We adore babies because they're so cute. And, of course, we are amused by jokes because they are funny. This is all backwards. It is. And Darwin shows us why.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I was a child, I always wanted to be funny and to please people in my family. As you grow up that instinct becomes more refined, but it's still there.
Isn't it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.
Most babies know how to win us over. We cannot help but smile at them and watch them smile back.
The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.
Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested - to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes.
As I get older, all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children, any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one's friends' and relatives' children.
Apart from anything else, I am designed by evolution, like we all are: if we see a little thing like that, big eyes, tiny nose, we go 'aaah'. That's what evolution does. We are programmed to do that. So to find babies the most amazing, isn't surprising, I don't think.
The responses of the baby monkey are very similar to those of a human baby.
I think the thrust of any child is to try to fit in and be part of it. And I can't tell you how many times my humor, you know, what I thought was humor ended up making me the outsider. Like I'd be, I go, 'It's a joke.' And they'd go, 'Well, what was funny?' And they just thought I was insane.
Both of my kids have my sense of humor - they're definitely entertaining.
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