ConserveLiberty takes the approach that many of the personality traits that humans (or any of the other animals) possess have organic roots. Meaning - our behavior - the way we detect, perceive, interpret, and react to things - is rooted in the way we are built. The way we are "wired up and connected" determines "The Device That We Are" so to speak. Thus, what we are, who The Me is ... has its origins (at the organism level) in our genetics.

And so it is with Humor. [Click here] for Wikipedia's more extensive description of Humor.

The practical joke of All That Is

Within the ConserveLiberty Personality Division, the focus is on credibly approaching various cognitively driven behaviors and "ways of perceiving" with the intention of inspiring a deeper, more accurate understanding of "how is it that we have been built to be the way we are?"

We assess various archaeological, medical, biochemical, and other evidence with a strong degree of scientific skepticism.

ConserveLiberty was interested in credibly assessing what was known regarding Humor that would address the questions:

• How is the mechanism that manifests Humor (both in behavior and our ability to perceive it) actually built?
  
  
• What is its Mechanism of Action (MOA) exactly? Do we have a credible start on that that can be mentioned?
  
  
• What selective forces might have driven Humor to evolve and manifest itself as it does? Was it directly selected for in response to covert environmental pressure? Or was Humor's selection indirect - did it appear randomly, and then those humans that wound up with the trait simply outcompeted those hominids that did not have the trait due to unexpected advantages that "just were!"?

For Humor, not as much is known biologically and genetically as one would like ... from a scientific perspective. Some is known, with varying degrees of likelihood to be True, but very little. We are only at the beginning of the process of understanding humor from a MOA perspective, and we have a long way to go.

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"There is a lunatic fringe out there that is confused by reality." - Ted Nugent

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As is always the case when wanting to uncover the Truth of a Matter, it is quite important to be asking the right questions, looking with the right perspectives, open to unexpected ideas.

Since we don't understand the actual MOA of Humor, then by definition we don't understand what those correct ideas and questions are ... until we ask them and find out whether they lead us to either a more correct understanding or a dead end that we eventually abandon.

In other words, credible Humor Discovery Research requires one to:

• be able to recognize the irony and inconsistencies in one's hypothetical assumptions.
• be looking for those moments when "what we believed" was actually true ... was NOT.
• find that "things that we did not think were related" actually were related to each other.

Note   → The study of "Humor, Amusement and Fun" leading to an increased understanding of its true MOA ... requires an Amused perspective - one that instinctively finds Humor in all that it pays attention to. Only then will one uncover unexpectedly innovative ways of regarding the Truth of Humor ... and be drawn to examining it more intently, more seriously, more credibly. ←   Note

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"Imagine how asleep or utterly unperceptive and clueless you would have to be not to see yourself as absurd for the most part." - John Malkovich

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Until then, ConserveLiberty will leave the reader with a few questions to think about. Are they the "right" questions? Who knows? Could be.

• Why might Humans have evolved a capacity to perceive Humor and manifest The Humor Personality Spectrum Tapestry the way that we do?
  
  
• Is what we recognize as Humor simply the manifestation of a more primitive or fundamental "filter" that is in play outside the human species? In the abstract, is there a trait or function seen at alternate levels of complexity within All That Is that is shared with humans ... that within humans manifests itself as Humor? (For example, at a more fundamental level, Gravity?)
  
  
• Does the manifestation of Humor that "brings us together", or unifies us, provide a selective advantage for humankind?
  
  

  Filter as ensemble of components

  Ensemble as ensemble of filters

• Does the Humor Tapestry leverage other significant filters (in ensemble) related to creativity, attachment formation, bullshit detection, etc., that are the truly selective attributes for humankind? Is the Humor Tapestry simply something that arises as an ensemble of many other filters selected for and important to our survival?
  
  
• A Hypothetical suggestion on how humor may have evolved, selectively.

Humor evolved.

Perhaps the selection pressure that led to its current ubiquity was that among many of the manifested behaviors enabled by the Humor instinct, a few were advantageous for making peace among competitive enemies. Calming things down. Working together and leveraging synergies.

In other words, perhaps Humor helped enable larger societies to form from what originally would have been small tribes of inbred families defending access to scarce resources from one another. Was Humor a prerequisite for Civilization?

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Practical Humor? Did selective evolution build us to be Funny?

