One last point about laughter. As I described it laughter seems to have a beneficial effect on human communities: those who laugh together also grow together and win through their laughter a mutual tolerance of their all-too-human failings. But not everything that confers a benefit has a function. Entirely redundant behavior—jumping for joy, listening to music, bird-watching, prayer—may yet confer enormous benefits. By calling it redundant I mean that those benefits are the effect of the behavior, not its cause.
-Roger Scruton, On Human Nature
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