We look the Ah-Ha Moment: Exploring Philosophical Ideas through Jokes and Puzzles by Martin Cohen. See more about the book here.
The Ah-Ha Moment: reviewed
This book is interesting, but perhaps a little depressing too. Cohen effectively tours through comedic comments across the centuries, explaining his analysis well and giving the reader much to think about. In many ways he effectively makes the point that comedy, satire and indeed any forms of poking fun at dictators is often effective. The depressing aspect is that, time and time again, including perhaps most relevantly these days those who are the source of these jokes invariably respond poorly and disproportionately.
Cohen sites Germans killed by the Nazis for making, not even very funny jokes about them. Similarly with Putin, he quickly shut down satyrical forms of comment, quickly followed by any media outlets that offered any criticism. Very much matching the observation of first they take the most obvious critics, very rapidly followed by anyone and everyone who offers any dissenting views. Cohen also discusses US based leaders and their noted lack of humour too. They might think he is witty, but, like many of his admired dictators, they have a thin skin, and a retribution based agenda, clearly motivated by revenge and self advancement rather than any desire to help anyone else.
I guess this doesn’t take away the value of jokes, satire and comedy, after all Kings used to have their court jesters, the trouble is that we live in an increasingly thin skinned age, especially among those who wield the levers of power. All the more concerning when their negative, self serving decisions can affect us all. A thought provoking book, even if, ironically, it not one that brings you to the happiest or funniest of conclusions.
More about the book
Jokes are intellectual can-openers offering surprisingly powerful insights into not only how our minds work – but into how the world around us works too. Why? Well, when you think about it, a good joke requires, demands, a very special kind of deep thinking – a kind of world-upturning, no-holds-barred problem solving. It’s the same skill that produces the great insights of art and commerce, the insight that sees solutions and creates opportunities. And yes, such skills can be approached through exercises and study, but there’s no good reason to think such sensible methods work any better than having a sense of humour.
So why not, at least for a moment, throw all conventional thinking to the wind, and start re-examining the world through the very special, very beautiful prism of jokes and riddles? “With wit and irony, Martin Cohen explains the basic concepts of philosophy and incidentally introduces the most famous thinkers in history.” – Der Spiegel.
More about the author
Martin Cohen is a journalist, editor and author specializing in popular books in philosophy, social science and politics. His books include the bestselling ‘101 Philosophy Problems’, ‘Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies’ as well as more social scientific books such as ‘I Think Therefore I Eat’, on food science, and a look at how scientists work called ‘Paradigm Shift’. This sounds rather technical but is actually a great deckchair read, taking a look at many perplexed and perplexing issues in life, from religion to science, from food fads to black holes in space..Another recent book, now issued in paperback, called ‘The Leaders’ Bookshelf’, is all about ideas and inspirations – and how even quite ordinary books can be ‘intuition pumps’ sending their readers off to achieve extraordinary things.
Martin now writes full-time, but in the past has taught philosophy and social science at a number of universities in the UK and Australia, and was involved in a research project exploring ways to shift philosophy teaching away from the the mere study of philosophical facts and toward a view of philosophy as an activity.
An activist environmentalist, he wrote an influential series of articles in the Times Higher (London) about the politics of the climate change debate. He has written discussion papers on environmental concerns for the European Parliament and been invited by the Chinese government to discuss ecological rights and indigenous communities.
As an editor, his strategy is to allow as wide a range of ideas as possible a forum and he loves articles by non-specialists with unusual and original ideas. He is currently based in Aquitaine, France, but travels often to the US and UK.
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