Humor as a Way to Live with Contradiction

How can we see the funny side and still take things seriously?

United Wisdom · Meaning and the Path · P-21-N01 · Andrey Zarinsh & Maria Evilkut

About this article

Imagine a meeting about reducing meetings. An hour later, the participants decide to create a working group. Someone quietly remarks, “As long as it gets enough meetings.” A few people smile. The problem remains, and the time is gone. Yet something previously hidden behind reasonable language becomes visible: the proposed change is already reproducing what it was meant to change.

A joke can hold that mismatch more quickly than a long explanation. We genuinely want to work more sensibly, and we know how to turn that desire into another procedure. Neither view cancels the other. Something funny may appear between them, provided the participants are willing and able to notice it.

This article considers humor that allows us to stay with an imperfect reality without immediately making it tidy. Living with contradiction means neither a therapeutic effect nor an obligation to endure. It means recognizing several aspects of experience and choosing what to do next. Philosophical accounts, a limited psychological study, and imagined everyday scenes will remain distinct. Together, they establish no general law of beneficial laughter.

1. When both statements are true

Some difficulties arise because a situation will not fit one definitive description. Someone loves having guests and feels relieved when the last one leaves. They want to finish important work and ceremoniously tidy the desk instead of writing the next paragraph. They value a loved one’s independence and have several precise suggestions about how it should be exercised. Recognizable as these scenes may be, they are not laws governing everyone.

We will call such collisions contradictions in the everyday sense. Logically, enjoying guests and wanting rest do not exclude one another: they concern different aspects of the visit. Yet they can feel like incompatible demands. “If I welcome the silence, I must have been a bad host.” Humor may reveal the unnecessary severity of that conclusion: hospitality has finished its shift, and the host has finally reached their own sofa.

The line does not establish that everything is fine. Perhaps the gathering was difficult, and next time should be arranged differently. Still, it permits a description without a single verdict. I wanted to see people. I am tired. Both belong here. A small comic form can place them side by side without making either disprove the other or forcing us to identify one supposedly authentic feeling.

Noticing the funny side also differs from having to laugh immediately. Someone can understand a joke without smiling and still see a new relationship between things. Or they can laugh to keep a conversation going without sharing the perspective. The visible response alone tells us neither that they feel better nor that anything has become clearer. Sometimes they want no joke at all; that is a valid position too.

Our working question is therefore specific: what becomes possible after the humorous perspective? Can we name the difficulty more accurately, return to work, acknowledge a limit? Or have we merely silenced something inconvenient? The same witty line can perform different work in different circumstances. Its significance may be easier to understand by watching the scene continue than by judging the joke as a perfectly constructed little object.

2. An expectation changes direction

In §54 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant connects laughter with the sudden collapse of a strained expectation. This is one philosophical account, rather than a universally established experimental formula. We can place it beside a concrete question: what direction of thought was prepared, and what arrived instead of the anticipated ending? Kant, §54, passage.

The meeting scene prepares an expectation of sensible time management. Creating another group formally belongs in a business discussion, yet sends it back along the old route. The remark introduces no random absurdity. It reveals something already happening. We see the familiar procedure from far enough away that its official appearance no longer conceals a simple question: does it actually help achieve the stated aim?

A similar turn can be imagined for a personal task list. Someone moves an unfinished item from notebook to notebook and observes, “At least this task gets to travel.” The work has not advanced, but its description changes. Instead of “I cannot do anything,” there is an observable action: moving the entry proved easier than beginning. Now the beginning, the task’s size, missing information, or abandoning the task can be discussed.

Wit is not inherently more accurate than serious language. A joke can distort, exaggerate, and omit essential details. Its strength is a quick turn of attention, which still needs examination. Someone who moved a task three times might have been waiting for another person or necessary materials. The comic account can be a good opening and a poor final explanation of what actually happened.

After a successful line, an entirely unfunny question may be useful: what did it reveal, and what did it leave out? If examination dissolves the joke, that need not be a loss. It has already made a mismatch visible. Another way of speaking can take over. Humor need not govern the entire conversation merely because it once redirected attention successfully and made people laugh.

