Adults Manual
“You are proof that God has a sense of humor.”
For Parents and Teachers
A Revolutionary Guide to Reducing Aggression between Children
by Izzy Kalman, MS
Chapter Nine
AN INSTANT COURSE IN HUMOR
The mystery of laughter, the best medicine
We all know the expression, “Laughter is the best medicine.” Science has been proving that this is more than a cute slogan. Experiments have been showing that when we laugh, our body actually produces chemicals that help us heal and make us stronger. Articles on humor have been appearing more and more frequently in magazines and newspapers, and people are being increasingly encouraged to use humor to improve their lives and relationships.
Humor is a mysterious subject. We all know when something is funny, but what makes something funny is not nearly so obvious. Being funny seems to be a gift; some people have it and some people don’t. The advisers telling us to be funny have great intentions, but they rarely tell us how to do it other than by putting a big red nose on our face or a silly hat on our heads.
Why don’t we get advice on how to be funny? Because few people, even the experts on human nature, are aware of what humor is all about. And with our current anti-violence social atmosphere, if it were clear what humor is really about, there is the danger that it would have to be outlawed. Allow me to explain.
Humor is violence
There are a number of different kinds of things that make us laugh. Among them are wordplays, children doing adult-like behaviors, and animals performing human-like behaviors. These things, though, rarely make us more than chuckle, and they comprise only a small part of the humor we enjoy in real life. The great majority of what we laugh at is people being stupid, clumsy, or miserable! And the worse they look, they harder we laugh!
Yes, all these years that we’ve been laughing, we’ve really been enjoying other people being wretched! We just haven’t realized it. Would you like to prove this to yourself? Then let me present you with a challenge: Tell me a good joke that doesn’t make anyone look bad. Don’t rush. Think about it over the next couple of days. Like everyone else, you should be surprised to discover that you can’t do it. Also, start opening your eyes and ears. Pay attention to what makes you laugh, whether it’s on TV, in a magazine, or in real life. You will come to the conclusion that we never laugh when people look smart, or generous, or capable, or brave. We only laugh when they look stupid, clumsy, or miserable.
The victim determines if the violence is comedy or tragedy
When you realize that humor involves either emotional or physical violence, don’t become depressed, thinking, “Oh, no! I just discovered I’m a sadist!” You are not a sadist. If someone really got hurt and you enjoyed it, then you might qualify as a sadist. But an essential ingredient of humor is that no one is really injured by the violent words or actions. The target of the insult does not get mad or upset, so no one’s feelings were hurt. The clown falls down, but he bounces right up again, and we know he’s OK. However, if the clown falls down and it turns out he really had an accident and needs to be taken to the hospital, we stop laughing and feel terrible. The important thing for us to understand regarding the subject of teasing victims is that it is the victim who determines whether or not he is hurt. If you make fun of someone and he gets upset, he turns the incident into a tragedy. If he laughs, then it’s a comedy.
The gap in the experts' knowledge
Now, you aren’t the only one who hasn’t known that humor involves the enjoyment of violence. The experts on human behavior, those who shape the national policies on society and education, don’t know it either. Pick up any education or psychology textbook and look up the words "laughter," "comedy," and "humor" in the index. Chances are that you will find little or nothing on the subjects. If aliens came to Earth and tried to learn about human beings from our professional textbooks, they would never guess that we have a sense of humor. Yet humor is one of the most important things in the psychology of people and in our daily lives. We love humor and can’t get enough of it. Without it, life would be absolutely miserable – we would be able to tolerate neither others nor ourselves. Humor is a major factor in resilience. It helps us to heal from illness and to face the most difficult life situations. A person without a sense of humor is either autistic, depressed, or suffering from some other serious illness.
Another subject our professional educators and psychologists don’t understand well is teasing. Again, look this word up in the textbooks, and you will find almost nothing. Even though it is a major cause of children’s emotional suffering, most of the experts charged with educating and counseling our children don’t understand teasing. Few know what to do about it other than to punish the bullies.
