There used to be a time when we didn’t take ourselves so seriously. As a society we were young and curious. We knew there was a lot to learn, but relished the process of getting there.
Why have we lost this?
Why are we so quick to take offense rather than laugh alongside our neighbours when they notice our incongruence?
I think it’s important to understand how we became a society who behaves like the kings and dictators who beheaded the court jesters so that once out of the pit we don’t fall back in. But it is also important to find our way back as painlessly as possible. This is why most of my writing has a lighthearted tone; it’s hard to find humour in things that offend you, but it can be done – although that idea alone can be quite frightening.
Does laughing at something mean you don’t take it seriously? Quite the contrary, and the masters of comedy know this all too well. The fringe comedians are the ones who play it safe for fear of being offensive. And the oblivious ones think that being offensive means swearing. (That was true a hundred years ago when those words were taboo, but they aren’t anymore, so in order to find humour in them you have to be more creative than just frequently dropping f-bombs *cough* Jim Jeffries).
I don’t mean to imply that this book is to teach you how to be funny, rather it is to re-teach you how to laugh.
If this blog has any success whatsoever, it will have reminded you that despite the onslaught of media voices trying to divide us, we are all one beautiful and amazing race that thinks, believes and does some pretty hilarious shit!
I truly believe that if you accept that, you will find that you will enjoy a lot of things more and probably find yourself a lot happier, you miserable sod!
So what the hell happened to us?
The word “us” is perhaps a bit sneaky, because what I really mean is, “what the hell happened to you?”
Question: did that piss you off? That suggestion that you are more guilty of turning into a dullard and ice been the same all this time? If so, that illustrates the exact point I’m trying to make. If not, fuck you for spoiling my ploy.
A friend of mine showed me a clip from the Jon Stewart show from back in 2015, in which he made fun of Joe Biden for being creepy. Today, no one in the mainstream media would dream of doing such a thing despite the fact that Biden is more deserving of mockery than ever. So I repeat… what the hell happened?
It’s as if the culture decided it was too self-righteous to allow itself a sense of humor. Personally I’m not a fan of interchanging individual actions with societal ones or vice versa, so I’ll illustrate this with the example of my friend, who probably wouldn’t want to be named, so for the sake of argument, I’ll just refer to him as Nat Irving of Lanark County Ontario.
“Nat” and I were best pals from the time we formed a boyband in fifth grade, right through elementary school. During this time we often got into hijinks, most of which he instigated… I’m Starting to understand why my parents didn’t like me hanging out with him.
Whether it was prank phone calls, defacing public property or putting bags of shit on doorsteps, we always found a way to make our time together as irritating as possible for everyone in our path. Nat was always one to find humour in making another person’s life a little more bleak, whether it was tripping them down stairs, or later hacking into their school computer account and deleting their projects.
He made a habit of pissing someone off then running away leaving me to deal with it. He also loved calling our friend Mike a chink, and our friend Kay a fag. Mike wasn’t Asian and Kay wasnt gay, but that wasn’t the point.
Fast forward a couple decades, and Nat has seemingly forgotten what he was like, and has now decided to play the role of social justice warrior, calling anyone who dares tell a joke a bigot.
Nat has a funny habit of making an argument, then running away from it the moment it is challenged – very much the way he would run away from other kids he antagonized. On one such exchange, just as the discussion was becoming civil, Nat decided to tell me that I’m a racist for having made a joke about how privileged snow is.
As you can see, “Nat” perfectly embodies what is wrong with the world.
Here’s a question to consider: is anything too serious to joke about?
Ricky Gervais famously feels that nothing is above being poked fun of. Of course there are a couple asterisks there… first of all, the joke has to be funny. If not you just seem cruel. Also, the context is important. Every subject is going to be slightly different for every person in the world, so if we are going to spend our lives trying to be sensitive to everyone we will never have a meaningful conversation of any kind. But being aware that certain subjects are sensitive to people helps so that in pointing out the humour of the situation you aren’t mocking them. No one likes feeling humiliated.
Likewise, no one likes realizing they’ve been taken advantage of because it may suggest they were stupid. This is why so many people have followed along with the media that has become increasingly divisive. They don’t want to realize that they’ve been manipulated.
I have another friend I’ll call “Greg” who perfectly demonstrates this. He was up in arms one day, angry that as a liberal, his own people would eat him alive if he had one or two non-liberal beliefs. He then went on social media the next day and without a hint of irony, accused all conservatives of being delusional. He was perpetuating the very thing he claes to hate.
Greg did himself a favour and took a hiatus from social media, and he looked more refreshed than he was after a Cuban vacation. This obviously proves that Cuba is horrible.
So to return to my opening question, how can we learn to take ourselves less seriously?
I suspect it means accepting that we all go through life with a set of rules. But those rules don’t always make a lot of sense. Discovering what those rules are required digging deep, asking ourselves difficult questions and giving honest answers.
Of course knowing what rules we have created for ourselves is only as good as what we do with them.
When Nat was a kid, his beliefs seemed to be that he could get instant joy from the suffering of others. As an adult it’s almost as if he’s overcompensating by believing that anyone who teases a silly idea is being hateful. I have no idea what made him go from one extreme to the other and I suspect he doesn’t either. If I were to ask him I imagine I’d get a disingenuous response describing how virtuous he has become. Sadly, I think he would still be oblivious to the fact that he’s far more hurtful now than he was back then.
- Here’s some examples of internal rules/beliefs that might ring true…
- I (or any person/group) am not to be poked fun of
- The only things that people should be allowed to say ought to be agreeable to me
- Laughing at something is mockery
- Mockery is bad… except when it’s towards people who don’t agree with me
- Anger feels good
Do you really want to continue having beliefs like these or others you uncover? They can be changed by creating new rules for yourself, and training yourself to buy into them.
I’d wager that if you allow yourself to laugh a little more, you’ll be a lot happier, not to mention more pleasant to be around.
shawnthebuffer 