3. A mismatch is not enough

Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren proposed the benign-violation theory: humor involves perceiving a violation as simultaneously acceptable or nonthreatening. We use the hypothesis stated in their paper without treating it as an exhaustive explanation. Perception is crucial here. Something seeming benign does not establish an absence of harm. McGraw & Warren, 2010.

Consider an ordinary scene. A friend arrives ten minutes late and announces that the city’s traffic jams have passed a personal reliability test. The person waiting may smile: nothing important was lost. If the delay cost them an important conversation, the same remark might sound different. The words have not changed; the circumstances and cost have. The funny side does not exist separately from the situation into which it arrives.

People also know different things about that cost. The late arrival may not know that the other person has only fifteen minutes left. A manager may consider a joke lighthearted while an employee concentrates on how to respond appropriately. “It is harmless” does not settle the matter. It expresses someone’s judgment, which cannot automatically be assigned to everybody present, especially when their positions differ.

For our purposes, living with contradiction requires keeping its sides visible. “I find it funny” can coexist with “This is uncomfortable for you.” If the second statement must be forbidden to preserve the first, the ease is one-sided. Every failed remark need not trigger a prolonged discussion. Sometimes we can stop, acknowledge the mistake, and return to what needed attention before the joke appeared.

A theory of perception supplies no permission for an action. Making people laugh proves neither appropriateness nor accuracy nor kindness. The distinction matters even for our own self-irony. A funny explanation can be invented for almost any delay. Consequences remain a separate question, and no satisfying punch line answers it for the person who still has something to do.

4. Seeing a familiar role from outside

In Laughter, Bergson considers the comic through rigidity resembling mechanical action where living adaptability is expected. He also emphasizes laughter’s social character and its corrective, sometimes humiliating direction. This philosophical interpretation is not applied to every case here. It reminds us that laughter can open a perspective or enforce conformity. Bergson, chapters I and III.

Imagine someone announcing an evening of complete spontaneity. It begins at seven, includes free conversation until eight, and offers unplanned enjoyment along a preselected route. What may be funny is not order itself but its persistence: even freedom must be secured through a schedule. Recognizing that persistence can matter to someone tired of being responsible for every minute and still reluctant to release a single one.

Yet the perspective can become another rigid role: “You always have to control everything.” A living person becomes a mechanism again, this time in other people’s description. Every suggestion confirms the established character. Even an attempt to change prompts another remark. Humor that began by revealing rigidity becomes rigid itself, failing to distinguish yesterday’s habit from today’s action.

More careful self-irony stays near the episode. “I seem to have scheduled an unscheduled evening.” The action is recognizable, and something can be done about it. There is no requirement to abandon planning, justify every preference, or welcome every future joke on the subject. One moment is enough: a useful skill has exceeded the task and started defining it for us.

The change of scale matters more than the strength of laughter. A person can plan well and sometimes overplan, be attentive and occasionally miss the obvious. A particular mismatch need not become a complete account of their character. Humor can leave room for movement: a role is seen from outside, adjusted, or set aside. It ceases to be the only way to inhabit the room, while important responsibilities remain.

5. What the study allows us to say

In a study by Andrea Samson, Alana Glassco, Ihno Lee, and James Gross, 57 participants reinterpreted unpleasant pictures humorously or seriously and rated their emotions, with another rating a week later. Humor was harder and succeeded less often. In analyses retaining successful and partly successful attempts, it produced greater reductions in reported negative emotion. Failed attempts were excluded. Samson and colleagues, 2014.

The limits matter: self-reports, specific pictures, prior instruction, and a predominantly young sample. There was no separate positive but nonhumorous comparison condition. The study therefore establishes no universal advantage for joking or reason to answer every life difficulty with humor. The laboratory result concerns the task studied, not someone’s capacity to withstand any circumstances.

The difficulty of producing humor is particularly relevant here. A tired person may be expected to find the funny side and make a conversation easier for everyone else. Yet the approach did not always succeed even in a prepared task. Treating an absence of jokes as a wrong attitude toward life would be unfounded. Direct description, asking for help, or declining to reinterpret something now are also available choices.

