There are some funny  ideas that are food for thought...

Perhaps it was unconsciousness that caused Mr. Unger to remark that 'thought' might transmit ideas from 'extra terrestrials'. He is a genius and I've had a couple of unusual experiences with his cartoonery. Humor is an odd factor in our lives.  I've not always known what I know now about what makes it possible to 'joke' about something that cannot otherwise be said without creating anger, resentment, rebuff or worse. It's a strange 'sense'.

A little humor sometimes illustrates the point I have in mind to make with this cartoon: there is an attribute in humor that creates a literal sense, in which a 'joke' is not merely a joke, but also a fact, a 'bit of information'. There is a kind of 'switch' involved that personalizes the content and this causes it to be factual. Jokes about old age never were funny to me until I had experienced being old.  The attribute of mind that 'highlights' certain content, in this case it's the words in the cartoon, creates 'self reference' as well as 'significance', meaning and supplies descriptive words. "Self reference" describes 'me' to me.

The odd thing about 'humor' is that almost anything can be said  with safety, because: "I'm only joking. Can't you take a joke?" Yet an unexpected doorway in the mind has to open up, then a strange kind of truth often seeps in,  just barely there, something that has been named by Gregory Bateson among others as 'metacommunication'. Not everyone knows from experience how this new sense changes everything, but there is still the fact that personal experience is what creates the significance in this kind of 'joke'. As in for instance the 'humor' in the cartoon Dilbert. which I noticed over a period of years was precisely paralleling  situations in my workplace! The same words described 'two worlds', mine and the imagined world of Dilbert. It was difficult to laugh for quite a while, and I've never been able to really return to my former mindset either.

But Jim Unger's cartoons have also quite often been stunningly parallel to an idea  that's already there, in my head, 'echoing' the words. I hope this cartoon conveys what I mean....thanks are due to Mr. Unger.