5.24.2005

metaphor as spirtual laughter

Imagine that you are sitting with your friend and suddenly, his/her face starts to convulse involuntary. Facial muscles, particularly the lips, stretch and there is a peculiar expression in his/her eyes. Your friend's vocal organs vibrate and he/she is making a sequence of rhythmic expiratory sounds. Oddly enough, nobody around you even turns his head to look as your friend chokes, trying to take broken, sudden inhalations, while your friend's shoulders jerk and their entire body twists and shakes.

Call 9/11? Not hardly. Its called laughter!

Little is known about laughter... but there are a few things we do know. Laughter is unique to human beings. Like language, we don't share it with any other creature on earth. Many theorists hypothesize that laughter and language must be associated.

I agree... I wonder if there is some connection with getting a joke and getting a metaphor. Both require language and cognitive ability... and both have an "Ah, ha!" moment.

One experiment was performed at the college of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Here, one researcher elucidated the unique pattern of brain wave activity via electroencephalograms during the perception of humor. He found that during the set up to the joke, there was activity in the cortex's left hemisphere. This is where the brain begins its analytical function of processing words. Shortly afterward, most of the brain activity moved to the frontal lobe. This is the center of emotionality. An instant later, activity spreads to both the right and left hemispheres as the right hemisphere's synthesis capabilities joined with the left's processing to find the pattern and "get the joke." A few milliseconds later, before the subject laughed, the increased brain wave activity spread to the occipital lobe. This area of the brain processes sensory information. The increased fluctuations in activity reached a peak and crested as the brain "got" the joke and the external expression of laughter began. (Derks, 1992)

Could it be the same with metaphor?

One of the theories on why we laugh is called the incongruity theory. This theory suggests that humor arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't normally go together. Researcher Thomas Veatch says a joke becomes funny when we expect one outcome and another happens. When a joke begins, our minds and bodies are already anticipating what's going to happen and how it's going to end. That anticipation takes the form of logical thought intertwined with emotion and is influenced by our past experiences and our thought processes. When the joke goes in an unexpected direction, our thoughts and emotions suddenly have to switch gears. We now have new emotions, backing up a different line of thought. In other words, we experience two sets of incompatible thoughts and emotions simultaneously. We experience this incongruity between the different parts of the joke as humorous.

Wow, I am reminded of all the metaphors Jesus used to teach us... just when we think we know the ending, he turns it at the last second like a good stand up comedian. Was the sermon on the mount given at the local improv?

William Fry, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Stanford University Medical School and expert on health and laughter, reports the average kindergarten student laughs 300 times a day. Yet, adults average just 17 laughs a day. Interesting that Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these and that in order to enter heaven, we must do so like a little child.

Chuck Gallozzi says: "Our five senses are not enough for ideal living. We need to use our sixth sense: our sense of humor. Humor isn't about merely telling jokes; it's the way we view the world. We can be sincere about life without taking it so seriously. We can laugh about our mistakes and pain."

Louis Kronenberger explains: "Humor simultaneously wounds and heals, indicts and pardons, diminishes and enlarges; it constitutes inner growth at the expense of outer gain, and those who posses and honestly practice it make themselves more through a willingness to make themselves less."

William James (1842-1910), said, "We don't laugh because we're happy, we are happy because we laugh."

Ah, the power of language to effect change.

5.11.2005

Canon

Is there ever a time that a church or religious organization becomes it's own canon to the point in which is in conflict with God's canon? Are there times in which the community overrules God? What is our response to be within that community, if this is the case... and what has God done Biblically in cases such as this, supposing they do exist?

I realize this is a loaded question with lots of definitions to be made and articulated, but I thought it might be a good topic to jump start my blog. :)