Discuss: The Sound of One Trickster Clapping

The Trickster is always present where the community is least prepared to honor it. The Trickster has never found more fertile ground to sew its influence than in today’s America which has forgotten its roots in the arcane practices of its founders. The Trickster in its many forms does not take a side, it defies polarity and thrives in contradiction. Neither does it seek conformity. If we can take a lesson from the Trickster it may be that we are free to participate with no rules attached.

Shandrick,

Perhaps you see yourself as a trickster who “thrives in contradiction”.

Though you seem to advocate “no rules”, the first thing that pops up on your website is “copyright” (this is mine - the rest of you keep you grubby hands off), and your vocation is “advertising copywriter and public relations specialist”.

It appears that you are the anti-Trickster who uses soothing and enticing words to bend people to the will of others. That’s exactly the kind of “trickster” that has deceived our culture to walk willingly to the brink while impeaching the voice of the shaman-poet beseeching us to wake up.

At 74, I find it almost mandatory to boycott the trickster media for increasingly long periods, the disheartening effect of so much of it isn’t good for anyone’s health.
In the USA especially, the media concentrates on an ever-cheapening pop culture, driving out the deeper voices of the poets in all fields.
Personally, I’m fortunate in being a classical musician, and have available to me the great music of a six-centuries-long tradition created by the best of the poets among us, and there’s nothing like a string quartet(particularly Bartok’s!)to instantly remind us where the depths are.  We all need a respite from the dis-
tractions of shallow commercial-
ism, in part to remember we are solely responsible for the healthy survival of this earth.

The Trickster cannot be trusted to stick within moral boundaries and has no backbone to engage in civic engagement.  That said, the Trickster has a lot of fun, and we are told life is supposed to be fun.  I am finding Albert Camus to be as relevant as any line of thinking these days. He isn’t about fun.  I also find the author of this piece to have appropriated a lot of the work of James Hillman.  Perhaps not, but it sure feels like it.  Hillman’s stuff isn’t fun either but it sure helps a reader think clearly.  Thank you to all comments, interesting discussion.