Laughter is the releasing of repressed nervous energy.
In comedy, or when we laugh at another, it is a recognition of a possible plight which afflicts another.
That it might me our own fate, but is not, is perceived as a relief.
Usually the plight is unexpected, expressing the infinite unknown, possibilities that might affect us.
Only an organism with a deeper perceptual-event-horizon, the imagination to project forward and to sample backwards, can experience the comedy/tragedy of the existential condition: an ordering within a chaotic world of uncertainties.
Why is this in the Palaistra?
_________________
γνῶθι σεαυτόν
μηδέν άγαν