Understanding Irony

* Philips HD1172. This is the iron I'm using. This design has been used for more than 20 years. Simple, elegant and timeless.

I've to say that understanding irony, is the most interesting module that I am taking so far. The title itself spells out its objective, to understand irony. Why understand irony? Other than the challenges it poses (it's a difficult-to-score literature module), I choose it because irony is a typical phenomena that I experience in my everyday life. For instance, it is indeed ironical that an engineering science student would find such a module more interesting than the science and engineering modules. Interestingly, some folks, knowing that I'm an engineering student, misheard the title of this module and thought that it's "understanding ironing". Well, I don't mind. I really need to improve my ironing skills to waste less time on doing laundry. (I spent 2 hours per week ironing clothes. But ironically, I enjoy it.)

Most importantly, I study irony because I believe it reveals he "truth" or more precisely the reality. My opinion is that irony occurs when there's mismatch between our expectations and reality. Thus, recognizing irony, I deduce, means seeing the mismatch and readjusting our expectations, thus discovering the reality. For example, as an engineering student, I am expected to be more interested in science than in humanities. (This is a reasonable contemporary assumption.) The irony reveals a reality: I'm more interested in humanities. (This is only argument's sake. In fact, my interests in humanities and sciences are oscillatory and anti-phase in nature.) Of course, this is just a trivial example. In this module, I wish to explore several of these more significant issues:

1. Ironies of life

"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."
Robert Heinlein (1907 -1988)

Understanding such ironies might give insight to the purposes of life.

2. Ironies of mankind

"We have guided missiles and misguided man."

I saw this on YH's msn nick. It is a great pun by Martin Luther King. It is ironical that missiles are more guided than man. It reveals a reality: our scientific capability is advancing much faster than our spiritual and moral capability.

3. Ironies of love

"我一定会爱你到地老到天长
我一定会陪你到海枯到石烂"

This is the lyrics I found in a 1990s Chinese pop. Isn't it ironical that such promises that supposedly last till the "eternity" are made (usually) in a moment of impulse when our passions are intense? Shouldn't there be more contemplation? The reality? Love is probably irrational.

Now, I hope I have convinced you the importance of understanding irony. For the meanwhile, I have this unfounded (stupid) fear. I am worried by the possibility that after the Understanding Irony course, I might end up concluding that irony cannot be understood. That would be the greatest irony indeed. Haha...