Another distinction concerns the outcome. A change in reported feeling is not a change in circumstances. Someone can view a transport delay differently without restoring the timetable. They can smile at an overlong list while the workload stays unchanged. Appropriate humor may accompany problem-solving. Between a smile and a solved problem, however, remain information, agreements, resources, and actions that a clever formulation cannot replace.

No technique of “Make a joke and you will feel better” is offered here. The study supports taking humorous reinterpretation seriously as one investigated response to unpleasant material. Our editorial proposal is narrower than a general recommendation: sometimes someone finds a comic angle and can continue. Sometimes they do not. Either way, a suitable next step can be sought without making a sense of humor a compulsory admission ticket to reasonable action.

6. A pause, or a way never to return

Two conversations can begin with the same joke and end differently. A couple discuss spending. One observes that their budget is developing confidently in the fantasy genre. Both smile. In one version, they open the records and examine which assumptions failed. In another, the conversation ends and repeats a month later with a fresh line. The opening remark alone cannot tell these stories apart.

In the first, humor made a brief pause within the work. In the second, it may have helped postpone it. Even here, there is no need to assign a hidden motive immediately. They might be tired, lack the figures, or have chosen a poor moment. The observable question is whether they returned and what changed. If a decision remains missing, that can be said directly without arguing about who was hiding behind laughter.

Living with contradiction here means recognizing both sides: the discussion is unpleasant, and it is still necessary. A joke can express that duality. It becomes less useful if one side is erased: since we laughed, there is no problem. Someone may say that conversation now feels easier while an answer is still needed. That continuation does not spoil the humor; it clarifies its place in the discussion.

The opposite extreme treats every smile as an escape from seriousness. People can discuss something difficult while noticing its funny side, without becoming less responsible. Look at the work itself: are the figures clear, disagreements named, commitments made? A solemn tone guarantees nothing either. It cannot substitute for agreements being fulfilled. Tone and responsibility need not be confused in either direction.

A practical guide avoids judgments of character: after the joke, returning remains possible. Returning to the question, admitting an error, hearing an objection. If humor becomes the final word and every clarification is dismissed as tedious, the conversation has narrowed. If it permits a few more honest sentences, its role may differ. We need not call humor either salvation or a defense against truth in advance. What follows reveals more.

7. Laughing at an episode without erasing yourself

Self-irony can keep an error proportionate. Someone explains at length how a new filing system will simplify everything, then cannot find the labeled folder. “The system has already achieved a higher security clearance.” In this imagined scene, the gap between intention and result becomes funny. It can be acknowledged without concluding that the person is incapable of organizing anything reasonably.

“I am hopeless” can also be said with laughter. The comic tone then accompanies a broad claim. It does not describe one missing folder; it seems to explain the whole person. Others might laugh awkwardly, offer reassurance, or accept the familiar image. A single episode cannot establish an inner condition. We can still notice how far the final formulation has traveled from the particular event.

One place to look for the difference is the next available action. After “I invented a classified archive,” you can change labels, check the arrangement, or ask a colleague where it becomes confusing. After “I ruin everything,” the task expands to the size of a life. This is no ban on harsh jokes about yourself. It invites attention to the description left when the comic tone fades: a mishap, a discussable habit, or a fixed verdict.

Sometimes self-irony also becomes an advance payment for participation: someone mocks themselves to get ahead of a possible group response. That motive should not be assigned to everyone who jokes about their shortcomings. Still, having a choice matters. Tell a story without insulting yourself, leave a mistake uncommented on, or ask others to stop. One laugh at yourself gives nobody perpetual permission to repeat the same characterization.

Living with a mismatch between yourself and an ideal does not mean becoming a convenient target. You can recognize the funny side and decline public discussion. You can correct an error seriously. Proportion lies less in how much self-irony you display than in keeping an action open to examination without letting a caricature replace the person, even if you originally drew it yourself and did so willingly.

