LAUGHTER AND HUMOR

Der Spass verliert Alles, wenn der Spassmacher selber lacht: 
A joke is totally lost, when the joker himself laughs.     –   Fr Schiller (Fiesco)

Laughing is as much an aspect of living as eating and walking and talking. However, one eats every day, often more than is necessary, one also walks every day, if physically able and one talks everyday – sometimes more than necessary -; but not many people laugh every day, certainly not as a matter of routine. I have even met people who have not laughed when I tell a joke.  But those who do (I mean laugh) are fortunate because it shows they are smart, especially if they laugh when I tell a joke..

The scientific study of laughter, known as gelotology, is no laughing matter. Nevertheless, just being told that our laughter is associated with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is enough to make some people laugh.

Music is a universal language. But it takes on different forms in different cultures. The music of Sama Veda is not the same as that of Sebastian Bach, just as Gregorian chants are very different from Greek guitar. But the sounds and facial distortions provoked by laughter cross cultural boundaries. Buddhist and Baha’is, Muslims and Mormons, Sikhs and Scandinavians, Parsees and Peruvians, Mayan Mexicans and the Maasais all undergo very similar muscular modifications in their looks when they laugh. However, there are different ways in which individuals laugh. Some are hearty in their laughing heaves, others are more subdued, some merely giggle while others keep going for several seconds.

Jokes are intended to make one laugh. They could be in the form of an anecdote: When the Irishman on his deathbed asked his friends to pour all the whiskey in his cellar on his gravestone, one of them asked, “Do you mind if we first filter the whiskey through our kidneys? A joke may also be as a question and answer.  For example: Did you hear about the punishment the couple got when they stole a calendar? Each of them got six months. Often, jokes have a punchline, and the listener or reader bursts into laughter, or is expected to, when it is reached. The success of a joke depends as much on how it is delivered, as in its brevity and content. 

When we see someone slip on a banana peel and fall smack on his bottom, we may be provoked to laughter – all the more so if the person happens to be a serene saintly soul or a president or prime minister, let alone a pope, but that is neither a joke nor humor. When a professor or a politician makes an obvious gaffe in answer to a question, we may laugh, but that is not humor. Nor is laughter provoked by tickling the result of a joke.

Humor makes us laugh or smile. It has an intellectual component, something that demands intelligent appreciation that a joke need not have. Parodying a poem can be humorous. For example,

Mary had a little lamb; her father shot it dead.

Now it goes to school with her, on a slice of bread.

Humor arises when words are misused or cleverly used. Many human situations can give rise to humor, if seen or described by someone who can transform them in that way. Concepts and institutions developed in human society can also be made the subject of humor.

It is interesting to know that the hippocampus and the amygdala of the limbic system are linked to laughter, but this knowledge is not funny. But we do know that laughter is healthy. However, it is to be scrupulously avoided, even suppressed if necessary, in certain circumstances: as when an ideologue claims in all sincerity that his or her path is the only one to solve all of humanity’s problems, let alone to reach God.

Like art and music, humor is an expression of creativity.  Indeed, humor is a creation by the human mind. More people enjoy humor than create it. It is not there in the external world: it is the human mind that produces and enjoys it.