The Story of Laughter: What’s Funny About It?
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A not-so-funny reflection on laughter and humour
When was the last time you laugh so hard that your stomach hurts? That kind of ache is what Bob Marley would say about music — when it hits you, you feel no pain. Above all, who would not want to laugh like that, like an ass once in a while? Put Marley on and let us dive into what the story is behind all the laughter and humour.
Just a while ago, I have a friend who was talking to her brother. He told her that if we open her head, we will see four asses standing in there. Obviously because she is so smart. I got hiccups laughing over it.
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| The study of humour and laughter is called gelatology. |
Introduction
If you believe in Darwin, imagine the first animal that had cackled for the first time. It could have been anyone. Let’s say it was a Neanderthal boy. He just saw a couple of asses having sex near his cave, making those piercing sexy-assy sounds. It could have been also a Peking girl who found out that tickling is literally rib-tickling. And the rest they will say is the history of laughter.
It could have been anyone though evolutionary scientists believe Homo ergaster had lived two million years earlier than Homo neanderthalensis (the Neanderthal boy’s relatives) but you get my point.
Experts on humour — ironically in the most sober ways or rather taking the greatest pain — have been exploring this topic for some time now. Nobody would expect that a simple question as to why we laugh can be more complicated than a Burmese language. It is no laughing matter.
Somehow the specialists reached a common ground and agreed that the secret of this whole monkey business of humour lies in the concept of mock-aggressive play that we see among the apes. In ‘English’, mock-aggressive play refers to the kind of aggression, mostly done in jest sans the intention of causing harm.
For example, we have tickling and wrestling for fun. We show our aggression and power and the tendency to be dominant. Over the years, the experts have been also making speculations on laughter and humour, and some of these are not only convincing, but also verifiable while others are more of a guesswork than scientific.
Laughing
If you are a fan of George Carlin, Oja Tolhan (from Imphal) and Russell Peters, then you know their USP lies in their laughter-challenge power to make others literally laugh their asses out.
By the way, scientific studies show their prehistoric ancestors would have been bad hunters. They would never take things seriously and above all, they are a nuisance with their knack for tittle-tattling all the time. Imagine their friends taking cover in a bush to catch a deer or a pig and they start cutting a joke. From that day on wards, little was talked and discussed about laughing until a Neanderthal boy saw a couple of asses having sex near his cave.
So back in those days, our prehistoric ancestors were always discouraged, and to a certain extent, they would only rely on their mock-aggressive plays to wind up after a hard day’s work. It is a sort of animal thing. I am the living example.
I usually do it to my cousin’s kids but sometimes they would beat me with their presence of mind. Now that the secret is out about my defeat, I can prove that all the kids are monkeys. I only wish their mothers do not hear what I’m saying about their supposedly precious childr...monkeys.
Every culture and society has its own ways of laughing but little was known about it until recently. In many parts of the world, during a wedding for example, it is natural for the bride and groom to smile and laugh. That is unthinkable in our Manipuri tradition. If we have to list the top five most serious people in the world, a Manipuri bride and groom will be second on the list! The first, obviously, is Narendra Modi.Laughing glossary
- gelatology the study of humour and laughter, and their effects on our mind and the body
- pseudobulbar affect, or emotional incontinence a type of emotional disturbance characterized by uncontrollable episodes of crying, laughing, anger or other emotional displays.
- pathological laughter a generic term for pseudobulbar affect, or emotional incontinence
- mock-aggressive play a kind of aggression found among animals, mostly done in jest sans the intention of causing harm
- schadenfreude (German) it is the pleasure we derive from another person’s misfortune
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| Laughter challenge: In many parts of the world, during a wedding, it is natural for the bride and groom to smile and laugh. This is unthinkable in our Manipuri tradition. (Image: Rashingam Ngoruh) |
Throughout history, the companies of Plato and Aristotle had written everything from Athens to Zeus. People led by their horny kings across the globe had constructed buildings and monuments of wonder. Also, people have been burning the proverbial midnight oil to create scientific laws and theories, much to the annoyance of high school children who have to memorise those laws and theories.
So, all along, humanity has been making progress but not many people have ever tried to know, or study what’s all behind the jokes and tales and funny stories that hurt our gut and facial muscles albeit blissfully.
Laughter and humour are indispenable in our life. Before we proceed and look up the reasons, nuances, and logic let’s try to see briefly why it is essential in the first place. Otherwise we will simply make a joke out of it.
