Chapter 85 The Skillful Cultivation of the Flower of Humor

Humor blooms everywhere.However, not everyone has the knack for nurturing the flowers of humor. Some people are born with a sense of humor, but most people develop a sense of humor through learning.To learn humor, we must first use the "interesting way of thinking" to capture the comedy factors in life. "Interesting thinking" is a kind of "misplaced thinking", that is, it does not follow the thinking of ordinary people, but "forks" to the interesting side.Secondly, we must work hard to conceive in an instant and master the necessary skills.Humor is a kind of "quick language art", which breaks through the inertial thinking, follows the abnormal principle, thinks quickly, speaks quickly, touches the scene, makes things interesting, unexpected, and reasonable.

This requires you to pay attention to accumulating humorous material in peacetime.Our life is rich and colorful, which provides many interesting materials. If we are "caring people", we will enrich our language materials.If you don’t have the ability to impromptu humor, it’s better to read more comics and jokes to experience the feeling of humor and learn to appreciate humor. Over time, you can create humor yourself, or at least use the jokes you see to create a humorous and relaxed communication atmosphere. Learning humor can also be carried out by experiencing other people's sense of humor, learning to understand jokes, and then imitating them.Open your mind to all kinds of people and things that will leave traces in your mind and become the leaven of humor.

Here are some commonly used humor methods for your reference. The comrades working beside Mao Zedong stood guard for the chairman with deep affection and respect, taking care of his daily life.One day, Mao Zedong suddenly smiled and said to them: "Why do you treat me so well? I have thought about this question for a long time before I figured it out. It turns out that you comrades can only be officials, not human beings." These words made the staff I was stunned: the weight of this sentence is too heavy.We take care of the chairman wholeheartedly, how can he criticize us like this?

Everyone was confused and nervous. Seeing this situation, Mao Zedong explained with a smile: "It is said that you can only be officials, which means that you are so kind to me, and it is because of me that you are an official? To say that you cannot be a human being means that you cannot consider yourself. Think about it! I saw so many of you standing guard here for several years. If you were in the front, you would have grown up long ago.” After the chairman explained this, everyone was suddenly enlightened, and they couldn’t help but change “surprise” into laughter. I feel relaxed. Mao Zedong was grateful to the comrades who wholeheartedly defended him and took care of him, but instead of words of praise, he used the suspense that "you can only be officials, not people", deliberately making the other party suspicious, creating illusions, and forming psychological pressure.Then explain the suspense, make it disappear, and humor suddenly emerge from the ups and downs.The comrades were moved by Mao Zedong's true feelings for his subordinates, and their hearts got closer to each other.

In the process of interpersonal communication, a few words can completely arouse the doubts of the other party that cannot be resolved according to conventional thinking, and cause a certain amount of psychological pressure.Then give the other party an unconventional explanation to relieve the other party's psychological burden.In the other party's psychological ups and downs, it produces a surprising and humorous effect.When the other party goes from doubt to confusion, from surprise to calm, in the ups and downs of emotions, a sense of humor is produced. The so-called misinterpretation means intentionally violating conventions, common sense and common sense with a relaxed and ironic attitude, breaking the conventional meaning of words, temporarily giving them new interpretations, or even giving them distorted interpretations in a specific context. , Pinch unrelated things together, make seemingly unrelated things connected, resulting in causal dislocation or logical contradictions, creating a disharmonious, unreasonable, unexpected effect, thereby generating a sense of humor.

Swapping concepts is a common method of misinterpretation.That is to borrow the concepts used in the other party's conversation and give them new content, so as to produce a humorous effect. A wife glared at her husband and said, "I get angry when I see you." The husband replied slowly, "Okay, I haven't felt any breath after practicing Qigong for a year. It turns out that you sucked all the breath in me." It went to you." The husband cleverly replaced the "qi" of anger with the "qi" of qigong to amuse his wife, and her "qi" disappeared with laughter.

In the Southern Tang Dynasty, taxes were heavy and the people were in dire straits.It happened to be a severe drought in the capital, and Lie Zu asked the officials, "It's raining in other places, why isn't it raining in the capital?" Minister Shen Jiangao said: "Because the rain is afraid of tax collection, so I dare not enter the capital." The ancestors laughed and decided to reduce the tax. Shen Jiangao cleverly used the topic to anthropomorphize "rain", thus euphemistically expressing the meaning of "heavy taxation and daunting", wittily admonishing the ancestors to reduce taxes, and achieved the desired effect.

