Replying to LO29007 --
Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all of you.
I have linked this essay to "The Dialogue LO29007". (You will have to read
to very end to see where Robinson Crusoe comes in ;-)
I focussed in that essay on the role of the 7Es (seven essentialities of
creativity) in the dialogue. Several fellow learners have written this
year in private to me, asking me for more information on the 7Es or more
applications of them. I realised with a shock that some still think the
7Es can be applied as a theory. They are essences and therefore they
cannot be applied. For example, since the heart is essential to the body,
applying it to the body is crazy nonsense.
I will again focus in this essay on satire on the role of the 7Es. This
will make this essay unique compared to any other past treatise on satire.
Perhaps it will help fellow learners to understand what highly developed
form of art the satire is and why the satire can so easily get
shipwrecked.
The satire, like the dialogue, helps keeping us humane. Both depend on
skilful communication in terms of a language. Both involves organisational
learning. However, they have far more differences between them.
Some of the differences between a dialogue and a satire is the following.
The satire may be prose or poetry while the dialogue is always in prose.
In the satire there is a deliberate implementation of a particular emotion
(which we will come later to) while in the dialogue any emotion may
surface. The satire involves an audience while in the dialogue all ought
to participate. The satire has a definite purpose (which we will come
later to) whereas the dialogue's only purpose, f we can call it that, is
to share thoughts. The satire is the ESC (Elementary Sustainer of
Creativity) "thoughts-exchanging" while the dialogue is the ESC
"art-expressing".
Sadly, as more organisations from all walks of society change from
knowledge driven to information driven systems, the fluency in using
dialogue and satire deteriorates rapidly. Thus the struggle of humans to
stay humane and to grow in spirituality intensifies increasingly. The
reason is profound. Knowledge which lives within a person depends on the
7Es (seven essentialities of creativity) for its actualisation. But
information which exists outside a person is devoid of the 7Es, except the
little in the physical representation of such information. To think of
information itself as having in profusion the 7Es liveness, sureness,
wholeness, fruitfulness, spareness, otherness and openness boggles my
mind. But to imagine a knowledgable mind with its 7Es preparing such
information or another scrutinising it comes natural to me. To rely
increasingly on information rather than knowledge let the 7Es deteriorate
in the mind.
So what is satire? I studied recently for this essay many treatises on the
topic. I was not happy with them in terms of the 7Es. The far majority of
them presented satire as a structure (literary form) without making use of
its processes to give it liveness ("becoming-being"). The far majority of
them treated satire as a topic which needed no context to give it sureness
("identity-context"). The far majority of them failed to associate it with
similar topics to give it wholeness ("identity-associativity"). The far
majority of them could not connect emotions to higher spiritual activities
to give it fruitfulness ("connect-beget"). The far majority of them did
not delineate quantitatively its limits to give it spareness
("quantity-limit"). The far majority of them did not stress its various
qualities to give it otherness ("quality-variety"). As for openness
("paradigm-transfer"), few stressed the vehicle which should always
enclose satire.
So let me begin with satire from the viewpoint of our whole spirituality.
Emotions in general drive ordinate bifurcations (up-down forking events)
in all the higher faculties of our spirituality. But whatever happens to
the bifurcations in these levels, they have a profound back action on
two-faced emotion, namely joy-sorrow. I use joy and sorrow here as generic
names. By this I mean I can associate many species within joy --
amusement, cachinnation, frolic, fun, gayness, giggling, glee, hilarity,
hysterics, jest, jollity, lark, laughter, merriment, mirth, pleasure,
prank, pun, rejoicing, rollicking, snickering and tittering. I have listed
them merely alpha-betically. I think it is impossible to arrange them in a
linear fashion. They require at least a 2D representation to depict their
fractal relationship. The same with sorrow and associated words such as
distress, frowning, gloom, lowering, mourning, pain, sadness, tears,
wailing, weeping.
