In Praise of Folly

I love those days of alignment, where several significant anniversaries pile up and add resonance to the moment. I know little of astrology, but we can favorably summon astronomy here as well, for it’s like those rare lunar days that pop up a few times a year, or even less frequently, when the moon’s distance from earth, and relation to the sun, and atmospheric conditions, and so forth, combine to give us a red one, a blue one, a harvest one, a hidden one.

Today, as far as I am concerned, is one of those days. Not only is it Midsummer (as we just noted), but it is also the birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre, which also happens to fall during Pride Month. And June happens to have been the month in 1511 when Erasmus published In Praise of Folly (Stultitiae Laus or Moriae Encomium). What’s all that add up to, you wonder? Why, only the most suitable day to finally finish a piece I began as part of the series that connected Carnival, April Fool’s Day,Francois Rabelais,Mikhail Bakhtin, etc. I turned out the last few pieces a couple of months ago, but realized that I had some orphan thoughts that wouldn’t fit into the existing essays, and subsequent to that, I couldn’t think of a peg. Now I have it. But at all events, this piece will most profitably be read in conjunction with those.

In Praise of Folly arises as a topic in this context because it was a major influence on Rabelais’ Gargantua. It is an exceedingly complex work, perhaps most aptly categorized as satire, though the high level of classical scholarship and mock seriousness imbue it with a tone that some may find more forbidding than funny. Like the best satire, it aims at something higher, touching on philosophy, theology, and the human condition. Yet even the title (Moriae Encomium) contains a pun. Moria is Greek for “folly”, but it also refers to Sir Thomas More, with whom Erasmus had just collaborated on a translation of the Greek satirist Lucian (not to be confused with the Roman satirist Lucan). A certain high school in Flatbush notwithstanding, More is probably the better known of the pair, having written Utopia a few years later, and serving as Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII, who then famously executed him for refusing to sanction his divorce and separation from the Catholic Church. More was a major critic of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. Ironically, Erasmus’s work is considered one of the books that influenced that selfsame birth of Protestantism.

The book reminds me a little of Milton — it sits you down in this magical, timeless headspace and engages the mind untethered. It’s told in the first person by an abstraction, Folly, who, in the spirit of a Pagan God argues for her importance to the human race. She then, with the literary equivalent of a straight face, takes you through history and shows why all the most important events were the result of foolishness, in one way or another. As it goes on, it increasingly becomes a satirical takedown of the hypocrisies of the church. This is how it fed into Protestantism, though Erasmus himself never left the church, and many Catholic leaders approved of the book (which condemns the sins and not the sinners, if you will).

So…I love to connect things, and to trace them backwards. In this case, the line goes from Bakhtin back to to Rabelais, to Erasmus, and then to the originator of his religion, who is relatable to the concept of the Holy Fool, which I wrote about here. I wrote in that same piece a bit about a “Philosophy of Laughter”, and so that’s what I’m hoping to get at in this exploration. What I mean by a Philosophy of Laughter, as well as some concepts of Bakhtin’s and Rabelais’ I couldn’t work into the other post, and lastly: what it is that connects it to those calendar dates I mentioned in the opening paragraph. Namely, Existentialism and Absurdism (it being Sartre’s birthday) and the Theatre of Ridiculous (Pride Month).

I should hope that you immediately perceive a relation amongst the concepts of Folly, the Absurd and the Ridiculous. They all seem to be slightly different takes on the problem of human existence that incorporate some type of comic outlook. My professional name Trav S.D. (i.e., travesty) may have something to do with my attraction to this topic. A Philosophy of Laughter. Is Laughter the most human of all acts? The most revolutionary one? Obviously I believe there are arguments to be made to that effect. The last thing I scribbled down before going to bed last night was this: “Laughing at Authority = Liberty”. It is what defines life, or at least a life that is worth living. “The Pursuit of Happiness” is foregrounded in the Declaration of Independence as one of our top three Inalienable Rights. Why create an “order” that makes people miserable? The real answer is that nobody who was fully informed would ever do so, at least if they reckoned they’d be among the miserable.

