March of the Blindfolded Penguins

Posted on January 15, 2006 in Crosstalk Depression Nipper Kettle Occupation of Iraq

Nothing can stop the occupation of Iraq it seems except the anger of family members. To grab those hearts and minds, the Pentagon now offers gatherings promoted by the World Laughter Tour:

With help from the Pentagon’s chief laughter instructor, families of National Guard members are learning to walk like a penguin, laugh like a lion and blurt “ha, ha, hee, hee and ho, ho.”

No joke.

“I laugh every chance I get,” says the instructor, retired Army colonel James “Scotty” Scott. “That’s why I’m blessed to be at the Pentagon, where we definitely need a lot of laughter in our lives.”

Scott, 57, is certified as a laughter training specialist by the Ohio-based World Laughter Tour, a group that promotes mirth as medicine. It touts scientific research that suggests chuckling can boost the body’s immune system and decrease stress hormones.

World Laughter Tour sounds like a noveau Toastmasters except members gather to yuck it up. According to the FAQ:

The World Laughter Tour, Inc. was founded by Steve Wilson and Karyn Buxman to support, promote, and act as a clearinghouse for the global grassroots laughter movement, with the mission of bringing events to every continent that promote health and peace through laughter.

So how does the Pentagon’s program promote World Peace? I’ll give you a word scramble: ti kgiufcn esdo tno! This is cooptation, pure and simple. At what level, I cannot say. What I do believe is that the use of the program to ease the minds of military families who worry about their loved ones overseas amounts to promoting cognitive dissonance:

In Festinger and Carlsmith’s classic 1959 experiment, students were made to perform tedious and meaningless tasks, consisting of turning pegs quarter-turns, then removing them from a board, then putting them back in, and so forth. Subjects rated these tasks very negatively. After a long period of doing this, students were told the experiment was over and they could leave.

However, the experimenter then asked the subject for a small favor. They were told that a needed research assistant was not able to make it to the experiment, and the subject was asked to fill in and try to persuade another subject (who was actually a confederate) that the dull, boring tasks the subject had just completed were actually interesting and engaging. Some subjects were paid $20 for the favor, another group was paid $1, and a control group was not requested to perform the favor.

When asked to rate the peg-turning tasks, those in the $1 group showed a much greater propensity to embellish in favor of the experiment when asked to lie about the tasks. Experimenters theorized that when paid only $1, students were forced to internalize the attitude they were induced to express, because they had no other justification. Those in the $20 condition, it is argued, had an obvious external justification for their behavior, which the experimenters claim explains their lesser willingness to lie favoring the tasks in the experiment.

The researchers further speculated that with only $1, subjects faced insufficient justification and therefore “cognitive dissonance”, so when they were asked to lie about the tasks, they sought to relieve this hypothetical stress by literally changing their attitude in a process akin to autobrainwashing in order really to believe that they found the tasks enjoyable

The USA Today article quotes exactly one woman (Mary Frances Booth) who enjoyed the program. She let a moment of fame overcome her feelings about her husband’s absence in Afghanistan. Her daughters, perhaps under the stress of embarassing their mother in front of a reporter, said that the program helped them feel “a little better” — which is hardly a resounding acclamation.

Knowing the power of revelation and truthfulness inherent in depression, the Pentagon wants to instigate mania, which is a state of delusion. Laugh! It will make the war all better! Don’t look at the ruined cities, the maimed civilians, the bloody firefights! Don’t think about your sons, your fathers, your daughters, your mothers who must slog through the hot streets of Bagdhad, their eyes open for civilian targets, their hearts reft by sadness and enslavement in an occupation that they know to be wrong. Act like a penguin! See the funny man in the White House! Laugh because we can’t afford to let you cry. Your tears will pool and wash away our plans, our bloody, precious plans.

This earns both James Scott and Mary Frances Booth a Nipper Kettle Award for pathetic self promotion.

Thanks to Alley Rat.