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2 July 2005 | Draft
Humour and Play-FullnessEssential integrative processes in governance, religion and transdisciplinarity- / -Introduction This exploration is dedicated to a friend, John E Fobes (1919-2005), former Deputy Director-General of UNESCO and co-founder, with Art Buchwald, of the Association for the Promotion of Humour in International Affairs (APHIA). IntroductionThe following exploration follows from a concern that modern civilization is boring itself to death trying to manage change -- and compensating for its inadequacies with respect to the challenge by indulgence in distractions and substance abuse. There is a need for radical reframing -- of a playful nature. Essentially the argument is that "no play equals no engagement" -- at least of any sustainable form. It was previously developed in relation to climate change (cf Playfully Changing the Prevailing Climate of Opinion: Climate change as focal metaphor of effective global governance, 2005). Both humour and play are taken "seriously" here in the light of their recognized role in transcending the boundaries constraining innovative change processes in government, religion and transdisciplinarity. Given the marginalization of humour in the patterns of such formal contexts, a dynamic vital to their role in society is endangered -- especially with the increasing tendency towards faith-based governance. The emphasis is placed on the nature of the subtle relationships of higher dimensionality that become apparent through humour -- when otherwise they would tend not to be perceptible. As in any creative process, the emphasis is also placed on the ways of playing with patterning possibilities, rather than being excessively attached to particular patterns. The potential of the dynamic attitude associated with humour is explored here as a means of sustaining the level of playful engagement in innovative change processes. This is contrasted with the tendency to quench enthusiasm through commitment to inflexible patterns that are increasingly unsustainable. The epistemological challenge of this paradox of detached engagement is seen as usefully modelled by the current challenges of ensuring the containment of plasma in a nuclear fusion reactor as the sustained source of energy for the future [more]. Recognized role of humour in politics, leadership, religion and creativity (Annex)The current recognition of humour is explored under the following headings in order to provide a context for the subsequent discussion of the potential significance of humour understood as an essential integrative process in governance, religion and transdisciplinarity: Varieties of humour Humour symbolism -- the "Laughter of the Gods"The "gods" in various pantheons may be understood as the comprehension by humans of a set of fundamental styles of creativity and destruction. To the extent that they are held to embody fundamental values recognized by humans, they might be described in terms of chaos theory as "strange attractors" (cf Human Values as Strange Attractors: Coevolution of classes of governance principles, 1993). The complex ways in which such "gods" are then experienced as interacting may indeed be described as "playful". Various deities have traditionally been held to symbolize humour -- indicative of a fundamental creative role it may play in psychocultural insights and especially in the management of cognitive patterns:
Trickster gods play an important role in world myth and religion (see selected bibliography). As documented by Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1988), they can be liar, cheat, joker and fool -- without pity on their victims. These roles can be understood as challenging existing patterns -- and are therefore understandably problematic where there is undue attachment to such patterns. As shapeshifters, tricksters often disguise themselves in a variety of human or animal forms -- again an indication of their ability to evoke new patterns through undermining those older ones on which there may be excessive dependence. They epitomize disorder and destruction for that reason. Examples of such trickster deities include:
