After the mind-killing explanation of the Liar Paradox, let's have something light before we engage in other puzzles (I've quite a few more). How about a philosophical experiment?
Duration: 30 to 40 years
Props: a complex society
Effect: joyful
How did court jesters amuse themselves, when there were jesters and people had a riotous good time? They made fun of one and all, and had no time for rules and conventions. They talked too loudly and laughed at all the wrong things. Defying expectation was their destiny. They could shake up people and conventions. Nomadic and subversive, they wandered roads and crossed rivers, weaving in and out betweem etiquette and obligation. They overturned holy images, parodied the sacraments and mock the authority of the Church.
Let us do likewise. Make yourself into own critic, journalist, writer, novelist, film maker, musician, drummer - something of the kind. Something out of step. Do everything you can to make waves. Don't dream of changing the course of history, just sow a little chaos around you. Disorganise plans, create surprises, confound predictions. Live stubbornly within your society, without at heart acquiescing to it.
Obviously you have to submit to certain norms and forces. You might even have to crawl, out of prudence, cowardice or even sheer cheek, in front of Mr Big or other. Tell yourself that it's unimportant. Give way, kow-tow tactically, from time to time, if you are absolutely certain that something within you is resolute and unbending.
Take care to leave yourself room to manoeuvre, over a long period. Act slantwise. Move like a bishop in chess - systematically diagonal. Walk crablike and crossways. Day in day out, meeting no resistance. Make it a habit to seek out at least appropriate, most incongruous answer to any question. Apply it from time to time, and see what happens.
The longest and hardest thing about playing the fool is arriving at the realization that nothing is serious. Occupy the horizon, that the point of convergence where absolutely everything becomes, in a sense, laughable: existence, death, humanity, love, the universe, ants, writing, money, careers, bodies, thought, politics. Among other things. Not forgetting laughter itself, and hilarity, and court jesters.
=)
From 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life by Roger-Pol Droit
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