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wise fools and other foolery
Jun. 1st, 2021 01:20 pmThe wise fool….
There are several different traditions about “fools,” who are sometimes “tricksters” and other times are simply not capable of adapting to the social circumstances in which they happen to find themselves. Sometimes such fools are “wise fools,” differently intelligent, genuinely skilled within parameters that the local yokels don’t quite understand (I love mashing up the divergent idioms of different linguistic and generational subgroups like that, because it grates on the sensibilities of the persnickety). And other times the fools are simply committed to goals that their communities affirm superficially but don’t take seriously, in which case they are called “holy fools,” whether they call themselves that or not.
I don’t talk much about either of them, because the most articulated forms of the traditions happen to come from countries that are indisputably on the outs with the native land that I love and in which I happen to live. Only a fool would cite sources from such countries unambiguously instead of appropriating their resources circumspectly and obliquely.
The fools' relativism, which is a politicized cuss word that ought not ever to be used, comes from their awareness of their neurological peculiarities (and therefore also of the peculiarities of their neuronormal neighbors) and/or their serious attention to topics that their differently wired neighbors tend to downplay except when using them as tools to wage conceptual combat with rival communities.
As is the case with all people everywhere, anything they have to say needs to be translated into terms that make sense to the people who are trying to understand them.
I wish that we could recognize that every human community is appallingly, almost unforgivably wrong about something or other, holding some misapprehension or passionately defended belief that is destructive to themselves and/or to other humans and/or to the planet as a whole. And then lean hard on the “almost” part when trying to repair the damage. But no one but a fool would express a wish like that.
There are several different traditions about “fools,” who are sometimes “tricksters” and other times are simply not capable of adapting to the social circumstances in which they happen to find themselves. Sometimes such fools are “wise fools,” differently intelligent, genuinely skilled within parameters that the local yokels don’t quite understand (I love mashing up the divergent idioms of different linguistic and generational subgroups like that, because it grates on the sensibilities of the persnickety). And other times the fools are simply committed to goals that their communities affirm superficially but don’t take seriously, in which case they are called “holy fools,” whether they call themselves that or not.
I don’t talk much about either of them, because the most articulated forms of the traditions happen to come from countries that are indisputably on the outs with the native land that I love and in which I happen to live. Only a fool would cite sources from such countries unambiguously instead of appropriating their resources circumspectly and obliquely.
The fools' relativism, which is a politicized cuss word that ought not ever to be used, comes from their awareness of their neurological peculiarities (and therefore also of the peculiarities of their neuronormal neighbors) and/or their serious attention to topics that their differently wired neighbors tend to downplay except when using them as tools to wage conceptual combat with rival communities.
As is the case with all people everywhere, anything they have to say needs to be translated into terms that make sense to the people who are trying to understand them.
I wish that we could recognize that every human community is appallingly, almost unforgivably wrong about something or other, holding some misapprehension or passionately defended belief that is destructive to themselves and/or to other humans and/or to the planet as a whole. And then lean hard on the “almost” part when trying to repair the damage. But no one but a fool would express a wish like that.
