Emo Philips: “Jokes are how we humans avoid violence.”

Emo Philips wrote what Penn Jillette calls “the best God joke ever” — you can read it here. I won’t ruin it, but I will say his God joke is better than mine.

He mentions, in this article about the curtailing of freedom of speech in the name of religious tolerance, that “Jokes are how we humans avoid violence.” As generalizations go, I’ll buy that for a dollar. But if thats the case, then for that same price, I’ll say that violence is one of the ways we humans avoid change.

I have fond memories of Emo Philips cutting his limbs off, Monty Python-style on UHF, a movie that occupies maybe 5-7% of my capacity for fond memories (the remainder being I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and other things that never happened).