middlepeace.com

There are various search leading to middlepeace website. One of them is the concept of  “Jokes.”
I am glad that middlepeace website has send this message out there that we can not just create jokes to the cost of people’s race, color, ethnicity, gender, accent, physical shape, nationality, or any other characteristics that differ people from one another.
I can realize that people try to learn about the real meaning of jokes in our culture.  Someone searched for “jokes on making fun of an individual.” This concept of making fun of an individual even in the format of a joke is called: Bullying.   What is unfortunate is that in our Persian language, the word “bullying” does not really show the depth of this act.

We tend to call everything as a “joke”, even when we are really bullying someone.  Regrettably in our Iranian culture, bullying is a top to down act and no one escapes this horrible behavior by those who believe they are “joking” and those who do this act on purpose.  The sad story is that the act of bullying is part of our everyday life (back home and everywhere) passed down from those in power who intend to hurt people based on their “different”characteristics: Religion, race, wealth, status, and a vast variety of other reasons.  In all those  bullying type actions that are simply called “Jokes”, people are hurt in all levels: physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.  We have to discuss this topic as it has never been done before.

Bullying with excuse of “making jokes” happens everyday in all kind of relationships. We have to stop it by discussing  why it is not acceptable.  We can not hide behind the facade of “jokes” anymore. Bullying someone or making joke of an individual is not funny.
Poran Poregbal
Www.middlepeace.com

We should be able to redirect our jokes from negative to positive, from subjective to objective, from biased to unbiased and from racist to non-racist.

Now we may get scared from ever telling any jokes. The purpose of this article is to emphasize the positive aspects of joke-telling in our culture.

A majority of our people tend to be happy, positive, and energetic people who love to sing, dance, laugh, and have fun. We have to appreciate anything that supports the notion of happiness in our culture, anything that makes our people resilient and strong in dealing with many complex life situations.

We may remember those winter evenings when we were tucked in the Korsi (the fireplace in the middle of the room) and stream of stories, jokes, and funny oral narratives would make us warm and happy.

Granparents would read from Ferdousi and stories of Shahnameh, or just take their time to say funny stories about their own childhood. We have a history of making jokes of hard moments of life and this is resiliency.

Sigmund Freud writes about jokes in 1905. I guess jokes have always had functions in human story. Freud in his work “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious” argues tat jokes are “judgments which produces a comic contrast” (1963).

With judgments (gezavat, pishdavari) he means of course all the things that we relate to someone or some group of people, while these are only our ideas not the reality necessary.

The contrast is about the differences between what people perceive something be like and how the event unfolds in that joke. In our Persian cultural of jokes, we make fun of someone who is being depicted as less than us, we as modern, educated, and wise people who know more than the person doing wrongful things. The contrast or the distance to what is perceived as “normal” makes the story supposedly “funny.”

Freud talks about the relation to the unconscious, the things that we are not aware of or do not know about their whereabouts. If we joke about a woman who is pictured as a sex object, would this mean that our men like that idea of a “free woman”? This is a huge discussion. I am not sure what the answer is, yet we can think about what is going on behind those walls we create in our jokes. We can question the world of “ugliness” that may exist in the collective thoughts when these jokes are being heard without any reaction.

Freud also argues that joking is playing with ideas, it is about attitudes toward the object of our jokes, and it is about a playful judgment. Jokes looks at the differences between people rather than similarities, why it is important to be objective, non-discriminatory, and non-biased when we deal with our differences.

For sure we are all different and we can celebrate those differences with funny, non-harming, and non-directive jokes.

What if we could give the funny spirit back to our our jokes? If we could say jokes about “someone” without referring to any nation, ethnical group or even any gender (male/female)?

What if we could make jokes without referring to a certain accent, or without attributing women to sex objects or else?

What if we could use our ancestor’s method of telling funny stories about things we do? This is a way of self reflecting, a way of self-criticizing and a way of showing that we have tolerance. We all need to be happy and we have to work on creating fun moments for all of us.

Hope can do it all?!

November 22, 2007

www.middlepeace.com

Culture of violence creates its own spheres of interpersonal relationships.  Culture is around us and we live with it.  However, at times we forget how we create our own cultures. Part of this culture creation is how we tell stories or jokes.

We construct and perpetuate the notion of violence in ways we may not be aware of.  We promote a sense of  hopelessness, abuse, neglect, rape, and various deviations when we engage in telling narratives that only have violent contents.

We internalize violence and desensitize cruelty.

We compare, contrast, confront, label, stigmatize, and generalize negativity and violence enforced upon us.

Instead of rejecting these dark areas impacting our lives, we are incorporating them into our lives. What do I mean?

Have you noticed that war, killings, murders, death, hangings, executions, assassinations, and torture have found a way into our daily life?

How? I will tell you!

How many jokes we hear about the war and the way people were dismembered and disabled?

How many jokes we tell about the way people were killed by chemicals, gas, mass weapon destruction, bombs, rockets, missiles and all that?

How many jokes we share about how people are being punished and tortured in “Hell”/ “Jahanam” as we say?

How many jokes we know regarding how men and women would be punished differently due to adult life they choose to have?

How many jokes we tell about people who are being given choice for the way they want to be dead? (Those choices are about how less painful dead could be!)

How many jokes we make about clothes restrictions for women in our home country and what the responses of women would be?

How many jokes we hear about child molestation, addictions, prostitution, theft, and other social issues no one wants to deal with it in our home country?

The lists go on and on……

There is a certain pattern in all these jokes; they are projecting the hard reality caused by human caused disasters.

Why is that?

May be we try to make fun these horrible experiences that makes no sense whatsoever!

Now the question is:

When did killing and torture become this normal in our culture?

When did we lose feelings /emotions about people being punished for any reason?

Why should punishment be the response for everything?

Why we are this much discouraged and hopeless?

Why we have let a culture of violence encompass our daily life?

Why we are perpetuating what is not right, what is not humanistic, and what is not appropriate?

What do we think we are passing down to our next generations?

Think about this!

What is your idea behind all the horrible jokes we tell each other?

I assume we can not joke around topics such as happiness, joy, love, partnership, and kindness in our jokes?

I assume you would say Jokes are supposed to be this way!

But, haven’t we lost the point?!

July 26, 2007

www.middlepeace.com