Re: Who are we?

Description: Lieb, on the battle between our animal impulses and our higher aspirations.

Question:  What forces have shaped humanity most?

Transcript: Oh come on!  What forces have shaped humanity? I mean what kind of question is that?  That’s so insanely broad.  Where . . .  I guess it’s evident we’re . . . you know . . .  Hunger, boredom, sleepiness.  Those are the forces that have shaped humanity.  Boredom, that’s what gives me a job.  You know I’m here to keep you from being bored.  Yeah, you know it’s . . .  We’re monkeys, and we wanna have sex, and that’s a big force.  Also Catholic Church, a big force.  Also books.  You know, these are . . . I . . . I . . .  I can’t say.  Whatever.  It’s all . . . the clash of cultures.  Our base animal impulses are what have driven us forward.  And then our aspirations.  We are smart enough to think that we are better than just animals, and I think we are.  I think we do have souls.  And so . . . and so we do the base animal stuff, and then we make the cathedral because we have a higher self.

Question: What moments in history strike you as particularly funny?

Transcript: The Defenestration of Prague doesn’t make me laugh or anything.  There’s no historical moment that I thought like, “Wow.  That’s . . .”  I was just thinking.  There’s a funny . . . just like . . . there’s such weird shit out there, like . . . I did like . . . I was just reading about the other day that the guy who created . . .  The same guy created x-ray specs and sea monkeys, you know, from the back of the comic books – the same guy.  But he was also a big funder of . . . of Neo-Nazi causes.  So he was taking his sea monkey fortunes, and especially I think the Arian nations up there in _________.  Don’t quote me on that.  I’m not sure.  So okay.  And then also he was Jewish.  So you know it’s just . . . . . . it’s . . . it’s one of those . . . you know, so . . .  Of course he was ‘cause . . . but it’s just like . . .  There’s funny, crazy stuff out there.

Question: Are people fundamentally funny?

Transcript: You know religiously I wanna believe people are fundamentally good.  Yeah I think people . . . (a) I think people are fundamentally good; and (b) I think people are fundamentally humorous.  And . . . and people fundamentally want to laugh.  And you know if someone is not laughing, that’s the exception.  That’s perversion, because I think you can’t be turned from someone who likes to laugh to someone who doesn’t; but I think it’s almost impossible to go the other way.  I don’t think . . .  No one’s ever met a humorless person who became a funny one.

Question: Can humor be learned?

Transcript:  No.  It . . . it . . .  You can learn the forms or whatever, and maybe you could even learn the form so well that you can fool most people.  But you wouldn’t be able to fool the genuinely funny people.

Question: Can women be funny?

Transcript: Of course.

Question: Why do people value humor?

Transcript: Boredom, you know?  And I think also just the . . .  There’s such intense psychic pain just being alive, and all this stuff going on around you and on top of you.  And it’s suffocating.  You know humor is a release.  It is joyful, you know?  It’s like sex, but you can have it more often.  It’s . . .  Yeah, it’s like cheap sex.  It’s like . . .  You can do it all the time, so . . .

Recorded on: 9/4/07