And yet? We’re all going to die! Not maybe. And not a thousand years from now. We’re all born into a temporary existence, and notified pretty quickly that we’d better get cracking — the party’s over in about 80 years. (I was about to type, “or 90 if we’re lucky”, but most nonagenarians I’ve encountered don’t seem ecstatic about the reprieve). Now…you would think this knowledge would make more people wise. If our time is limited, hadn’t we better be kinder? Shouldn’t we make ourselves less attached to material possessions, worldly goods? But seemingly, most people, in full knowledge of the facts, and having been educated to some degree about the wise sentiments of sages, stubbornly behave as though you CAN take it with you. You can’t. To paraphrase a joke I saw on social media, “You know what you call a person who dies owning massive amounts of wealth? DEAD.” Long ago, I guess because I spent all this time amongst the great philosophers of antiquity, and also because I’m my father’s son, I decided that most of the things most people spend most of their lives pursuing are worthless. I’m not talking about things related to virtue — not esteem, respect, love. I’m talking about what they DO. What they spend all day doing, every day. Most of the work that most people knock themselves out doing on a daily basis is either bullshit, or worse than bullshit, an actual affront or injury to the wellness of humankind and the planet.

As society and technology become increasingly complex, it is increasingly the case that what most people spend their lives doing is both meaningless and of debatable value. Does that sound cynical? Well, whom precisely should I cheerfully sound off about, with regard to their great contributions to their fellow humans? Instagram Influencers? Traffickers in “debt instruments”? People who ring up the garbage sold at chain stores? People who manufacture the garbage sold at chain stores? The person who stands next to the robot while you ring up your own garbage at the chain store? People who teach online classes about how to market online classes that teach people how to market their online classes? Obviously, these mind-numbing non-jobs refer to the modern predicament. But it’s always been the case, from the beginning of time. Are you proud of that thing you made? Well, sometime after your bones degrade and return to the elements, that thing you made will do the same. Crumble. So what actually matters? It’s both a little and a lot. I would say that one of things that matters is creating some type of world where the powerful can’t harm and exploit and hurt the weak.

The main Bakhtin/Rabelais concept I had difficulty tying into my previous pieces in this series of essays was this notion of an “unfinished” quality in Rabelais’ writing. Bakhtin theorized that this came to Rabelais as a by-product as his work as a surgeon. The human body is never “finished” until it is dead. The living body is full of holes and pores and liquids and imperfections. In aesthetics, especially the classical sort, we are forever seeking perfection, a “finished” work. But the humanity and the life is in the seeking and the engagement. This is why carnival is so vital to the worldviews of both men. And why a true revolutionary spirit would chafe at systems that evolve and ossify around previously revolutionary systems, such as Christianity and Socialism. Once you write the rule book and command obedience, the whole thing is as dead as if it had never existed in the first place. This is why Rabelais had trouble with the church, and Bakhtin had trouble with the Communist Party. Laughter and Tyranny cannot coexist. (Another relevant figure I’d throw in here is Michel Foucault. Never a genuine Marxist, Foucault advocated for a revolt that was universal and unceasing. The minute you’re the boss, you’re the enemy. No one ever accused philosophers of being practical).

