Tricking Power into Performing Acts of Love

How Tricksters Through History Have Changed the World

Shepherd Siegel

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781631957314
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Arte e politica

Tricking Power into Performing Acts of Love tells the history of tricksters who challenged the boundaries of doctrine to light the way to a more peaceful and playful society.

Come Play

CHAPTER ONE

The Ten Attributes of the Trickster

What does matter is that we come to recognize that playfulness, as a philosophical stance, can be very serious, indeed; and, moreover, that it possesses an unfailing capacity to arouse ridicule and hostility in those among us who crave certainty, reverence, and restraint. The fact that playfulness—a kind of divine playfulness intended to lighten man’s existential burden and promote what Joseph Campbell called “the rapture of being alive”—lies near the core of Zen, Taoist, Sufi, and Tantric teachers, is lost on most Westerners: working stiffs and intellectuals alike.

—Tom Robbins⁹

Like the trickster who limps and wanders between two worlds, in Stumblin’ In¹⁰ Suzi Quatro sings about vulnerability, stumbling and foolishness…and love. And so we begin. We clean off our shoes and commence the journey, to envision and create a more perfect and playful society. The quest compels three questions, the first being: what is this thing called play?

Play scholars have identified at least 308¹¹ forms of play; a more modest count yields 131.¹² But we shall concern ourselves with a mere three. The first, original play, is that substance found in all life forms. The universe offers it. It’s been described as rough-and-tumble play, and it is physical, yet we see it in that most fragile of critters, the human infant. No hitting, no biting, no scratching, no grasping, nothing sexual, but by all means, full physical contact, rolling around on the ground, wrasslin’, starting games that dissolve as quickly as they begin, all of us can engage in original play and enter that state of grace. That kind of playfulness also has a cerebral corollary, most commonly manifested in art, but it can take many forms.

When original play develops into games with winners and losers, with competition, even competition against oneself (i.e., scorekeeping to attain a “personal best”), then original play becomes what is in many ways its opposite, cultural play. In cultural play, we compete, we achieve, we seek titles, we defeat competitors, we win or we lose. Though these two kinds of play are opposites, in each lies the seeds of the other. The spirit of original play can be embedded in cultural play. Consider the example of, say, Michael Jordan in one of his many superlative games with the Chicago Bulls basketball team. While on the outside he is competing in and winning a game that is clearly cultural play, he is also “in the zone” and experiencing the flow of original play.

Both forms can be fun; both forms are essential to our society and the enjoyment of life. My only caveat is that we have become overly obsessed with cultural play, and when grown-ups squelch the original play of children with more structured and achievement-oriented cultural play, those children become grown-ups who would seem to have lost their ability to be original players, lost sight of the joy original play brings. And in our obsession with cultural play, with playing the warrior and seeking victory and another’s defeat, when we fail as a society to moderate cultural play, fail and are seized by scenarios where cultural play escalates, we find ourselves in its most toxic form, war.

Short of war, political disagreements are not settled through debate and collective inquiry, but through a need to attack and defeat. And a saturating commerce regularly defeats our resistance to consumption; it permeates and invades our daily lives, interrupting our access to original play. So yes, we need cultural play, but we’re overdosing.

The third form of play is disruptive play. Quite simply, when original play (we play in order to keep on playing) is introduced into the arena of cultural play (we play to win and bring the game to its conclusion), it disrupts the game, provokes the cultural players, lays bare a primordial conflict in the interest of letting love and fun overcome power, and opens the door to the possibilities of the Play Society. Thus the underrated human proclivity for the prank. Whether streaking naked onto the field of an NFL game or protesting war by attempting to levitate the Pentagon three hundred feet off the ground, disruptive play is the thing.

The Warrior archetype informs cultural play. The Child, original play. And the Trickster thrives on disruptive play.

The second question is: what happens when grown-ups retain the ability to be playful the way they were as children and continue original playing? Consciously or unconsciously, what happens is that they are going to engage with the oldest archetype known to humanity, the Trickster, a powerful demigod who appears all over the world.

