Laughing in four ways

[minus1@minus1.ghost.io]

One of the things that has helped me embrace a more true version of myself the last year is to have learned to tell the difference between four kinds of humor. I now understand better why I most of the time dislike sarcasm and fooling around - or just don't get the point. And I've discovered the part of me that gets touched and laughs out loud when I hear affectionate humor and "work jokes" (inside humour that is relevant to the context without irony).

The first reason, which now seems obvious, is that the feelings make all the difference.

Sarcasm almost always carries passive aggression. My working definition of sarcasm is: Irony used to taunt, mock or deride, ie. communicate contempt. Importantly, the contempt is not reckognized by the sarcastic person (hence the use of irony). I really dislike sarcasm for that reason. Passive aggression makes me uneasy, not able to relax. Even when the sarcasm is directed towards people I have less sympathy with, I get frustrated and impatient. If we could just reckognize the contempt, maybe we could learn something. In any case, not really a feeling state for great laughter.

The more at ease, the more out loud I can laugh.

Fooling around almost always carries some kind of restlessness or anxiety. It is avoidant too. The kind of humor you use to sidetrack a serious issue or diminish it. So the laughter it gets is usually nervous giggles (because most of us know the issue is still real). It's fine and understandable, but not really the kind of humor I live for.

Affectionate humor carries warmth and an interpersonal focus expressing intimacy and goodness between people. This is the kind of stuff that the best memories are made of. When I think about the most memorable jokes in my life, that put a smile on my face or made me cry tears of joy, they've most often been in this category. The most redemptive moments have often come packaged in an affectionate joke too. I am grateful that my partner is particularly good at this without turning to self-irony.

Work jokes carry a lightness of spirit and inspiration. It is "work" in the broadest sense of the term here - doing something that creates a change. The deepest (and hence funniest!) work jokes I've heard have always floored me with insight - awe even. There's a particular way that humor can get to the essence of things in a way that no other epistemological method can. One punchline can get to the heart of the matter in a way no summary can (compared to a joke, even a summary has too many words haha!).

Graham Harman built a whole metaphysics around humor as the royal road to truth.

The wisest people have often been compared to fools - a figure that at first appears ridiculously naïve, but then uses that naïvety as an extraordinary openness to the unknown. Through that openness, the fool brings in entirely new pieces of reality, often with a lightness of spirit that makes you burst with a laughter of reckognition. "Haha! Of course!"

When you laugh out in joy like that, you've likely just learned something wonderfully new. Something so obviously true it was as if you already knew it - you could reckognize it as soon as you heard the joke.

(Otherwise the joke wouldn't have worked)

Silvan Tomkins argued for something he called "the smile and laughter of reckognition". In his typically unique way, he defined smile and laughter as a function of a relatively quick decrease in affect. Laughter being the more steep and intense decrease, the smile being the less intense version of the same. When you have a sudden drop in interest, and remember that interest is wanting to get to know something, what do you imagine might have happened? That's right, the thing you wanted to get to know - you know it now. That happens every day of our lives. We're interested, then try to get to know something, and then we know it and lose interest and move on (or perhaps enjoy ourselves knowing it).

Most of the time, that's a gradual process. Sometimes, you get to know something very quickly (and interest drops fast, usually being replaced by enjoyment, ie. knowing). That's when you get the smile or laughter of reckognition. Remember some time you saw someone on the other side of the street you vaguely reckognize and wonder who it is, you get a bit closer and suddenly you see the face of an old friend: "Aha! I know her!" And a smile fills your face (or you burst into laughter if you literally bump into each other).

The fool has a special ability of making us look at something unknown that sparks our interest. And then, through the most elegant way of communicating (a joke), reveals what it is just like that. Like magic. It is the fastest way our interest turns into reckognition - if you get the joke. Hence, why work jokes are always "insider" orientered - if you know, you know. If you don't, you'll have have found a new interest - to understand why others around you got it and you didn't.

You can probably tell I have a soft spot for work jokes. I think they could get a better name (perhaps literally!). And we'd probably all laugh more out loud - with our whole heart and soul - if we learned to appreciate these differences in humor. And to those of you, who sometimes get told you're humorless or "too serious" because you get uneasy or frustrated with sarcasm and fooling around - I see you ️