Seriousness (noun; adjective: serious) is an attitude of gravity, solemnity, persistence, and earnestness toward something considered to be of importance.
Some notable philosophers and commentators have criticised excessive seriousness, while others have praised it. Seriousness is often contrasted with comedy, as in the seriocomedy. In the theory of humor, one must have a sense of humor and a sense of seriousness to distinguish what is supposed to be taken literally or not, or of being important or not. Otherwise, it may also be contrasted with a sense of play. How children learn a sense of seriousness to form values and differentiate between the serious and that which is not is studied in developmental psychology and educational psychology. There is a distinction between the degree of seriousness of various crimes in sentencing under the law, and also in law enforcement. There is a positive correlation with the degree of seriousness of a crime and viewer ratings of news coverage. What is or is not considered serious varies widely with different cultures.
Sometimes fields studying degrees of seriousness overlap, such as developmental psychology studies of development of the sense of degrees of seriousness as it relates to transgressions, which has overlap with criminology and the seriousness of crimes.
Read more about Seriousness: Seriousness and Comedy
Famous quotes containing the word seriousness:
“The Germans—once they were called the nation of thinkers: do they still think at all? Nowadays the Germans are bored with intellect, the Germans distrust intellect, politics devours all seriousness for really intellectual things—Deutschland, Deutschland Über alles was, I fear, the end of German philosophy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“People do not become convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity or of the seriousness of your pain until you are dead.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“A man’s maturity: that is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)