Humor is more powerful than we think. It can change the world and make it better. Today I want to outline weaponizing humor for self-improvement. For more reading I suggest taking a peek here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The truth is ridiculous
One of the things we learn in writing classes is the true face of humor. Most of the writing requires manipulating information, making things look clear and inspiring. Nobody wants the reader to start laughing uncontrollably when the hero fights his archenemy unless the whole piece is humoristic. So the archenemy is strong and frightening, and the hero is brave and agile. The real people and real situations are not as clean.
Today I watched a documentary about the presidential debate between Nixon and Kennedy. Guess what. Nixon was very clumsy and hit his knee when coming out of a cab more than once. Kennedy loved dirty tricks, and he was nowhere near a champion of civil rights until he was given a chance to call Coretta Scott King to spite his foe. The elections were incredibly close and in the state of Illinoys there were signs of votes bought by Kennedy’s fortune: in some locations, there were more votes for Kennedy than people with voting rights.
The whole situation was ridiculous. The truth is ridiculous. Yet people remove the funny parts of the story to provide a moral value, a great face-off and a respectful facade.
Embrace the humor
Once we remove the humor, history becomes boring. We see these larger than life figures facing monumental challenges. No matter how hard we try we cannot live up to that image. Guess what: neither could the actual heroes of our stories.
To fight the unrealistic expectations of our teachers, the better-than life photos on social media and the depressing need to be better than we can, I suggest embracing humor.
If we stop taking ourselves seriously, some monumental challenges may become small bumps. We do not have to take heroic challenges, we can find creative solutions instead. “Always look at the bright side of life”.
Humor for resilience
We are the heroes of our own story. Yet we do not need to be tragic heroes fighting gloom doom. Instead, we can be funny and invulnerable. Each setback and humiliation can be as simple as falling on a peeled banana. It will hurt. We will cry first, laugh later and finally move on.
The humor is a part of our life because it offers evolutionary advantages, mainly reducing the paint. When we laugh we clean our respiratory system, pump the brain with blood, and generate enough “feel good” hormones to fight any pain except the most severe one.
Group therapy
A comedian has the most tricky role in any society: presenting the truth to everybody in a way that will not generate any confrontations. Angry disappointed people come to a stand-up show, and they are faced with a mirror of their shortcomings. This is a very painful realization. Yet, instead of feeling pain they enjoy the show. The messages masked by comic presentation bypass the defense mechanisms and influence the way we think almost hypnotically.
With some training, we can do this to ourselves and each other. We can present a funny parody of the most important events, and then add more levels of humor. As we add humor we can dig deeper and poke in the painful realizations, staying open and creative.
Funny memorization
When we teach people to create remarkable visualizations, we ask them to add humor. The spirit of nonsense removes the visualization blocks and performance anxieties many people have, and we can be sure that we will review the subject again simply to enjoy its humor.
If a historic figure is given a funny name or funny qualities, we tend to remember him better. We also tend to feel better for our own period in history. There is a story that the secret service was created to drag Benjamin Franklin out of bars, as he used to tell state secrets when drunk. That’s funny to think this way about the larger-than-life figures, and it also makes us more curious about other events of their lives.
Self-motivation
If someone calls us names, we will likely fight it. But if we see our own image in a funny light, with all its ridiculousness, we are often motivated to change. Self-humor is a good way to get public sympathy and win a public speech, but it is also an interesting way to generate motivation to change. At the same time, humor often generate empathy. If we treat ourself less seriously, we can easily generate more self-compassion.
Humor in communication
When solving relationship problems, humor is invaluable. Gelotophobians, people who fear they are laughed at, have on average less sex and are generally miserable. I quote:
Looking at relationship satisfaction, people who scored high on gelotophobia reported the lowest satisfaction in their relationships, and felt less physically attractive and less sexually satisfied, compared to low gelotophobians. … For men, having a gelotophobic partner reduced their own sexual satisfaction in relationships, probably because their partner’s insecurities make them less appealing. In contrast, women who loved being laughed at (gelotophilians) were more attracted to and enjoyed higher sexual satisfaction with their partner.
Laughter and focus
There are neurological findings closely correlating laughter with both relaxation and focus. I quote:
The laughter response appears to be coordinated by a laughter-coordinating center in the dorsal upper pons. This pathway may have an evolutionary role as the brainstem has a role in alertness and attention. A recent study by Fujiwara found that listening to a prepared recording of laughter for 20 minutes after experiencing a stress-inducing protocol mimicking daily life was associated with decreases in heart-rate variability measurements that reflect autonomic nervous system reactivity, compared to having the participants simply rest for 20 minutes. Hearing laughter increased parasympathetic nervous system tone. Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system has the effect of inducing a sense of relaxation, and is the opposite of the “Fight or flight” response of activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
So if we could not focus on the subject, or found the subject disturbing, simply making the subject funny we will be able to focus on it. And this works at every age. We can teach our kids better using funny stories and not boring moralization. In some was, laughter keeps us young. I quote:
The primatologist Jane Goodall, for example, points out that young chimpanzees often engage in tickling games, making huffing and puffing noises all the while. Maybe, then, human laughter is best viewed as an evolutionary extension of certain playful vocalisations already found among apes.
The power of cute
Our inner child is often the most curious, open and unconventional part of our being. We love connecting with that part, yet we often need assistance. I quote:
Cute expresses an intuition that life has no firm foundations, no enduring, stable ‘being’, and that, as the philosopher Martin Heidegger intimated, the only ground for life lies in the acceptance of its ungroundedness.
Some of my peers frown seeing their students mindlessly wandering the internet and searching for kittens. Yet I think this tendency should be embraced. Instead of feeling frustrated and embarassed we should feel innocent and cute.