8. Shared laughter, different positions

Humor can briefly provide a shared description. On a rainy trip, someone says that the city tour is turning into a comprehensive survey of awnings. The route has failed, yet the group finds a way to talk about it together. That is one possible outcome. Someone soaked, cold, or spending their last free hours might find nothing funny, even while others sincerely enjoy the remark.

Togetherness need not require matching reactions. Laugh and suggest going indoors. Do not laugh and remain part of the group. Trouble starts when a smile becomes a membership test: “Come on, everyone else is fine.” The contradiction between some people’s enjoyment and another’s discomfort is then resolved at the latter’s expense. They are asked to stop disturbing the shared picture and adjust their expression instead.

Different positions deserve particular attention at work. The person setting a deadline and the person doing the work can hear a joke about heroic efforts differently. Shared humor remains possible. But a laughing room does not establish agreement about the workload. After the joke, deadlines and resources can be discussed separately, leaving people free to answer without the expected cheerful tone.

We need only a modest boundary here, leaving a fuller discussion of humiliating humor for another occasion. A joke helps people stay with contradiction if differences of position can still be named. If someone must disappear from the account for everybody else to feel at ease, the shared story is incomplete. Sometimes it is repaired by acknowledging another experience and moving from judging mood to a concrete need or decision.

Attention to appropriateness does not require screening every sentence before ordinary conversation. It means noticing responses, changing tone, and refusing to make intention the final argument. We can get it wrong, stop, and continue differently. Humor stays responsive when a remark need not defeat the reaction of the person it was meant to reach, and when conversation allows more than one pace and mood.

9. Lightness without indifference

There is a way of viewing every serious effort that makes it ridiculous beforehand. Someone cares about quality: trying too hard. Admits an error: performing nobility. Hopes for agreement: naive. The commentary risks very little. Whatever happens can be translated into the same familiar tone. Meanwhile, the variety of reality quietly shrinks to one response that fits everything.

We will call this a cynical way of describing things, rather than diagnosing a person. Unlike humor that holds a contradiction, it removes one side in advance. Effort can contain nothing worth attending to; hope contains only delusion. Wit may remain, but openness diminishes. There is no need to investigate how this case differs from the last or what consequences actually followed the action.

A more flexible view allows awkwardness and value together. A gift is unevenly wrapped because the giver tried hard to do it themselves. A long speech about simplicity becomes complicated, while the wish to speak clearly remains sensible. We can see the mismatch without canceling the purpose. Good intentions do not justify every outcome. They are simply another part of an evaluation that becomes more precise by containing more than one element.

One way to examine an ironic formulation is to ask whether anything can be said plainly afterward. Name what matters, what you want, or what you will take responsibility for. If a direct proposal cannot survive without immediate self-mockery, irony may be taking too much room in this conversation. That does not require abandoning a favored style forever. Another style can be chosen temporarily so that a particular thought becomes audible.

Lightness then does not mean that nothing matters. It means that important things need not look flawless at every moment. Someone can participate seriously and see a project’s comic side. They can discover an error in an attractive idea, adjust it, and continue. Humor can leave room outside both solemnity and contempt when those tones begin demanding equally final judgments about everything that happens.

10. Life continues after the joke

Return to the meeting. The working-group remark has landed, and people have smiled. What next? They can schedule another meeting and retain a pleasant memory of their wit. Or they can ask which decision needs a shared hour and which can be settled by a brief written reply. The joke does not choose. It momentarily made a perspective available; that perspective still needs connecting to action.

The action may be small: removing an item, acknowledging that a task has lost its point, or changing the discussion. Sometimes external conditions cannot be altered, but a more accurate statement of one’s position becomes possible. A joke can also remain a pleasant episode without further consequences. Every laugh need not be useful. Otherwise humor becomes another activity required to submit a performance report.

Yet when we speak specifically of living with contradiction, the continuation matters. There is no obligation to reconcile every desire immediately, make the situation fair, or find an ideal answer. For a while, experience need not be perfectly orderly. Want the result and fear beginning. Love people and tire of company. Care about the work and notice the absurdity of your solemnity. Choices can remain within that multiplicity.

