Humour

Had a tutorial about humour yesterday, and it brought to light the way it can be used, especially in a negative manner. In particular, it focused on situation where a patient might be talked about or joked about, and the morality of this. On the one hand, there's the issue of confidentiality and respecting patients, whilst on the other, it can be seen to be a method of stress relief for example. It was also interesting to note that students tended to side with the patients more (when they were at the brunt of a joke). Apart from the fact that medical students were also usually the target of jokes, I think the comraderie between patients and students lies in knowledge. Both are on the bottom of the ladder, with little knowledge on what's going on, what will happen next, and so on. With this is a sense of helplessness and lack of power - they are both at the mercy of the superiors above them. Let us hope that once I reach a level where there are those below me that I don't forget what it was like to feel helpless at the bottom.

Another focus in the session was that of 'safe' humour, and of all the things spoken of, the only one that was, was humour about one's self. Sex, politics, religion, and that about others (especially a disability) were out of the picture, and even that of events and situations were inconsistent. Here, you would need to know a least some of the background of your audience to be able to make sure you don't offend. This subject got me to thinking of the idea I had heard somewhere in the past about a hierarchy of conversation. The three things were: talking about people (gossip), situations, and ideas; this being in order from lowest to highest. I don't think necessarily that this was referring to a 'goodness' or 'badness' rating, but perhaps more of a abstractness and requirement for thought as one moved up. In any case, I got to thinking, and the conclusion I reached was also that the more objective you got, the 'safer' it was. The example above of humour about situations could be dangerous, as the obejctive idea of a situation could refer to a subjective situation that someone else might have had, which then might cause offense. So the thing being the least subjective, with the least chance to be able to refer to anyone in particular, ideas, should in theory be the safest for use in humour. This, of course, I cannot be sure of but I will try to look out in the future now and see if I can find any examples where humour about ideas has failed.