MAGIC TRICKS or TRAGIC MIX?
I FIND MEDITATING ON DESCARTES AND HOUDINI SO LIBERATING, BUT THE REASON ESCAPES ME
What’s so funny about this? At first glance, these two guys don’t appear to have much in common. Descartes was a philosopher and a thinker, while Houdini was a magician and an escape artist, hence more of a doer than a ponderer. Descartes used his mind to prove his existence and Houdini used his body to prove his. And yet both men seemed to be attracted by the other’s interests. They did not know each other at all and lived in different times. But Descartes felt that the mysteries and magic of the world could be explained by reason and logic; Houdini, I think, shared this attitude. He knew how to fool people and how gullible they were especially about ghosts and spirits. He spent a lot of time proving that spiritualists and mediums who spoke to the dead were fakes. In other words, since he could fool people so well into believing in magic, he himself could not do so. Descartes’s writings were known as his “Meditations” and that’s what the joke alludes to. Meditations here just mean “thinking” or “thoughts.” If you have a lot of problems and the solutions come to you while you are meditating on them, the feeling can be very liberating or freeing. Houdini himself was not about liberating thoughts; he was more about liberating himself from chains and boxes and water tanks. He was the master escape artist. And Descartes was a master mental escape artist. The last line of the joke tells us that “reason escapes me.” That simply means that he couldn’t find the answer or the reason that meditating should be liberating. Of course it’s also a pun on Houdini’s magical escapes. I think the joke is funny but reason escapes me too. And THAT’s what’s so funny!
This joke came from Owen McMahon, Irish Limbo on Facebook