Despite the challenge that they bring to the status quo, trickster gods are also understood to bring humour and joy. Their sense of humour, as for example in the case of the Sumerian god Enki, may break the wrath of other gods -- as with Enlil in the Sumerian pantheon. The trickster is an archetype that has been extensively studied by depth psychologists, following the work of Carl Jung (On the psychology of the Trickster figure, 1956). As both a mythical figure and an inner psychic experience, the trickster embodied the urge for unremitting exposure to privation and torture as well as an approximation to the figure of a saviour -- the negation of the hero archetype, somehow managing to achieve through stupidity what others fail to achieve by concentrated effort. The trickster brings the possibility of transforming the meaningless into the meaningful -- the propensity for enantiodromia (namely transformation into its opposite). Jung saw the trickster as related to the shadow -- a summation of all the inferior and unconscious traits of character. The detached perspective associated with "laughter of the gods" is widespread, notably in a much-cited phrase of Albert Einstein: "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." For Homer: "... the laughter of the gods knows no compassion for the weak, no mercy for the afflicted, no sparing of the innocent, no solidarity with the victims.... rings out over the battlefield with its piles of corpses" In his translation of the The Hymns of Orpheus in 1792, Thomas Taylor -- a neo-Platonist classicist -- provided extensive footnotes. Although considered questionable by contemporary scholars, the result was an influence on successive generations through to the 20th century. With respect to the verse on the "laughter of the gods" (footnote to 221:8, Verse 8), Taylor indicates:
In the Old Testament, it is stated that "He who sits in the heavens shall laugh." (Psalms 2:4). The cause of that heavenly laughter, indicates that same psalm, is that God holds arrogant sinners in derision. This might be understood to point to the humourlessness of patterns of low dimensionality from which the higher order dynamics have been removed -- sin as the loss of a dynamic perspective with which humour is associated? Martin Luther stated: "If the earth is fit for laughter then surely heaven is filled with it. Heaven is the birthplace of laughter." The notion is to be found with reference to new levels of consciousness, as noted by Lokesh Chandra (The Flesh and Blood of Time, 1996):
Discussing Friedrich Nietzsche, Pierre Klossowski: Nietzsche, polytheism and parody) notes his view of divine laughter as being evoked by what amounts to "presumptuous" imbalance introduced into divine order:
Complementing this dynamic response of the gods to presumptuous imbalance is a recognition of a tendency for the gods to be "bored" with divine equilibirum:
The belief in the "divinity" of distant "gods" has been transformed in modern society:
Humour as a playful reactive response to the tragic incongruity of the worldHumour is much used in reactive response to incongruities, notably in relation to collective initiatives -- especially by authorities -- in their response to challenges in society. Such incongruities may even be seen as ways in which the gods play with humanity in the world they have created -- with reference to the "laughter of the gods" at the inadequacies of human response. Such laughter may even be seen as a call to play. There are three main sets of theories regarding humour [more]. these may be described as:
In every domain, the world is faced with fundamental, unresolved incongruity, whether articulated as strategic dilemmas or as the laughable consequences of strategic initiatives. Humour also serves a vital function of bringing into collective awareness the dangerous incongruities that remain unacknowledged in formal discourse (cf Global Strategic Implications of the Unsaid: from myth-making towards a wisdom society, 2003). This is reactive humour. Even though it has been established that humour is a cognitive tool for dealing with incongruity, there is great irony in the fact that society is as yet unable to develop that humour to reframe fruitfully those strategic dilemmas and contradictions. Humour tends to be used reactively in response to circumstances and not proactively and strategically in order to transform them. Given the valued role of humour in the domains noted above, what is most curious is the transformation of the creative, playful "meta-process" into the static, stilted forms with which they are commonly associated:
It would seem that there is a fundamental commitment to making the regulatory framework of the world (in which people are expected to live) as boring and alienating as possible -- after those who designed it have had their fun. This might be understood as an emulation of the behaviour of the gods and the humour they supposedly derive from the ability of the ordinary person to live in the world they have created. This transformation from a dynamic to a static emphasis may be usefully modelled by the operation of fusion reactors. Energy is created if the plasma can be kept out of contact with the materials of the container wall -- to avoid being "quenched". It might be argued that most of humanity experiences society as "quenched". Seriousness and humourlessnessThe argument here is, if humour is so significant to parliamentary debate, why does none of this humour translate, in any way, into the legislation produced by such bodies? Why is the product of such debates so humourless -- inherently boring to