Sartre, on the other hand, 20 years older than Foucault, was a full-fledged Marxist, though, a qualified one (he liked early Marx), and never a member of the Communist Party, though he tended to be more sympathetic to the aims of Communism than most of his contemporaries admitted to being. If one wonders, “How can the founder of Existentialism, a belief that life is objectively meaningless, sign on to some system that claims to have it all figured out?” The answer is that he didn’t. Like Charlie Chaplin and Brecht and others he signed on for the general goal of full bellies; he wasn’t in bed with the people who make the sausages. Many French intellectuals lived in that No Man’s Land throughout the Cold War. Anyway Dostoevsky obviously influenced Existentialism, just as he influenced Bakhtin. Hegel was surely a path to Marx for Sartre. In the Soviet Union, Bakhtin was no doubt force-fed both, though he undoubtedly came to different conclusions. Leaders in Communist countries inevitably come to the convenient decision that the revolution needs to stop once they are in power. Foucault, Sartre and Bakhtin all placed human freedom high on their agenda. Existence may be, to all appearances, meaningless, but we can at least strive toward human happiness.

Foucault was also influenced by the French Absurdist Antonin Artaud. (See how we inch closer and closer to theatre?) And before Artaud there was Alfred Jarry. The greatest theatrical thinkers have always acknowledged the art form’s quasi-religious foundations, which began long before the Greeks, it began perhaps even before articulated human speech. Sign language, visual art, pantomime, these all point the way to the “mock existence”, the “second reality”, the 1:1 analog that is theatre. Shakespeare refers to it in almost every every single play. The French are perhaps more aware of it than any other western culture, which is why you find so many French philosophers who are practicing artists, and vice versa.

In some ways, one feels that the Absurdists are closer to tragedians than comedians. There is such formal striving in the plays of Beckett,Ionesco,Genet, and (early) Pinter. And such pain and terror. But the quality of alienation, of the individual’s struggle against the tyranny of the majority — THIS is what feels akin to the Strategy of Laughter I’m trying to articulate. The rebellious response that defangs and disarms and neutralizes power. It is a fighting back.

What I’ve been grappling with lately is that such pushback doesn’t appear to be a universal human response to authority. Some large proportion of humanity embraces control, sometimes at astounding personal cost. There is some non-zero number of humans who possess no itch to be free and independent, in fact, who loathe and distrust those who profess to. So what I’ve been wondering is, what makes the dissatisfied different? What brought me to that question was a contemplation of the Theatre of Ridiculous, the artistic movement I have been most enamored of throughout my career. What makes the Ridiculous different from the Absurd? It clearly is, though you’ll get no illumination from Ronald Tavel’s famous non-definition “We have passed beyond the Absurd: our position is absolutely preposterous.” One gets a sense of the difference between the two schools, almost by feel. You know it when you see it. The Absurd privileges alienation. Alienation is also present in The Ridiculous, but the latter often feels lighter in tone, less angst-ridden and Existential, and often purely formal. There are times when I have wondered, “How is this different from mere parody?”

There is an obvious answer, it’s in the part I left out. The Ridiculous began as a gay aesthetic response that has a lot to do with Camp. In her famous essay on the topic, Susan Sontag wrote convincingly that Camp sprang from the necessity of gay people to laugh off their pain. Giving the numerical disparity and the unwillingness of the majority to accept them, there was nothing else to be done. They were beyond alienated. Or rather, their alienation was imposed by society; it didn’t come from an instinct to be different. Gay people already were different. So they critiqued the world around them, often indirectly, sometimes even disguised as admiration. And it was funny. I can’t remember where, but I recall somebody (maybe Charles Ludlam) talking about drag as the ultimate role playing — a metaphysical level of role-playing, because you’re not just playing another man or woman as the case may be. You are embodying another character as completely as humanly possible. The level of make believe, of creation ascends to entirely higher level. This, too, brings us back to Shakespeare in plays like Twelfth Night and As You Like It. (I played with the double drag idea in this early play of mine).

