Keep Calm and Laugh

International Day of Peace (21st September)

Is it me or does everyone seem more dogmatic and angry these days? Is cancel culture closing down our opportunity to express ourselves or is it a necessary evil as people start to espouse more aggressive and unkind sentiments. Our brains are overloaded with opinions and facts (some fake, some real), so it’s hard to know what we really think about anything and even harder to understand the opinion and values of others. When we lose this ability to understand ourselves and evaluate others, connection becomes more difficult. We look for affirming behaviours that reinforce our superficial assessments, which very often are all too quickly made. Regrettably, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not the only conflict in the world, and personal as well as international divisions between people seem all too prevalent. Whilst we can’t fix Twitter or World Peace, we can all do our bit to make humanity a bit more human and whilst kindness is the go-to behaviour of the moment, I would like you to take a moment to consider how laughter can be that glue.

In his book, ‘The Comedy of Error’, Jonathon Silvertown (2020) posits one of the social functions of laughter as reward. We know that almost all laughter takes place in the company of others and the reward is the social connection with others. When we experience social laughter we release endorphins and these create feelings of attachment to those we are with. Silverton explains that laughing helps us to build affiliations with others. This then, becomes part of our necessary bonding process and ability to create extended friendship groups and strong teams. This is our reward; being comfortable with other people. This theory is based not just on human studies, but by observing the behaviour of animal species such as apes and rats (yes, rats laugh too) who use a form of laughter whilst playing or being tickled by others. This is not news, it was Charles Darwin who first thought laughter extended wider into the animal kingdom. It seems that laughter is an innate connector that pre-dates jokes and YouTube cat videos. Surely this makes it a reliable form of coming together.

Will laughter help us to achieve world peace? Well, probably not (although I suspect many a great treaty was built more on personal connection than common political agreements than we realise) but it might diffuse some of the interpersonal conflict and misunderstandings that goes on between and within groups of people. The late Jo Cox, MP said, ‘we have more in common than that which divides us’ and having a good laugh together helps to break down barriers, even when we hold differing philosophies and principles. Perhaps that’s a good place to start.

Jane

Silvertown, J. (2020). The comedy of error. Scribe.