Insights on humor

I promised on a previous message that I’ve recently got some insights on humor. Here goes.

1. At the “Enjoy the colours of my society” training course there were two defining things on laughter (for my jokes):

• One person is eating breakfast; He makes some complicated calculations on how to eat a sandwich; I tell him just this: “So you need complicated calculations to eat a sandwich?”; He gets an insight and he bursts into unstoppable laughter; Not long afterward, we’re at the training; 20 persons; I say, among others, that “I do Search Engine Optimization”; The person had a similar reaction to this; Everybody was silent (including I), no one was laughing, that person laughed; The person was even criticized (as a joke, but still) for the burst of laughter;
  My analysis – the initial laughter at breakfast created a small bond and kind of reaction (although I talk seriously, I can make a joke and it’s hard to resist not to laugh); Then at the training course, even if I was serious, and I made no joke, that person got an insight, and entered a pattern; The person couldn’t stop; This is just awesome: I say “I do Search Engine Optimization” and one can’t stop laughing; Good level for telling jokes;
• One other person laughed very silently most of the time (with others), and in a bit peculiar and loud way when I told some jokes / made some insights; Although it might have been a bit embarrassing to laugh loudly, that person still did it;

So, what’s the conclusion? I’m in the heaven of jokes: making people laugh even if there are some restrains that would typically prevent them (what would others think when they are laughing); To me, this is the one thing that can get me closer to a person; I became as close as one as I can get as a friend to the two persons above; The first person was the only person who came to me with a bottle of alcohol and I didn’t say no to (and it happened twice), while with the other one I talked (why do you interpret it as laughter?) a lot; Why the friendship with the two? Due to the laughing connection;

2. At the same training course, we had to say if some sentences were true or false; In my group, the third sentence was:
“Cultural diversity can be promoted without intercultural learning”
I was surprised that my answer, agreed by the whole group:
“Cultural diversity CAN be promoted w/o intercultural learning, BUT intercultural learning helps A LOT”
was funny;
Dissection of a joke:
a. The joke has the structure of Radio Yerevan jokes;
b. It’s a bit of a surprise, considering that most other answers were typically yes or no;
c. I made other types of jokes, so perhaps it was just a reinforcement of previous jokes;
Anyhow, I don’t know what of the previous reasons made people laugh and this joke be included in the list of memorable stories in the last day; Thus, I can’t readily repeat the pattern;

3. If you think humor is surprising, let’s talk about serious stuff; We were asked why would Brazilians (just an example) be allowed to participate in European Union programs? And I answered, as a joke, that they had an European soul, which proved to be right (although with different phrasing); Quite surprising;

4. To me joking about anything proves that a rule exists; So, if I joke about Snow White, this means that Snow White is something that should generally be taken seriously – Exception that proves the rule; You can apply the same logic to any other entity – countries, nations, genders, religions, political views, habits, etc.; If I joke about it, it means that on a primary level I think it’s something to be taken seriously;

5. There’s an expression I like: “I don’t discriminate, I hate everyone equally“; To me, joking about everything is a good way of non-discrimination; As a matter of fact, I tend to joke more about things I like best (see below);

6. Humor about God; I like this quote from Ellen DeGENERES a lot:

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.

Actually, this is my favorite quote ever; It is an insight, nothing attacking or discriminating about it (so I think); Yet other jokes about Jesus, God, and other celestial creatures are funny to me; To put it plainly, a joke about God is more likely to be funny to me than a typical one; The Orthodox church is not really at ease with this kind of jokes; To me, talking in funny ways about the things you love most, you want most in this life and work most to get is just a way of disconnecting; It’s helpful to me to have an opposite opinion, feeling and thinking to the typical one; I like to read critical thinking writings, I enjoy atheist writings, I want to counterbalance the one view of Orthodox church with something else; If this is humor, then so be it; I agree, telling a joke which starts with Jesus on the cross can be highly offensive to others, so I must be careful when telling it; But other than that, religion jokes are fine with me.

So this message ends like this: Do you know what Pavlov did when his dog died? He kept on feeding him.