Chapter 1. Conceptual and Applied Overview of Healing, Hostile, and Higher Power Humor
Prologue
The Introduction to my evolving new book, currently titled, Higher Power Humor ?: Energizing Self and Engaging the World through Emotional x Humor Intelligence, provides a preliminary sketch for and value of : a) adding humor and wit to one’s presentation or communication repertoire and interpersonal relations, despite not being a “class clown” or having “stand-up” experience, b) reflecting on the Stress Doc’s “break out” Psychohumorist ? journey, c) appreciating the interaction of drama, trauma, and humor with its potential impact on the interplay of fear, mastery, and laughter, d) recognizing how these interaction-interplay patterns facilitate the discovery and the design of a personal “higher power humor” path, and d) utilizing the CASES method for bringing the conceptual to life through applications, stories or songs, and skill-building exercises.
The second installment, Chapter 1: Conceptual and Applied Overview of Healing and Higher Power Humor, identifies and illustrates how humor can be differentially employed to cope with or counter aversive, aggressive, or antagonistic people and situations. Humor can range from the silly and sly or the purposefully hostile to the wacky and wicked. And the historical and/or organizational context often shapes the manner of expression. Some examples that follow:
Survival Tool for the Oppressed: Holocaust Humor
Black Gallows Humor: Double-Edged for Satirical, Safety, and Survival Effect
Hostile Humor for Ego Inflation, Defamation, and Intimidation; e.g., Internet Bullying
Absurdist or “Comedic” Humor to Distract from Tragic-Incident Anxiety
Cynical Humor to Cope with Chronic Organizational Stress and Frustration
Chapter 1. Conceptual and Applied Overview of Healing, Hostile, and Higher Power Humor
To get us rolling on our “higher humor” journey, let’s go “back to the future,” and quote a passage mostly penned twenty-five years ago:
“What allows us to express affection and aggression, to reconcile contradiction and puncture pretension? Here’s a hint: it may reflect intuition or clever invention. Yet, the answer is more than just a big joke. Much more. The answer is a key to the mind and body, heart and soul of wellness, wholeness, and community. We’re talking about the multi-faceted nature as well as the healing, humanizing, and harmonizing power of… HUMOR!” (Gorkin, Mark, “Humor for Humanity: A Creative Force for Healing and Wholeness,” USAE, May 10, 1994.)
Actually, humor can be used in different ways to cope with or counter different aversive or antagonistic situations – that is, as a life-saving tool in circumstances most cruel – to, alas, being employed as a hostile, stealth weapon. Some examples will be identified and illustrated:
a) Survival and Gallows or “Black Humor” of the oppressed or enslaved to distract from or withstand daily horrors; also, blacks purposely employing competitive hostile humor to prepare for the auction block
b) Black Humor as a cultural code: double-edged, self-deprecating, and masked
c) Hostile Humor for ego inflation and intimidation, especially easy in an anonymous Internet Culture
d) Absurdist or “Comedic” Humor to distract from tragic-incident anxiety
e) Cynical Humor to cope with chronic organizational stress and frustration
Humor as the Last Line of Defense
Dr. Chaya Ostrower, an Israeli Psychologist, studied the role of humor in one of humanity’s darkest times. Her dissertation title: It Kept Us Alive: Humor in the Holocaust. She interviewed a number of survivors, and quotes extensively from one gentleman, who consulted on Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed movie, Schindler’s List. When movie personnel asked him how he survived, he surprised them with his response: not good fortune, dumb luck, or a miracle, but forever trying not to take things seriously; to make fun of or joke about everything, including themselves along with their captors. Specifically, “not to take things the way we were living…if we did, we all would have committed suicide.” So, we would “dress everything up as something different.” Humor “helped us remain human even under hard conditions.” As, 18th c. English man of letters, Horace Walpole insightfully noted: “Imagination compensates man for what he is not… Humor consoles him for what he is!” And perhaps we should add, even where he is.
