In what I have read so far, the author describes how today's technologies, especially but not only social media, have started to lead to the disintegration of centralized, institutionalized, hierarchical, vertical structures, in favor of decentralized, organic, horizontal associations. He uses examples from nature, including biology and chemistry, as well as species other than humans, to show how they are organized in the second way. He also discusses that though institutional structures try to emphasize human dualistic thinking to segregate us into various groups ("You're either with us or against us"), human language and thinking can show us that our minds actually often subconsciously integrate what our conscious minds segregate.
This may be the strongest evidence yet of the reason behind Unintended Puns, or the activation web, that I described from Dr. Motley several months ago. This activation web, perhaps, subconsciously integrates two thoughts that our conscious minds had segregated. Here is a long quote from Dr. Schaeffer's book:
"Humor seems to be a reflection of our unconscious mind’s awareness of the harmony found in seemingly contradictory relationships. Whether we are considering jokes, puns, sight gags, witticisms, irony, or satire, humor provides a pleasurable meaning because it gives us the opportunity to integrate what our conscious mind tells us is to be segregated. James Thurber described “humour” as “emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.” It operates along the boundary lines separating the expected from the unexpected, sometimes bouncing back and forth from one side of the line to the other, giving us glimpses of the complementary nature of the world. This is what gives puns their potency: a word or phrase used to communicate different meanings than when such expressions are used in a different context. Puns challenge the boundary lines of what we like to think of as the mutually-exclusive meanings of our abstractions."
In terms of the purpose of investigating Unintended Puns, I think Dr. Schaeffer is saying that puns, as abstractions, allow us to mean two different things at the same time, which allows us to integrate two thoughts into one. Unintended Puns are often silly or mundane, but show that our brains are perfectly capable of doing such a thing; therefore, as an example: we as humans can handle the fact that a person might be of a different race or nationality, but not want to kill or harm us just because of that difference (as Dr. Schaeffer discusses in a different part of the book)--our brains can deal with that fact, even though some institutional structures in some contexts would have us keep those facts separate.
We don't have to think in terms of the simple segregated groupings that many of us have been taught most of our lives. Our brains are capable of integrating things that we've been told can't be integrated.
Let me know what you think. This seems right to me, but maybe it's too big of a leap to think that Unintended Puns show that we are capable of holding two disparate thoughts in our minds at once, especially thoughts that have been inculcated by years of teaching.
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