Studies of Trickster gods from various cultures turn up consistencies and patterns. I’ve been able to distill ten recurring attributes that that characterize the Trickster.

To answer the most-asked question and set the table, consider the first attribute, that a person cannot be a Trickster if we are talking about the capital ‘T’ Trickster archetype. Yet humans are very much a part of the conversation. So think of it the way Star Wars casts the Hero Warrior. The Force animates the Hero Warrior archetype. No human, not even a Jedi, can be the Force, but the Force can be strong or weak with a person.^vi Likewise, the Force of Trickster energy can be stronger with some than others. Some humans have quite a lot of it, some not, but everybody’s got some. So understanding these attributes yields a lens through which one can develop a sensibility about tricksterism as it manifests—in folklore, fiction, art, music, consciousness, politics, culture, theater, mythology, and the like.

1. The first attribute we have just reviewed. The Trickster is an archetype, thus a human being cannot be a Trickster . . . but we all embody, to varying degrees, a mixture of archetypal influences. The Trickster force can be strong with a person.
2. Secondly, a Trickster never met a boundary they didn’t relish crossing. For example, they might first appear as male but frequently spend time as females too. This gender fluidity reminds us that the nonbinary approach to gender has been around for at least as long as people have been telling each other stories, and the current movement to challenge cultural dictates around gender announces a rebirth of something ancient. But the point here is that Tricksters compulsively test, challenge, and cross boundaries and transgress when it suits them.
3. Tricksters tend to be loners. Lonerism^vii makes wandering easier, and they like to wander. Lonerism means autonomy, and so harebrained schemes that work, as well as the ones that backfire, get executed as no one else needs to be consulted. And their aversion to lasting connections complements the image of the wandering loner. Yet it is the transcendence of this attribute—the intriguing, ephemeral possibilities of the collective, of communal connection—that, paradoxically, Tricksters seek.
4. Tricksters are not evil, but neither are they good. They are ruled by moral indeterminacy. They just want to have fun. Trickster amorality/indeterminacy is, in the case of the infant, simply pre-moral. In trickster grown-ups, moral ambiguity restarts a process that invites a fresh stab at figuring out what morality is. Thus, think not of amorality as necessarily evil, as many do, but as the pause that refreshes.
   By embarking on adventures with no greater intention than having fun, tricksters eventually discover values, order, and morality anew. These adventures regenerate the urge to human progress. And trickster tales are part of a cycle, a cycle that begins free of morality and ends with moral discovery.¹³
5. Tricksters play tricks. But they get tricks played on them, too, and sometimes they play tricks on themselves. Embracing the risk of backfire and the near-guarantee of guffaws, being willing to play the fool for the sake of enlightenment, or peace, or a good laugh, performing whatever it takes to grow the party—this is the essential fifth attribute of the Trickster. It’s important to consider this self-effacing attribute when looking at politicians and applying the label. Folks whose lives are about power rarely display this humble and sacrificial quality.
   A favorite trickster tale comes from the Winnebago tribe, where Trickster Wakdjunkaga tricks a buffalo with straw men, making the buffalo think he’s surrounded. He thus captures the buffalo and skins him using his right arm. His left arm becomes jealous and tries to usurp the right arm and take over the skinning. The result is some nasty self-mutilation of the left arm by the right. It is this kind of silliness, innocuous intentions, and backfiring of tricks that distinguish Trickster from villains or sadists. The trickery can bounce in any direction, including back at Trickster.
6. Trickster tales typically feature fart and poop jokes. And sometimes pee. And at this point, the reader may wonder whether the author is stooping to cheap tricks to sustain attention or whether he is really on to something.
   The theory of disruptive play connects the playfulness of the infant, of animals, to political liberation and a utopian vision. Thus the import of how the scatological brings our consciousness back to core functions inevitably emerges. In other words, when you were a little kid learning your first jokes, was anything funnier that poop and fart jokes? I daresay not. The Bavarian Trickster Till Eulenspiegel is particularly obsessed with scatology, but these jokes and poop plot devices show up throughout folklore, and even in Western art. Marcel Duchamp—the Force was strong with him!—provoked impressionist and cubist art dealers by submitting a men’s urinal into a prestigious art competition. And female tricksters outwit men who fear the menstrual cycle.
7. Tricksters are liars. And saviors. While many people will have the initial response of looking askance at such a trait, they should also consider that if one envisions a world far more beautiful, just, prosperous, and fun than the one we currently inhabit . . . is that messianic inspiration or lie? Mischievous trickery can be in service to a savior-like quality. Amongst indigenous tribes of the North American Northwest, Raven lies and tricks the Chief into relinquishing the sun, the moon, and the stars into the world and, in another tale, rebuilds the world after the flood.¹⁴
8. We are living through difficult times. By that very term “living through,” we attach our existence to the forces and circumstances of the present, forces that oppress us, that bind us to the moment. Examples abound, from our environmental catastrophe to the exploitation of the poor, from any of our personal tragedies and trials to the Tower of Babel that best describes the state of public discourse. If Trickster consciousness is to work its magic of perspective, lightheartedness, and optimistic vision, it must be granted the ability to escape the current moment through a tunnel, and Tricksters use that superpower. Tunnels are the first tool in the trickster’s toolbox. Whether it’s the Zulu weasel, Native American coyote, Bugs Bunny, Dennis Rodman, a hipster subculture, or Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, tunnels show up as escape routes, traps, a gimmick for a trick, a metaphor, or a means to understanding.
   Tricksters can tunnel through time, detach from a moment so as to connect histories past to speculative futures. We see it in trickster types who anticipate the future, like Lord Buckley or Alfred Jarry. We experience it in the fictional worlds of Shakespeare’s King Lear and in Warner Brothers’ Bugs Bunny. Thus the eighth attribute of the Trickster is about a transit system for crossing boundaries and connecting distant points. In other words, tunnels and time travel.
9. When Tricksters are powerful, from whence do they draw their power? Sometimes they attain power through trickery—no surprise there—when biblical Rebekah helps Jacob steal the birthright from Esau or when West African È
   