There are many thinkers who consider joy and sorrow (or pleasure and pain)
as the primary dialectical dual of human behaviour. According to them the
joy (pleasure) act as thesis and the sorrow (pain) as antithesis. From
this dialectical dual spiritual activities are then synthesised with joy
feeding upon sorrow and thus eradicating it. I do not think so. Joy or
sorrow are not causes, but emotional symptoms (outcomes) of experiencing
creativity. When we feel the emotion joy, it is in remembrance of
constructive creativity in the past. But when we feel sorrow, it reminds
us of destructive creativity in the past.
Although joy or sorrow are symptoms of experiences in creativity,
obviously both as a two-faced emotion can drive our subsequent creativity.
This means that when we feel joy or sorrow, we may want to respond
creatively. Although not intended, one person's joyful response may
trigger sorrow rather than joy in another person. The sufficiency
condition which will determine whether the creative response is
constructive for another person so that it leads to joy, or destructive,
leading to sorrow, consists of the 7Es. When one or more of them are
seriously impaired, the creative response will be destructive.
The majority of thinkers on satire stress that it has to do with humour
which produces laughter. But many of them also readily admit that
satire does not always have the desired effect. Why?
Humour-laughter is indeed the identity of satire. But to have sureness
("identity-context") in satire, we have to bear in mind that its context
is joy and not laughter. Satire with all its humour-laughter should
never overstep the bounds of joy into the sea of sorrow by impairing
one or more of the 7Es. This can easily happen in racial, ethnic,
sexist, cultural or religious satire. For example, in racial satire comic
comments are made on the racial features of some persons. Those
laughing may feel closer to each other, but those excluded feel sorrow
and pain. Here the laughter contributed to some wholeness, but the
comments impaired otherness ("quality-variety").
Many of those thinkers who identify satire with humour which produces
laughter, focussed on the humorist species of joy such as the pun, wit,
joke or comedy. A few of them like Sigmund Freud and Arthur Koestler
delved deeply into the nature of the joke. Both of them concluded that the
joke has a curious "economy of verbal energy". Too much words in a joke or
explaining the joke reduced its effectiveness to produce laughter. In
their articulation I recognise that entropy has to be produced (/_\S > 0
), but that its production must be economical or minimal (/_\/_\S < 0 ).
In this they came very close to the dynamics of LEP (Law of Entropy
Production).
However, they did not distinguish between necessary and sufficiency
conditions. The minimal production of entropy is a necessary condition.
Nevertheless, Koestler did something brilliant. He proposed that this
"economy of verbal energy" should also be bisociative (bijective). In
other words, he also introduced a sufficiency condition, but did not
distinguish between the two as such. He meant with bisociation that two
flows of energy, seemingly isparate to each other, have to join for the
joke to produce laughter. In this he had paved the insight for me into all
the 7Es as sufficiency condition for the joke to be effective. He did it
by touching with his bisociation (bijection) theory upon the essentiality
fruitfulness ("connect-beget"). One of the jokes contrived by Freud led
him to this insight. It is the following.
"An actress gave a great performance. Afterwards an admirer begged her to
have dinner with him. She responded that she cannot because she had
already given her heart to another gentleman. He answered that he was not
thinking so high up".
The woman connected with her heart, but he connected lower down. See how
fruitfulness ("connect-beget") of the heart was stressed in this joke to
lead the listener astray from another possible connection.
Here is a another joke to illustrate how another essentiality is involved.
Because the first one is of a sexual nature for historical reasons, this
one has to be of the same nature to continue the thread.
A man, obsessed with sex, went to a psychiatrist for therapy. To make sure
what the man's problem is, the therapist gave the man an ink blotch,
asking him what he saw. He responded with a "man and woman having sex".
The same response followed with subsequent blotches. The therapist said to
the man that he is indeed preoccupied with sex. The man replied "No, it is
you who are preoccupied with sex because all the blotches which you showed
to me are of a sexual nature".
This joke involves sureness ("identity-context"). They have been swopping
each other's identities with their contexts.
