In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on August 9, 2008

In case you are wondering why I put the term “theologian” in quotation marks, it’s simple: the quotation marks are used to indicate a verbal tonality, in this case, dripping sarcasm (the red text is used to indicate “Danger”). I use the term “theologian” to indicate a person who is, as Dawkins might say, “a carrier of ideological mind viruses”. This type of person has certain core psychological characteristics, such as a Manichean view of the world and an absolute conviction that they know the Truth. Sometimes mislabeled as a “fanatic”, the “theologian” is actually much more dangerous than the typical fanatic since they have the ability to mobilize (and produce!) fanatics to achieve their ends by producing the situationally relevant Authoritative Word (Truth). Even worse, as “carriers” they are partly immune to their own mind viruses, and often motivated by other, non-Truth related, motivations.

My use of the term “theologian” has, possibly, an unintended side effect. While many of the individuals who fall into the general class are “religious”, there is no actual requirement that that be so. “Theologians” also appear as carriers of many, non “religious” ideologies such a organizational cultures, secular “theologies”, and political parties. Care must also be taken in order to not confuse them with other theologians (note the lack of quotes and black text) who recognize that they do not hold the “Truth” but, rather, only a piece of it.

Back in the 1960′s, a rather brilliant radical by the name of Saul Alinski wrote two fascinating books: Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals. These books (re)introduced the North American public to the idea of fighting “theologians” with humour (the breaking of the Kodak strike is a classic…). It’s not that the general idea of using humour as a political weapon was absent at the time but, at that point, a lot of it was via satire in music. For example,

or

What Alinski did, however, was to reintroduce the idea of oppositional popular Social Theatre to the North American public while, at the same time, giving guidelines on how to actually do it by using humour as a weapon.

Social Theatre, in case anyone doesn’t know what it means, is, basically, a form of secular ritual that gets a lot of people together and focused towards some form of social action. Indeed, the practice of social theatre, in the West, goes back for quite a long time to well before recorded history; Social Theatre derives from Social (religious) Rituals. As a technology, it had been developing in the Western world at quite a clip since the early-mid 19th century as a way of constructing nationalism and establishing the primacy of “national” (vs ethnic) identities (amongst other things; see Hobsbawm and Ranger’s The Invention of Tradition). By the 1930′s, the technology of social ritual, at least from a large organizational standpoint, was quite well understood. For example,

and

Now, using Social Ritual against an entrenched power can be both tricky (you might get shot) and ineffective – nothing changes except you and your friends are dead.

Does this mean that oppositional Social Theatre is ineffective? Nope, it just means that it has to be applied in the correct manner and aimed at the correct focal point or, what Clausewitz termed, “the centre of gravity”.

Now this type of social theatre can be quite effective at winning political goals. Consider, for example, its use in Estonia:

(as a side note, this is a trailer for the full movie which is currently playing in North America, see here for schedules – it is really worth seeing).

Social Theatre is not only “revolutionary”, it may also be “evolutionary” (i.e. it doesn’t lead to a revolution, but it does lead to change). Social Theatre operates by attacking the legitimacy of a position, stance or belief, and one of the best ways to attack these is to use humour. The use of humour, and especially satire, operates so well because many of the things that we, as a species, find “funny” are, in fact, the areas of structural strain within our societies. This was Radcliffe-Brown’s insight into the function of Joking Relationships (see here and here).

Part of the reason why this happens, i.e. why we joke about things that stress us, has to do with how our brains work. Laughter “works” by releasing endorphins (and other neurotransmitters) into the brain (see here). Now, endorphins are naturally occurring “drugs” similar to opiates that produce a “natural high” making the world seem “better” or more easy to bear. In effect, the classic Joking Relationships give the people involved a drug hit that allows them to bypass or “deal with” a structural strain issue.

Now properly deployed social theatre operates in a similar manner, i.e. a variant of behaviouralist programming. The “target” of the piece of social theatre becomes associated with the production of endorphins in the “mind” of the “audience”, giving them that instant “hit”. But one of the effects of an endorphin high is that you are neurochemicaly conditioned to not take the target “seriously”. In fact, a sufficient dose of endorphins aimed at a target over a long enough time will probably serve to demyelinate the neural chains in your brain that made you take the target seriously in the first place, “reprogramming” your reactions from, say, instant obedience or acceptance to laughter. This type of “neural (re)programming” is the functional goal of Social Theatre regardless of the particularities of the case.

So, why am I talking about laughter in a post on “theologians“? Simple, “theologians“, in order to survive, prosper, and spread their mind viruses, must be taken seriously, and laughter is one of the best “inoculations” against them. As with so many issues, this has been examined in Science Fiction – in this case, I think the best such examination was done by Grant Callin in A Lion on Tharthee which takes the concept of Social Theatre to entirely new heights (check out his idea of Joke Plays; fantastic!).

But Social Theatre can also be used by “theologians“; the al Qaeda videos are an excellent example of this. In this case, their aim is to make coalition forces into the target of laughter while, at the same time, spreading their own mind viruses as “serious”. This type of asymmetric warfare is really not understood by most of the military not because of incapability but, rather, because of incredulity – they just have a really hard time believing that anyone could be that “stupid” in operational terms (sacrificing ten fighters to get a good video?!?).

Personally, I think if the military is serious about winning its current wars, it’s time for them to start hiring consulting teams of comedy writers / producers in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, there are certainly enough of them keeping the military under a laughter watch; time to “spread the joy” while, at the same time, doing something effective about “theologians“. I’ll leave you with a final video to consider.

Category: Anthropology, Social Theatre
Tags: Asymmetric warfare, Comedy, Humour, Music, Satire, Social Theatre