Do you really believe that telling a funny story about something that happened to you, six months after the fact, is the same as laughing at someone else who has just suffered a traumatic injury?
“Sucks to be you” is high praise coming from someone with such a mindset.
It’s called self control. Give it a try.
It’s a poor sense of humor that finds everything funny.
I’d guess that your understanding of evolution is rudimentary, if you believe that all extant traits are beneficial.
There’s a huge difference between an excuse and a possible reason. I’m glad that your combat veteran friend got through things OK, but there are some that don’t. My ex (a psychologist) met a guy that had just gotten back from Iraq, where he’d killed a lot of people, children included. He wasn’t throwing puppies off of cliffs, but he needed some pretty serious help.
Can combat turn a normal person into a raging psycho who would throw a dog of a cliff for fun? I don’t know- possibly. But its also possible a person could’ve been a total dick before combat and can then use that an excuse for the psycho behavior he’s always had. Plus, does anyone know for sure if this guy even had any experience “in the shit” anyway, before we go making excuses for him?
you really should look into that stick up your ass. Where did I say joking about ‘six months after the fact’? **Showers ** hurt six months after the fact. I’ve joked about my personal (and traumatic) injuries w/in minutes, it’s there, in my posts. really. Hell, I was joking about my burn while I was in the fucking ER. With my torso covered in large blisters, my back was magenta and green and yellow, very colorful. and I was joking with the people around me.
beyond the ‘sucks to be you’, is more of a “sucks to be around you”, I suspect.
and I believe that I said that I’d notice some humorless fuck like you and not laugh in his/her face, so there’s your self control. I find that a human who fails, repeatedly, to see humor in life is, indeed, a humorless fuck, and feel pity for them.
I can no more control what I find funny than I can control what I find beautiful or what I find horrifying. The imprinting has already happened long ago.
I said it was my guess. But does it matter? Whether it’s beneficial or not, the genes have been inherited.
Hey, you know, I’m sorry you’ve had some injuries. I’m not laughing at you. Too bad, man. But when I saw that picture, a chuckle came out despite my feeling bad for the woman. What do you want me to do? Change my genes?
Yeah but that’s sort of expected- you see a guy hitting a ten year old, you think automatically he’s an asshole, but what if before you came along thant ten year old had killed his kid or whatever? You do something shitty, its up to you to prove that you’re not asshole for doing so.
And some people deal with trauma by laughing at it, some don’t- people are different and react to and handle things differently. You’re not a heartless bastard if laughing at a tragedy is how you will deal with it, but you are on the cross a bit if you judge others for doing so.
I don’t suppose I could bother you for a cite that laughing at others’ misfortunes is caused by a particular gene or genes, could I? It’s really a remarkable claim, when you think about it.
When I was a child, I would make fun of my brother when he hurt himself. My mother would scold me, and ask me if it happened to me would I find it funny. I stopped doing that. Did I change my genes?
Why? I’m not the one taking pleasure at others’ pain.
This whole brouhaha started when I asked why it was funny when an athlete injures herself. So far, no one has even attempted an answer, save your laughable appeal to genetic inertia. And I have been accused of all sorts of character flaws, simply for wondering why a particular incident is funny.
A good friend of mine works for a sports orthopedist. She rehabs people every day. I guarantee you that she finds nothing funny about traumatic head injuries. How was she able to overcome this evolutionary compulsion? Ever watch a college basketball game, or football game? I do. Spectators don’t laugh when a player is injured. There is usually a collective gasp, followed by a stunned silence. How did those thousands and thousands of folks manage to turn off this genetic component that has you inextricably bound to the Nelson Munz response? Seriously, I want to know.
Oh, well, now we have proof then, your friend is your cite. Got it.
If I’m in the audience and see some one injured, I’m gasping and silent until I know they’re basically ok.
If I see it or read about it later, and there’s some humorous aspect to it, I’ll laugh. Do you not see any shred of humor in the story about the guy who makes a homemade cannon and accidentally shoots himself in the groin w/a golf ball? I mean, I’m sorry for his family and all, but damn. I admit that it would be less funny if it wasn’t a golf ball. Not sure why.
I think the video is a fake. And personally and anecdotally speaking, constant exposure to combat can twist your sense of humor towards the black and into what would be considered unfunny to the casual observer.
My best guess is that these Marines staged a joke and filmed it so they could share it with other Marines in their unit (whom may be in on some inside joke regarding puppies) and never intended it to get the exposure it did (unless of course they posted it onto YouTube themselves, do we know how the video got on there?).
Wow. You’re just mot getting it. In fact, you seem to be going out of your way NOT to get it.
Once again, does it matter? It’s something that has been going on for millenia, at least. That’s not a character flaw, that’s part of being human. Imprinting, genetic, whatever.
