Kirby raises a good point on the "funny bone humor". I have had plenty of moments with friends where someone gets hurt and it's funny to everyone. I think personally that this type of comedy, although I hate to admit it, is mostly aligned with Hobbes Superiority theory. The reason I laugh at my friend's pain is because I don't feel bad when I am outright acting like I am above them. As friends, we cut each other down in a jesting way in order to keep ourselves from acting too serious all the time. Laughing at a friend's short comings is a good reality check for them.
With family members it's even worse because they feel so comfortable with you that they don't mind knocking you down a few pegs to keep you in line. For example when my family went on a trip to Peru two summers ago we went on an ATV tour through the mountains. I, being the youngest and only girl, gave my brothers plenty of ammunition to make fun of me for not knowing how to work the gears or being able to control the machine very well. As we set off I got a little more confident in my ATV skills and was more than keeping up with the rest of my family. As soon as I though I had a handle on things, bang, I drove into a ditch with the huge ATV ending up on top of me. It was the scariest moment of my life and for a minuet when I was pinned between the ground and the vehicle I though I was going to have to be air lifted to a sketchy Peruvian hospital. I ended up only sustaining minor injuries, but my whole family was shell-shocked. However, later that night at dinner after I had been bandaged up the status quo returned to normal my family was able to laugh at my inferiority.
Peru's health system is actually ranked ahead of the US's. actually, I made that up. But we quote such statistics for something similar to the reason you are discussing--to take something down a peg. Annexing opposite ideas to something dignified, as Hutcheson sees it, is one of the most common ways of achieving laughter. Luckily in this case, this is what happened. If it had gone further, it would have been tragic. (Tragedy too has a kind of incongruity at its core, but that's another story). It's a fine line.
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