Comedosophy
6 June 2024 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
digitalravenSticking a random midnight shower thought here, so it's recorded somewhere I can find it...
Radio 4's doing Robin Ince's Reality Tunnel, which is another comedy series that's pretty much also philosophy, or at least, is communicating philosophy in an engageable way.
I've thought before, and this is making me think of it again, that comedians are communicational savants, who communicate complex and difficult ideas in a way that is engaging to people who otherwise (believe they) couldn't get to grips with the source.
Whether it's Robin Ince talking about the fundamental ways that being surrounded by knowledge increases curiosity, Natalie Haynes getting across what day to day life was like in ancient Greece and Rome, Rob Newmann using philosophical thought experiments as the comedic straight-man, or Frankie Boyle going on a tangent on an episode of fuckin Taskmaster about the very nature of art. Or hell, _The Good Place_ and moral philosophy.
Ultimately it's not the same as education from primary sources; listening to Rob Newmann tearing apart the "If a tree falls in a forest" argument doesn't give a full grounding in the metaphysics of unperceived existence. But it can get to the interesting bit, and that means that a half-hour radio programme may inspire four different people to look into four different things that were brought up as jokes, going on a Wikipedia rabbit hole or picking up a cheap kindle book or whatever. And that's a wonderful thing. It's promoting the spread of knowledge.
And that in turn is a philosopher's duty, not just to think, but to communicate thought.
Radio 4's doing Robin Ince's Reality Tunnel, which is another comedy series that's pretty much also philosophy, or at least, is communicating philosophy in an engageable way.
I've thought before, and this is making me think of it again, that comedians are communicational savants, who communicate complex and difficult ideas in a way that is engaging to people who otherwise (believe they) couldn't get to grips with the source.
Whether it's Robin Ince talking about the fundamental ways that being surrounded by knowledge increases curiosity, Natalie Haynes getting across what day to day life was like in ancient Greece and Rome, Rob Newmann using philosophical thought experiments as the comedic straight-man, or Frankie Boyle going on a tangent on an episode of fuckin Taskmaster about the very nature of art. Or hell, _The Good Place_ and moral philosophy.
Ultimately it's not the same as education from primary sources; listening to Rob Newmann tearing apart the "If a tree falls in a forest" argument doesn't give a full grounding in the metaphysics of unperceived existence. But it can get to the interesting bit, and that means that a half-hour radio programme may inspire four different people to look into four different things that were brought up as jokes, going on a Wikipedia rabbit hole or picking up a cheap kindle book or whatever. And that's a wonderful thing. It's promoting the spread of knowledge.
And that in turn is a philosopher's duty, not just to think, but to communicate thought.
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Date: 2024-06-30 02:32 pm (UTC)