Coulrophobia

Just clowning around

Its the fear of clowns. And in that … its the reversal … of every child's basic nature … regarding clowns. It takes the happy natures … steeped in the expectation of laughter … and turns them … into the opposite sensation … of suspicion and doubt. Well … that's the premise apparently … for a bunch of hooliganism and muggings … that's going on in Northern France. It makes one wonder … what are they trying to say? Is it a social statement?

 

I seem to recall that … social statements … were made in the hallowed halls of school and academia … along with the chaste messages of worship. Thereafter … it borrowed itself from the wisdom and sayings of social leaders … and the quotes they produced. Art and sculpture produced some deep perceptions … and at some point … it reached street level … as murals and sometimes graffiti. Advertising took up the initiative thereafter … and produced some thought provoking one liners … about life in general.

 

Social responses to these messages … are possibly mixed. We view these messages … or hear them … and for a moment sense the experience of our agreement. In some ways … we may also relate that to events in our life … that illustrates the same issue. However in the frame of the current world's experience … we view these past aphorisms as dated. It seems to refer to an older time somehow … quite out of touch with the state of the individual mind … in these times.

 

In a broader view … of the issue of nurturing social values and norms … our societies give the indication … of funneling into a narrow confine of experience … in the isolation of dismissal and disregard of the importance of social relations. In its place … it births the metamorphosis of new attitudes … first emerging in the individual … and thereafter extending itself into new social values and norms.

 

News reports cite the US … Britain … and now France … as nations that have witnessed … muggings by perpetrators … dressed up as clowns. The social outlook … as epitomized by these events seems to say … its no longer funny … as if … in revelation that … people are laughing at the social breakdown … like a Nero fiddling … while Rome burned. Hence the mugger is saying … hey! … look at me … I'm laughing too … but you are missing one wallet.

 

In his novel ' IT ' … Stephen King … introduced the magical way … in which our fears and joys … are mixed in a batter of whimsical natures … but it is possible to discern the one from the other … not through … the minds pondering around the batter … but through life's experiences … that puts in physical perspective … our real joys from the dreams … and what we fear … from our anxieties. It is by the process … of applying ourselves … to a little each day … in the daily activities we encounter.

 

Cervantes … in his book Don Quixote … explored the heights of such a mix of the batter of joys and fears … and in a clownish way … stretched the dream into reality … and acted out the fantasies … in a mind grown weak … with weariness. Certainly there's much clowning in Don Quixote … but the mind does not release its grasp on the finer points of social norms … instead it takes some time out … to examine its own … convolution and bizarre natures.

 

Our individual choices … in cognition of our rights … freedom to belief … permits us to do that. We discover in the experience … our rock of origin … be that the River Jordan … or the Kingdom of the child … that rises from our subtle senses … to refer to possibilities … that are as yet untested in our lives. Do we have perfect knowledge of man? Are we as yet informed on the diversities of human conduct in the world … where one man's meat may be another's poison? Have we found a way to view these many conditions and bring about their union in a common purpose?

 

What we sometimes do is to identify with the child in his kingdom … and add our acquiescence … to the growing complaints about the world and society. At the risk of becoming comic … this attitude brings us down the road to a separation … between our individual selves and that of the world. In the alienation thereafter … we sometimes do what Shakespeare referred to as … ' mocking the meat that we feed on.'

 

In Harper Lee's … To Kill a Mocking Bird … we come to the realization that … our fine balance of the sanities … is threatened by the mocking conduct of others. It explains why … for instance … the books of Khalil Gibran … were burnt in the public square … in his native Lebanon. We are unable to discern … that one individual's handling of his child's kingdom … may have lessons for us all … if we are not already applying ourselves to deal with it.

 

As a society … would we grow in the maniacal nature of coulrophobia? We might … if we thought that … we are so far gone … that its impossible to make things better again. And then … we might engage the maniacal nature of the comic … to frighten the child in the kingdom … into a blind acceptance of everything we do. Or we might engage the child … and realize that … like all men … at the start of civilization … we had simply thought life is wonderful … and we had dreamed of the many possibilities life would bring.