The following joke involves liveness ("becoming-being") to give a complete
enough picture. See how action (raining, driving) is overstressed leading
the hearer away from action of a sexual nature.
A man said to his friend that driving in the rain always made him think of
sex. His friend was puzzled. He explained to his friend that the sound of
windscreen wipers sweeping between left and right reminded him of pleasing
both sides -- "sweeshop', "sweeshop", "sweeshop".
I can safely claim that of the thousands of jokes on whatever topic which
I have examined, each one worked as follows. The joke leads the hearer on
a path which hides or distorts one of the 7Es. The punch line of the joke
is to make the hearer aware of his/her tacit knowing of this essentiality.
This recognition produces laughter, a kind of joy. The person's body begin
with convulsions, the face begins with contortions and the person utters
strange gasping sounds.
The pun, whit and comedy also work with the 7Es on the tacit level. Each
of them confronts in its own manner the hearer with recognising one of the
7Es in its articulation. For example, in the pun the unexpected makes the
recognition instantaneous while in the comedy the recognition is carefully
developed.
When I walk on our campus, I observe students carefully. They do not live
excessively by pun, whit, joke and comedy. Yet they frequently show the
tow-faced emotion of joy-sorrow -- the corners of the mouth and eyes
turned upwards (joy) or downwards (sorrow). This means that many more
elements of joy rather than merely the humorous pun, whit, joke or comedy
influence their lives on campus. For example, some student might point to
a person doing something unusual and the others will grin.
It is this ship of joy with humour as its bridge in which satire has to
operate to become successful. Any satire which produces primitive
laughter, but otherwise neglects the limits of joy, will cause shipwreck
into the sea of sorrow. The ships hull will spring a hole and sink. These
limits or hull of joy are nothing but the 7Es. The satire uses the
buoyancy of joy as emotion to sustain its purpose. It uses the immense
power of humour which produces laughter to complete its course. It unites
people in its purpose. As the old saying has it, "Laugh and the world
laughs with you; cry and you cry alone."
Some people learned that telling jokes or transforming potentially
threatening situations into a comedy is an enormously powerful survival
tactic. If you can make someone who is threatening you to laugh with you,
then you have transformed the situation from one of danger to yourself
into one of a shared moment of understanding of your common humanity.
Satire can do the same. Jan Smuts, the father of holism, even used singing
favourite songs to do the same. In other words, by remembering that the
ship to navigate dangerous seas is called joy, we can outlive any storm on
them.
So what is the purpose of satire? Again we have many different viewpoints.
Some think that the purpose of satire is didactical, i.e., to teach.
Others think that the purpose of satire is to moralise, i.e., to preach.
Some even think that the purpose of satire is to correct social practices.
I myself think that the purpose of satire is to bring about a constructive
change of character in any of its many faculties. The satire is used to
influence the true, the good, the right, the beauty and the consistent,
some of the faculties of character. Satire is not directed at a change of
knowledge, but of a change of character which is for me at a higher level
of spirituality.
Satire should not be targeted at other ordinary citizens because they can
easily be influenced by other less complex group dynamics. Most important
of all, they can be reached by the dialogue. Satire is ratger targeted
with outrage at powerful persons of high office, whether it be social,
political, economical or religious. Because of their very power, they take
those under their heel little into consideration. They have to be beaten
by a power greater than their own. As the old saying has it, "The pen is
mightier than the sword." It is in the satire that the pen gains this
might. Its purpose is to effect some changes in the character of the
target (so that he or she reforms) and to encourage others not to behave
in a like manner. Let us now follow the historical course of satire.
The first great master of satire seemed to be Archilochus of Greece about
600BC. We have nothing left of his works, except the Roman Quintilian who
attested to his supremacy in this form of literary art. About the same
time the prophet Jeremiah of the Hebrew civilization showed his own
deftness in satire. When reading it, I want to sing with laugher and dance
with joy. Eventually the Greek Aristophanes taught with his comedies just
how much can be accomplished with satire. Later on the Lucilius did for
Roman literature much the same. So much so for classical satire.
