In flux

This is a liberating laughter; it creates freedom and connection, gives substantive differences their due and keeps them in flux. When the partners in a debate concentrate only on their differences, identifying and insisting on them, they are emphasizing what divides them, thereby letting the divide grow wider, gain significance, and become more palpable. By contrast, laughter builds bridges. Emotionalism looses (sic) its edge in laughter; difference and the experience of it are allowed to float free and feel secure in that hovering state. We are bitterly in need of laughter as an all too rare bridge between groups of people, a bridge that both connects them and maintains their distance from one another.

Laughter: The Sudden Turn of the Mind, in Unlearning with Hannah Arendt by Marie Luise Knott, translated by David Dollenmayer