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Note, again   → Humor is primarily invoked when things or elements of things are encountered that were not expected and yet can be embraced, enabling us to be brought together. ←   Note

"Humor" has been something that the psychology, neuropsychology, biology, and biochemistry folks have been interested in for awhile. Humor is such an integral component to human behavior that everyone has it at one level or another, and creative people are interested in exploring it.

Interestingly, the variability in the default instinct regarding what is found Humorous varies across many demographic groups. Gender, age, and cultural (i.e. nurture, experience) differences are commonly observed. These observed differences do not arouse much attention from clinical or social perspectives. However, a significant lack of humor (on the edge of the "Bell Curve" for manifested Humor) does attract significant clinical interest, and can be associated with various recognized neurological and psychological phenomenon such as the dementias, depressive illnesses, etc..

For that reason, there doesn't appear to be any demand for treatments that might increase or decrease the "incidence" of "lower than average" or "higher than average" humor like you might have for issues related to significant affect changes (e.g. mania, depression), reality judgment (e.g. schizophrenia, various neuroses), addiction (e.g. opioid, alcohol, tobacco, spending), or the lost ability to think and make decisions (e.g. various dementias, accident damage, strokes). Without a commercial value or a perceived societal need for the research, not a lot of replicable (thus, validatable) research in the area of "fine tuning" the perception, appreciation, and improvisational generation of humor, irony, or interesting speech seems to get funded.

Although biological research to better understand the MOA of Humor does not attract a lot of funding, the impact of Humor in various circumstances does attract a lot of attention.

On the positive side, a high degree of humor, irony, and enjoyable dialog is exhibited by almost all of the leadership of organizations generating positive impacts in a broad number of fields today. Could the degree of Humor be managed or manipulated in order to facilitate more advancement?

On the negative side, consider various of the negative outcomes experienced by groups led by people with either corrupt intent or non-rational, poorly thought out strategies for achieving goals. The unfortunate members of these groups have accepted the authority of their leadership often because their leadership's humor and easy to embrace rhetoric has been executed quite wonderfully.

The impact of relying on humor as a selection mechanism for leadership can have both positive and negative consequences.

Rowan Atkinson has IQ 178

Yet today there does not seem to be much biological research directly related to the Manifestation and Mechanism of Action of Humor.

Despite having so little to share definitively regarding the molecular biology (genetics, genes, etc.), neurobiology, and neurophysiology underlying the infrastructure that generates our Humor related perceptions and behaviors, a few essays of interest are offered below:

• ConserveLiberty Research Articles
  
  
• ConserveLiberty Summary Essays
  
  
• ConserveLiberty Outside Commentary

→ The Introduction section above was last updated 17 Jan 2018 15:30 PST ←

Humor Examples (collection) - A large collection of humor from various perspectives that ConserveLiberty has assembled to illustrate the truths communicated using irony and its role in drawing us together.

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Note   →   Anyone freely choosing to engage in the perception and/or
generation of humor (as we've defined it) IS having Fun   ←   Note

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This section will have content posted to it in subsequent revisions of this chapter (The Humor Personality Spectrum Tapestry). The current version as of this writing is v #1.0.

We've defined Humor earlier. On a related note, what exactly is meant by Fun?

Important   →   ConserveLiberty's use of the term is actually quite simple, and defines FUN here.

There are a few areas that ConserveLiberty will call out and deal with in this section that are relevant to amusement, humor, and fun. Those are:

• Theories of Humor including the Incongruous juxtaposition theory.
  
  
• Physiological and neurological issues, such as mania, depression, certain degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and even injuries to certain areas of the brain that impact affect and the expression and perception of enjoyment.
  
  
• Intoxication.
  
  
• Age (youth to senior differences)
  
  
• Tickling
  
  
• The Spiritual - Instinct: are some of us just "built that way?"

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David Apollo will have Fun every moment he is alive, whether he enjoys it or not!

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Let's address Intoxication first.

It is well known that mild to moderate intoxication by a variety of substances, which have different mechanism's of action that explain their ability to intoxicate, can have positive impacts on our ability to enjoy ourselves and others. These intoxicants include:

• Ethanol - Lifts mood, increases euphoria, decreases anxiety, increases sociability.
  
  
• Cannabis - psychological effects and neurological effects. A psychoactive drug with low addiction potential.
  
  
• Cocaine - Note the psychological and neurological effects. This psychoactive drug has a higher addiction potential due to increased ΔFosB levels generated by cocaine use. ΔFosB has been implicated as a critical factor in the development of virtually all forms of behavioral and drug addictions.
  