Black Humor
Another historical example of humor rising from the ashes of abuse is the African-American cultures use of “gallows humor” to withstand an oppressive and dangerous white racist society. (Mona Lisa Saloy, “Still Laughing to Keep from Crying: Black Humor,” Folklife in Louisiana, 2001.) And considering the horrific lynchings in the South, the term “gallows humor” is poignantly apt.
Not surprisingly, according to Mel Watson, (Mel Watson, “Black Humor from Slavery to Stepin Fetchit”), The Alicia Patterson Foundation, Mar 30, 2011) the public face of “black American humor prior to the 1930’s was nearly always masked. As one old blues tune put it:
Got one mind for white folks to see,
Another for what I know is me.
He don’t know, he don’t know my mind.”
And as referenced by Saloy, laughter was parts mask and medicine. Cultural historians believed that African-Americans often “laughed to keep from crying, giving fuel to Langston Hughes’ admonition that laughter is the best medicine.” However, in an oppressive environment, humor and laughter may have to go underground or be based on an “insider” code. As Watson noted: The humor displayed by blacks to those outside of their own ranks was of necessity oblique, sometimes double-edged, and usually at least superficially, self-deprecatory.
One can plainly see the link between shadowy, double-edged humor and dark comedy or “black humor.” The latter is “a genre of fiction referring to a comic style that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered too serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues, by provoking discomfort and serious thought as well as amusement in their audience.” (“Black Comedy,” Wikipedia.) Dark humor turns frightening reality into fantasy and alarming fantasy into absurdity and the outrageous!
Hostile as Ego Inflating and Bullying (and Dehumanizing)
Finally, there can be another double-edged domain: humor that’s healing and humor that’s hostile. Whether viewed historically or virtually (e.g., the present state of the art of war in the twittersphere), too often aggressive and antagonistic humor is meant to disparage and demean. Or to demand attention and confirm that the texter is caustically cool. (Of course, the anonymity of the Internet only exacerbates nameless and shameless, though more aptly, shameful, bravado. Consider these lines from my “Generational-Digital Diatribe”:
Now a conflict with a colleague, just two cubes away
Sparks Dirty Harry fantasies…Go ahead, make my day!
Forget about walking down the hall or aisle
Just don that text mask with a toxic smile.
No need for a word or even "the bird"…
Simply fire away on that “killer” keyboard.
When the “e” in email stands for “escape”
Go blast that e-rocket fueled by sour grapes.
Be honest, when I hear that smack-filled whistle:
Sending an e-mail or launching an e-missile?
Turn smoldering anger on a foe or stranger:
You’re livin large on the safe edge of danger.
So “talk thumb trash” and bully; “be happy, don’t worry” …
Having an avatar means never being sorry.)
Hostile as Fortifying and Hardening (yet Humanizing)
Conversely, such humor may well be defensive, shielding a fragile ego or boosting the status of an “in-group” clinging to its privilege and power. And such group inflation invariably comes at the expense of those who are labeled outsiders, who seem strange, and obviously are of lower (or have lesser) “class.” A longstanding example: jokes, or visual cartoons and posters, devoid of any empathy and understanding, belittling or sneering at the physical appearance, the stereotypical characteristics or behavior of various minority or ethnic groups.
However, somewhere near the border of healing and hostile humor (most likely driven by controlled rage), one finds another manifestation: competitive hardening humor. The goal of cutting-edge sparring is to fortify the individual. Trial by verbal volley (or one-up punchlines) may instill a tough outer bearing while affirming personal integrity. For black cultural historians, a significant factor in the origins of Black American verbal prowess is found in a ritual insult game. This verbal hazing, “called the dozens, was meant to toughen Black hearts from the abuse of society, specifically on the auction block. The insults fly back and forth between ‘contestants,’ and the loser is the one who gets angry, or literally loses their cool.”
