‘Lighten- up’; humour, playfulness and plain silliness is seriously powerful stuff!

It’s arguably the quickest way to turn people towards an idea, principle or joint purpose by allowing us to share our feelings, thoughts and attitudes in a non-threatening creative way.

In my piece on ‘Stay Something Stupid’; I talked about how critical humour was to the long term health and happiness of our relationships at work, socially and at home. I guess it also applies to the 'serious' business of politics.

If it comes from a genuine place, humour is a brilliant form of emotional dancing; a verbal jousting that connects us. It’s not just a social mood enhancer, it’s the most effective way of diffusing tension, attracting and holding someone’s attention and, when applied in regular doses, an effective way of building positivity and resourcefulness across our relationships.

Jon Stewart has done an excellent job in demonstrating this by teaming up with fellow Comedy Central presenter Steven Colbert with their ‘Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear’ that took place in Washington yesterday. Here’s a short video on the lead up to it reviewed by Al Jezzera:

It seems the serious business of politics which so often starts from the negative now often rapidly descends into a psychotic frenzy of hyperbole and desperate fear. In the face of the ridiculous Tea-Party movement in the states and rise in similar fear mongering groups in the UK, I for one think it’s time to use humour and down-to-earth authenticity to start talking about what we really want in our society above what we should be afraid of.

‘Humour is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective; an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.’ ~ Christopher Morley

The mistake people make is to equate humour with lack of intellectual debate or reverence for what’s at stake. I think the truth is quite the opposite. Often politics and media will come up with sweeping statements and dogmatic positions that offer no platform for dialogue and understanding. Chose your position; 'you're either for something or against it'.

If we continue to use fear and defensiveness to get people to act, we create battle lines of inflexible paranoid positions based on increasingly warped ideology.

The first question in politics is often are you left or right wing? Well both, neither, centre ... who cares? Extreme positions on either are detrimental to society. The real question is how are we going to deal with uncertainty, question fear and rhetoric so that we’re not being brainwashed into thinking we’re victims that need parental politics to save us from ‘them’? Instead we need to start developing new socio-economic- political models that creating economic and emotional prosperity for all.

For me it comes back to social and emotional Well-Being. Fear simply doesn’t work. It’s time to realise that humour together with kindness and compassion are arguably the most powerful tools we have to help each other realise common aims.

People need to be the change rather than waiting for Obama fairy-godfather dreams to save them. It starts with how we connect to and understand each other.

I leave you with top comic Imran Usuf who summed it up brilliantly at his show in Edinburgh earlier this year. His message; communicate a better ideal!

Not everyone's comfortable relating on an emotional level, even if you're using humour. What do you think?

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Thank you

Kuldeep