Power, Proximity, and Standup Comedy
Metadata
Highlights
- Without intimacy, proximity only provokes hostility. (Dante’s concise definition of hell, in fact, was ‘proximity without intimacy.’)
- Elias Canetti opens Crowds and Power (the definite book on this whole topic) with chilling paragraph on The Fear of Being Touched: There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange. In the dark, the fear of an unexpected touch can mount to panic. All the distances which men create round themselves are dictated by this fear. The promptness with which apology is offered for an unintentional contact, the tension with which it is awaited, our violent and sometimes even physical reaction when it is not forthcoming, the antipathy and hatred we feel for the offender, even when we cannot be certain who it is – the whole knot of shifting and intensely sensitive reactions to an alien touch – proves that we are dealing here with a human propensity as deep-seated as it is alert and insidious; something which never leaves a man when he has once established the boundaries of his personality.
- Canetti goes on to describe a powerful phenomenon, which is the release of energy that happens when a group of individuals all of a sudden throw off their differences and defensiveness, and merges into a crowd. Crowds form when the perceived distances between people drop to zero, and intimacy within the group suddenly swings from negative to positive. This can mean a physical crowd – one common place people have viscerally felt this physical “coming together” is at sports games or concerts – but the same thing happens during team formation, when there’s this distinct moment where a group of individuals aware of their differences suddenly transforms into a united crowd that becomes capable and powerful.
- it’s very important that your physical surroundings be actively uncomfortable. (There’s a famous Jane Jacobs line that ’new ideas need old buildings’, which is almost correct – it’s not the age of the building that actually matters, it’s the size and shabbiness of the rooms. An old building that’s been beautifully renovated with all the walls knocked down doesn’t count.
Power, Proximity, and Standup Comedy
Metadata
Highlights
- