The laugh button
I found this in my (offline) journal from last May, and thought I'd share it:
Biking back from the park, I considered the practice of laughter. It is apparently as good for your health as exercise, so I hear. I began to laugh. Practicing laughter. Forcing laughter. Inducing laughter.
It is funny that we (I) have a belief that one must have a reason to laugh. There's this assumption that making yourself laugh, without having something "genuinely funny" to trigger it, means the laughter is not real. But the fact is, inducing laughter does cause “real laughter”. Try it. Even the fact that there's no reason behind the laughter becomes funny. Laughter is not reasonable. Reason can be included among those things that are “funny”, but The Funny does not obey reason, by any means.
I noticed that my reason is threatened by purposeless, reasonless, meaningless laughter. And I laugh at that. It is threatened by the idea that if you contort your face in a certain way, and exhale rhythmically in a certain, spasmodic way, your brain will begin to release certain chemicals that are experienced partially as a further desire to continue this spasmodic grimace and chemical release. It makes my reason afraid that I am basically just like a robot. A really complex, but empty robot nonetheless, consisting of nothing but on and off switches. It makes my reason fear that pretending- faking to a convincing degree- creates reality. This is fearsome to my reason because it thinks that if faking can create reality, there may be no difference between "the fake" and "the real". i.e. there's no such thing as the real. My reason is threated by this because Reason operates entirely upon the assumption that "reality" exists. Of course, reason considers the other side of this coin: that there's no such thing as "the false"- everything is real. Mr. Reason doesn't think this shit is very funny- just very confusing.
Anyway, as a result of this practice, I felt pretty light-hearted and relaxed for much of the day. Easy to smile and laugh.
Biking back from the park, I considered the practice of laughter. It is apparently as good for your health as exercise, so I hear. I began to laugh. Practicing laughter. Forcing laughter. Inducing laughter.
It is funny that we (I) have a belief that one must have a reason to laugh. There's this assumption that making yourself laugh, without having something "genuinely funny" to trigger it, means the laughter is not real. But the fact is, inducing laughter does cause “real laughter”. Try it. Even the fact that there's no reason behind the laughter becomes funny. Laughter is not reasonable. Reason can be included among those things that are “funny”, but The Funny does not obey reason, by any means.
I noticed that my reason is threatened by purposeless, reasonless, meaningless laughter. And I laugh at that. It is threatened by the idea that if you contort your face in a certain way, and exhale rhythmically in a certain, spasmodic way, your brain will begin to release certain chemicals that are experienced partially as a further desire to continue this spasmodic grimace and chemical release. It makes my reason afraid that I am basically just like a robot. A really complex, but empty robot nonetheless, consisting of nothing but on and off switches. It makes my reason fear that pretending- faking to a convincing degree- creates reality. This is fearsome to my reason because it thinks that if faking can create reality, there may be no difference between "the fake" and "the real". i.e. there's no such thing as the real. My reason is threated by this because Reason operates entirely upon the assumption that "reality" exists. Of course, reason considers the other side of this coin: that there's no such thing as "the false"- everything is real. Mr. Reason doesn't think this shit is very funny- just very confusing.
Anyway, as a result of this practice, I felt pretty light-hearted and relaxed for much of the day. Easy to smile and laugh.