Chapter 15 Chapter 2 The Wisdom of Humor

Humor is not honest words, it is the use of wisdom, cleverness and various funny skills to make people laugh, surprised or dumbfounded after reading, and get educated from it.Humor is not only the outburst of wisdom and the expression of kindness, but also a kind of mind and a state.As the writer Wang Meng said: "Humor is a kind of adult wisdom, a kind of penetrating power, and one or two sentences can bring out the deformed and secretive things. It contains both helplessness and healthy hope." Humor is not glib, mocking or ironic.As a famous person said: impetuosity cannot be humorous, pretentiousness is difficult to be humorous, sharp-edged is difficult to be humorous, dullness is difficult to be humorous, dull and clumsy is difficult to be humorous, only calm, equal treatment, detachment, skillful, clever and thorough can be humorous.

The famous writer Lin Yutang said: "The more humorous the humor, the better it is." Take tea for example.In the category of the best tea, whether it is West Lake Longjing, Tieguanyin, or Biluochun, they don’t seem to have any special good taste when they first drink it. , unspeakable" beauty.If someone adds milk first and then sugar because the taste of Tieguanyin is not too strong, it can only be said that he does not know how to drink Tieguanyin.Humor also differs between elegance and vulgarity, the more secluded it is, the more elegant it is, the more silent it is, the more vulgar it is.Although humor does not have to be elegant, but from an artistic point of view, it is better to be subtle than to be revealed.Humor can certainly make people smile meaningfully, laugh out loud, and even laugh "spouting rice" and "hitting the belly", but the most admirable humor is a smile that can make people slightly raise the corners of their mouths.

Qian Zhongshu described a scene like this: "Only two Chinese women can be seen on the deck, and a child who is not considered human - at least the shipping company did not treat her as a human being, and did not ask her parents to buy a ticket for her." When describing this scene, Mr. Qian Zhongshu violated people's normal thinking mode, causing "people's psychological expectations to be emptied". "A child who is not considered human", what people expect is to explain it in terms of age, but the author reveals it from the perspective that the shipping company did not let her make up the fare. This kind of revelation is unexpected but reasonable, and the meaning of humor is beyond words.

Humor is a manifestation of wisdom, and it must be based on a wealth of knowledge.Only when a person has the ability to assess the situation and has extensive knowledge can he be able to talk richly, make witty words interesting, and make appropriate metaphors.Therefore, in order to cultivate a sense of humor, one must explore extensively, enrich oneself, constantly collect humorous waves from a vast array of books, and extract humorous gems from the essence of celebrity anecdotes. Here is another example of Mr. Qian Zhongshu. He once wrote this passage: "The gust of foreign fever that has been blowing from the late Qing Dynasty to the present did not blow sand and rocks all at once. Opening foreign meat was still an unappetizing thing..."

Here, the "wind" of the abstract "social atmosphere" is compared to the "wind" in the natural phenomenon. Only in this way can the blowing sand and rocks be blown away. It is both vivid and funny, and there is no fanfare of humor, but the taste of humor has already been revealed from the lines. Developing wit and quick insight is an important aspect of improving humor.Only by quickly capturing the essence of things and using appropriate metaphors and humorous language can people feel relaxed.Of course, while being humorous, one should also pay attention to the fact that the important principles should not be neglected, that different problems should be treated differently, that one should be extremely flexible in dealing with problems, and that humor should not be clichéd, so that humor can provide true meaning to human spiritual life. nourishment.

Humor is the product of intelligence.If you compare humor to a beauty, she should be rich in connotation, as gorgeous as a peach blossom, with a temperament like an orchid, and she should be able to bring joy to people.She's more temperamental than funny, and more intriguing. In "Historical Records. Index", Sima Qian once interpreted "funny" as "being able to mix similarities and differences", that is, through ingenious associations, the "one-third or one-fourth similarity between objective things can be transformed into all equals." .This kind of "reversal of differences and confusion of similarities" or a sneaky change of concepts can create a kind of "tactful humor".

