The Fellowship Forum
1993
International Conference
Congres International
THE SOCIAL EFFECTS OF HUMOR: OR,
WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING?--I'M NOT FINISHED YET!
By Jim Harris
This being a conference for Urantia Book readers, I should talk about how The Urantia Book sees humor. There are several references to humor in The Urantia Book . Roughly half of all the references are found on pages 547 to 550. There are a few other places in The Urantia Book with references to humor and the gift of humor as we picked it up through the Adamite influence.
They might have some relevance to some of the things you think about. Just looking from the front to the back of the book there are five references. One of them is on page 312. There is a series of points. Point number 5 describes a type of reflective angel of the secondary seconaphim called 'The Joy of Existence." Among its responsibilities is to act as sort of 'joy clearinghouse'. It tries to improve our taste for humor, and help us develop what we might call a 'super-humor'. I don't know if that means a vastly improved sense of humor, or a 10-hour marathon in classic comedy! Anyway, it is significant to know, as described further along on page 835, that our appreciation of humor comes mainly from the Adamite influence. In support of that we are further told, on page 942, that this came from the violet race, which were the Adamites, and that this capacity was only imperfectly realized. But, in one of the group of papers on the Reversion Directors, I remember it being written that, of all the things that were imparted to us through the Adamic infusion, we received much of the capacity for humor, and more than we got of either music or art.
There's another reference on page 1089, in the middle of the page. We learn that humor is not affected by adherence to any of the genuine religions. Humor is actually exalted by this kind of religion. And on page 1100, at the bottom of the page we read that "The religionist’s detachment from much that is purely temporal and trivial never leads to social isolation, and it should not destroy the sense of humor." By 'temporal' they mean what you see every day, 'earthly'. You know, there is good, contemporary humor on television. And if you want to see the comedy trend, which very closely follows what's happening in society, the best way to see it is in what you get on television. For example, there is the TV comic named 'Kramer', who acts as a pratfall character in the style of Red Skelton (on the Seinfeld show). The unique thing is, the 'Kramer' character is based on a real individual who lives in New York City and has described his lifestyle to the show's writers. They incorporate events he has experienced for use on the program. This is a unique approach because most comedy is written out of some writer's head, and put into episodes.
Another program which I think some of you may be familiar with is 'Mr. Bean', an English comedy program. English comedy, to me, remains the most unique in the world. Nothing else approaches it. This 'Mr. Bean' is a strange fellow who goes around, never speaks, and keeps getting himself into all kinds of bizarre and comic situations when he goes to do something that most of the rest of us would do without any trouble at all.
Red Skelton was a key individual in the expression of humor on television. Essentially he was a professional clown. He brought clowning to the medium of television and found some interesting means of expression in this new medium. Says Red in a clip from a biographical video of his career:
"It's really a lot of fun to try and make people laugh. I personally believe that each and every one of us was put here for a purpose, that to build, and not to destroy. If by chance, some day, you are not feeling well, and you should remember some silly little thing that I've said or done, and that it brings back a smile to your face or a chuckle to your heart, then my purpose has been served for my fellow man."
He has one of the most clearly explained theories of humor of any comedian that I've seen.
There is a saying which has been attributed to Stephen Leacock (who was really an economist and just wrote humor on the side, and was never on television): "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."
This declaration, however, more recently has been traced back to Thomas Jefferson, who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence in the United States in the 1700's and may, history could determine, have been a humorist in his own right, but was certainly an innovator. Humor is a funny thing. Not only do we not always recognize it for what it is, but in our society we have only certain ways of expressing it.