This lack of professional knowledge about humor and teasing is also why you will be told to use humor without being given any instructions. Because to have you be truly funny, and not just making corny wordplays, you will have to be verbally violent! But it is taboo to be verbally violent today, especially after Columbine. So you’re being told to be funny, but you stand to be in deep doo-doo if you actually say something worthy of a good laugh. In the past year or so, in fact, a number of people in the public eye have had their careers seriously damaged for making jokes that didn’t even hurt anyone’s feelings. My supervisor at my New York City Board of Education job has an excellent sense of humor. Once upon a time ago, he used to tell jokes that would have us rolling in laughter. Now, he tells lame jokes that elicit groans. (Allan, if you're reading this, don't be mad. You really do have a great sense of humor, and I love you).
Humor requires courage
If you know any people who are truly funny, you will sense that they are people who have guts. They do what the rest of us are afraid to do. What gutsy thing do they do? They make fun of people! But the thing is, they don’t hurt people. They make people feel good! Have you ever gone to a comedy club? The comedians stand there making fun of people in the audience, and the audience loves it. Customers who get overlooked by the comedian probably feel cheated! Also, the best teachers are the ones who use humor. The students love them and listen to them with rapt attention because they don’t want to miss any of the jokes. The truth is that humor has always been a wonderful thing and still is; it’s just become more dangerous to use it because of the increasingly anti-violence climate of the country.
Why humor feels good
Mother Nature rewards creatures with pleasure when they do things that are biologically necessary. Since laughing is so enjoyable and healthy, it means that it must be good for us to see others portrayed as fools. Does this make us evil? No! It is just the way we are. Our ancestors have been laughing at people’s stupidity for millions of years, and this trait has become biologically programmed right into our genes. That is why we start laughing from the time we’re babies, without anyone having explained to us what is funny.
Why should it be so pleasurable to see others being fools? Because, like all other animals, we have a need for superiority -- to be better than our competitors. The most important trait of human beings is intelligence – more than anything else, this differentiates us from the other animals and is responsible for the incredible success of our species. Everyone wants to be smart. The easiest way in the world for us to feel smart is for someone else to look stupid. It’s like winning a soccer match by having the opponents kick the ball into the wrong goal. You don’t do anything, and you win! When others are being fools, an inner voice within us says, “Ha, ha, ha! Look how dumb he is! I’m much smarter than that,” and “Thank God it’s him and not me!” These thoughts are not usually conscious. It’s just that biologically it has to feel good to be smarter and more capable than others.
Victims have a defective sense of humor
But there’s another part of the equation. To have a complete, healthy sense of humor, it is not enough to be able to laugh at others. If it’s good for us to laugh at other people, whom are they going to laugh at? Obviously, it has to be OK for others to laugh at us. And the truth is that none of us are perfect. We all have things about us that can be laughed at. Even our positive characteristics can be portrayed in a way that makes them look bad, and thus funny. An essential characteristic of an emotionally healthy person is that he knows he’s not perfect, and can take a joke about himself and make a joke about himself. Psychologists are still wondering what was wrong with the Columbine killers and the other students who committed massacres. They are having difficulty because the essential human trait of humor is not part of their diagnostic manual. But the most accurate way of diagnosing what was wrong with these murderers is that they had a deficient sense of humor: they couldn’t take a joke about themselves. And this is what is wrong with every victim of relentless teasing. Fortunately, as you have been learning in this website, this is a deficiency that is easy to correct with the right approach.
The value of being funny
You certainly want the children in your care to develop a sense of humor, so they can become more resilient and happy. And if you are a teacher, you would like to be funnier so that your students will learn better, and so that school will be more fun for both you and them. But you are faced with the dilemma: since humor is a form of violence, how can you do this without getting in trouble? Now, I am not a true expert in teaching people how to be funny, and I am not nearly as funny as I think I should be, but I believe I can help by giving you a clearer understanding of humor.
Five levels of humor
There are five general levels of humor. (I am excluding things like wordplays. My concern is only in the most common type of humor, the kind that makes us feel really good, which requires making people look bad. It may be more appropriate to call it comedy). The higher the level, the more risk is involved. They are as follows:
1. Jokes about imaginary people. These include things like, “Did you hear the one about a guy who goes into a bar…” These are completely safe because the person does not exist, so we don’t have to be afraid anyone will be offended and try to retaliate.
2. Jokes about real people who are famous. This includes all the Monica Lewinsky jokes. Sure, President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky are real, but they don’t know us, and they don’t personally care about us. Because most of us aren’t important enough to hang out with them, they will never know we made fun of them, so we can’t get in trouble.
3. Jokes about people we know, behind their backs. This type of humor is very common. For instance, we sit around the lunchroom talking about a colleague or supervisor who isn’t there at the moment, saying things we wouldn’t dare say in his presence. This is mildly risky because word may get back to him that we made fun of him.
4. Making jokes about ourselves. This is risky because it requires openly admitting our faults to others. Not everyone has the internal strength to do this, because our nature is to try to show how wonderful we are.
5. Making fun of people right in front of their faces. This is the highest form of the art of humor, and involves the most risk. There is the danger that the person will be truly offended. To pull this off successfully, we have to know the person well enough to know he can take a joke without getting upset. But this kind of humor is also the most enjoyable. Good friends can do this with each other. In fact, it’s impossible for two people to be good friends if they can’t allow themselves to make fun of each other. It is also what happens when you go to a comedy club. People pay money to have comedians stand up and make fun of them. Chances are you feel cheated if he made fun of most of the audience but overlooked you.
Five ways to be funny
Now that you have all this theoretical information, how do you use it? That depends on whether you are a parent or a teacher. If you are a parent, your relationship with your children is informal. You spend lots of time with them at the dinner table, in the car, in front of the TV, etc. Within the walls of your home, you have lots of opportunity to use all five levels of humor without having to worry about getting in trouble.
However, if you are a teacher, you have to be much more careful about what you say. You can have your career destroyed for the crime of making a joke!
You may be expecting the advice I give on using humor to follow my outline of the five levels of humor I just defined. Unfortunately, life isn’t always as neat as we would like it to be. Instead, it will be based on the safest and healthiest ways to be funny.
1. Making fun of yourself. This is appropriate for both teachers and parents. It is the absolutely best thing you can do for several reasons. One is that you will be modeling to the children the attitude of health: that I am not perfect, and I can laugh about my imperfections. After all, if even the teachers can make fun of themselves and enjoy being laughed at, then certainly we should all be able to. A second reason is that it is perfectly safe. No one else can claim to be hurt when you make a joke about yourself. You can even make fun of your religion, your skin color, and your sex, things that may otherwise be taboo, when you make the jokes about yourself.
2. Making fun of imaginary people. This is like the “This guy goes into a bar…” joke. No particular ethnic, religious, or physical characteristics are being made fun of. It’ll make people laugh, but no one can get hurt. If you are a teacher, though, you probably won’t have too many opportunities to make such jokes if you are trying not to stray from the material you are trying to teach.
3. Making jokes about ethnicity, religion, gender, sex, or physical characteristics. Teachers: Don’t even think about it! Aside from the fact that you can lose your job, you may actually be hurting children who share the traits being ridiculed. Even if there are no such children in your class or school, you are not making your students better people by fostering bigotry. Maybe we’ll be fortunate to live long enough to see a society in which everyone enjoys making fun of each other and no one is stupid enough to get hurt by it, but we shouldn’t hold our breaths. Parents: you can be more relaxed about making fun of people’s traits. There isn’t much chance of getting in trouble, though you may be turning your kids into bigots if you don’t make extra effort to teach them to respect people’s differences. If you are going to joke about other groups of people to your children, it is essential that you joke about your own group’s characteristics as well.
4. Making fun of famous people. Fortunately, this is still acceptable in society. However, if you are a teacher, you still have to be careful about offending people who identify with those you ridicule. If you want to play it safe, don’t make such jokes in school unless you really know your audience.
5. Making fun of your children. Making fun of the people right in front of you is, of course, the highest and most difficult form of humor. In order to pull this off successfully, you have to be sure that the child will laugh at the joke and realize that you are not being serious. This is especially true if you are a teacher. Never be angry with the child you are making fun of, because that means you see the child as an enemy and want to hurt him! It should be obvious to all listeners that you like the child you are joking about. If you are a teacher, remember the instructions in item 3 about ethnicity, religion, gender, sex, or physical characteristics. You don’t want to get fired! Another important rule is that if you are going to allow yourself to joke about kids, it has to be a two-way street. They should be allowed to make jokes about you, too. After all, what lesson will you be teaching if it is OK to make fun of others but others are not allowed to make fun of you?
I know this list is not all-inclusive, and I may be missing some important situations. However, I hope it gives you some useful guidelines for adding humor in you life.
Good luck. I hope you enjoyed this Revolutionary Manual.
Sincerely,
Izzy Kalman
