David Foster Wallace repeated a quote (from an unknown source, unknown to me that is) that went something like, “some truths can only be communicated via jokes”.

For a while I’ve found this to be true. Stand up comics are modern day preachers. They seem to capture something true about life that people don’t seem to talk about in everyday life.

For a while I didn’t know why it was true. You could consider that maybe the truth is so funny that communicating it in any form would constitute a joke. I don’t know if I quite believe that.

My running theory is that in an age of pleasure and entertainment and avoidance of pain, the only way for us to really pay attention to something true but uncomfortable, painful even, is for it to be cushioned with a dose of pleasure, entertainment, by putting it in a joke. That’s the only way we would be able to stomach it. Lest we reject the truth, because we’ve become too accustomed to filtering out painful experiences.