When Lucille Ball and Gracie Allen started in television it was noticeable that, in mixed groups, humor took a 'male' approach, with the male in the group being the joke-teller and the female being in the position of reacting to the joke. This difference in male-female approach only appears in humans at about age six, the age, psychology tells us, at which children begin to form concepts about what society expects of them. Earlier, even before the age of two, youngsters will make references to combinations of objects or words which they find satisfying, but which may appear cruel or salacious to people of more mature years. And after that, up to the ages of nine or ten, children may resort to neutral joke forms, such as riddles, as they continue to form concepts of what society expects. After the age of ten or eleven, children begin to prefer jokes with more sophisticated meaning as they continue to develop an appreciation for forms of incongruous humor, and by the way, to fall into the male vs. female role.
In our time the female (of the) species takes the initiative with more activities that were formerly seen as the 'male' preserve in mixed company. So there are now many women who are recognized as good comediennes, who freely cross what was formerly a cultural blockade. And so we get our Mary Walsh, formerly of the Newfoundland comedy troupe 'Codco', hired by the United Nations to attend its delegate dinners and poke fun at the U.N. track record in the Third World.
I recognize that within each sex there is a strong humor, or jocularity, in which, in their own company, members freely take part. In every crowd of men there are the jock jokes and jibing that reflect the aggressiveness and positioning cherished by men in the company of other men.
In every crowd of women there are the jock jokes and jibing that reflect the aggressiveness and positioning cherished by women in the company of other women.
Comments by Participants:
Comment: The healing aspect, more and more, is coming to the forefront of humor. Humor is high on the priority list for participation in healing.
Presenter:
In a lot of hospitals now, you go in, and they have 'humor' rooms, where you can go and sit down and relax, read, chat, do something that's a little animated, not necessarily funny, but gives you a break from the tedium of being in the hospital. I think that's becoming more common. I know there's a very strong movement now for the whole idea of humor in healing.
Comment: It's well-known that more healing takes place in our own family than in a hospital. If we can associate humor with our own emotions and learn to use humor positively, we are on a first-person basis here, rather than having a mediator.
Comment: Some time ago in our study group we had the paper on humor and tried to define humor. I think humor is in the eye of the beholder. And humor is usually at somebody else's expense. Humor can be used very subtly to put somebody down.
Presenter:
That's a big problem we have with humor in our society. A lot of it is deprecating humor: it's at the expense of somebody else. It takes a well-versed humorist, or somebody who writes and rewrites many times, to get above that, to say something funny about society or our institutions without actually nailing somebody for it.
Comment. We should mention the humor of God. I think it's pretty humorous that the fourth child is invisible. It's pretty humorous that every child is a different color. I think God has a tremendous sense of humor. The last thing is that the best kind of humor, The Urantia Book tells us, is when we laugh at ourselves.
Comment:- Religious humor is an important thing to me. There's a statement I learned from another minister, that helped me a lot. He was quite a good humorist himself and it's helped a lot in his ministry. He said he found that humor was the anesthetic that he used so that afterwards he can go in and do spiritual surgery. It worked out that way in his ministry, so that by the time he was finished talking, sometimes for a half hour or 45 minutes, people would be rolling in the aisles. When he finally got around to delivering his message, whatever he wanted, there was this great receptivity for it.
Comment: Does everybody else feel it's important that, while The Urantia Book is one of the most--if not the most--serious thing in which to share the knowledge of love, we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously? I hope I'm not offending anybody by saying that. Here's a small illustration: Yesterday at one of the meetings there was a gentleman who gives talks in Quebec to the public-introductory talks, and asked for questions from the audience. One fellow gave him a hard time. He kept saying, "Tell me how The Urantia Book would help me. How does it help you? In the end the gentleman said: 'It gives me tolerance!"' One seminar participant had a limerick, a verse form of five lines and a certain meter:
We're here to study Urantia,
A book whose scope is gargantia.
Please come if you can,
It's for woman and man.
If you can't, please tell us: why can't ya?
I'm pleased to have had the opportunity to present the seminar on humor to those who took part. When you go about your daily lives, keep an eye open for humor and look for the absurdity in things, and maybe that will relieve the stresses that you are living with.
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship