There's a quote I recall from the introduction to Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest in the Norton Anthology the first time I encountered the play years

There's a quote I recall from the introduction to Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest in the Norton Anthology the first time I encountered the play years ago as a college undergraduate in an English Literature survey class. Something to effect: Oscar Wilde's play held a mirror up to Victorian society and it died laughing at itself. One way I've conceptualized comedy, especially satire, is as a kind of soft cultural version of Karl Popper's falsification principle. When applied successfully, it can change the way you look at the world by leading you to reject, or at least question, the status quo. I was expecting this article to suggest something similar. It maybe halfway does? According to research on the ‘meaning maintenance model’ of human reasoning, surreal and absurd art can be so unsettling that the brain reacts as if it is feeling physical pain, yet it ultimately leads us to reaffirm who we are, and sharpens the mind as we look for new ways to make sense of the world. Reaffirming who we are and making sense of the world in new ways sounds somewhat paradoxical. I suppose it implies a gradualist model of intellectual growth. Of course, comedy and ridicule can also be deployed to reaffirm the status quo. But I've always found subversive humor more intellectually engaging.