Humor here resembles changing our distance from a familiar scene. This is an editorial metaphor, not a measured inner mechanism. Very close, one detail fills the view. A little farther away, its relationship to other details appears. Stepping back need not mean leaving. We can return to the work, the conversation, and our imperfect selves, then act with attention to what became visible, without turning it into a final verdict.

Perhaps the significance of such a joke lies in the preserved possibility of continuing. A mismatch has been noticed; it need be neither denied nor declared the last truth about everything. It takes its place among other circumstances. Seriousness returns without having to look monumental. Laughter ends, and life remains complex enough to examine and open enough that one successful sentence does not already contain the next step.

What this means in practice

Consider a recent small episode in which an expectation and outcome diverged. Choose your own action or an ordinary shared situation rather than someone else’s vulnerability. This is an invitation to reflect, not a validated psychological method. If the episode is too unpleasant or you do not want to revisit it, no comic angle is required. A calm, literal account can make it understandable without trying to change your mood.

First, name two sides: “I want an evening off” and “I keep adding items to the plan for my evening off.” Do not rush to explain your character. Notice which actions collided in this case. Try a short sentence holding both: “Rest is still awaiting approval.” This is an invented example, not a formula to apply to everyone or every similar situation.

Then examine what lies behind the line. Has a specific task turned into a general accusation? Has a real constraint vanished: another person’s schedule, necessary work, insufficient help? A funny account can be incomplete. Add a direct one: “Stopping is difficult because I have not decided what can wait.” If that explanation is more useful, it is enough. The comic effect need not be preserved at any cost.

Name an available continuation. Postpone an item, agree on a stopping time, ask for specific help, or acknowledge that tonight cannot be free and stop promising yourself the impossible. Action need not be immediate; information or rest may come first. Simply distinguish what changed in the perspective from what changed in the circumstances. Neither should pass for the other to give an exercise an attractive ending.

If you share the line, leave someone free not to laugh. Ask whether that tone suits the moment, or notice the response and adjust. A joke is no assignment for its listener. It may fail, and conversation has other ways to continue. Sometimes the useful outcome is that you have named a contradiction more precisely and can now discuss it without continually defending your clever formulation.

Connections between approaches

Approach	What it helps us notice	Limit of application
Kant	A turn in a prepared expectation	The philosophical formulation does not explain every laugh
McGraw and Warren	Simultaneous appraisals of violation and acceptability	Seeming benign does not establish an absence of harm
Bergson	Rigidity of a familiar role and laughter’s social dimension	Laughter can enforce conformity rather than offer freedom
Samson and colleagues	Possibilities and difficulty of humorous reinterpretation	57 participants, pictures, self-reports; failed attempts excluded
The article’s proposal	A comic perspective can coexist with responsible continuation	An editorial position, not another scientific theory

Primary sources and research

Immanuel Kant. Critique of Judgement, §54, passage. The English passage on expectation and laughter was consulted, not the complete treatise. Philosophical primary source in translation; historical physiology is not presented as contemporary science.
A. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren. Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1141–1149, 2010. DOI: 10.1177/0956797610376073. Abstract and The Benign-Violation Hypothesis section consulted; part of the first study’s method inspected. All five experiments were not independently checked; the theoretical formulation is used here.
Henri Bergson. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Translated by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell; Project Gutenberg #4352. Relevant passages of chapters I and III on rigidity, sociality, and corrective laughter were consulted, not the whole book. A philosophical account, not a universal empirical law.
Andrea C. Samson, Alana L. Glassco, Ihno A. Lee, and James J. Gross. Humorous Coping and Serious Reappraisal: Short-Term and Longer-Term Effects. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 10(3), 571–581, 2014. DOI: 10.5964/ejop.v10i3.730. Abstract, method, results, discussion, and limitations read. Licensed CC BY 3.0. Of 61 recruited participants, 57 remained in the final sample; attempts reported as unsuccessful were excluded from analysis. Everyday or clinical benefit is not claimed.

About the authors

Andrey Zarinsh is the author and founder of United Wisdom. He explores inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut is a co-author of United Wisdom. Alongside her research, she seeks to test these ideas in practice and observe how the principles of unity and mutual understanding work in real life between people and cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.