Unlimited exaggeration of the facts, resulting in an extremely incongruous comic effect, is also one of the effective ways to generate humor. A unit organized retired veteran cadres to travel by bus. When getting on the bus, they gave way to each other, which delayed a lot of time.After driving, an old comrade joked loudly: "Let me tell you a story for fun: Once upon a time, there was a woman who gave birth to twins after 10 years of pregnancy. When asked why the twins refused to appear, they said that according to etiquette, the elder should go first, but The two of them didn't know who was the elder brother, so they gave way to each other for 10 years, which delayed the birth of the mother."

These words caused the veteran cadres in the car to look at each other in blank dismay, and then roared with laughter. The so-called pun means that the spoken words contain two meanings: one is the meaning of the sentence itself; the other is the extended meaning, from which the humor comes out.It can also be said that the meaning of the words is here, so that the listener not only understands the words literally, but also understands the meaning behind the words. "Pun" can be said to be one of the most powerful moves of humor. It is not just "humor", but also contains a very "lethal" "wisdom" component.

There is a fable: After the monkey died, he went to the King of Hades and asked to be a human in his next life.Hades said, since you want to be a human being, you have to pluck all the hair from your body.After finishing speaking, I asked the kid to pluck the hair.Unexpectedly, only one hair was pulled out, and the monkey screamed in pain.Yan Wang smiled and said, "How can you be a man if you don't take out any hair?" On the surface, this fable is telling a story about a monkey, but it humorously expresses the truth that "a hairless person is not worthy of being a human being". Although it is very ironic, it is also euphemistic and reserved.

A friend of an officer asked him for some military secret.He didn't want to embarrass the other party by sternly refusing, and he couldn't abolish public affairs for personal reasons.So he pretended to be mysterious and asked: "Can you keep a secret?" "Yes!" The other party replied. "Well, I can too," said the officer.The officer imitated the words and tone of the other party's answer, thus getting rid of the embarrassment, not only keeping military secrets, but also maintaining the relationship between friends. The so-called antithesis refers to the words that are spoken, and the meaning expressed is completely opposite to the literal meaning.For example, it is affirmative on the surface, but it is negative in meaning; it is negative on the surface, but it is affirmative in meaning.This is also one of the effective ways to generate humor. There is a public service advertisement promoting smoking cessation, which does not mention the harm of smoking at all. On the contrary, it lists four major benefits of smoking: one can save cloth.Because smoking is prone to tuberculosis, which leads to hunchback and atrophy of the body, so much cloth is not needed to make clothes; second, it can prevent thieves.People who smoke often suffer from bronchitis and cough all night long. Thieves think that the owner is not asleep, so they dare not steal; three ways to prevent mosquitoes.Mosquitoes can't stand the strong smoke, so they have to stay away from it; four things can keep you young forever.Die without waiting for old age. The four "benefits" of smoking mentioned here make people realize from laughter what the advertisement itself really wants to explain, that is, smoking is harmful to health. The key to the humor technique of taking meaning out of context is whether it can be absurd and out of context. The farther the meaning after your out of context is from the original meaning, the more absurd and humorous it will be. A well-known miser rich man asked Iha to work for him. "Okay, but how much will you pay me?" "Salary?" The rich man frowned, "I'll give you food, drink, shelter, and clothes. How about it?" As soon as the clever Yiha rolled his eyes, he agreed and wrote down the contract.People were all sweating for Iha, because that old miser was abominable! That night, Yiha ate something, lay down to sleep, and slept until ten o'clock the next morning without getting up.The rich man was furious, and came to reprimand him: "Hey, how long do you want to sleep? I think you are crazy?" "Which one of us is insane?" Yiha said, "I ate and drank, and stayed again. Now, according to the contract, I am waiting for you to come and dress me!" Of course, the stingy rich man will not support Yiha in vain. He just wants to use food, housing and clothing to offset his wages, but the smart Yiha uses out of context and humorous wisdom to play tricks on the stingy and treacherous rich man.