one's sense of humour

I gave a speech in high school about the nature of joking, about what is and is not, should and should not be funny... led to the topic, and coming to somewhat of a conclusion based on my limited experience of having a dear friend ridiculed through boarding school, I spoke of the harm in using stereotypes and searched for a pure form of humor that did not contain a dark underbelly, a mean-spirited side, one in which belittlement is absent, one without abuse of another person, object or concept, etc. I think I ended up showing clips of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, maybe some Chris Farley thrown in there, making some points or other on a style of physical comedy that is funny because it takes itself non-seriously, but on some level, the abuse of my friend in his younger years, together with a school preaching tolerance and equality, there was a definite feeling that making observations about other people and commenting on this or that aspect of their difference (it was in fact the most ethnically diverse place I had ever called MY community), perhaps also in trying to fit in as a new member of the school from somewhere else entirely, it became a part of my strategy for success, to cleanse and purge myself of those types of thoughts entirely. As I became entrenched between groups of soccer/lacrosse playing jock friends and AP science booksmart kids, it was harder still to take a stand against (OR WITH!) a group. Moreover I felt it was part of a noble course of conduct to maintain this dignity, and I have ever since (I think)! Flash forward many years to a self-proclaimed and relatively friendless self with a sense of irony and a level of cynicism that overshadows and crowds out almost entirely the SENSE of HUMOR that I've today come to believe should have developed out of those times when precisely I chose not to be like everybody else, to opt out, to encourage people to be themselves and not to be what pleases me - in this manner have, I think, I missed a great big point. Preliminary searching was disappointing as regards my new sense of the alignment between the ridicule that passes between folks and having a sense of humor, but my belief in the overlap of the word humor and humility led me to push onward... until I came to this little gem on Wikipedia: "Western humour theory begins with Plato, who attributed to Socrates (as a semi-historical dialogue character) in the Philebus (p. 49b) the view that the essence of the ridiculous is an ignorance in the weak, who are thus unable to retaliate when ridiculed. Later, in Greek philosophy, Aristotle, in the Poetics (1449a, pp. 34–35), suggested that an ugliness that does not disgust is fundamental to humour" - I am INTRIGUED. And so, feeling vindicated, embarrassed, and ignorant, I begin my humble quest to rejoin humanity and to rekindle and develop my stunted sixth sense, to laugh and to love those who can reveal my weaknesses to me!!