I love the idea of being conscious.  I think most of us do, frankly, because we are in control when we are conscious.  If we fall asleep on the team bus or at our friend's house, what are we going to do to keep other people from messing with us?  If we are left in a vegetative state after an unfortunate accident, who is going to decide whether or not we should continue to live that way?  If we experience especially vivid nightmares, why do we fear going to sleep?  In each of these situations, when we lose consciousness, we lose control.  But as long as we are awake, we can maintain control.  Right?

A recent article in The Economist details a line of research that counters our intuitive notions regarding consciousness.  We are quickly accumulating evidence that consciousness may be a product of our behavior, rather than the determinant of behavior that we always assume it to be.  It turns out that the brain activity that drives a behavior is often well underway before the person ever has the experience of having a conscious thought.  Think about that for a minute.  Suppose you decide to raise your hand in class to answer the teacher's question.  Before you are ever aware of making that decision, your brain has already begun the neural processes necessary to lift your arm.  Your brain is raising your hand before you make the conscious decision to raise your hand.

All of which begs the obvious question of whether or not consciousness exists.  And if it does exist, what exactly is it?  We intuitively feel like consciousness guides and determines our behavior.  We decide to raise our hand in class, so then we do it.  We choose to run from the rabid wolverine, so then we do it.  But do we intuitively feel that way simply because we want to believe that we work this way?  Is it possible that we form our conscious thoughts and decisions around the things that our brain is already doing?  It is seeming more and more likely that "conscious decisions" are simply decisions that our brain made which we then assume responsibility for.  Does that still count as active decision-making?  Do we really want the Twinkie off the shelf at the convenience store, or do we just talk ourselves into wanting it after our brain decides to buy it?  What does it even mean to "want" something in the first place?

A St. Patrick's Day Joke (courtesy of Ms. Gray in 3rd period AP Economics):

Q: Why don't the Irish iron their 4-leaf clovers?

A: They don't want to press their luck.

Ok, so I didn't say that it's a good joke...  Like most people, I enjoy jokes.  A good joke can make me laugh or put me in a better mood.  Good jokes can impress me, make me like someone more, and ease tension.  Like most people, I just feel positive feelings when I hear a good joke, and I enjoy it when a friend treats me to a dose of wit.

But as with most people, I have a tough time remembering jokes.  A really tough time.  When a joke-telling session breaks out, my mind goes blank.  I've got 2 or 3 good jokes committed to memory, and I'll fall back on those when the need arises.  But other than that, I'm pretty much useless when it comes to joke-telling.  For a long time, I couldn't understand why.  I like jokes, and I think I have a decent sense of humor.  Jokes elicit positive emotions in me.  It is well-documented at this point that we remember things better if they induce emotions in us.  You would think that these things that we call jokes, things that make us laugh and smile and bond and feel, would stick to us like glue.  But for a surprising number of people, they don't.  Why not?

If we want to answer this question, we need to think about what it means to be funny.  What is the difference between a good joke and a bad one?  Between a person who is funny and a person who is not?  Surely there are movies that make us fall out of our seat laughing, and others that try to do the same, but fail miserably.  What makes something or someone funny?  I think we can find the answer in one of my favorite William James quotes:

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.  A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."

I like this quote a lot.  To me, humor is all about the unexpected.  Something is funny if it is somehow logical (i.e. related to common sense), but still makes a connection that you wouldn't have otherwise made.  That's the dancing part.  Funny things surprise us, they delight us with their clever nature.  They push our minds to think in ways that we may not have thought before.  That unexpected, surprising nature of the obvious is what consititutes humor to me.  We find some kind of intrinsic joy in seeing the world in new ways, so perhaps humor is simply a realization of one of these new ways.

Back to jokes then...  We still haven't figured out why jokes are so difficult to remember.  This train of thought started for me with a NY Times article I found online (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/science/17angi.html?ref=science).  The article is about memory more generally, and is perhaps a bit scattershot, but it makes some intriguing points about humor.  Our memory is much more past-dependent than we sometimes realize.  Our previous experiences, our likes and dislikes, etc. are all influential in steering our memory.  If humor consists of a jaunt from the expected to the unexpected, we may not have developed the necessary pathways to neurally model that joke and retain it in memory.  A joke is funny precisely because it is unexpected, but it can be difficult to remember for the exact same reason.  The best of jokes can be ruined instantly by poor timing, lousy delivery, etc.  Jokes are precise and exact, and they are unflinching in these demands.  If we haven't created the neural mechanisms to psychologically represent those forays into the unexpected, it's probably not surprising that we either forget jokes entirely, or we remember them just barely well enough to butcher them horribly upon re-telling.

Or sometimes we just steal our jokes from fellow teachers and blame them when the students don't think they are very funny...