  
• Heroin - Note the psychological and neurological effects of heroin. Besides the euphoria produced, psychological tolerance is developed quickly, requiring more each time to achieve the desired cognitive result. It is also favored among those looking for a "retreat from various stresses" using quick acting intoxicants rather than resolving through culturally accepted avenues. Highly addictive.
  
  Note  → this discussion ←  of the impact of the opioids. While the Humor Tapestry chapter focuses on the manifestation of humor and enjoyment (related), the impact of the opioids are much broader than that. The component filters used in the Tapestry are used broadly for a variety of physiological processes.
  
  It is interesting that some of the neurological components used to manifest euphoria, the utmost perception of joy and fun, are also used by the body in many other significant areas required in order to live.
  
  
  
  Ball-and-stick model of D-Amphetamine
• Amphetamine and its various derivatives. - As with many neurochemicals, amphetamine influence is much broader than the category of behavioral impact. Within the domain of behavior and personality, amphetamine is a potent central nervous system stimulant, cognitive "enhancer," aphrodisiac, and euphoriant.
  
  In the CNS, it is a dopaminergic stimulant. At continued repeated high doses, it can become addictive for the very same reasons that the general mechanism of action (MOA) of addiction takes place. Overactivation of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway gradually increases the level of accumbal ΔFosB, a "master control protein" for addiction.
  
  
• etc.
  
  
• Regarding Intoxication, outside of the chemical realm, Words often alter perception quite significantly. Just sayin.

Physiological and neurological issues:

• Thrill rides
  • How Amusement Parks Hijack Your Brain
  
  
• Potential emergence of the Humor Instinct during the Cognitive Reboot.
  • Reflex and response testing. Just click on the link, read the neurosurgeon testing bullet, and then use your browser's BACK function to return. The basic idea is that Humor may be among the initial communication behaviors to come back online, either after a serious head injury (The Cognitive Reboot) or perhaps after birth, as communication behaviors are emerging (The Initial Cognitive Boot-up).
    
    
• Examples of neurotransmitter involvement with Humor, and how the sense and manifestation of Humor may be impacted under certain physiologically altered circumstances.
  
  
  • The neural basis of humor processing - discussing structures in the brain involved in the manifestation of humor
    
    
  • Funny Science: Review: Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why and The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny - a review, touching on some neurobiology. Perhaps a good jumping off point for leads to credible scientific articles and reviews.
    • Ha!
    
    
  • Humor, Laughter, and Those Aha Moments - an easy scientific commentary article. Some biology, not an in depth review by any stretch.
    
    
  • 
    Click to enlarge
    The Dopaminergic Pathways - involved in many functions such as executive function, learning, reward, motivation, and neuroendocrine control. Among other clinically related behaviors, involved in Parkinson's disease, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and addiction.
    
    
  • The Amygdala - performs a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional reactions. Each side holds a specific function in how we perceive and process emotion. In one study, electrical stimulations of the right amygdala induced negative emotions, especially fear and sadness. In contrast, stimulation of the left amygdala was able to induce either pleasant (happiness) or unpleasant (fear, anxiety, sadness) emotions. Other evidence suggests that the left amygdala plays a role in the brain's reward system.
    
    
  • temporo-occipito-parietal areas involved in detecting and resolving incongruity (mismatch between expected and presented stimuli)
  
  
• Memory - fundamentally, without a functioning cognitive Memory or Recall, a functioning manifestation of Humor will not occur. Irony, incongruity, and the unexpected are not detected in the absence of memory.

The Spiritual (just blessed that way, instinctively):

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"I spent the whole year visiting and revisiting friends.

True Friends.

You know, the ones that tell you their Real Stories.

Seems every single one of them had the same thing in common.

Shit Happens.

And just before True Shit Happens, you don't see it coming.

After It happened, their lives just Kept Moving On.

For them, once There, one wouldn't have it any other way.

One can't have it any other way, even if one wanted it another way!

And the Way It Just Happened was Way Better Than The Alternative."

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In so far as Humor reduces the stress of embracing the actual factual Truth, Humor enables those who can to approach Harmony more easily.

Either way, among many priorities, humans instinctively Conserve the Liberty to have FUN.

→ The Big Picture section was last updated 17 Jan 2018 16:30 PST ←

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Consider thoughtfully.