94 And Not Dead Yet: Maybe Humor Can Save Us

by Reg Green (January 2024)

 

Palestine, Taiwan, global warming, homelessness, bitterness within families and so on and on. They look insoluble. Genocide, which I thought went out with Hitler, and its less violent but insidious cousin, censorship, have crept back. It’s clear that white-hot tempers on both sides of every issue are impeding the way forward. Max Beerbohm, the 19th century English essayist and caricaturist, who could go to the heart of a dispute in a phrase or the stroke of a pen, had a better idea. He said he wished he could have met Isaac Newton so that he could have introduced him to the law of levity. Shouldn’t we all try a bit more of that in the year ahead?

 

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