I’m reminded of the training that the ‘60s Civil Rights sit-in protesters received when they were attempting to integrate lunch counters in various cities throughout the south. Based on video footage, experienced trainers literally screamed at and repeatedly hit the sit-in trainees. For those who could make it through “basic,” this combat training strengthened courage and techniques for self-protective cover. (Based on personal experience, there are some parallels with military basic training.) Of course, the greatest challenge was developing the self-discipline to not lash back during the anticipated violent ordeal. I got a very small taste of this frightening and painful harassment attending the Martin Luther King, Jr. Museum in Atlanta. You sit at a staged lunch counter and put on headphones. Suddenly, voices are screaming vulgar epithets and names at you. Then the chair stats rattling violently, as if people are grabbing and shaking you furiously. And while truly sit-in-lite, this encounter left an indelible impression and unmatched admiration for those heroic figures.
Countering Traumatic Incident Anxiety with Comic Absurdity
Of course, we don’t have to go back to the 20th c. to find the purposeful use of humor to cope with tragedy and trauma, or at least anticipatory anxiety. For example, after the shock and chaos of 9/11, when airport lines were creating serious customer stress, Baltimore-Washington International Airport hired actors to play costumed comic figures, such as Groucho Marx – in tails, with a crouched walk, leering eyes, and waving an over-sized cigar – to banter with folks in the queues. BWI was betting that a surprising intervention of the absurd could reduce if not replace anxiety or frustration. Two complementary quotes illuminate the powerful interplay between fear and fixation, laughter and psychological freedom.
Psychiatrist Ernst Kris: “What was once feared and is now mastered is laughed at.”
And the Stress Doc’s inversion: “What was once feared and is now laughed at is no longer a master!”
So, with the help of absurdist humor, folks defying their fears by going to the airport, then laughing at Groucho and their own worst-case scenarios, may well have stood a little taller. The lunacy of Marxism was more powerful than the threat of bin Ladenism. Once again, Dark humor turns frightening reality into fantasy and alarming fantasy into absurdity and the outrageous!
Cynical Humor: Survival Sloganeering in Chronic Conditions
When I submit program titles for various speaking and webinar engagements, a popular subtitle is: “Combat Strategies at the Burnout Battlefront.” (This is typically paired with an engaging witticism: Practice Safe Stress!) People often feel there are war zone elements in their work situations. Perhaps the most vivid example: VA Head Nurses introducing themselves at the start of a stress workshop by barking out their last names and their wards: “Walker, W-14, Thompson, W-18, Jones W-20.” I immediately exclaimed, “It sounds like your reporting from your battle stations!” Their sighs and nodding heads let me know I was on target.
So, even if “Burnout Battlefront” is an exaggeration, it’s certainly an effective alliteration: folks believe I have a sense of their intense work conditions/stress levels. Though, for these nurses it wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Their two favorite slogans: Do your eight and hit the gate; nine to five and stay alive! (As we will explore further, keeping it short and rhythmically edgy seems to be another manifestation of survival humor in exhausting, hyper-vigilant circumstances.) As for the extreme conditions, maybe it was a sad coincidence, though I don’t believe so…The very caring Director of Nursing who brought me in to lead the workshop was dead within a year from cancer. Humor can definitely be at the cutting-edge of life and death.
Next Time
And continuing with the theme, Installment 3. will explore “Gospel Grief Rap” and other personal examples of the connection between stress, trauma, and healing/higher power humor.
So, Seek the Higher Power of Stress Doc Humor: May the Farce Be with You!
Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ?, a nationally acclaimed speaker, author, webinar presenter, "Motivational Psychohumorist," therapist, and personal coach.?. The Doc is becoming a distance-learning rock star for the Dept. of Health & Human Services and other Federal Agencies. Topics include Cross-Cultural Diversity, Stress, Change, and Conflict Resilience, The Four Faces of Anger, and Leading with Passion Power. Mark is a founding partner and Stress Resilience Consultant for the Nepali Diaspora Be Well Initiative. The Doc is also a part-time Clinical Therapist for Inner City Family Services, Washington, DC. A former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, he has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for the US Army. The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, Preserving Human Touch in a Hi-Tech World, and The Four Faces of Anger: Transforming Hostility and Rage into Assertion and Passion. Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR). For more info, email: [email protected].