Jung, Ferris Wheels & The Meaning of Life

I have seen many people die because life for them was not worth living. From this I conclude that the question of life's meaning is the most urgent question of all.

Albert Camus

If you are willing, and you have to be since you are here to take this complex journey through the sublimely meaningful to the outright idiotic.

“Life is crazy and meaningful at once. And when we do not laugh over the one aspect and speculate about the other, life is exceedingly drab, and everything is reduced to the littlest scale. There is then little sense and little nonsense either.”

"Which element we think outweigh the other, whether meaninglessness or meaning is a matter of temperament. If meaninglessness were absolutely preponderant, the meaningfulness of life would vanish to an increasing degree with each step in our development. But that is – or seems to me – not the case. Probably, as in all metaphysical questions, both are true: life is – or has – meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle”

C G Jung

The truth about Milk - Cow and Human

There is no better person to express the duality of the meaningless and meaningful than the showman. The jester can be the mirror which shows us that the deep and the shallow are all part of the same swimming pool. How deep it is depends on which end you jump into.
At the Carnival the duality of life's meaning and emptiness are like the full cream milk straight from a cow's udder or a mum's breast. If left to stand the fat separates out and floats to the surface. By stepping through the Carnival Gates we buy the ticket and take the rides. The rides shake us, roll us, and wriggle our bodies and our minds until the the separated mother's milk inside us all once again blend with the rest. On the gravitron, the Ferris Wheel and the Carousel the ridiculous and the vital becomes one again. Mechanically shaken by carnival rides some of us get so shook up the fat and the skimmed milk fuses so totally that it might never separate again. It balances us  like the  homogenized milk we buy in the corner store. The Carnival has the potential to heal us for life.

The world viewed from a Ferris wheel.

The Philosophical Ferris Wheel

From the top of the Ferris Wheel we get a new perspective. We feel ourselves enclosed in a colourful steel cage dangling on a slowly spinning orbit through space. We are alive. Butterflies swirls around our bellies becoming one with the corn dogs and cotton candy imbibed just before getting on the ride. For some the whirling of the carousels and Ferris Wheel makes the butterflies and corn-dogs dream of freedom and with a feeling of neausea they threaten to escape back into the world.
We feel life in our guts. But from our new vantage point atop the world we see the world as it is without us. For a second, whilst holding back the vomit coloured butterflies the world below becomes the primordial savannah. The beings below are grazing. Flowing like chaotic rivers and streams around the midway. The real roar of lions from the Menagerie tents fuses the unconscious dream with the reality below. Clanking of orbital machinery, clockwork wiggles of wooden skeletons adorning the ghost train and the melancholic cries of a child lost in the throng. A little hand wet with tears reaching up towards you as you descend, wet blue eyes with a quivering lip searches, longs, for nothing more than closeness, nothing more than a smile, and a large pair of arms to scoop him up and say everything is going to be alright. I am here now.

View from inside the first Ferris Wheel

I am here now.
So are you.
In that moment the world below goes from nothing to something. The grazing herds of mindless animals stumbling through life with little to no reflection vanishes and for the first time there is connection, reflection, recognition and conscious meaning. From the vantage point of your metal cage on the Ferris Wheel you complete the creation of life, with your mind melded with the lost child you give the world verifiable existence. Life no longer just exist, it knows that it exists.

Amongst the spokes of the giant wheel the cosmic meaning of consciousness becomes overwhelmingly clear, "Man is indispensable for the completion of creation, he alone has given the world its objective existence - without which, unheard, unseen, silently eating, giving birth, dying, heads taking in the worlds through hundreds of millions of years, it would have gone on in the profoundest night of non-being down to its unknown end. Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great process of being." {Jung Memories, Dreams, Reflections.}

Conciousness

It is consciousness that gives the world it's meaning. "Without the reflecting consciousness of man the world is a gigantic meaningless machine, for as far as we know man is the only creature that can discover 'meaning'."

In this last quote Jung suggests meaning to be made by man for man, that is to say it is artificial. Much like the Showman's creations. Can we from this extrapolate that the creation of meaning in Big Tops is as real a meaning as we will ever find?
I believe so.
Meaning is what is experienced as meaningful by groups or individuals. There is nothing more to it. Meaning is, like truth, not something that is but something that happens.
The answer to the meaning of life is not to be found in scientific journals for it is not a scientific question. Instead we can say it has no answer and at the same time many answers all of which are absolutely and irrevocably true. Every answer springs from the mind of someone who have considered the issue at some length. It is based on human interpretation and conjecture created by our consciousness and according to Jung in his memoir it is a myth. In its search for meaning consciousness creates a myth, a myth of meaning.
This is what consciousness does, so it is what we do. We do it because we can't not do it.