Aristophanes and Lucilius remained unrivalled for almost two millennia
until Shakespeare explored satire further in some of his plays. On the
continent Erasmus did the same for continental minds. Alexander Pope,
Jonathan Smith and Charles Dickens demonstrated that perfected satire,
applied with cold logic and unrivalled imagination, can change the course
of a nation. Unfortunately, satire began to decline from the beginning of
the 19th century. In the 20th century only a few struggling magazines like
Punch still caters for it. As for the rest, it has become but a cartoon
next to the editorial article in a newspaper.
Many popular TV shows excel in humour-laughter. They are claimed to be
satire. But they are not because they lack the purpose of satire -- a
constructive change of character to undo a social vice. Looking at shows
one can imagine how someone, hidden to the TV camera, shows a poster to
the audience like "laugh" or "giggle". But one cannot imagine what vice
they had in mind.
Exquisite satire is one of the ultimate forms of freedom of expression. It
is a deadly weapon against dictators and others of similar ilk. When they
begin to march the satirists to prisons, the public ignorant to satire
ought to have known what future lies ahead for them. Satire also lays bare
the insatiable greed of men of fortune. When they respond with
litigations, again the public ignorant to satire is unaware who is paying
for what. Satire calls power drunk fanatics to justice where jurisprudence
cannot reach. When they respond with character assassination, again the
public ignorant to satire cannot perceive a catastrophe in the making.
We live in an era in which the gap widens between the few with power and
the many without power in all walks of life. Giving facts will do little,
if anything, to change the course of events. It is the same with holding
demonstrations or writing outrageous letters and articles. They deal with
knowledge, not the character which is at fault. It is now time to take up
once more the pen (or keyboard ;-) and exercise the satire which reach out
to character itself.
Why is the general public ignorant to satire? I think that it is a vice of
modern education based on information. Learners have to be trained to
memorise logical conclusions based upon facts. Truth is out there. They
have to be trained to find problems for memorised solutions. Satisfaction
is out there. They have to be trained to manage systems as if ruling over
them. Control is out there. Art in general and the satire in particular as
a form of literary art are now for the birds. This is a clear indication
to their ignorance of the classic Greek satire of Pisthetairos' The Birds.
Education which avoids or suppresses the spontaneous development of
character is indoctrination. The blindness to satire vindicates it.
When we compose satire, we have to bear in mind its three essential
features -- careful composition, general humour-laughter as immediate
outcome and a lasting change of character for the better. The composition
of satire is far more complex than most people would appreciate. Thus,
unlike in the dialogue, the LRC (Law of Requisite Complexity) plays a
watershed role for whoever to appreciate the satire and become motivated
by it. The complex satire is wasted on rigid people (lack of liveness), on
rational people (lack of sureness), on specialised people (lack of
wholeness), on treasure map people (lack of fruitfulness), on
over-confident people (lack of spareness), on exclusive thinking people
(lack of therness) and on trusting people (lack of openness). Thus, when
you fellow learners want to introduce satire once again to the public,
keep it simple because they have a lot to catch up.
Nevertheless, the satire will sweep its audience in recognising what is
essential to constructive creativity and thus to feel joy. The dynamics
have to be accomplished in terms of carefully composed entropic force-flux
pairs. One such an entropic force-flux pair consists of what is known as
irony. It is a figure of speech in which what is said is the opposite of
or incongruent to what is meant. It creates tension, expecting from the
listener to make a distinction between appearance and reality or between
expectation and fulfilment.
Another entropic force is sarcasm. It is cutting (down sizing) speech
which complements joy with sorrow, intended for the person to whom the
satire is addressed to reflect upon sorrow (pain). But it works only when
the person addressed is a learner. Avoid it when otherwise. For example,
it is wasted upon those acting with hubris. It stops working for anyone
when uttered in a judgemental tone. Brutally bitter sarcasm makes only
enemies. Sarcasm should never hurt because it has the power to do so, but
only reflect on hurt having been done. It is said that power corrupts.
