Maria Bamford is my new favorite comic.
She is brilliant and she’s very frank about needing medication. So, she’s a hero as well.
I sincerely love her.
For the latest info on my humor related projects sign up here.
Maria Bamford is my new favorite comic.
She is brilliant and she’s very frank about needing medication. So, she’s a hero as well.
I sincerely love her.
For the latest info on my humor related projects sign up here.
Read the 1st post of the humor series here.
Do animals laugh and why should we care?
One of the first things that comes up when you start to study what people find funny, and why they do, is the issue of purpose.
“What’s it all for?”
And when you start asking those questions invariably you need to see if humor is a uniquely human quality or if other creatures have some of it too and why might they.
It turns out that science has tried to measure that. The results, in my opinion, are mixed and even a bit unsavory. But, I’ll get to that in a minute.
Noises of Play
Plebeian anecdotes of laughing dogs or snickering nonhuman primates circulate and seem to indicate that something akin to genuine laughter or maybe some sort of sense of humor could be at work. Yes?
For a number of years scientists have discerned what seems to be jolly noises coming from chimps at play. These sounds mimic the intonations of young children at play and keg parties.
And then there’s the business of rodents.
Rats, actually.
I told you it would get unsavory.
Laughter in the Lab
Apparently, scientists can get grant money to tickle rats.
You heard me right.
See, if they just use the phrase “heterospecific hand play” on their proposal, a grant check comes in the mail.
The phrase sounds sophisticated and science-y, and no one in the grant issuing department considers it perverted.
With grant money in hand, scientists use their other hand and go about tickling rats of different ages, in different settings, at different times, and sometimes (I’m guessing) on the couch near a cozy fire in the fireplace and atmospheric candlelight as Barry White music plays softly in the background. It’s all very clinical.
The Results
Older (married?) rats don’t seem to respond, but juvenile rats, foolish to the wiles of scientists, make high frequency chirping sounds as they encounter “heterospecific hand play”.
The sounds are somewhat comparable to staccato laughing of human children at play. Human children playing but also gnawing at garbage in a dumpster, perhaps. Or, perhaps the panicked sounds of high anxiety.
The strange result is that the young rats then seek out the human that tickled him or her for plenty more of the same. (This convinces the scientists that the impressionable rats are enjoying the interaction and not developing strange and unhealthy co-dependency issues sourced in dubious psychologically damaging tickle abuse.)
In fact, the rats grow closer to their ticklers socially, and perhaps hope for an engagement ring one day.
I’d also like to note that so far I’m finding no such experiments are conducted where rats are allowed to tickle scientists and whether the rats or the scientists laugh because of it. This seems like a gross oversight. It would also be interesting to know if the scientists found the rats attractive in different outfits and vice versa. Or, maybe not.
I don’t know whether to be proud of the these discoveries or terribly embarrassed for the scientists.
The Purpose of Humor
What laughter–or its nonhuman equivalent–appears to do in the animal world is to build social bridges through appropriate positive interactions.
Positive, mutual, social responses build bonds, trust, and cooperation. Everyone wins.
Rats, dogs, and chimps are all highly social creatures, and maybe this is needed for things to go well.
The exception is the occasional instance where rats eat their young.
• This seems to indicate that some tickling just isn’t funny, or that kids can be a real pain sometimes.
Humor and Spirituality
I’m proposing that humor remains invaluable to human flourishing, not just for healthy social bonding, but ultimately for the vital element of identity, and this is the territory of spirituality. We’ll get into the reasons of why more deeply as we continue.
Like those laughing animals, humans are social too. When they are not socially healthy, bad things happen: murder, sexual assault, arson, random violence, and strange behavior on Facebook.
But, unlike animals, scientific experiments show that humans have three main reasons for laughing besides a tickling episode, according to work by psychologist Diana Szameitat. Here are the other three:
1. Laughing in joy.
2. Taunting laughter. Laughing at someone in contempt.
3. Schadenfreude laughter. Laughing at another person who encounters something unfortunate, like falling down. The Germans have just the precise word for it too, which is not surprising.
I think there are several more, but that’s for future posts.
Funny Things are Seriously Complex
Humor and laughter comprise a whole system of complex emotions for humans, compared to animals.
And as anyone who’s been tickled for too long knows, sometimes humor includes mixed emotions like discomfort, fear, apprehension, or wanting to slap a scientist for creepy “heterospecific hand play”.
We’ll learn much more about the complexity of humor as we go. In future posts I’ll also cover the dubious reputation of humor among early philosophers, the fascinating aspect of humorous sarcasm and mockery, plus the latest compelling humor research theory that explains both the good and bad reasons why we find things funny.
Anything for a laugh.
To sum up, humor is both uniquely human and shared among certain other creatures in a lesser way.
Read the next one in the series here.
Are you enjoying this series? I’d love to know.
Thanks for reading!
-Lisa
Prison is a place of lasting aloneness. A place where you are reminded that you are forgotten.
Trying to overcome it is a big deal.
Volunteer groups are cherished by inmates like fresh air. They thank us each time we come.
I didn’t know how to answer him. I sort of felt crushed.
Not just that he would ask, but that the truth was so simple and unreachable.
He suggested I speak to my church and invite them to participate. I already had.
“It does say that is the Bible. You’re right. I don’t know….
I’m sorry,” I told him.
“What keeps them from coming?” another man asked.
“Maybe because all people know about prison is what they see in movies. Maybe they are afraid.” I said.
That comment incited and 3 page letter the prisoner brought back the next week to help convince people from our church that they were not violent and they were also Christians who love the Lord, were re-paying their debt to society, and wanted the support and Christian brotherhood.
But, nothing like that can be taken out of a prison. (It’s a felony.) He had to keep his correspondence. I thought he was going to cry when he explained that he needed to keep what he wrote. Abandonment? That was probably what I was on his face.
It’s heartbreaking.
But, I also wondered if some of the reasons were really a greater indictment on Christians and human nature.
• Laziness
• Lack of compassion
• Self-centeredness
• Distain for outcasts
Could this be it?
If I asked people from my church, face-to-face this time, what keeps them from being involved, they might say,
“I’m just too busy.”
Or “I’m not really interested in that (in them).”
Or, “I don’t like criminals. They deserve to be where they are and we shouldn’t make things easier for them.”
or maybe,
“I’d rather be doing two million different things than that!”
And whatever the reasons, good or not, they hamper the work of Love.
You wait for your special day for what seems like an eternity.
You what everything to be just perfect…
or you realize that perfection is impossible.
Why?
There aren’t any options left.
Sure she could be heartbroken, angry, bitter, or embarrassed (or all of the above) but what happened was out of her control and adding drama won’t make anyone feel any better.
Better to admit the humanity of it all, have a good laugh, and make the best of it!
Then, try to have a great party.
(What she did afterward didn’t make it to the footage, but I’d love to know what happened next. Maybe the groom should have jumped in and they could all continue together.
Also, was the aisle buttered of something? CRaZy!