Brotherhood of Illuminated Showmen

SO this is a goal for the Acolyte Showman.
An important part of his education and study is to get himself to a point where his own consciousness, or heart in the terminology of the Brotherhood of Illuminated Showmen, creates his very own myth of meaning. Meaning is like fire it can spread.
The young Showman's myth must be like the Greek myths and Norse Viking mythology. Not something to be shrugged off as childish or less than religion or philosophy, but as a firm foundation for well balanced, happy and always creative Showman.
"He who stands on firm foundation can move the world with the fulcrum of their mind." {
In the symbology of the Brotherhood the voice of individual consciousness is a little candle. It is a fire but since the newborn myths are mere whispers at first it is but a candle. They are shy and insecure in the face of strong personalities, childhood encounters with religion, secular organizations or media. Only by engaging in the Creative Process guided carefully by Crowds and fellow Showmen can one learn to discern the tiny whisper of a voice that comes from the heart. The sheer peal, almost inaudible at first slowly comes to ring true. First only fragments. Like single freestanding acts. But as the Acolyte Showman gains experience he creates more acts, each one building on the one before, each one containing new truths and insight that rings true to him. The pinnacle in the evolution of meaningful Showmanship is symbolized by a star. It is no longer a little candle, a mere whisper of unintelligible hopes and aspirations but a roaring giver of energy. The kind of powerhouse that fuels worlds.
As his Craft develops so does the Man. When the Show is deep the Man is deep. Before he goes through the Final Initiation his Acts have become a show. The Journey Man's Master Piece have become a fully fledged Seed Show and the Master Showman has mastered the most important lesson; to create a Myth for himself strong enough to be a fulcrum to change the Hearts of Crowds towards Good.

Why is this exploration so important? and if meaning is 'man made' and not something inherently in nature would it not be better to admit to life's meaninglessness?
I don't think so.

"Meaninglessness inhibits fulness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness." Whilst Meaning has an inherent curative power. "Meaning makes a great many things endurable - perhaps everything." {Jung}

" What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? to answer this question at all implies religion. Is there any sense then, you may ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is no only unfortunate but almost disqualified for life." {Einstein - The World as I See It."

For the weighty reasons stated above it is of the utmost importance for all Showmen to not only seek to create their own meaning but also use their unique position as communicator to help others find theirs.

"There is grandeur in this view of life." {Darwin}

Meaning In Entertainment

Rambling - under the influence

I struggle with the dichotomy of meaning and entertainment. Can I produce a show which at once is appealing to the mind and eternity as well as capturing the crowds imagination today?
The question is age old. Goethe writes about it in his Prologue In The Theatre from his Faust (1828) where three characters discusses the business of creating shows. The Manager character is interested in selling tickets and is trying to find the balance between the Jester and the Poet's contributions. The former is only interested in making the Crowd laugh and enjoy the moment whilst the Poet wants to create work that will last for eternity.

MANAGER
I wish the crowd to feel itself well treated,
Especially since it lives and lets me live;
The posts are set, the booth of boards completed.
And each awaits the banquet I shall give...
...How shall we plan, that all be fresh and new,—
Important matter, yet attractive too?

POET
What dazzles, for the moment born, must perish;
What is genuine posterity will cherish.

JESTER
Posterity! Don’t name that word to me!
If I should choose to preach Posterity,
Who shall entertain the Crowds today?

Jeff Koon's balloon dog at Versailles. 

So the problem is old and touched upon in much great literature. In studying these issues I have lately wandered into the camp of science fiction. I believe there are certain similarities between the literary sub genre of science fiction and the Craft of the Showman. For both are areas of art which many will simply brush away as 'mere' entertainment without taking any closer look at it. I readily admit that there are much empty chatter and mindless drivel produced both within science fiction and circus, but amongst all the dirt, gems of diamond quality is unearthed.
Is it so that even these gems are reserved for people with special interest in the genres or can they reach beyond their fans? And ultimately, does it matter if they do? We are in the show business which requires both the show and the business to be successful if we Showmen are to put nutritious and varied food on our tables.