This is where you’re not getting it. There’s a world of difference between an involuntary response and making fun of someone.
Where did I say I was taking pleasure? I said that first I laughed, then I felt sorry for the woman. You seem to keep ignoring the second part so that you can bolster your argument.
OK, let’s try it another way. No one was laughing at her injury. People were laughing at her oopsie. I have no idea why it’s funny, but many people find it so. Personally, I can’t help it. You apparently see that as a deep moral flaw. Thing is, you’re wrong.
Yeah, you’ve been a saint here. No moral judgements on your part.
I doubt you do, but I’ll try anyway. Voluntary != Involuntary.
But, yeah, depending on exactly how you hurt yourself in each of those instances, could have been funny. Finding something funny does not preclude feeling compassion. I think it’s largely an empathic response to begin with. Maybe you need the ability to laugh at yourself in the first place. I know that every time I’ve seriously injured myself, I’ve been able to laugh at myself at the same time. Even when the injury was in no way the result of an action I’d taken.
Here’s an example: about nine months back, I had a gall bladder attack that led to me having the first major surgery of my life. It started after I’d gotten back from a picnic. I was in the bathroom, doubled over with pain, and puking my guts out. After unloading my stomach, I look in the bowl, and the water’s bright red, with dark red chunks floating in it. I started to seriously lose my shit when I saw that. I was thinking, “Oh my God, I’m vomitting blood clots! I’m hemorraghing internally! I’m going to die! I’m going to die! I… had a blackberry pie for desert today.” And I laughed at myself. I was still in a hell of a lot of pain, sure, but that didn’t stop it from being fucking funny.
So what? They’re still badly hurt. Why does that make it okay to laugh at? The DEA guy isn’t showing off any more than a professional athelete was: he’s a guy doing his job, who fucked up and hurt himself. How’s that functionally different from the highdiver cracking her head on the diving board?
Well, she crashed into a diving board. That’s simply funny, and finding it so isn’t “fucked up,” it’s a completely normal, human reaction.
Well, my 68 year old father would disagree with you, as he was laughing almost as hard as I was. I’m hoping I’m similarly able to retain my sense of humor as I age. I think my odds are pretty good on that score.
And I don’t understnad the mindset that can’t comprehend that it’s possible to have more than one emotional reaction to a given situation. I feel bad for the woman who cracked her head on the diving board. I’m sure it hurt like hell, and she probably feels equally bad about not winning the competition. But feeling compassion for her does not cancel out my ability to recognize the essential hilarity in her situation, nor does my finding humor in her situation lessen the amount of compassion I feel for her. It seems you are unable to process laughter as anything other than insulting or derisive. But for most people, that’s not the case at all. Most people can laugh at someone, and care about them at the same time.
Your response to an event like that is almost entirely a result of socialization.
Injuries at sporting events are so common that there is a social script in place for how to respond “appropriately.” A person who laughs at an event like that is displaying a lack of values that are important to the group they are surrounded by, namely sportsmanship and empathy. If you know anything about psychology, you know that people don’t like to deviate from the group (not even you).
It would seem to you just as absurd that a person might see a violent crime being committed by do nothing about it. Still, no one called the police for Kitty Genovese. This was largely in part because there was a lack of social proof of how to respond appropriately in the situation–all observers were alone, in their apartments, so there were no other people present to help interpret the situation. Similarly, in a sporting event, there is social proof that the situation is serious and you see other people reacting in a serious way, and your behavior mirrors that.
Empathy is developed as a result of modeling and mimicking. Children can at a very young age mimic adults’ facial expressions, and soon learn to match those expressions with their emotions. As we get older, we can soon mimic their emotions, and later even imagine complete hypotheticals where we feel empathy for hypotehtical persons. This is called a switch from perception-based empathy to cognitive-based empathy.
Empathy is a contagion. People who score high in empathy are also more susceptible to “catching yawns” (I mean yawning after seeing another person yawn.) What this means for me and you is that people who are highly empathetic are most likely to have their emotional responses regulated by their environment.
Notice that you’re responding to this in terms of how appropriate laughter is, not how mentally healthy it may be. In terms of positive mental health, laughter is the best way of dealing with any stressful or traumatic event. If you can’t laugh at Hans Moleman getting hit in the crotch with a football, that says more about you than us.
Hoffman and Kohlberg are the big names in empathy related studies. I suggest reading Marc Hausers “Moral Minds” for a very good look at studies of the psychology of morality. And while you’re at it, pick up The Social Animal by Elliiot Aaronson–it’ll give you a good basis for how our actions are shaped by our environment.
You couldn’t laugh if you were truly empathetic about the diver who hit her head, because your emotions would be the same as hers. I’m not saying anything is wrong with you (it would be pretty unhealthy to feel empathy towards everything), but recognize the difference between sympathy and empathy.
