The Fool wasn't invited

And the ARC Conference fell flat

Irreverence is the royal road to sanity, so it’s a shame that the organizers of The ARC, all of them honourable men and women, didn’t realize it. Though I will say that the opening speech Konstantin Kisin gave did have moments of wit and satire that the audience ate up. If you don’t know what ARC is, Kisin is perhaps the best introduction.

Had the conference been able to sustain this level of brilliance, all would have been well. But no. Kisin was the only speaker who was able to marshal serious thought to biting wit and personal insight. But he was not there to satirize. He wasn’t on stage to make the audience laugh. In fact, there was really nobody at this gathering of prominent right wing thinkers who took on that role. (the disheveled ‘poet’ didn’t count). And that was a serious failing. I have always believed and still do that the role of The Fool and the Jester is vital to preserving public sanity and is, alas, even undervalued by those in the comic business. John Cleese: “I’ve realized in the last nine years that comedy is much more important than I ever thought,” he says. “It changes people. So many come up to me now with a tear in their eye saying, ‘Thank you for making me laugh all these years… perhaps I should call myself a comedy therapist.”

And who among us hasn’t thought the entire western world has developed a serious mental condition in dire need of a giant couch and a kind but tough global therapist? Perhaps that is the unspoken truth behind the first conference of The ARC, or Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, a modern version of a Court with pretensions to becoming The official Court Of Public Opinion in the West. A countervailing force to the Davos crowd and the dreadful Klaus. They really want to save us from ourselves, to ‘tell a better story’ as they keep insisting. I applaud that. We do need a way to think differently about ourselves, to shut up the voices in our heads and on the unsocial media that tell us we live in a totally evil culture that has nothing to recommend it. I doubt that such a culture can survive for long (as Kisin pointed out) and forgive me, but I am interested in our survival. I am not quite ready to throw in the cultural towel and empty the baby with the dirty colonial bathwater.

Speaking of Fools, during the Middle Ages when Kings and Queens ruled by divine right, just as our current Oligarchs do, everyone understood the importance of levity, wit, and silliness. Any court worthy of the name had not just scheming aristocrats, insane kings, and several minxes competing for the position of ahem, Maitresse en Titre; they also had an official Fool. He was the only man at the court allowed to tell the King the truth. It was understood that to survive, the rest of the court lied, prevaricated, spread false rumours and generally behaved the way our current politicos do. But. The Fool was the fool precisely because he understood that to speak truth to naked power, it had to be cloaked in the finely woven garment of wit.

He had to make the King smile or better yet, laugh, while telling him what he didn’t want to hear. That way, some bedrock of sanity was preserved or at the very least, acknowledged.

So, what did ARC do? They invited a bunch of very worthy intellectuals and former politicians, but utterly forgot to bring in The Fool. The funny man as therapist. There was neither the gentle Cleese nor the sharper punch of Gervais to leaven the heavy dough of seriousness on offer here. For all their clearly good intentions presented on a bed of traditional Conservatism, the global audience that had paid good money to fly to this much anticipated event in London had little to laugh about. Aside from Kisin, not a single joke anywhere, much less wit. Just an endless plain (plane?) of rather tired platitudes that we have all heard before.

The Baroness Stroud opened the conference and looked very nice in pearls and black and lots of white blond hair. Nothing wrong with that, but one wanted something a bit more well, new. Different. Maybe a bit of irreverence would have lightened the mood. But no; it was all upbeat smiles and the same old same old. It’s like the ARC people had never heard of the importance of keeping things light if you want to attract followers. There’s an old German proverb ‘Lachen muss bei der Leiche sein, sonst geht niemand mit, which means there’s got to be laughter at the funeral, or nobody shows up.

In my family, making people laugh is highly prized. My maternal grandfather, a noted judge, and his brothers engaged in the noble pursuit of making everyone pee with helpless laughter at family gatherings. It was just a friendly contest, conducted roughly a hundred years ago. And according to my mother, who was one of the pe-ers, they generally succeeded. Cleese would approve of them though he has never sent me racing to the loo, as they call it in Britain. Having given it serious thought, I believe that development of that kind of wit should be a mandatory class, starting in Grade Two, with regular readings of puns, bad jokes, Lear, Alice in Wonderland and then updates and exams throughout life. Just kidding!

Seriously, without levity, irreverence and downright silliness, humanity has a terrible habit of turning into humourless fascists. Look around. These very serious people are everywhere, waving or burning flags, murdering innocents, throwing food or drink at priceless art, desecrating monuments, or gluing themselves to pavements that people need to drive or walk upon. The Nazis, just to remind you yet again, had a thing about laughter: it was basically verboten if it made fun of them and their insane ideas. They didn’t mind it if it made fun of those they despised. They understood the undermining power of making people look ridiculous. So should we. We all need to embrace looking ridiculous whether we’re right left or ‘binary’ politically. Because it’s the only antidote to hubris that I know of.

But the ARC organizers didn’t know any of this. Or if they did, they considered it too dangerous. Too risky. I think they too have fallen under the spell of a culture that punishes public kisses but applauds mass murder. All I can say to that is WTF?

Oh, they tried, they did. Our very own Canadian intellectual, Jordan Peterson, also looked quite stunning in a burgundy/blue outfit but his talk left me feeling in a black mood because it focused on how not to raise dysfunctional adults instead of giving us something to hang on to besides a refurbished Christianity. To my mind, the only speaker who had ideas that translated into action was the economist, Paul Marshall. He laid out in some detail how Capitalism should work and how it has become utterly corrupted. How it is no longer fit for purpose, which is delivering well-being to all, not just to a few psychopathic billionaires. At least he offered real life solutions to a financial system on the brink of collapse. The ARC didn’t offer any music, either. Nor did they include people like Dr Iain McGilchrist who might have enlightened them on the dangers of left-brain overproduction, of which they were all guilty and apparently, not conscious. FYI, humour and laughter is a right brain phenomenon.

All in all, it was an earnest, well-meaning effort to save the world and they deserve a B for that. Well, B- in my less charitable moments. For the Jews in the audience, it must have seemed all too familiar because at least the Jews have a name and a tradition for this kind of thing. It’s called Tikkun Ola, and it means Repairing the World. That is what they were trying to do and if they had been just a little bit cannier, they would have mentioned this ancient tradition. It’s perfectly clear that repairing the world, or anything for that matter, is a delicate matter involving extraordinary skill and patience, and the one presentation that pointed to that was by a Japanese artist, Makoto Fujimura.

He was showing us a bowl that had been mended, and not just mended but improved in the mending. A beautiful broken bowl, a visual symbol of the brokenness of our age. That too is an ancient tradition and seeing it was a profound reminder that mending the world, repairing the deep fissures of discontent, fear and anger is not an easy task nor a quick one. And without the sound of laughter in the background we will never be able to summon the patience and forbearance to do so. We’re going to give up, tear out what is left of our graying hair and go home to watch old Cleese movies.

Deep sigh.

Come on guys. Find yourselves a funny man/woman, a Fool, a Jester and let her/him be the first you invite to your next session. Ask Kisin for advice; he understands satire. Oh, and make it cheaper. I would love to come and be in the same room with the elites who are now so worried that our western world is collapsing that they host such events.

You should, you know. Because if we ordinary folk cannot afford to be in the same room with you, you have already failed.

Hollow laughter in the background…