Years ago my father read a magazine and stumbled upon a title that he couldn't comprehend. He passed it to my mother that remarked that although she recognized some characters, the whole things are incomprehensible. Then my mother passed it to my sister who immediately read it aloud. That brought laughter from both my parents.There are 2 things I learned from that episode:
The title was of Latin alphabets, stylized to make it looks like Chinese characters. Due to the presentation, my parents try to read it in Chinese. On the other hand my sister, lacking the skill in Chinese, read in the only way she knows.
- KISS Principle.
- As the title said.
To contemplate: One who makes swift decisions is often admired / appreciated. However, how many people try to consider how each decision was made? Was it after careful contemplation; considering alternatives, implications, feasibility, oppositions|supports, cost|benefit of each alternative? Or was it simply because he only saw a nail and whacked at it as usual?
The Key to Good Humor is Knowledge
First a disclaimer: I'm using the word knowledge very loosely here. I'm not limiting the definition to text book stuff, but also local slang, culture (name of food, peculiarity of dialect / accent, etc) and so on -- every useless bits you can memorize. Info may be a better term, but I prefer knowledge.My brother doesn't like to socialize with the bookworms because "they tell lame jokes". True, to have someone explaining every joke is kinda lame. However, if one's level of knowledge / exposure is on par with the surroundings, jokes would have more hits than misses. Either learn or leave.
Why do crude-jokes (especially sex-related) have the highest rate of delivery? Because the knowledge are inherent (well, unless one has very strict parents and is a very obedient child). That's also the reason why slapstick works like a charm. No brainer.
As jokes become more subtle, more background knowledge would be demanded. For example, to appreciate a joke in a series, the audience had to watched the previous episode, understand the character and so on ... read more here - I can't put it in better words.
Straying from the topic for a bit - while looking for the link above, I stumbled upon this. Published over a year later but has a Copyright?
Final Words
I'm not advocating the hyper-active knowledge gathering. Sometimes extra knowledge would only serve as hindrance rather than helpful. It may gets in the way of applying KISS principle, or worse. A partial knowledge may be misleading when one doesn't know the context of its application: when, where, how, under what condition &/ who has the capability to apply.The wealth of knowledge certainly help as foundation, but foundation is the basic, not the goal in itself. The value of a person should then be decided on how one can apply, adapt/re-purpose or enhance an existing knowledge or create new ones.
Absorb knowledge in moderation, don't be a hammer specialist, but don't be a tool collector for the sake of collecting. It would be silly to own a tool that one doesn't know its name, much less its usage.
Humbly admit that we're ignorant to some topics and stay hungry on the topics that held our interest.
Never underestimate one who has less knowledge; he/she is not lesser, merely different.
Swing your hammer proudly, but learn to use other tool(s) as well.
The most difficult to apply:
Don't judge by the speaker, but by the content. It's in human nature to pass judgement; and once a label is pasted, it sticks, even when further revelations should shed light that initial labeling was wrong.
