How does humour arise from conflict?

In The Importance of Being Earnest,
the conflict arises from the fact that two friends, Jack and Algernon, lead double lives
for their own pleasure. However, things become complicated when they are basically both
found out by the respective ladies who are engaged to marry them (understanding that
both men are named Ernest), and decide to walk away from them
momentarily.

The conflict of double identity is mocked and
made ironic by Wilde in that, despite of the ugly nature of double dealing, Victorian
society cared less about double lives but more about superficial lives. When Lady
Bracknell asked Jack about his peerage, all he could really tell her was that he was
found inside a handbag in Victoria Station.

That was a
problem because, despite of the fact that Jack had a double life, and that Algernon was
as well, the fact that Jack could not produce a name for a family (or a pedigree) was
even more important than so.

To this, add that Gwendolen
and Cecily, Algernon and Jack, and Ms. Prism, even, are characters that contradict
themselves completely throughout the play. All insist in leading a fantastic life born
out of their imagination, and become completely oblivious to the actual problem in front
of them: They are all mocking each other.

Yet, in the end,
it is Wilde who mocks them by presenting them as characters who are funny but dimwitted,
interesting but superficial, and all of them completely trivial and concerned only with
their own idiotic view of life.