To start with, don’t you think a smile is one of the best things we see in other people? Smiles. And cheerful faces. A smile is the root of all the laughing in the world! Besides, we like to be around our friends who have great sense of humour. It is enjoying, funny, and worthwhile. They seem to possess a power to get rid of all our pain, at least for the moment when we are with them.
Also it is a clichรฉ but who has not heard that laughter is the best medicine?
Unfortunately, instead of studying the art and science of laughter and humour, humans have been busy, occupied with bland politics, and if not, then planning on how one people should conquer another with the Art of War, how the victor should write one-sided histories. In the scientific front, we have had inventions and we have developed our mind to that extent with which we can call ourselves as the most intelligent animal and what not.
Truth be told, the experts were wary of people who considered that laughter is the best medicine. As a proof we can cite the example of Plato. He was a master of all but he looked down on this special quality.
The philosopher viewed that such humour and laughter demean our logical thinking ability. No wonder he professed that poetry only appeals to the most useless and pathetic part of our soul while making us a slave to reality. He even went on to preach that the ideas of communism necessitated everybody to live in a commune without private ownership of anything and to share their partners and their monkeys, oops, their children.
In that regard, Mao Tse-tung was not impressed so he had to redefine it with a little help from Marx and Lenin. Now we know China is all free market. Meanwhile, I have a conspiracy that China is undergoing a process to redefine communism. That is also a reason why the May Day has been celebrated as the World Laughter Day.
Laughing like a langur
Essentially, one of Plato's contention was that we laugh at others generally, which the Germans call it as ‘schadenfreude’. According to a dictionary definition it is the pleasure we derive from another person’s misfortune. In other instances, such an activity lessens our self-control or so was it considered. Plato was stuck in these ideas and he had a lot more other things to do, as in penning the Republics, Phaedo, Statesmen, Symposium and Apology and so on.
The great philosopher even justified that such a person who used humour and laughter should never be given citizenship. Imagine losing your citizenship after getting your NRC certificate! It was a big deal to possess citizenship then as the Greeks were still experimenting with democracy.
Additionally, at the heart of democracy is the concept of We, the People and we refers to the citizens. Now it still is, and in the Indian context, the concept of We the People has become the butt of a joke. The credit must go to the government that has been playing the Hindu-Muslim card astutely.
Never mind the citizenship and government. Plato had really a hard-on for humour. On the other side, pPolitics is, according to Groucho Marx, the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
If not governments then the gods
On another level, consider the faiths of Islam and Christianity. We do know Christianity was an old pain in the ass that had transformed miraculous relationship with Islam just as Sikhism and Buddhism are to Hinduism. Like what the American Christians are now, the Muslims were once a superpower. It’s, so to say, just a matter of time who triumphs in the clashes of the civilisations.
However history is a witness to fact that some societies around the medieval period, regardless of their different divine creators and powers, would even go to the extent of banning comedies on the ground of ethics. The point is religion and humour do not gel together because the former is too tight ass about its gods and goddesses. See how funny they sound when they speak so seriously.
We have gone a long way back to medieval history. Read about stand-up comedians who have been arrested by the police in India for allegedly being anti-Hindu. This happened in January 2021: Indian comedian held over ‘indecent’ jokes at show where he did not perform. (The Guardian)
So we laugh at others, because why not? Laughter is also the best medicine though most of the time it is not a doctor who is making the statement. Yet, Plato had a problem with all this literal laughing matter. Very close following the philosopher, religions also have a problem. What else do we know about the story of laughter?
All’s not lost though even if gods are involved now. Psychologists, philosophers, ethologists and evolutionary scientists have been observing us when we are rolling on the floor laughing.
Such an accustomed habit as laughing ought to have a set of similarities but the reality tells a different story. This gives rise to the formulation of several theories to explain the phenomenon. We can only study if these theories are relevant or not. However, with or without the scientific theories, I’d suggest that we keep laughing no matter what.
The theory of laughing like a langur
Theories in our context today:
- Superiority Theory
- Relief Theory
- Incongruity Theory
- Benign Violation Theory
- Mechanical Theory
Taking cues from the Plato & Co, several Western thinkers came up with the idea of the Superiority Theory. It deals with the idea that we laugh mostly over another’s misfortune or weakness. So we can call it as well as a neo-schadenfreudestic theory! If we take into account of the human nature, this kind of laughing response indicates our sense of superiority above the people to whom we laugh at.