many? This argument is supported from an unsuspected source, namely copyright law. As recorded by Patti Waldmeir (Parody in humourless jeopardy, Financial Times, 27 April 2005): If the point of law is to tame the state of nature, the point of copyright law, surely, is to make it fun to live there. Copyright law is not just about money -- it is about creating the things that make life worth living. One of those things is parody, a known antidote to modern life. But now US copyright owners seem intent on creating a vast new humour-free zone in America, by pursuing parodists through the courts. Each of the last two presidential elections spawned a big anti-parody lawsuit, but the phenomenon is not just limited to political jokesters: the sense of humour failure on the part of copyright owners has hit literary parodists as well. During the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia in 1989 humour was used to attack the Communist party leadership. Commenting on the humourless British elections of 2005, Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov (Is it time for a British revolution? Guardian, 26 April 2005) argues, in the light of the Ukrainian "Orange Revolution" in 2004-5, that:
Elsewhere (Issues too Important to be Left to Specialists: Selected web resources, 2004) many sectors are identified where the issues are effectively "too serious" to be left to those who claim to deal with them seriously. Is it possible that some of the issues are effectively too important to only be dealt with seriously and that calling upon humour is an important strategic initiative? The case is often made that politicians and government officials take themselves too seriously. Curiously even the Wall Street Journal has described the US presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter as being utterly humourless [more]. Is this confirmation of the statement by Thomas Hobbes: "They that are intent on great designs have not time to laugh"? Whether the translation of their design into practice is laughable, is another matter. Dictators and tyrants are typically described as humourless. Conrad Hyers (Holy Laughter, 1969) says, "A common trait of dictators, revolutionaries, and ecclesiastical authoritarians alike is the refusal to laugh at themselves or permit others to laugh at them." In a poem, Volodimir Barabash (Humour can be Divine) goes further, making the point that: "Dictators build their strength upon / The people who are humourless". As argued by Simon Barnes (The Times, 7 April 1999): But so much of daily life is organised by the conspiracies of the jokeless: the dehumanisers, those who dread perspective, balance, thought. Lord deliver us from the humourless.... The humourless always win. In an original form of "action humour", this challenge has been taken seriously by social-philosopher / guerilla-artist Noël Godin through his international pie-throwing network (the "International Patisserie Brigade"). This aims to "assassinate through ridicule all world celebrities who take themselves spectacularly seriously". He notes: There are a thousand forms of subversion; all of them are interesting, but few, in my opinion, equal the convenience and immediacy of the cream pie. In the light of opinions of the wise throughout history, is the pretense that humanity can respond effectively to its challenges through seriousness alone to be take seriously? In this light, consider these points from Oscar Wilde:
From such a perspective, it is worth noting the efforts of the Aachen Carnival Celebration Club which has awarded, since 1950, a Medal for Combating Deadly Seriousness, officially designated as "humour in office". In practice this means the relaxed, jovial absence of ponderous gravity. It is a quality that is capable of even bringing out the human traits in the most inveterate bureaucrat. Most of the more than 40 award bearers are politicians, diplomats and lawyers. Essential catalytic and dynamic qualities of humour-playfulnessEpistemological significance: There is a marked tendency to consider humour in terms of its importance to the relief of tension, to sustaining (challenging) relationships, to maintaining a sense of perspective, to offering a contrast to pessimism, to demonstrating one's humanity, and the like -- or to its positive (or negative) effect on those involved. Such appreciation obscures the existential and epistemological significance of humour celebrated by the Caribbean surrealist philosopher Rene Menil (Refusal of the Shadow: Surrealism and the Caribbean, 1996) in an essay on Humour: Introduction to 1945 -- of which Ralph Dumain states: He brilliantly stresses the epistemological significance of humor. He explains how humor expresses our highest standards in contrast with our paltry condition, how it affirms our highest ideals while releasing us from the weight of finitude upon our spirits, how it negates mundane actuality by the