People who are already inclined to laugh contribute a favorable condition to the social nature of humor. Starting from a cheerful mood, they allow humor to rise among them without impediment or judgment and they accompany it to the surface. Were it not for the personal guidance of humor, nothing humorous would be recognized.
The guidance of humor is the special quality humor has. A comic or text is not inherently funny, it must be discovered as such to elicit amusement - otherwise it goes unheard - recognized, perhaps... but not enjoyed.
This tells us how important is the role of the audience to the humorous event. Nothing is funny without an audience, which indicates that humor is a quality of our own making. A maleable aspect within ourselves to constitute a notion of humor... of incongruities and novelties.
Humor embodies an epiphanic behavior, an almost forbidden behavior to that compensatory reaction we have to feelings and emotions that internal and external stimuli evoke within us. Clearly, humor is associated with novelty - what we find amusing.
I'd like to bring attention to my blog's rating. Some individuals do not react positively to images of peace and tranquility one encounters when Googling the keywords "peace" and "tranquility". In fact, positive words like - LAUGH - BE HAPPY - SMILE - can cause physical discomfort for some individuals when they come across them; the very opposite reaction occurs for others...reactions of contentment, felicity, and joy.
But what happens to humor when it includes an element of discomfort?
(I say this because while you might have read the caption, the moment you saw this lego you CRINGED in agony and from your gut to your heart you instantly recognized how much IT HURTS to step on one of these legos - if this has never happened to you, then you are an exception. You probably read the heading and then remembered trying to pry these suckers apart - if you didn't have that reaction, you're over a certain age and did not play with legos growing up - nuff said.)
Early on in my exploration of humor I identified my comfort levels, my own "Happy Place". This "Happy Place" is far-reaching. It extends into the deepest crevices of the human mind to the furthest reaches of space-time and the nature of existence. It lands on popular lullabies and hides in the best hide-n-seek spots around. It is a reaffirmation of warm, positive emotions that define my perception of humor... it is my own being that corrects and creates humor out of nothing.
It is me laughing at this Zen comic and relating how I said "we create humor out of nothing" to the "nothingness" of Buddhism....hehehe.
Humor's out there... inside everyone - unless you have a humor deficiency. In which case, I recommend reading about the concept of humor itself. Explore the descriptions and imaginings of philosophers and mathematicians, alike. Marvel over the works of Bergson, Freud, Raskin, Berger, Fry, and others. Let a guide help you find out what humor means to you.
Exploring humor may not, at first, impress upon you the relevance of humor, but stick with it long enough and you begin thinking in terms of funny, not funny... enjoyable, not enjoyable. Every subject that comes up is seen from this new perspective. Then, when you turn that humorous perspective inward, you laugh and take delight with yourself. All the irony and incongruities tickle us in the heart and we react in our stomachs, which pushes up air, which then escapes through our mouths and sounds a little like laughter.
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