I have been reading the underrated and relatively unknown polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem recently. For those of you that don't know this writer here follows Wired description of him:

Stanislaw Lem has never been beloved by the science fiction establishment. Philip K. Dick accused him of being a communist agent. Members of the Science Fiction Writers Association booted him from their group. And no wonder: Lem has denounced popular sci-fi as trivial pulp produced by mental weaklings. Science fiction, he once wrote, "is a whore," prostituting itself "with discomfort, disgust, and contrary to its dreams and hopes." But strained relations with his peers hasn't tarnished Lem's career. The author of dozens of books translated into 40 languages, he is considered among the greatest sci-fi writers of all time.

So why is it that Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke are household names, but Stanislaw Lem remains unknown to so many Americans? Start with the obvious: Lem writes in Polish. His most important books have never appeared in English. Even his best-known novel, Solaris, is available in US bookstores only as an English translation of a French abridgement of the Polish original. Yet the main reason Lem's never become established here is that his wit has always been too cruel, his love of science too prominent, his outlook too cerebral to fit easily into a publishing niche devoted to fairy-tale adventures and timeworn astronaut yarns.

Drawing by Stanislaw Lem

 In this description I find Lem to be a kindred spirit, one who seeks to inject some important and deeper subjects into a genre which so often is looked down upon by the literary elite, possibly for good reason.

"We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

In his essay "Phillip K Dick: A visionary amongst the Charlatans," Stanislaw Lem brings up the subject of populism.

"Knight declared himself to have been mistaken earlier in attacking books by van Vogt for their incoherence and irrationalism, on the grounds that, if van Vogt enjoys an enormous readership, he must by that very fact be on the right track as an author, and that it is wrong for criticism to discredit such writing in the name of arbitrary values, if the reading public does not want to recognize such values. The job of criticism is, rather, to discover those traits to which the work owes its popularity. Such words, from a man who struggled for years to stamp out tawdriness in SF, are more than the admission of a personal defeat—they are the diagnosis of a general condition."

Should mass appeal make the work beyond reproach? I don't think so. Great art is rarely the most popular.

Does performances of the Carnival Arts have to loose their mass appeal when meaning is introduced? Let me rephrase the question. Does important topics necessarily make shows boring? I don't think they have to, but often they are.
Usually because the issues discussed in the performance are just that; discussed, or talked about. Some current political issue is just plastered on top of a performance like cheap wallpaper or shoved in between acts like mortar between tiles. This will not work. We must be more subtle and creative than that because our Crowds are smarter than that.

MANAGER
I know how one the People’s taste may flatter,
Yet here a huge embarrassment I feel:
What they’re accustomed to, is no great matter,
But then, alas! they’ve read an awful deal.

Faust

People say: nobody likes being preached to, but there are millions of religious people out there who gets preached at constantly so people can't mind it that much. I think it is a context thing. People don't mind being preached at when they are in church because they don't expect anything better from their local priest. Whilst when it comes to entertainment, they are a lot more choosy.

Squirrel powered musicbox

If a Showman has something to say, beyond the elements of his craft ie juggling, tightwire walking, magic etc, the Showman must make it funny or moving or scary or cool and fundamentally part of the act. Meaning should not be plastered over the top of an act it needs to be woven through it. Further and most importantly it needs to come across as real. If the person delivering the meaningful material doesn't believe in it 100% it will not work. But if they do share the passion so genuinely the Crowd might accept it and enjoy it in the most crude and preachy form, but I wouldn't rely on it. So make the meaning into material, treat the meaningful stuff with as much work as you do with your tricks and your Craft.
SO, for meaningful material to work it needs to be flawlessly integrated into the tricks and skill, it needs to be well crafted to hold its own as material whilst simultaneously ring true.

Most of the time when Showmen attempts this it falls flat, which must indicate it is a difficult thing to get right, but just because it's difficult doesn't mean we should stop trying. Rather the opposite. Like JFK said about the mission to get man to the moon:

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 61

Love your Audience. You can't truly succeed as a Showman unless you realize the importance of this. Without them you are nothing, at least not a Showman. Since a Showman is someone who Shows significant material to other people, we need the Crowd like fish needs water.
They can read you like an open book as soon as you walk on stage. They are all Mind Readers, if you will. So have your love and respect in your mind and body for them to read. Show it in your face. Open up, smile, radiate. They are the ones who makes our Craft Meaningful, show them your gratitude for this.
If you instill this mental attitude you will crave their excitement, their wonder, and their happiness even more than your own. This is a beautiful mind for them to read.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 56

When you consider the archetypal, historical, and cultural background of whatever you do, it gives you a sense that your occupation can be a calling and not just a job.

Lessons from the Way of the Showman - 40

 The Crowd’s ever watching eye brings meaning to our craft.  You are there for them. Let them know how grateful you are for their attention.