This means that powerful sarcasm can easily become corrupted.
Perhaps the most daring entropic force is that of ridicule. The virtueless
acts of a person is compared with metaphors to what every person expects
tacitly. The deadliest arrow in the quiver of satire is to put ridicule in
the mouth of the victim. The following is a ridicule of science: "I love
being a scientist. What I can't stand is the bench-work." But when it
becomes: "I love bench-work. What I can't stand is the scientist" the
ridicule attacks the person and not the vice so that again it strikes a
hole (lack of sureness) in the hull of the ship of joy. The destiny of
those on board will be drowning in the sea of sorrow.
Entropic forces may also be created by distortion, exaggeration, mock,
parody, understatement, pun, double entendre, malapropism, manufactured
words, spoonerism, lampooning, pairing of unlike elements and fancy.
Fellow learners can explore these entropic forces themselves. However, it
has to be warned again that these forces, like irony, sarcasm and
ridicule, should always be kept within the boundary of the 7Es so that the
laughter they elicit can come to rest as joy.
The satirist has to imagine every possible means to create frequently
tension between the denigrating actual and the loftier ideal. Furthermore,
the satirist has to resolve every tension created as quickly as possible
through humour-laughter, never overstepping the bounds of joy. The
satirist has to keep his/her relentless attacks one by one funny. I mean
he/she has to keep laughter coming quickly with sufficient variety so that
the audience stays interested in what is going on. Hence the audience will
become engrossed in a change of character for the better.
In his "An Essay on Mankind" Alexander Pope displayed a profound diversity
of these entropic forces on the well being of humankind. Unfortunately,
Pope's satire was so complex that afterwards he had to explain he intended
no malice nor denigration towards those involved. Make sure that you do
not have to explain afterwards what you intended.
In my twelve years of schooling we had dozens of language teachers. We are
a multilingual society and during the years of apartheid the study of at
least two languages was encouraged. How is that for apartheid. But in the
new South Africa with its inclusive democracy, English as lingua franca is
displacing increasingly every other language in our public organisations.
What irony!
Nevertheless, of those dozens of teachers, only one, a mister Heyberg,
tried to teach us the art of satire. He insisted that satire has to come
spontaneously from within rather instructed by force. The majority of
pupils could not understand this so they ridiculed him. I felt very sorry
for him as he lit in me the passion for satire. Under his mentorship I
learned how to compose satire. But he was not there to comfort me when my
own later attempts failed. I still had to learn that we both lived in a
century in which satire had become as rare as chickens with teeth and
horses with horns.
Consequently if we want to use satire to undo the gross imbalances of
society, we will first have to educate people in recognising satire for
what it is -- an art in composition, feeling and purpose. This is not an
easy task. Furthermore, people making use of satire will also have to
learn how to accept satire when it is directed at them. The best way to do
this is make a satire of oneself when directing satire at a social vice.
A few months ago I read that Daniel Defoe wrote many satiric pamphlets and
treatises, in bulk far more than his novel Robinson Crusoe. Can you
imagine how much surprised I was? The tragedy f living in a developing
country like South Africa is that we do not have libraries with any works
of writers like Defoe other than his "Robinson Crusoe". New books acquired
are usually from the latest hype. Some twenty years later these books
merely gather dust. The greater tragedy of living in a developed country
is that such books there also get covered with dust.
Fellow learner Andrew Campbell wants to visit me so that we can explore
the crispness of some desert. I want to visit him so that we can explore
some libraries of Oxford, smelling of ancient books. (Defoe is now also on
my list.) Is the grass on the other side of the fence not greener? Dear
Andrew and others who tried satire before, hone your attempts at it. You
will change the character of the world for the better. Seek laughter to
unite and stay within joy to keep it safe. Begin it simple for many have
to learn once again what has become almost obsolete.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.