   hù Elégba contrives with the chief god Ifa the day before a contest to receive the blessings of Àshe. Or, as in the cases of Norse god Loki and Northwest Raven, they’re born that way; their power is a first principle. So Tricksters do not assemble armies. They do not conquer through war. This is not to say that Tricksters cannot be lethal or dangerous or powerful, but their nature is to mock power, not to amass it.
10. Raven is the Trickster god whose tales span Northern California, the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, and Siberia. And the word raven has Old English, Norse, Danish, Dutch, High German, and even Greek roots that tie the raven to the crow. Now tricksters and hedonists are not the same thing. But that’s not to say that tricksters don’t have an enormous appetite for as much food and sex as they can possibly get. They do. Rare is the trickster tale where food or sex or both are not a major aspect or plot device, and these appetites are, naturally, frequently described as ravenous!

So consider these ten attributes as a roadmap to the rest of this book, to help us notice and sort out Tricksters and Trickster energy as they appear and just as quickly fly away.

And what of the third question . . . quite simply, what happens when this playful grown-up, an original player, gets involved in culture and politics, politics being the most competitive arena there is? Here disruptive play takes its shot at breaking the game and making time and space for better lives, for playful living. Despite the sweet accolades draped on play in popular culture, disruptive play, until it clears the path to the Play Society, is a bloody and difficult affair. This first chapter inches closer to the cliff’s edge from whence we leap into an exploration of that third question.

And so we delve into the playground where elusive demigods meet provocative gadflies, where we catch a peek at the influence of the Trickster archetype, shrouded in mystery for too long. And we ask the truly serious question: can a deeper understanding of Trickster and a fuller integration of Trickster consciousness make the world more fun?

Tricksters! Demeaned, dismissed, disregarded. Demonized, confined, even punished. But as Lewis Hyde has warned us throughout his book, Trickster Makes This World,¹⁵ if we suppress Trickster, Trickster energy will eventually blow u...