on in that house, and not just on paper.
Unlike Lizzie in Reply All, we didn't have a polite term for people who didn't want to talk to others.
You were a "snob" if they didn't get it and a "hermit" if they kind of did, but we didn't have the Internet upon which to natter on explaining ourselves.
And, as a writer, I'm relentlessly reminded that showing is more dynamic than telling, such that I really get turned off by any sentence which begins, "I'm the kind of person who …"
Atlantic Magazine ditched their comments section in favor of letters, and recently put out an inquiry about the gender imbalance, since both comments and letters are overwhelmingly written by men. It might seem paradoxical, but they asked women to write letters to the editor about why women don't write letters to the editor.
I expected someone to cite Carol Gilligan or Deborah Tannen or some other feminist scholar on the differing interpersonal and conversational styles of women, but nary a citation.
The letters were quite articulate, and often quite intelligent, and not "wrong."
But still a bit more circular than scholarly and there's probably a dissertation or at least a thesis in that.
Specific to "introversion," my problem is that introversion strongly suggests a more active mental process than simple shyness, though, granted, "introversion" and "introspection" are not synonyms.
They damn well ought to be. (Another dissertation topic free for the taking.)
Which of course brings to mind this Punch classic.
There's nothing wrong with just sitting and not thinking unless you're convinced there is.
Seriously. Just think about it.
Now here's Joy of Tech on the topic of mindfulness, which has reportedly begun to invade the workplace.
It is not necessarily a spur to productivity, or, at least, not to the kind of productivity that fits on a spreadsheet.
Which is the sort of observation that pretends to leave a lot open to your own interpretation but which is in fact so heavily slanted that you'd have to condemn yourself if you didn't go along with the obvious intent.
But, hey, go ahead: Insist that the sum total of your life fits neatly on a spreadsheet and that you're pleased it does.
We promise not to judge you.
Heh.
No, really.
I'll just post this Andertoons and we'll see if you laff or shudder.
Public Service Announcement
If you are a developing cartoonist with a major project about half-hatched, here's a chance to put all those spreadsheets and other bogus obligations behind you long enough to get something valuable done.
Harry Bliss has created a fellowship through the Center for Cartoon Studies that provides you with a month-long residency, plus a stipend, at a significantly, purposely isolated home in the woods of Cornish, NH, but close enough to CCS that you can make use of their equipment and advice and, if you're seeking fellowship, fellowship.
While, if you're seeking solitude and not fellowship, you'll have plenty of opportunity to test your introversion as well as your introspection.
"Stop and think about what you're doing"
Ward Sutton made quite a wise and insightful acceptance speech for his Herblock award. It's as funny as the reflections on wisdom with which we started, but also contains some genuine examples of how wisdom is obtained and turned into valuable art, including the above advice.
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom:
and with all thy getting get understanding.
– Proverbs, IV, 7
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