Alain de Botton

Have you watched the hit TV series “Saturday Night Live”? Have you read the New York Time’s editorial cartoons or Johnathan Swift’s satirical essay, “A Modest Proposal”? If yes then I must ask you this: did you find these humorists entertainingly discourteous or vital to society? Well, Alain de Botton argues that the humorists’ aim is not merely to entertain but to “convey with impunity messages that might be dangerous or impossible to state directly.” I agree with de Botton’s stance towards humorists’ vital role in society of bringing out repressed thoughts and messages that ordinary people can relate and understand without restrain, because through the usage of comical and amusing entertainments, such as editorial cartoons, TV shows and satirical writing, humorists indiscreetly express messages that might be politically dangerous.

Dangerous humor has been express throughout human history. For centuries, satirists and humorists aimed to deliver underlying messages that were subtly implied. In Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," ridicules the British parliament in a gloomy, sarcastic and over exaggerated manner to bring forth parliament over taxation of Irish peasants. Swift primary aim was to advance "our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich," mocking the heartless attitudes towards the poor, he humorously suggests the idea of cannibalism when he says that a "healthy child... nourishing, and wholesome food." Swift subtly implied to the king of England that if he was going to “taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound”, then he might as well sell their children as food for the rich to ease the country’s economic trouble. Being a satirical work of literature with the hyperbole of his proposals to end England’s tax system, qualifies de Botton's point that humorists display seemingly ridiculous, yet with no consequences, "messages that might be dangerous" in order to prove a valid point.

Proving a valid...