[Neurons] 2008 Meta Reflections #41

[Dr. Hall]

From:  L. Michael Hall

Sept 8, 2008

Meta Reflection #41

   Humor -3

                        

 

THE META-STATE STRUCTURE 

OF HUMOR

 


 


 


I began this series on humor by identifying the meta-state structure of
humor (Meta Reflection #40). We can now analyze the experience of humor to
detect what it is that jars our consciousness into the delightful, joyful,
and fun state as we experience the meta-state of seeing the lighter side of
life.  If you want to create humor for yourself and others, what is the
strategy process for creating states of humor?

 

1) First get into a "good" state.

This mostly means an un-threatened state.  It means that you basically feel
"safe"-you feel secure, not in danger, and that your human needs are
basically satisfied.  This "good" state also means that you are not in an
opposing state like a state of anger, resentment, hatefulness,
self-contempt, and so on.  We all know that when we are in such states,
nothing is funny!  State of stress, irritability, and feeling unwell
diminish and can even prevent humor.

 

2) Then enter into a context with specific expectations.

This can happen in one second as when someone says something to you that
"sets a frame" (sets the stage) putting you into a specific context of
understanding.  At that moment, your mind and emotion is oriented in a
certain way.  You live in a certain "world."  Sometimes it takes much
longer; stories take longer to set up the expectations.  Yet neither you nor
the other person have to consciously know the expectations that are set-it
is only required that meta-level expectations are set.

Why is it so difficult to make anything foolproof?  Because fools are so
ingenious.

                        How many people here have telekenetic powers?
Please raise my hand.

So just why did Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

 

3) Then let your frame of expectations be jarred.

With the set-up of a particular mind-set of understanding, orientation, and
expectation, you next have to experience something that jars you from that
state.  It could be a word, gesture, phrase, etc. which suddenly and
delightfully shifts the frame putting you into a different understanding,
orientation, and expectation.  This jarring has to happen quickly
-surprisingly.  Here the timing of the telling plays a crucial role in the
jarring of consciousness.

 

4) To this jarring, then welcome a meta-state moment of realization.

With the sudden, surprising, and delightful shifting and jarring of
consciousness, you then experience a moment of awareness about the trick or
the tease.  For a moment, you rise up in your mind and "go meta" to a higher
perspective.  As you then gain perspective on the jarred understanding or
consciousness, you enjoy the shift and surprise of the playfulness of the
joke or pun.  You experience humor.

 

And you thought humor was simple!  When it comes to humor, it is actually
amazing that it is so complex.  Yet if you think about it, that really
shouldn't be surprising.  After all, how many times have you not "got the
joke?"  You didn't "get it" because to get it required certain background
and contextual information.  You didn't know enough to have the needed
orientation or expectations and so there wasn't enough inside you to be
jarred.  

This last week the new nominee for Vice President of the United States,
Sarah Palin, currently the Governor of Alaska who has a reputation for being
tough and who has been called a bulldog, asked, "What's the difference
between a hockey mom and a pit bull dog?"  "Lipstick!" she said pointing to
her lips.

 

And what about those times when someone took the time to "explain" a joke to
you?  Didn't the very act of explaining deflate the joke?  Typically it
ruins it.  Why is that?  Because then there's no surprise, shock, or jarring
of consciousness.  This is the difference between telling a joke or a story
with the appropriate timing and emphasis versus those times when you miss
the critical emphasis, set-up, and timing.  In humor, we induce one state
with our set-up and then shift and jar that state quickly to surprise the
person's expectations.  So communicating humor requires the induction of
two-states, one after the other, sometimes in very quick succession.

Some years ago I read about the sudden passing of a minister's wife.
Distraught he wrote to his supervising bishop.  "Bishop, I regret to inform
you of my wife's death.  Can you possibly send me a substitute for the
weekend?"

            

What's funny here?  The humor is in the ambiguity of the word "substitute."
Substitute for what?  What is the context?  Is it Sunday services or
services of a different nature?  And are you safe to hear the story?  Or did
you just lose a loved one?

 

This analysis of humor explains why even infants will laugh and giggle when
mother or father tickles them, but often will not laugh and giggle, but
scream and cry when a stranger does so.  The infant doesn't feel safe (#1).
[Research indicates infants are fifteen times more likely to laugh when
tickled by a parent than someone else.]

 

This analysis also explains why parents cannot tease young children too
much.  If you're a parent, you know that it is often difficult, if not
impossible, at times to tease your children about some things.  Why?  They
also are not safe enough with their world to be teased.  Professor John
Morreall writes in Taking Laughter Seriously, "Once a child has a picture of
the world and has operated in it for awhile, he can begin to enjoy humor."
Higher levels of humor require a solid sense of reality, a solid sense of
your conceptual world.

 

This explains why when sanity goes, so does humor.  It explains why mental
wards are not happy places.  Maymond Moody, Jr. M.D. writes in Laugh after
Laugh.

"I've watched acutely schizophrenic patients in the day room of psychiatric
wards, dolefully assembled before TV sets, gazing, unsmiling, and
unlaughing, at the nightly dose of situation comedies.  But their expression
were serious, strained-even more so than when watching the grim and joyless
soap operas in the afternoon." (page 64)

 

If what happens in the experience of humor is a sudden change of meaning and
awareness, then humor inherently involves jarring consciousness (#3).
Suddenly, things change and we see things in a new or different way.

"We experience humor when we have a change in our psychological state,
whether that state is primarily affective (emotional) or cognitive
(intellectual)." (Morreall)

 

Humor requires creatively mis-matching incongruities.  This explains why
humor corresponds so closely to states of creativity and innovation.  If
"humor is that which is out of place in time and space without danger"
(Aristotle) then as you begin from a safe state, you have a place from which
to play with your concepts of the world, turn them upside down, exaggerate
things to the point of being ridiculous, and mismatch things.  So what
structures "humor" also leads to creative innovations.

George really surprised me today when he told me that he had a big weekend.
I knew his end was big, but I just didn't realize that it was also weak.

 

Finally, humor also requires the meta-state of stepping back from oneself to
gain perspective (#4).  That's why healthy humor is so often identified as a
"philosophical attitude" or "philosophical outlook."  Stepping back (going
meta) enables us to gain perspective.  Often in the midst of conflict or
challenge we say, "One of these days I'll look back and be able to laugh at
this."  Laughter here indicates that we have moved away from being inside
the problem to being able to look at it from another perspective.  We have
transcended the problem.

 

It is in this way that humor protects and saves our sanity.  This is what
Viktor Frankl discovered in the Hitler concentration camp.

"Unexpectedly most of us were overcome by a grim sense of humor.  We knew we
had nothing to lose except our ridiculously naked lives. . .   Humor was
another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. . . .
Humor more than anything else in the human makeup can afford an aloofness
and an ability to rise above any situation if only for a few seconds."
(Man's Search for Meaning)

 

Transcendence describes another aspect of humor.  The state and mind-set of
a humorous perspective enables us to transcend our situation.  The
philosophical attitude enables us to look at life philosophically so that we
are not swallowed up by it.  It gives us some psychological distance and
objectivity when facing troubling problems.  To the Unleashing of your
Humor!

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

International Society of Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

1 970-523-5790 fax

     www.neurosemantics.com 

      www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com 

      www.self-actualizing.org 

 

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