These seem creditable explications of the Ridiculous, or aspects of it anyway. But what about Absurdism? As a human being I relate to the struggle of the Absurdists. I’m not gay, as it happens, I’m at most gay-adjacent, that category deemed “gay enough” by wider society for the crimes of reading books, asking inconvenient and troublesome questions, being very, very bad at sports, and worst of all, not caring. What is THAT? Women, blacks, the LGBT community, and other groups have these aesthetic baskets they can belong to. But what defines a person whose differences are purely internal? Whose thoughts aren’t like the others? I don’t presume to answer. All I know is that it led me to make common cause with those other alienated groups. I relate to them more than I relate to other people. My wife is a RABID feminist. I relate to her far more than almost any fellow straight male I’ve ever met. I feel that she and I are alike. Most dudes, the things they think about, the things they want, the things they talk about? It’s like we’re different species. It’s like being at war with the entire world. And that’s about the best definition of comedy I’ve ever come across.

Nicky Paraiso of La Mama shared a terrific quote from bell hooks the other day: “I think of…being queer not as being about who you’re having sex with – that can be a dimension of it – but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and it has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

I can live by this definition of queer, I find, though I continue to find myself repelled and not attracted by many or most things that represent men or embody maleness. War and wealth, mostly. And that will put you at odds with most of the human race. I find my commonality with those who choose to live at the margins, the voluntary poor who choose to make art, or talk about it, or live it, rather than seeking the approval of others and acquiring meaningless possessions. Don’t get me wrong: I love luxury and ease and baubles. But I’ve never been able to bring myself to seek them or or devote my life to striving for them. I’d sooner hock a gold watch and live off it than wear it around to impress people.

As someone who wants to make theatre and movies, who are my Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Only Hollywood, Broadway, Academia, and the Arts Establishment! I’ve realized that I kind of define myself by being in opposition to all of them. Naturally I love the products of these institutions when they’re at their best, but there is tendency toward ossification and dogma and bureaucracy when things become institutionalized. Add to these, another four: Political Parties, Organized Labor, Corporate Capitalism, and Organized Religion. Like many who’ve lived in the world before me, I’m not talking about a literal war against all those forces, or even alienation and abstention from them, no more than every single Christian must become a monk or a nun. One must live in the world. But one must also be mindful and vigilant and true, even if it consigns you to a life of never-ending struggle, as it must necessarily do. Which is also about…comedy.

There is an element of anarchism in this idea of the unfinished. It is about acknowledging no rules or definitions, or at least disregarding them when it pleases you. It’s about perpetual growth and metamorphosis. One is never done, one never stops to finish or polish or explain to the kids at the back of the class. Bakhtin has a really interesting conception of the carnival mask that I’m sure perturbed the conventional Hegelian interpretation. Most of us regard a mask as a thing we put on to disguise ourselves. In this paradigm, you become the mask, and your true self is hidden, it disappears. Bakhtin, taking his cue from Rabelais, says something quite different, and it’s that when you put on a mask, you and the mask MERGE. There is no hard boundary, no dualism. That’s the real lesson: man + mask = man/mask. A mask is hard, finished, defined. A person is not, or shouldn’t be. The person in a role is a living creation. The point is the metamorphosis, an action, not an illusion, a result.

Criticism and comedy are two of the principal human activities that embody this idea. The two come together in the metaphor of the Gadfly (as we tip our hat to the author of The Flies). I find that I am eternally bored by the facile and straightforward, and will always value nonsense over sense, the surreal over the “real”, poetry over prose, the ambiguous over the transparent, the implied over the obvious, the subversive over the submissive. I like expression that refuses to yield to control, simplification, or rules of discourse. Many’s the time I have preferred a non-actor over an actor, a non-singer over a singer, and a naive artist over a trained one.

Why don’t I allow comments on the blog, and delete most of them from social media? Most of them are directly antithetical to everything I have expressed above and merely remind me the degree to which one must swim upstream to even stay in the same place. Why argue with a crazy person? I honestly don’t want to waste my time or yours trying to convince you to be as crazy as I am.

Even now, some readers are wriggling in their seats going “What is the POINT of this essay?! Why doesn’t it come together? What am I supposed to take away?” You may choose to believe you’ve been made a fool of. I choose to believe that the topic is ever-evolving and unfinished.