Humor

This is a post that is likely to get me in some trouble, if not now then at some future time. So be it.

I have a confession: I have a hard time accepting humor—both my own and others'. I'm not saying that I have a hard time getting humor. I am indeed quite capable of laughing and, at times, making other people laugh. What I'm saying is that I have a hard time pegging humor as a good thing or bad thing.

Most people, I suspect, think that humor is a good thing that should be encouraged—end of story. After all, laughing is enjoyable, is it not? But perhaps most people are wrong. Here is my simplistic theory of humor that challenges the humor-is-a-good-thing idea: on the whole, humor is a psychological tool by which a person makes himself feel better about a bad circumstance. This may sound strange at first until you consider that most of what we find funny is related, at least in part, to something that causes us pain or discomfort. There are the obvious cases, such as slapstick. Slightly less obvious is sarcasm. Other cases are not so clearly connected; however, reflect upon how many times you've laughed at something good happening to someone. Rather, if you're like most people, what makes you laugh is folly, pain, embarrassment, etc.

Reinforcing my simplistic theory of humor is my observation, made over the course of about a decade or so by now, that most habitually funny people are also habitually sick—in the psychological sense. Many of the most frequently funny people I know are ones who mostly frequently don't have their lives together and are, internally, lonely or otherwise discontent people—e.g., bad childhoods leading to bad adult habits. It seems to me that humor is a dangerous coping mechanism.

On the other hand, it does feel good to laugh. Doubtlessly, if humor is a coping mechanism, then nature has endowed humans with it precisely because it is a workable coping mechanism. A coping human has better survival fitness than a non-coping human, it would seem.

However, why not forgo coping altogether and work through fixing the root causes to one's problems in the first place? Perhaps this is simply too difficult to accomplish and humor is the best alternative. I don't know where to stand on this one and can see it both ways. Maybe bad habits are not so bad after all and life should be taken and appreciated, through whatever coping method necessary, one day at a time. But should bad habits be encouraged? Why not be better if you are capable? Shrugging off humor—at least its defensive forms—seems like a good first step to getting one's house in order.

Maybe some common ground between these two positions is benign humor, the kind that is not based on things related to pain or discomfort. Take as an example silly word play. Here's one for you: what letter of the alphabet is most confident? Answer: Certainty. Get it? Wait, why are you groaning? I assure you that joke has no pain associated with it at all!