If the side is changed and we are laughed at, we feel a sense of losing importance. Well that’s human nature 101. But this is just one aspect because we do not always laugh, but rather become miserable like we feel when we consider the plight of a place like Imphal. Besides, this theory does not hold good in cases like a laughter riot initiated by ร la George Carlin. Also, modern humorists claim that the ability to laugh at our own stupidity once in a while is the first step in developing a good sense of humour. So there is no question of a superior or inferior complex.
Nobody laughs at the Superiority Theory, but some of the mortals did see the shortcomings in this hypothesis and came up with other propositions such as the Relief Theory and the Incongruity Theory. Both of them are slightly similar on the basis of getting respite that laughter offers us.
Sigmund Freud suggested that, according to the Relief Theory, laughter breaks down the nervous energy inside us and produces a kind of psychic energy, which elevates our sense of pleasure. This is also the one of the bases on which today’s medical specialists say that laughter improves our immune system.
Essentially, according to the Relief Theory, humor assist in relieving pain caused by our fears. C George Boeree, Shippensburg University explains it in Humor: A Phenomenological Sketch:
The most characteristic aspect of the smile is the upturned lips, or rather, if you look closely, the twinkling of the eyes and "popping" of cheeks. The smile is the opposite of the fearful face, just like the sigh of relief is the opposite of the shallow or still breathing of fear. Perhaps the smile is an "over-release" of the fear-face, a reversal of certain muscle tensions past relaxation.
In the Incongruity Theory, thinkers like Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer theorised that laughter and humour are a sudden result of the incongruity or absurdity of what we expect and what we get in reality — or what we expected and what we experienced. In Kant’s word, laughter arises ‘from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing’.
For Schopenhauer, it owes to the delight of seeing sudden relations between ideas. In our case, it is best exemplified in our desire to make our elected representatives speak directly to New Delhi while, despite being a Great Rambo and Rocky in the town, they metamorphose into anything but the representatives we want, except in those meetings where funds and grants are involved. As we say in our native expression, we are confused whether we should laugh or cry.
All of these theories, however, are not all-inclusive; in fact they explain only the parts of a whole. For instance, the Superiority Theory might well establish the concept of ‘schadenfreude’ but it does not hold water when we consider the cases of incongruity. Likewise, the Relief Theory cannot explain, to take an example, why puns are delightful. The same is true for the Incongruity Theory.
To overcome these inadequacies, we further have the Benign Violation Theory and the Mechanical Theory.
First introduced by Tom Veatch, a linguist, the Benign Violation Theory suggests that humour occurs when a situation is a violation however it is benign (kind and caring). Simultaneously there is an awareness of both the benign and violation element. Tickling which is intimidating yet harmless is the perfect example. On the other hand, the humour ceases if the violation does not appear to be benign or it is too benign to be considered as a violation.
One of the institutes at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Humor Research Lab (HuRL) mentions it ‘uses the Benign Violation Theory as its theoretical foundation’. According to the HuRL:
[The Benign Violation Theory] integrates existing humor theories to propose that humor occurs when and only when three conditions are satisfied: (1) a situation is a violation, (2) the situation is benign, and (3) both perceptions occur simultaneously. For example, play fighting and tickling, which produce laughter in humans (and other primates), are benign violations because they are physically threatening but harmless attacks.
Source: Benign Violation Theory
The Mechanical Theory is based on the unbending nature/habit or rather the idiosyncrasy of an individual. In simple words, it is based on the monotony of our behaviour. This might explain why Kaboklei Inaocha with his rib-tickling Dasanihey remark was so hilarious in the popular Manipuri film Yaishkulgi Pakhang Angaoba or how the Suppandi tales never fail to amuse us even if we know what is to become of the boy.
The ideas behind the theory of laughing like a langur
Let me begin with an example. Fake encounters are quite common in my hometown. Sometimes when we talk about death, you can imagine the air of grave concern or anything severe. In that moment, suppose someone blurts out that the policemen had found a grenade in the wallet of the victim.
Actually it had happened in Manipur — and don’t be confused. It’s not that the victim really had the grenade in his wallet but that the police would report it that way, because in any case they had had an encounter and the awards for killing people are simply too hard to resist. It is a matter of pride to receive the gallantry awards on the Republic Day from the head of the State.
Experts, who study human character, term the condition of inserting tales of grenade-in-the-wallet amidst the condolences and seriousness as a play signal. They consider that the oldest play signals in humans are in the form of grinning and laughing. These signals, again, imply the readiness of social play, which in turn is a phenomenon of animal cognition that we can observe in the communication process among various mammals. We have inherited it from the apes.
