The loss of humor

The distinguishing mark of senility in a thinker is the eagerness with which he is ready to embrace a religious or a moral or an altruistic way of life or thinking mostly as an antidote to his own growing disgruntlement, assuming he has not already announced himself to be a god. This happens to even the mightiest of thinkers. In his youthful days, however, he had not adopted significantly different philosophies or ways of lives. Even then he had acted as a god, an atheist, a savior and a destroyer. But he assumed these roles very flexibly. He got in and out of them very easily. He could do so because he is still able to laugh at the fact that he does not have to, or he cannot even if he wanted to, define himself, or 'be' anything, that his life lacks a unitary meaning. He is cheerful about the abyss. The senile thinker has lost this sense of humor.