Tag Archive for: Understanding People

Honesty

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When I see honesty, and I try to show other people, I am not always able to get what I see across to other people. I don’t know how to, actually. How do you, for example, point out sincerity when you see it? How do you identify a genuine expression?

It’s a bit of a quagmire for me.

When someone lies, I can usually point out the clues that I see that support my hypothesis, and usually people will see some of them. I can identify inconsistencies in fact, and behavior. I can point out smirks as well as smiles that don’t make sense, or that have odd timing. I can identify inordinate pauses in speech, strange word usage, or clues to fear when no fear should be present. But with truth, there is nothing to point out. There are no red flags, no oddities, nothing unusual. The behavior in question is normal, as expected. The emotions are genuine and sincere.

Read moreMany times when I watch people who are trying to identify honesty, I detect an emotional bias that skews their ability to register emotions, and facts correctly. Because of their belief system, they want to see something, yet no matter how hard they try to scale their fundamental beliefs, they are unable to do so. People will even speculate that the person speaking didn’t mean exactly what they said, and the person I am watching won’t think twice about rearranging the spoken words to make the message mean what they think it should mean.

Other times, people are not able to interpret emotions: they misinterpret the subtle expressions of sadness, and mistakenly assume that the sad person is callous and cold and showing no emotions. Many times, people miss the expression of contempt completely, as if it never had flashed before them.

One thing is for sure: I think our emotions are one of the biggest obstacles we have to seeing the truth. That is one reason I avoid writing about, or talking about politics and religion—two highly emotional subjects that no matter what is the truth, we will convince ourselves our beliefs are correct, and that others are misjudging the true meaning of what really is…

Comedians

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My husband loves the show Last Comic Standing. He can’t get enough of it, and I am not surprised. As a life partner, I am far from comedic. I am way too serious in life — so hence I understand his need for comic relief.

Since we’ve started watching the Last Comic Standing, I’ve really taken an interest in the comics. There is something very predictive about these people. They, as a collective group, share traits about them that make them unique.

Read more I never realized this before, but if you put a group of people in a room and asked me to pick out the “natural” comics after a one-line introduction from them – I can do it. I tested myself during the Last Comic Standing auditions, and low and behold, I was spot on choosing 9 out of 10 people who that made it to the final audition rounds.

I don’t know how I do it, or what I see in them that identifies them — but I see something. It perplexes me and makes me curious so I naturally sent out to understand what makes a comedian a natural-born comedian.

What I found is that true comics who are naturally gifted see the world very different than I do. When I look at life, I try to find the reasoning behind what people do. When a natural-born comedian looks at life, he sees the absurdity in the normalities of life. It’s kind of bizarre.

Where I would only see functionality, comedians see the irrationality behind the functionality. They see the absurd without a purpose, the backwards, the twisted normalcies that we all take at face value. I suspect they see it everywhere and all around them, on a routine basis. It’s not something they have to search out.

If I had to exist in the world of a comic, I would be blinder than a bat without radar. I don’t see those oddities, or absurdities. I just don’t have a mind for it. I have a mind for human behavior and deception, not humor, but I can spot a natural comedian.

How can you determine a natural comedian? Well, I can’t identify traits for you because that would take more study, but I can tell you how to pass/fail them really quickly. That’s easy.

You do the challenge faced by the comics on the show last night. You parade before them a group of beautiful ladies who happen to be from Deal or No Deal. You tell them they must tell each of these ladies jokes — and he who makes the most women laugh, wins. Then you let them write their comedy routines.

But instead of putting them into a booth with a beautiful lady, they switch out three of the ladies at the end for a drag queen, a nun and a clown. A real drag queen, a real nun and a real clown.

The truly gifted, natural born comedian will see the absurdities in every situation as they have a lifetime of seeing the absurd to use as material. They will get people laughing — regardless of their preparation or their audience. In a strange twist, they will be able to relate to everyone much like myself.

The ones who can’t survive or muster laughter are the self-taught talents — the ones who must work solely from a script because they have to work at finding funny things to talk about unlike the natural talent who sees funny things all over the place.

If you want my opinion, these are the natural born comedic talents on Last Comic Standing this season below. Just sadly they are not all going to the finals for various reasons unrelated to their talent:

DEBRA DIGIOVANNI
MATT KIRSHEN
AMY SCHUMER
LAVELL CRAWFORD
JON REEP

These are truly funny people! Hats off to them.

On a side note, Debra Digiovanni paralleled herself to me as someone who is quite similar to Rachel Ray. I bet they have a lot of similarities in their personalities, behaviors and attributes.