A young woman said to her husband: "My dear, the man who lives across from our house always kisses his wife before going out in the morning, and kisses her first when he comes home at night. Don't you do that?" ?" The husband replied: "Of course, but I don't know her very well." This clever husband cleverly replaced his wife with a young woman from the opposite door, secretly changed the concept, and inadvertently revealed witty humor. Violating people's normal thinking rules, explaining things ingeniously, or telling the truth that people don't expect, will achieve a good humorous effect.

A customer was eating in a restaurant, and there was a lot of sand in the rice, and the customer picked them out one by one and put them on the table.Seeing this, the waiter said sorry, "Is it all sand?" The customer shook his head and said, "No, there is also rice." The customer responded subtly, using the thinking mode that violated ordinary people, and easily and naturally created the effect of humor and irony. A ragged man was squatting in front of a puddle of five centimeters deep to fish, and everyone who passed by thought he was a fool.One of the passers-by couldn't help feeling pity, and he kindly said to the fisherman, "Hey, would you like to have a drink with me?" The fisherman happily accepted his invitation.After they had a few drinks, the man asked the fisherman, "You're fishing, aren't you?" "Yes." "How many fish did you catch this morning?" "Including you, eight gone."

The seemingly stupid behavior hides a sadistic motive. Once the truth is revealed, it will naturally make people laugh. The witty humor is implicit and tactful; sharp and honest, making people feel sharp but not bloody; hot but not burning.Witty humor is not grandstanding, but an optimistic attitude towards life, which enables people to face reality optimistically even in adversity, and feel anxious in prosperity. Humor is the flash of a person's knowledge, talent, wisdom, and inspiration in language expression. It is an "ability to catch jokes and witty imagination." Disadvantages, revelation of contradictory nature and description of some unconventional words and deeds.

Under normal circumstances, the people who are really good at the art of conversation are actually those humorists who are good at leading the topic and turning meaningless conversation into funny at the same time.This kind of person is often at home in the social arena, and can be regarded as a master of humor in social conversations.Monotonous conversation is boring, so a good talker must be good at humor.But this kind of humor does not mean that everything can be used as a joke.For example, about religion, about politics, about great men, about some kind of sympathetic suffering, etc., are never to be laughed at.In some people's opinion, if the words are not humorous enough, it is not enough to show their intelligence. This kind of thinking is unavoidably extreme.

