When the questions stop and the smile falters.

Are we all going to wake up one day and discover we have forgotten how to to laugh, to smile? Are we going to be so immersed in the problems of the world that laughter is only going to be a faint echo resonating in a distant, ancient cranial canyon?

It's easy to see how we could forget to laugh. With everything that is going on in the world today, is it any wonder? Every day we're bombarded with news of disaster and war and economic catastrophe; an endless litany of negativity.

A megalomaniac exploits a loophole in Islamic law and as a consequence, two planes slam into the the World Trade Centre towers. Now, a quarter of the world's military are involved in trying to find this creature.

A despot in the Middle East (who coincidentally happens to be sitting on the world's largest oil reserves) is finally targeted by the FOG (Forces of Good) and flees. Eventually he is captured, and a large third of the world's military are concerned with trying to keep the peace in his devasted homeland.

In 1980, another despot came to power, but the fact that he behaves in exactly the same manner as his Middle Eastern counterpart doesn't seem to matter. Because his land has no economic or commodic value, he is totally ignored by the FOG and is left alone to do as he pleases. It would appear Zimbabwe's only hope now, would be the fortuitous discovery of a large deposit of fossil fuel.

Closer to home, the news doesn't seem to be any better; innocent children dying because their parents can't get along; our youth inundated by a tidal wave of so-called recreational drugs; evidence of corruption by people who hold positions of societal responsibility; road rage; phone rage. The list is added to every day, and more and more, we are afraid to get to know our neighbours.

The media must accept most of the responsibility for this. After all, they are the ones who deliver the doom and gloom to our lounge rooms daily. But we, as individuals, must also take some of the blame. We seem to be all too willing, almost sycophantic, to accept what we see and hear without question. And the more sensational, the more we believe, or so it would seem.

Stories of murder, rape of babies, looting, were recently plastered on our consciousness in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. These stories were given major headline prominence, and were the lead bulletin on the nighttime news shows. Yes, some of the things reported did happen, but it now appears many of them were unsubstantiated rumours. Did the media rush to make sure we heard that bit of news? To date, I have only seen a couple of lines in two leading newspapers. No headlines, more of an afterthought. "Death and destruction continued today ... blah ...blah ... blah ... oh, and by the way, some of it wasn't true."

Our willingness to accept without question all we are being told is the very basis of fundamentalism, a field which propaganda, terrorism, fanaticism, censorship, and few other nasties, find extremely fertile. Yet, we increasingly pass our fate into the hands of the noise makers, and allow ourselves to be led blindly wherever they choose to take us.

"Their's not to reason why,
their's but to do or die:
Into the valley of Death
rode the six hundred" *

We must never stop asking questions. And the best question to ask is that one known to every parent around the world; the one that your child asks and is so annoying; why? The more we ask, the more likely we are to discover just how irrelevant some of things we take so seriously really are.

That's where laughter comes into the equation. It allows us to not take life too seriously. To quote the consummate Peter Ustinov, "Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." It allows us to examine that which we find important or threatening, and take the edge off it. Mark Twain said it best; "Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place." Comedy allows us to question the motives behind a political experiment in a way that's less confrontational physically, but has the surgical prescion of a scalpel mentally. It's a "rubber sword which allows us to make a point without drawing blood".

The ability to laugh at ourselves; to poke fun at our frailties and inadequacies; to find something funny in a tragic event; this is what allows us to get on with our lives. Without that release of tension, it wouldn't be long before the entire world population was stressed beyond breaking point.

"Total absence of humour renders life impossible."

*From The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson