{"id":32515,"date":"2015-01-08T02:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T07:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=32515"},"modified":"2015-01-08T02:00:56","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T07:00:56","slug":"laughing-through-general-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/01\/laughing-through-general-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Laughing through General Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the-first-presidencylds_conference_april_2010<\/a>No one comes to General Conference for the jokes. And yet, some of the conference moments I remember most clearly involve laughter. In 1997, after Elder Nelson gave a laudatory talk about President Hinckley<\/a>, President Hinckley took the stand and said<\/a>, \u201cI thought we were conducting General Conference. It\u2019s turned out to be a funeral.\u201d He went on to challenge Elder Nelson to a duel in the basement of the Tabernacle. Later in the session, he postponed the duel. It was a fabulous moment in conference history.<\/p>\n

What does humor in General Conference do? First, the spiritual tide of General Conference can feel overwhelming at times and humor can break it up, making it easier to be attentive to the rest of the counsel we\u2019re receiving. Second, it can teach a subtle lesson, as with the humility implicit in President Hinckley\u2019s embarrassment at being praised. Third, it can make a story that teaches a lesson more memorable, as when President Tad Callister, at the most recent conference, recounted<\/a> [and all the links in this post go straight to the laugh-inducing moment, so click with caution] the time his aged mother told him she was delivering food to the elderly, to which Brother Callister thought, \u201cMother, you are the elderly.\u201d The joke makes the story \u2013 fundamentally about lifelong service \u2013 stand out more.<\/p>\n

With that (limited) justification, I propose the General Conference Mirth Index<\/strong> (yes, it\u2019s the GCMI). To construct it, I listened carefully to the full audio of each session of conference, noting which talks had any laughter. I then re-listened to each of those talks and recorded each instance of laughter. Note that I focus on laughter, not jokes, since whether a line is a joke or not is much more subjective than whether or not a line elicits audible laughter in the conference center. (A more ambitious empiricist might seek to quantify the length or volume of laughter.) I then adjusted for the length of the talk.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I found in the most recent General Conference, last October<\/a>. We didn\u2019t laugh too much. About 40% of talks (two in five) had any laughs at all; that\u2019s 15 talks with laughs in total. There were no laughs during conducting (as in President Hinckley\u2019s challenge above). Among talks that did have laughs, the average was four laughs per talk. The laughs range from one liners (apparently there\u2019s something inherently funny about hearing President Uchtdorf<\/a> say \u201cPinterest\u201d) to stories that set up the talk (Elder Allan Packer<\/a> forgetting to take the cover off his hatchet).<\/p>\n

Across sessions, we laughed about 5\u00bd times per hour, although to be frank, the answer to the question: \u201cWhich is the least mirthful session of General Conference?\u201d is probably \u201cThe session in which President Uchtdorf isn\u2019t speaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Laughs\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Several jokes were made about the new format, with General Authorities speaking in the language of their choice, as when Elder Christofferson opened<\/a> with \u201cMuy buenos d\u00edas\u201d or Elder Godoy joked<\/a> about previously worrying about his accent in English and now worrying about the speed of his Portuguese. Only a couple of jokes didn\u2019t make it into the written record, most notably President Eyring\u2019s comment in Priesthood Session about someone he visited as a youth who kicked beer cans under the sofa and being \u201cnot a very likely success.\u201d<\/p>\n

So here they are, the 15 talks accompanied by laughter, compiled in the GCMI. Elder Bednar takes the cake<\/a> with his serial-laugh-inducing story about one of his sons treating the wounds of another. President Uchtdorf, unsurprisingly, stands out with all three of his talks among the five most mirthful (an honor to which he has most likely never aspired).<\/p>\n

\"Mirth\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the October 1970 General Conference, then-Elder Thomas S. Monson cited<\/a> a \u201ccardinal principle of industrial management\u201d as \u201cWhen performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.\u201d As an indulgent laugher myself, I can only hope that the GCMI improves performance without distracting anyone from the central goals of the assembly.<\/p>\n

What moments of mirth do you remember most vividly from General Conferences past? What role do you feel humor plays in General Conference?<\/p>\n

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Bonus reading on humor and spirituality or the Church<\/span><\/p>\n