A sense of the absurd can help us to be more creative. It feels particularly important in 2020 when many of us are feeling alarmed and sometimes baffled by events in the world.<\/p>\n
So we were interested in this article, spotted by our friend\u00a0Marigo Raftopoulos:\u00a0A touch of absurdity can help you wrap your mind about reality<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n It highlights two different, somewhat opposing, ways\u00a0in which we can respond to absurd things happening. One response is to meet the challenge to our sense of\u00a0normality\u00a0by\u00a0doubling down on our existing beliefs<\/strong>. Two groups were given alternative stories to read, a surreal one by Kafka and a more straightforward one by Aesop. The Kafka readers “compensated for their feelings of uncertainty by reaffirming their cultural identity”\u00a0– significantly more so than the Aesop readers.<\/p>\n On the other hand, we could respond to challenging art or ideas by\u00a0allowing our worldview to change<\/strong>. The article suggests that humour is a key factor in generating the more creative, rather than conservative, response:<\/p>\n “Paradoxically, humour can similarly diminish the psychological effects of the absurd. In another of Heine\u2019s studies, volunteers read a story based on an iconoclastic Monty Python sketch. As expected, they demonstrated fluid compensation as a result (in the form of harsher moral judgments) \u2013 but only if they didn\u2019t understand that it was a joke.”<\/em><\/p>\n So when facilitating, we might want to think about how we ourselves respond when\u00a0uncomfortable and strange things happen. Perhaps by responding more cheerfully we can help encourage more\u00a0imaginative thinking, rather than digging heels in.<\/p>\n Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> to get regular articles like this one.<\/p>\n (Photo by\u00a0Steve Harrris<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If we can encounter the absurd with a sense of humour, we can use it to enable creative thought, rather than becoming more entrenched in our worldview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1611"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1934,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions\/1934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}