The ability to laugh at oneself typically increases with age and experience. I thought you would appreciate this. Absurdity is everywhere in the human condition, but there are those that can't objectify (at least to some degree) or pick up on the often subtle nuances of a situation to see it as a reflection of themselves or said human condition. I have found that those that personalize everything are particularly unable to do this. Of course, I have made the mistake also of living the approach of "absurdity" to such a degree that I clean forgot how to take my life seriously and also how to ground the "absurd" within in a way that shows respect for life and others.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : Great article and great concept, Emily. Thanks for posting both. I don't talk about my time with the Rama guy much here because some are averse to it and freak out, but one of the things I'm most grateful to that teacher and that whole trip for is that my time there taught me to laugh at myself a lot more. Relating it to this study, the more self-importance (and thus self-deception) I managed to drop, the more in life I found funny, and the more I laughed. In a way it was very Castanedan and his suggestion that one of the reasons his characters don Juan and don Gennero were such funny guys was that they had gotten past their self-importance. From: "emily.mae50@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2014 6:51 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Humor and Self-Deception I've been thinking about humor - how some things strike some as so funny and others as not at all. I had to be taught by others in early adulthood to appreciate the absurd, for example, as that element of humor was lacking in my upbringing. This article is from 2012 so may have crossed here already. It’s No Joke to Self-Deceivers http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/05/21/its-no-joke-to-self-deceivers/ http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/05/21/its-no-joke-to-self-deceivers/ It’s No Joke to Self-Deceivers http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/05/21/its-no-joke-to-self-deceivers/ People who fail to see the absurdity in themselves may also fail to notice absurdity more broadly. View on blogs.wsj.com http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/05/21/its-no-joke-to-self-deceivers/ Preview by Yahoo
