Learning Amidst the Chopping Blocks
Back in the Middle Ages when one could be put to death for an off-hand remark, the Court Jester often had the role of both entertainer and truth teller. Those royal clowns used humor to tell their hard truths. It was a dangerous position, however, never knowing at what point the privilege to speak freely would be cut short by the chopping block.
Today we presume to enjoy the right of free speech and that includes the right to offend. Modern day fools — the stand up comics — quip about politics, relationships, existential questions … anything and everything is fair game.
At least it has been until cancel-culture.
With the dawning of cancel-culture, the axe blades have been sharpened.
I’m not a stranger to metaphorical public execution. When I was in college I did a stand up routine that didn’t go well. I went to Wheaton College, often referred to as “the Harvard of Christian schools.” (That’s debatable) Though the institution is rooted in conservative Evangelicalism, the professors I had were mostly progressive intellectuals. I went there to study with Jim Young, a man who would become my mentor and teach me how to be a good artist and human being. I’ll come back to Jim, but first, the humiliation of my stand-up routine.
A friend of mine organized an “Open Mic Night” in the theater. There were bands, poetry readings and he tagged a few of us “funny people” to do stand up. His first mistake. The only thing I really knew about stand up was what I had seen George Carlin do. I was sure comedy was supposed to be truthful, harsh and outrageous. So that’s what I did.
In a black box theater packed with over a hundred 19-21 year old virgins I didn’t even get through my jokes about sex before I was hissed off the stage. Hissed!! Off the stage! I said true things that people didn’t want to hear. Things that offended their sensibilities. That — and my comedy probably wasn’t all that great.
My head was on the proverbial chopping block, not for what I said but for not knowing my audience. A more nuanced comedian could’ve said the same things and made the audience look at themselves and laugh. Maybe.
Because of the deeply conservative, even puritanical ethos among the student body, the first lesson my teacher Jim, or Jimma as we affectionately called him, taught us was the skill of bracketing. In his hugely popular Intro to Theater class Jimma exposed students to all kinds of literature, music, and art – Samuel Beckett, Bertold Brecht, Leonard Cohen, John Cage, Rothko, Rauschenberg, Motherwell.. the list goes on.
As we engaged with a piece of art we were to journal our reactions; anything that confused us, offended us, or grossed us out, we were to write down and put in red brackets on the page. Then he asked us to let those difficult things go and move on to what surprised us, delighted us, and moved us.
You see, because so many of us were coming in with underdeveloped world views that were rigid and dualistic, he gave us a system for naming the hard things and moving on. He gave us an out so that we could continue to engage even after we were offended, to engage for the purpose of learning, to engage outside a binary mindset and with a lens towards nuance.
It was a new idea for a lot of students that something that offended them could also be a source of wisdom. Both/And.
That is what it means to be a non-dual thinker – to live into the gray spaces, on the edge with curiosity. It’s what it means to be a learner, an intellectual. To look beyond our delicate sensibilities and exhibit a sturdiness that says, “There is a NO for me, but this, this part is really interesting. Let’s dig in and talk more.”
No matter what the “purity culture” of the 90’s told my classmates or what the cancel-culture says to today’s young people, merely being offended is not worthy of a merit badge. Everyone is offended by something. BUT, to be offended and to continue the brave task of staying in the room, talking, collaborating, and co-creating new space that is perhaps not perfect, but surely a step closer —THAT, my friends, will get you a gold star every time.