Transformational Irreverence

“Irreverence takes no particular religious, political, ideological, philosophical, scientific, artistic, or moral position. Rather, it asks us to question the validity of all such positions, sometimes proposing alternative views or practices.”

Michael Kroth, The Irreverent Writer

Idaho Writer’s Guild Blog (see essay here: http://bit.ly/31KlSEz )

Why do people and institutions fear questions? Just questions. No one has to accept new answers, but what's wrong with questions? With learning more or differently?

Questions - curiosity - can inform, deepen, or modify what we conclude to be true. If we believe something to be true, why would we fear questions about it? Irreverence is one way to suggest questions that don’t otherwise get asked or even considered, and to look for deeper or more accurate (but again, provisional) conclusions.

For quite a while, I felt sure that trying to understand the topic of “irreverence” was going to be my main interest simply because I believed, and still believe, that irreverence has had and has an important role to play in society. Satire has had a long and useful history. Think M.A.S.H ., All In The Family , Saturday Night Live, Catch-22 in contemporary history. Jesters have a history, or at least a reputation, for being irreverent. Of being the ones who can deliver bad news. See: An excerpt from Fools Are Everywhere, by Otto. The arts have often played the role of irreverent provocateur, and satirists have been playwrights, novelists, comedians, and more.

But my thinking has evolved and I have evolved. I have come to believe that the topic of profound learning and living, which includes – the way I think about it for now, anyway - both reverence and irreverence, is the focus that captures best what my interests are today.*

But irreverence like many things, reverence included*, can have both helpful and unhelpful aspects. Here I talk just a little about what distinguishes those two different types. There is overlap between the two, but I think it's helpful to look at differences as well as similarities.

Transformational Irreverence and Gratuitous Irreverence

Irreverence has at least two characteristics, one of which is self-serving, the is other not. One side is the generative side, which tests, pushes up against, or breaks constraining societal, cultural, and legal rules. The other is self-indulgent. One aspect of this self-indulgence is troubling and occurs when people and ideas and beliefs can be attacked viciously for no reason other than to hurt someone else or to make someone – themselves - feel important. Another aspect of gratuitous, or self-indulgent Irreverence can also simply be healthy, fun, and playful. One type of irreverence is intended to open minds to new perspectives or to lay out uncomfortable information, the other is mostly interested in oneself.

The form of irreverence which is intended to generate new perspective and to open minds to new ways of thinking I am calling transformational irreverence . Transformational irreverence pushes at constraining or oppressing conformity, societal standards, and power structures in order to change society and individual lives for the better. Often humor is a way for those who have little power to push against those who do.

The form of irreverence which is self interested, on the other hand, I am calling gratuitous, or self-indulgent irreverence . There is obviously some overlap between transformative and gratuitous irreverence as, for example, sometimes people will feel insulted as a result of behavior intended to point out weaknesses or incongruities in something about them. Also, someone can be funlovingly irreverent (wear non-conforming clothes and such), but through that also be transformational. Self-indulgence is something we can use from time-to-time, as long as we're not doing it at others' expense. So these are distinctions as much to point out different ways of looking at irreverence more than to create hard categories. I think the useful distinction is the purpose of the two approaches.

While irreverent actions may or may not have as their ultimate purpose to change individuals, society, institutions, or culture, its specific purpose as a transformational tool is to prod people to question their thinking about personal beliefs, including culture, and the way those beliefs are manifested in day-to-day life. A common intention of irreverence is to point out the hypocrisy between espoused and practiced beliefs and values.

One way, I think, to figure out where irreverence might be useful is to think about places that resist questioning. Think about those places. Why don’t they encourage exploration of ideas, looking more deeply and more vastly?

Irreverence is one way to pose those questions, even if it's just poking fun at ourselves, self-irreverence if you will, and the silly and a bit egotistical idea that we might have actually figured it all out.

I know I don't.

Although irreverence often includes acts or attitudes of gratuitous mean-spiritedness which are intended to hurt, to make fun of someone or some people at their expense for no reason other than to belittle or to gain power or notoriety, I am interested in transformational irreverence, that which has the potential to change society or personal lives for the better. I'm also interested in the funloving, indulgent part of irreverence - we need to laugh in this world, even if it is at ourselves. Maybe especially when it is at ourselves.

For more:

Kroth, M. (2017). Irreverence. Human Resource Development Review, 16 (1), 100-108. doi:10.1177/1534484316689645

Kroth, M. (2011), The Irreverent Writer. Idaho Writer’s Guild Blog (see essay here: http://bit.ly/31KlSEz )

*For more I’ve written about reverence, irreverence, and how I moved from thinking about them separately and more as paths to what I’m calling “profound living”, see La Sacra di San Michele , Essay - On Reverence and Irreverence , Essay - Thinking About Irreverence , I Revere The Nighttime Stars , and Essay - Beware of Reverence.