Saturday, October 24, 2009

Confusion as Primal

In a sense, we’re all fools. Confusion is the primal emotion, that which greets our first thought and our first sight of things to come. Confusion is primal, and it never goes away. Many of the great psychological theorists of the past were wrong in choosing differently, but then, they, too, were confused. What lifelong therapy would they design to cope with this primal, evanescent emotion? The shaman may be seen as the authority who addresses this confusion but he is also a jester, or holy fool , and a portion of his function is that of an entertainer. As holy fool, he exemplifies that fool within us all. He is us, in our weakness, our freakishness, and our animality. The shaman and the totem of the tribe represent our beastliness and boorishness, our vulgarity and our wildness. Hence, the shaman plays on our love for him through his knowledge (manifesting his self-knowledge) of our humble position in the face of confusion, our utter ignorance and pathetic weakness, our cravenness - as known of himself in amplified form, by him. He is a fool, as confused as we are, and all that he has is his heart.

(c) Copyright 2009 by A. Rogolsky

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