At the 2009 Sasquatch! festival in Washington, a random guy got up & started dancing. Alone, he stayed dancing… No friend in sight… just a guy by himself… enjoying his dancing. Losing himself on the hillside as the song played ‘Unstoppable’ on the stage far below.
…and what starts with one guy expressing his own inner fire, turns into a fast-growing group of wild ones joining until the hill is completely covered by fellow humans all dancing passionately.
“Light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn.”
―John Wesley
By escaping the common social comfort zone, the young man became the architect of a collective outburst of optimism & joy right there in the midst of an otherwise rather calm atmosphere.
In our daily lives, we mostly follow social roles and conventions. These subconscious habits provide structure and predictability, guiding our interactions - shaping our behaviors. While our social habits serve their purpose, there is untapped magic waiting to be explored when we dare to break free from the script and allow the extraordinary to take center stage.
Breaking out of these roles and expressing our individuality creates a social opening as philosopher and former pro skater Nick Riggles calls it. Enabling the person we're interacting with to do the same. In other words “An Invitation To Play“.
“When we break out of our norm-governed roles by expressing ourselves, we often create what I call a social opening. A social opening occurs when an opportunity arises to step outside of these roles, in particular, when there is an opportunity to recognise the individual each other is, or aspires to be, beyond whatever personality traits and skills are required to enact the social role.”
Splitting Social Reality
…speaking of social norms & humor:
Benign violation theory: Humor arises when a situation is perceived as both harmless (benign) and violating social norms or expectations (violation).
For example, play fighting and tickling, which produce laughter in humans (and other more hairy primates), are benign violations because they are physically threatening but harmless attacks.
In order not to waste these new definitions that we learned (originally created by Peter McGraw) let’s connect it to our notion of "social opening". Both could be summarized as an emotional opening that challenges our expectations or pushes us beyond our usual limits. Embracing the unexpected (“Humanity's Deepest, Darkest Fear“) in order to experience a more colorful range of human emotions & expressions.
There is a difference between social excellence & social opening - where social excellence depends on & reaches for conformity, a social opening reaches for authentic expression.
If you grind hard at your local dancing school and put a lot of pressure on your soul, congratulations you can achieve a perfect score in the tango driving license (does this exist?) but lost all fun in the game.
In contrast, real pulsating life in our soul is created by breaking or teasing our behavioral routines. When we are at a tango dance party and everybody is super stiff & nervous to make a mistake, we can start moving in some rather embarrassing & ridiculous moves to ease the atmosphere for everybody. We break the rules of tango - We lose at the tango game but win in the “just chill & have a good time“ game.
The desire for peace is fear-driven, the desire for creation is driven by our lust for life!
“Don't play what's there; play what's not there.”
―Miles Davis
In order to transform the initial social opening into a collective play, the benign violation needs to be accepted with a curious “YES, and…”
"Yes, and..." in improv theater is about accepting & building upon your scene partner's ideas. It means acknowledging what they've said or done ("Yes") and then adding your personal meaning to the scene ("and").
If you accept a scripted role behavior with “YES, and…” you just continue the routine (congratulations you achieved boring peace). Yet if you accept a rule break, a dirty little storm in the routine - You create a story. A hero’s myth.
Superheroes, Villains & The “Superartist”
The opposite of a villain is not a hero but a person who creates. A hero is always reactive, trying to bring back harmony & routine. A hero protects the balance. A villain is proactively trying to destroy balance & routine. But in a way to create suffering & polarization. We hardly have a culture of proactive heroes. Superheroes that act also proactively, that want to push us out from mere balance. To tease us out of our local optima. But not to disturb us but in order to make life more vivid, inspiring & passionate. More aware & more alive.
This gap that stares at us with confused eyes, I want to fill with “artists” (you may have heard about them). Great artists are proactively inspiring us, breaking our routine in healing playful ways! Bringing people together with inspiration & excitement. An artist is inspired by the god of creation. The art in his heart dances to the beats of the jester’s drum. Lovingly creating new games and teasing us to unleash our souls.
"The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation."
- Jonathan Larson
The Jedi want the “balance of the force“ to be preserved, they don’t want to play. That is why Anakin Skywalker became a Sith. He was seen as The Chosen One to “bring balance to the force”. Yet his temperament is one that is rather bored by balance. He is passionate and creative. He jumps from flying cars in order to take shortcuts (creating benign violations). But in his galaxy far far away there were no force-sensitive “Super-Artists“ that could help him explore his own passions & recognize his creative force. Only repressive Jedi that wanted calm ascetic lives of balance (basically galactic “Super-Monks“). They want everybody to be good civilians ("townspeople", "villagers" or "commoners") they want balance & peace. An artist wants us to be unleashed real dirty wild Viking humans, excitable soul material.
In contrast to the neurotic Jedi in Star Wars, the spiritual message of the documentary Kung Fu Panda speaks quite clearly that out-of-the-box thinking is even a distinct sign of “The Chosen One”:
The rather well-fed panda Po is not a classic 'student' of Kung Fu. There is no 'bear style' and his master, mindful of that, teaches him no one technique. He doesn’t transform him to a good student. Po is left to find the secrets of his own power as a self-teacher similar to the old master Oogway:
“Oogway is a self-teacher. As a turtle, he is even less appropriate than a Panda as a Kung Fu archetype. …Thus Oogway is a self-teacher trying to pass the secret of self-teaching. But how can he do this as to train a student risks crowding out the self-teaching modality? So he decides to pick a self-teacher by choosing the panda whose only achievement is to break into a Kung Fu competition by turning a fireworks cart into a makeshift rocket to hop a wall.
In this case, Po’s benign violation is a sign of his greatness:
Yet this act of improvisation tells the great turtle that he is better off working with this humble unconventional maverick than with the overtrained tigress or other conventionally trained high achievers…
Po then realizes that he can create without waiting to receive wisdom down the chain of masters.“
- Eric Weinstein
Po is an outsider, and as such, he was not conditioned too tightly in the social rule book. His rewards were not fed by social cues or conformity but by fantasy, play (and food). Instead of being possessed by social roles & identifications with collective grinding games, Po is possessed by his muses. He is dreamy and full of fantasy.
Let’s summarize here some factors that enable benign provocations to be social openers:
Their craziness distracts us from social self-awareness (“Did i say something wrong?“)
Being different (social benign violations) stretches our social conventions, and expands the space of social possibilities.
Being playful signals safety to our mammal brain and relaxes us.
Intuitive communication triggers deep desires, passions and values which enchant us.
Skillful breaking of social conventions frees us from social hierarchies & roles.
By triggering collective dreams they unite people and create emotional sometimes even existential bonding experiences & common ground.
In this way, responsible passionate artists are proactive healers that invite play by fostering individual and collective expressions. They are the shamans of our culture, the heroes we need.
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
―Cesar A. Cruz
Sources:
[1] The guy who started a dance party
[2] Bon Jovi Fan Cam:
[3] https://aeon.co/essays/how-being-awesome-became-the-great-imperative-of-our-time
[4] https://thecreativemind.net/perspiration-meets-inspiration-or-the-return-of-the-muse/
[5] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anima/202304/animal-creativity-is-linked-to-popularity-and-personality
[6] https://www.eightleaves.com/2010/04/the-dancing-guy-at-sasquatch