Monday, January 21, 2013

Humorous Halo of Significance


Humor allows us to experience familiar concepts as though for the first time, and occasionally, with a humorous halo of deeper significance. 

Seeing the world through a humorous lens seems to break down the oldness in favor of a newness that when explored opens our minds to the unexplored ways of thinking about old concepts, problems, and propositions. 

For a philosopher compulsively seeking distinctive philosophical insights for sheer entertainment, humor is like a drug that increases the brain's creativity - unleashing it upon spurious correlations and placebo-like effect thinking that predominates social interactions. 



The ideas we conjure whilst in a humorous mood come from the same mind, so it is as if the serious mind had previously denied these innovations admission to the privileged court of consciousness, until a joke or quip opens the way. 

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Dyslexic Santa



While admittedly it is easy to get carried away with humor, projecting our imagination into many creative endeavors that we may never actually develop the talents to pursue, humor is still an invaluable ally in expanding and focusing whatever innate creativity a person naturally possesses. 




Humor allows us to mentally explore previously unsuspected dimensions of possible connections and associations. When you're in a humorous state, unexpected ways of understanding are presented to the imagination, and whatever their peculiar combinations suggest, we laugh, for it seems funny. 

As in my case, I explore humor specifically for the sake of experiencing the impression that the humorous state affords me, free from the limitations and inhibitions that constrain my ordinary creativity.

Humorous enchantments might give the comedian the appearance of existing in a straight-jacket: a crazy, zany, out of this world-type expression of self, but from within the (humorous) sensation it feels instead as if one has stripped the world of its straight-jacket, and is now enjoying seeing things distinctively, for how they might be, as well as funny, for how they actually are.

Whether they are or they are not, the mere idea titillates us in ways that affects how we process thought when not in a humorous state. 



The test of humor is not necessarily whether we create something brilliant as a direct result of humorous experimentation, but rather or not we allow it to exist as part of a background music, realizing that it might be helping us produce other work more creatively. 



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