Improv’s Paradoxes: The Trick of Trickster

What we have to do now is make clear we do want government to work differently and better than it has, but burning it to the ground won’t do that for anyone. 

– Pete Buttigieg

The Trickster archetype is full of delicious paradoxes and contradictions—delicious to those like me who revel in life’s complexity. Lord of the marketplace, Trickster has an ear for both merchants and for thieves. Lord of Liars, he also makes communication possible—between gods and humankind by creating the rituals of sacrifice, and among us, inspiring hermeneutics, the science of interpretation. The god of mischief, Trickster often makes things better, ends up enriching culture. The disruptive voice of improvisation, Trickster challenges decorum, the right way to do things. Amoral, not immoral, neither good nor evil, from Trickster’s mischief the values we live by emerge. From Trickster’s pot stirring, more delicious gumbos flow. Trickster embodies the paradoxes of human existence, including the ultimate paradox: the idea that duality, symbolized by the two snakes on his caduceus, can be unified. (The more familiar medical staff only has one).

Read the rest of “Improv’s Paradoxes” over at Randy’s Substack.