power of imagination. Sixty years ago, humor was an important part of the spiritual and cultural resistance against fascism. I am convinced it is the only true art of our time; only humor can adequately express the world aesthetically and reflectively in which we live today. [more] Friedrich Nietzsche held the view that: "we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh." This is echoed by an attitude of neurolinguistic programming according to Robert Dilts (Modeling & Epistemology Too: the art of pragmatic epistemology -- NLP: Cult, Field or Footnote, 1997), namely that an epistemology without a sense a humour is incomplete. As philosophers, Hugh LaFollette and Niall Shanks (Belief and the Basis of Humor, 1993) consider that:
They note that other theorists have offered typologies of humour, typically based on motives for humour or its psychological benefits. They focus rather on identifying "central features of paradigmatic instances of humor -- features which, although perhaps absent from marginal cases, are vividly present in most cases, and certainly present in those which are of crucial interest to philosophers". They consider that building on incongruity theories to be most fruitful. These are all based on the idea that the meaning of a comic text is less important than the collision of meanings, determined by competing interpretative contexts -- termed "matrices" in the comic theory of Arthur Koestler. LaFollette and Shanks base their argument on the recognition that:
They distinguish between first-order beliefs and beliefs about them:
They see beliefs like points in an "epistemic space" which have complex arrays of connections with other points in that space:
Flickering dynamic: Humour is then dependent on the ability to view a subject matter from multiple perspectives -- provided there is appropriate "psychic distance" or perspective offered by the higher-order beliefs in order to determine "to which patterns of our first order beliefs we currently attend -- and which other patterns might be relevant in that context". LaFollette and Shanks stress:
Most importantly the authors stress the dynamic quality of humour associated with such "flickering":
The dynamic aspect is also stressed by Peter Collins (Humour and Related Experience: Towards an Integral Appreciation, 2005):
Humour in this sense may be understood as a catalyst for the emergence of higher forms of order. It opens the possibility of higher-order questions (cf Engaging with Questions of Higher Order: cognitive vigilance required for higher degrees of twistedness, 2005) Humour-playfulness and higher dimensionalityThe above theory of LaFollette and Shanks goes beyond that articulated by Arthur Koestler (The Act of Creation, 1963) regarding the "bisociative" pattern underlying all varieties of humour -- namely perceiving a situation or event in two habitually incompatible associative contexts. References to Koestler's insight tend to emphasize the static, structural nature of the link. The relationship indeed causes an abrupt transfer of the train of thought from one framework to another governed by a different logic or "rule of the game". And, owing to their greater inertia and persistence, when certain emotions cannot follow such leaps of thought, discarded by reason, they are worked off along channels of least resistance in laughter. Elsewhere Koestler expressed this as follows:
In an insightful study of the traditional concept of humour (hâsya) in Sanskrit literature, as articulated by Abhinavagupta, Sunthar Visuvalingam (Abhinavagupta's Conception of Humor (hâsya): the aesthetics and semiotics of the Indian clown, 1983) reviews G I Gurdjieff's Theory of Laughter, noting:
The author articulates an understanding of the network of bisociations and a higher-order perspective on them:
In clarifying the role of humour (hâsya) in rule transgresssion, the author further stresses the dynamic of the relationship together with its transcendence of polarization:
LaFollette and Shanks, through their emphasis on "flickering", highlight the nature and context of those dynamics -- and the essential sense of perspective. Such flickering might even be understood as a waking cognitive analogue to rapid eye movement (REM) characteristic of dreaming -- perhaps to be renamed in this case as "Rapid Epistemological Metamorphosis"! This might offer a way of framing the Australian aboriginal understanding of the Dreamtime. Aspects of this understanding are evident in the study by Mark Weeks (Laughter, desire, and time. Humor, 15–4, 2002, pp 383–400):
The above description of epistemic space, and the dynamics between belief frameworks with which humour is associated, together provide a context to note some other possible higher dimensional features of this space that may be vital to deriving operational benefits from humour (as discussed subsequently):
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