[In-person] Laughing Matters: Humour in Our Lives (Ticketed Event)

We experience and produce humour through the memes we spread and the inside jokes we share with friends, and even use it when facing life’s most difficult challenges. Humour can help us bond, cope, and rethink our assumptions. But what makes something funny? Why do humour and the laughter it produces play an important role in our culture?

One answer is that humour can help break down barriers and bring people together. As Victor Borge once said, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” Humour can also be used as a social instrument to call out misconduct. How is it that humour fosters community and division at the same time? At our next Curiosity Café, we’ll dive into the silly and serious sides of humour, and explore the role that humour plays in how we connect, think and live.

Together, we’ll discuss questions like:

• How does humour help break down barriers and bring people together?
• Does humour have a unique ability to help us find common ground and strengthen relationships?
• How might jokes or humour be perceived by people from different backgrounds?
• Is it possible to create humour that’s both provocative and inclusive?
• How might humour give us a sense of control?
• What is or should be the role of comedy in society?

Join us for a lively and collaborative conversation moderated by Erik Ai and Dylan Michels, where we’ll explore these questions and (hopefully) share plenty of laughs along the way.

Space is limited! Please obtain a “Pay-What-You-Can” ticket from Curiosity Café here to attend this event. See the ticketing page for more info about tickets and other options including a limited number of free tickets.

Hope to see you there!

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This event is brought to you by Being and Becoming, a Toronto based non-profit. We aim to create community around exploring everyday concepts and experiences so that we may live more intentional, thoughtful, and meaningful lives. We use philosophy as a tool with which we can come to a richer understanding of the world around us.

By offering activities, spaces, and other opportunities for conversation and co-exploration, we hope to enable the meeting and fusion of individuals and their ideas. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background: indeed, we believe the journey is best undertaken alongside explorers from a variety of disciplines, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences.

Find out more about Being and Becoming here.

About the Curiosity Café Series:

For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.