American psychologist Paul McKee believes that a sense of humor plays a pivotal role in the development of people's social skills. Being with a humorist is like reading a good book, you can benefit a lot and have a lot of fun. Once, Mrs. Astor, Winston Churchill's political enemy, said to him: "Winston, if you were my husband, I would put poison in your coffee." Churchill smiled and said, "Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink that cup of coffee." Here, Churchill satirized the attacks of his political opponents with ingenious answers, instead of facing the conflict directly, and taught the opponent a lesson with gentle but powerful humor.This is a speaking skill worth learning by each of us, even a human skill. Humorous language can release our inner tension and pressure and turn it into a relaxed smile.In communication, humorous language is like a lubricant, which can effectively reduce the "coefficient of friction" between people, resolve conflicts and contradictions, and enable us to calmly get rid of possible difficulties in communication. In social situations, people who talk humorously tend to win, and people who don't have a sense of humor often lose.In communicative occasions, humorous language can easily open up the communicative situation quickly. People who are good at talking sometimes make fun of themselves out of necessity.The famous American lawyer Dieter is a person who is good at making fun of himself. Once, the president of Columbia University introduced Dieter to the audience when he gave a speech: "He can be regarded as the first citizen of our country!" Dieter seemed to be able to seize this rare opportunity immediately and joked Said: "Listen, gentlemen, the first citizen is about to speak." But if he did, he would be a fool whom no one would look up to. So what should he say?He not only wants to use this introduction to humor, but also to gain the audience's goodwill.He said: "I didn't quite understand the term Mr. Principal said just now. The first citizen - what does it refer to? Now I think that he probably refers to the citizen often mentioned in Shakespeare's plays. Principal Sir must be a person with great experience in the study of Shakespeare's plays. When he introduced me, he must have thought of his Shakespeare plays again. The audience must know that Shakespeare often intersperses many citizens in his plays. Most people say only one or two sentences, and most of them are people without eloquence and insight. But they are almost all good people, even if the status of the first and second is exchanged, it will not show any difference at all. place." Before he finished speaking, there was a tidal wave of applause from the audience. If we can use more humorous and wise words in life, it can really make us healthy physically and mentally, and smooth interpersonal relationships, and our life will be full of joy and freshness everywhere! It is better to seek "naturalness" in everything, and the same is true for humor.Prepared humor can certainly cope with some occasions, but it is inevitable that it will be artificial; humor played on the spot is more skillful and more elegant. In 1975, at the doctoral dissertation defense meeting of the University of Paris, the French examiner asked Mr. Lu Kanru a strange question: "In the poem "The Peacock Flies Southeast", why doesn't it say 'The Peacock Flies Northwest'?" Lu Kanru responded Said: "There are tall buildings in the northwest." He cleverly used the sentence in "There are tall buildings in the northwest, and the upper reaches are as high as the floating clouds" as the reason for the peacock to fly southeast.It is amazing to be able to answer questions wittily in the face of Diao. Humor is not the product of deliberation, but the crystallization of wit and nature, often connected with quickness and ingenuity. On the train bound for Geneva, the conductor is checking tickets.A gentleman was frantically looking for his ticket. He rummaged through all his pockets and finally found it.He said to himself, "Thank God, I found it at last." "It doesn't matter if you can't find it!" said a gentleman nearby. "I have been to Geneva twenty times without buying a ticket." His words happened to be heard by the train conductor standing aside, so after the train arrived at Geneva station, the gentleman was taken to the detention center and interrogated. "You said that you came to Geneva twenty times without a ticket." "Yes, I did." "You don't know, this is illegal?" "I do not think so." "So, how do you explain the ticketless ride?" "It's very simple. I came here by car." This gentleman really has the ability to "turn straw into gold bars".There is no doubt that he is a passenger without a ticket, but he can cleverly use humor to excuse himself. What can the conductor do with him? Playing on the spot is a kind of skill, but also a kind of mind. It requires us to have a cool head, keep calm and calm, and not rush.In various evening parties and cultural performances, many hosts and actors reacted on the spot and made surprising witticisms, adding fuel to the joyful atmosphere of the evening and winning applause and love from the audience. On-the-spot humor depends on discovering and grasping the "catalyst" in time, so as to make clever associations and play it appropriately. When an actor sang the Leting Dagu, the drum board hit the ground a few times, and the drum fell to the ground with a bang, causing the audience to be in an uproar.The host took advantage of the moment when the actor bent down to pick up the drum and said cordially: "Everyone, today's show was added temporarily, and the actor didn't have time to bring his own drum, so he used someone else's. It seems that this drum is a bit unfamiliar. " One sentence eased the tense atmosphere, and we had to admire the host. Next, when an acrobat was performing "Stepping on Eggs", one of the eggs under his feet was accidentally trampled, and the audience saw it all. The actor was very embarrassed and changed another egg. , to prove that the egg is real, so the actor deliberately crushed one for everyone to see." Unfortunately, as soon as the host finished speaking, another egg was crushed under the actor's feet.The audience immediately turned to the host, let's see what you say this time.The host sighed helplessly, and said, "Alas, fake and inferior products have been banned repeatedly in the society. It seems that we will not be able to catch them—even hens produce inferior products!" This humorous, witty no-nonsense, admirable, instantly filled the audience.