Humor

Thanks for directly and indirectly reminding me of the importance of humor, Jim. 
Some of us can be too earnest. In other words, me. That occurs with activism, counterproductively. As for activism, the 1960s involved a sort of explosion of civic engagement not yet seen since. Hopefully that changes. 
But along with the political ideas and protests of the 1960s, was a robust flowering of artistic expression, especially music but also comedy, standup and theatrical, along with the technological feats of that era. 
Humor, with it’s deliberate absurdity involves an acknowledgement of our limitations in making sense of ourselves and of the world. At its best, humor is a mode of humility,  not the crass, mean-spirited sexist, homophobic,  and racist rantings of people such as Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison. 
Thank you for calling me out on that when I played you some of their recordings in 1989.
But as for high-quality humor, thru its deliberate absurdity, we can help ourselves come to terms with the many elements of our unintentional absurdity, and even kindly do so on some level when the absurdity is tragic. Mark Twain did some of  that, as a flawed but sincere anti-racist, anti-imperialist for his time. 
Much of my own harsh self-criticism  (what Lou Reed says in Dime Store mystery via his vocals, “From the front, the sides, the back, the mind itself attacks…”) involves seeing deep contradiction and being at cross purposes with myself during much of my life, and knowing  that I’m running out of time. 
Along with a sense of perspective offered by the writings and speeches (and sermons) of MLK, it’s been helpful to consider the existentialist concept of absurdity Albert Camus and, maybe also Sartre offered. 
As materialist in its orientation within the philosophy of mind, their form of existentialism involves coming to terms with absurdity, in the sense that there is no intrinsic meaning in one’s exist, and that once a person recognizes  that, a person can better embrace one’s own freedom and responsibility.  
This also somehow relates to Dostoyevsky writing that his deepest fear was not being worthy of his suffering. 
Aside from extreme mental illness that poses a danger to others, my opinion has been that despair and grief can be beneficial. MLK reminded me of this in a dream, as you know. 
What’s key is redirecting harsh self-critical preoccupation with the past toward forward-looking, creative problem-solving.