I remember Alan Watts saying time and time again throughout the course of his lectures that humor/jokes/laughing is one of the most constructive things you can do. Him saying that has always stuck with me. I've personally noticed that when I smile at random people with a kind of detached sense of "I'm not judging you, you are wonderful as you are, and I love you no matter what" throughout my day, people, most of the time, return the smile with a smile!
A laughing person is always infectious, right? Whatever worries you have, or anxieties and depressions that may torment you, if you find yourself in the presence of a bubbly laughing care-free soul, don't you find that you too catch drift of that super-positive feeling they are emanating through their smiles and laughter?
I feel that you can get away with anything if noone can fool you into taking whatever-it-is seriously with gloom.
Be as the wind, and nothing can blow you over!
I don't have access to the full paper, but I did find the summary interesting, copied below.
______________________
Laughing bonds: a multidisciplinary inquiry into the social information processes of human laughterAuthor(s):
Jorge Navarro ( Aragon Institute of Health Science Zaragoza Spain )
Raquel del Moral ( Aragon Institute of Health Science Zaragoza Spain )
Pedro C Marijuán ( Aragon Institute of Health Science Zaragoza Spain )
Citation:
Jorge Navarro , Raquel del Moral , Pedro C Marijuán , (2016) "Laughing bonds: a multidisciplinary inquiry into the social information processes of human laughter", Kybernetes, Vol. 45 Iss: 8, pp. -
Abstract:
Purpose
A new core hypothesis on laughter is presented. It has been built by putting together ideas from several disciplines: neurodynamics, evolutionary neurobiology, social networks, and communication studies. The hypothesis focuses on the social nature of laughter and contributes to ascertain its evolutionary origins in connection with the cognitive and social-emotional functions it performs.
Design/methodology/approach
An in-depth examination of laughter in the social communication context and along the life cycle of the individual is performed. This instinctive behaviour that appears as a ‘virtual’, non-physical form of ‘grooming’ would serve as a bond-making instrument in human groups. Further, the neurodynamic events underlying laughter production—and particularly the form of the neural entropy gradients—are congruent with a sentic hypothesis about the different emotional contents of laughter and their specific effects on bonding dynamics.
Findings
The new behavioural and neurodynamic tenets introduced about this unusual sound feature of our species justify the ubiquitous presence it has in social interactions at large and along the life cycle of the individual. Laughter, far from being a curious evolutionary relic or a rather inconsequential innate behaviour, should be considered as a highly efficient tool for inter-individual problem solving and for maintenance of social bonds.
Originality/value
Laughter, we will conclude, has been evolutionarily kept and augmented as an optimized tool for unconscious cognitive-emotional problem solving, and at the same time as a useful way to preserve the essential fabric of social bonds in close-knit groups and within human societies at large.
Genesis is Now, the Mind is Incarnate.