According to these experts, mock-aggression — mentioned in the beginning of this write-up — is also our oldest social play. This explains so well on one hand, why one of my aunts, while laughing, she hits all the people around her; and on the other, that we evolve from the apes. Run behind a kid as if you are chasing the monkey and just see how they explode into laughter. Monkeys, mothers, monkeys!
To cut the long story short, human beings deeply believe in the fraternity of apes, primates, monkeys and the people. We belong to the same stock. The only difference between us and them is that all of them ‘never’ learn how to say ‘mock aggression’ but we had not only mastered it but we are as well accustomed to laugh back or simply ignore it as the situation demands.
Evolutionary science tells us that our erect posture is also one of the factors how we began to laugh not like a langur but more like a human being. Earlier it was a sort of panting and breathing, which is still found among our modern monkey brothers. That’s why some specialists also maintain laughing is a primitive form of vocalisation.
One of the products of our modern world in this field is the rise of laughter clubs. The members would not even joke but simple laugh like Herodotus’ mad men or women. The rise of these clubs is credited to an Indian physician, Madan Kataria who started such a club for the first time in the mid Nineties.
It is based on a couple of premises: firstly, that we cannot be happy for a reason, which can be taken away so we need to be happy and laugh for no particular reason. Secondly, the laughter club is riding on the benefits of laughing as in alleviating pain and feel-good factors plus the other physical and medical advantages that we get from laughter. Join a laughter club if you want to get a hands-on experience.
And all good things must come to an end. There is a medical condition called cataplexy. According to the Sleep Foundation, it is ‘a sudden muscle weakness that occurs while a person is awake’. Well, excessive laughter can lead to cataplexy.
We have a local Manipuri expression that can be loosely translated as laughing so much that you will cry. It has a trace of superstition in that we suffer if we enjoy too much. So, cataplexy sans the blind belief belong to that category. You laugh so much that wake up with a paralysis. That is terrible. Psychology also tells us that excessive laughter or feeling extra delightful can be a disorder. Moderation is the key!
Conclusion
When we learn to drive a vehicle, it is not mandatory to know how the machines and systems in the vehicle work. So is the case with laughter. We can simply laugh it off and it is inessential to know what Plato and Sigmund Freud had professed about the related topics. You lose nothing from the ignorance; however if you know at least how the radiators or the spark plugs work, you are somehow in control of the vehicle and the mechanic would not be able to fleece you. That’s the idea of this write-up.
Knowledge is essential. What is also equally important is to learn to laugh like an ass once in a while. It is therapeutic. After all, we are not as rational as we claim to be but that’s not an issue because nobody knows it except us, human beings.
Laughter and humour purify our body and mind. Next time when you laugh your head off, remember the science and psychology. Being conscious of the moment is also enlightening. It takes us to a higher level of understanding. It gives us a comprehensible meaning in this absurd world. Laugh, they say, and be merry! And we have several theories to explain why we laugh the way we laugh and why we laugh like a langur.
Before we wind up, if you are done with Bob Marley, here is a special playlist for you:
- We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful: Morrissey
- Dogs Can Grow Beards All Over: The Devil Wears Prada
- Mmm mmm mmm mmm: Crash Test Dummies
- I Bought the Shoes That Just Walked Out on Me: Wynn Stewart
- How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I’ve Been A Liar All My Life: Fred Astaire and Jane Powell
Reading material to tickle your brain
- Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson (Project Gutenberg) )
- The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer (Project Gutenberg)
- The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde (Project Gutenberg)
- Philosophy of Humor, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- PG Wodehouse’s works
- Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
- Fraud: Essays by David Rakoff
- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
- Every Man in His Humour by Ben Johnson
- Humor Research Lab (HuRL), University of Colorado Boulder
- 5 Leading Theories for Why We Laugh—and the Jokes That Prove Them Wrong, Slate
- What’s So Funny? The Science of Why We Laugh, Scientific American
- Kege Makhongda Certificate (The Certificate Under the Castor Tree) by Elangbam Dinamani
- Kanana Haijillibano (in two parts) A compilation of the
Poknapham’s daily humorous and satirical column and published by the
newspaper’s publishing branch (The newspaper has also a fantastic weekly
column called Vox Populi, from which a long time ago I had created a blog with permission: voxxpopulee.blogspot.com)
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