Humor runs in families, like eye color and height, and I come from a long line of the irreverent and politically incorrect, with my father as undisputed champion. For example, while most food co-op shoppers enjoy a sense of security (or at least virtuousness) in the knowledge that they are purchasing products someone has determined to have met certain ethical standards, my father finds it quite annoying that this screening prevents him from making his own choices. He is all for doing the research and making the information available, but he does not want the decision made for him as to whether a boycott is warranted. He was particularly incensed when his favorite sandalwood soap was removed from the shelves. Never one to mince words or worry about the impression he is making on others, he declared that he didn’t care if the soap in question was made from ground-up Chinese prisoners. I hasten to add that although my father is radical and eccentric, he would never knowingly purchase a product whose ingredients or production caused human suffering or death, nor does he harbor a secret vendetta against the Chinese. It was simply a rather drastic exaggeration to illustrate a point – an illustration I hoped he hadn’t seen fit to share with the owner of the store.

Some humor makes us squirm even as we crack up. Sometimes this is because it exposes our most unflattering traits, laying bare secrets we thought were ours alone. This is laughter as liberator; we are giddy with relief that we are not the only ones capable of behaving like a two year old without a nap. I love this kind of humor because it does us a great service when someone is willing to get naked in order to show us what we look like unclothed.

We also twist and fidget when the joke is on a group to which we do not belong. We squirm because we did not think we were the sort of people to make fun of others or be amused by stereotypes, and wonder uncomfortably if finding this funny means we are prejudiced or mean-spirited. We feel better if the comedian belongs to the group in question and other people are laughing; we hope those present are the arbiters of whether humor is offensive and their collusion grants us protection from a charge of insensitivity. Still, we can’t be completely certain that our laughter does not betray us, revealing us to be less than who we thought we were.

I recently watched a show with comedian Chris Rock. The majority of his routines belonged in the first category – taking those things we hide in a dark hole in the back yard and parading them up the street. (Warning: if you try this at home, I do not recommend excavating the entire hole – it’s wise to leave a few items at the bottom lest your neighbors all put their homes up for sale.) These were hysterical – they may have been the most brilliant satire I have ever heard. Then there were the routines that highlighted the absurdity of human behavior – the kind of behavior that causes homicidal thoughts in our partners but is not a serious obstruction to world peace and the safety of our streets. These were mostly jokes about relationships, gender differences and sex. For some reason we never tire of laughing at sex, and all the jokes are pretty much the same: who wants it, if and with whom they get it, and the secret of their success or failure. We’re like hamsters on a wheel when it comes to sex jokes, but I guess as long as someone is bringing food, fresh wood chips and filling up our water bottle every day, it’s not a bad life.

There were also segments that made me angry – segments that I thought reinforced and perpetuated stereotypes that we’ve had quite enough of thank you very much. Then I felt that humor was being used irresponsibly and began commenting and arguing, even though it was helpfully pointed out to me that Chris Rock couldn’t hear because he wasn’t really in the room with us. I made some really good points, though.

Most of us have had the uncomfortable experience of an acquaintance (usually a relative) telling a joke that we find odious, and being torn between implicit agreement and a confrontation just as everyone sits down to Christmas dinner. Even my father probably would not have made his infamous soap remark if there had been a Chinese person present, and a case could be made that this is an indication that it should not have been said at all. I try to imagine some version of this story wherein those being sacrificed and made into a personal hygiene product are a group I belong to – short women, perhaps, or people who never wax their kitchen floors. I suppose it all comes down to context and what we believe to be the intent of the person speaking. Yet we are part of that context, for there are times when if we were more certain of the contents of our own hearts, we might have less ambivalence about our laughter.

Only a small percentage of work in any art form manages to provide real illumination, but when it does it is worth all the time spent wading through material that makes one question whether our belief in evolution is just wishful thinking. When I read a great poem or novel, get a lump in my throat listening to music, see a painting I can’t take my eyes off of or come across a comedic gem that sets me laughing ‘til my stomach hurts at the whole human catastrophe, for a lovely moment the notion that we are all part of the same family becomes more than just an empty cliché or the words to a Raffi song. For a moment I can feel our common ground.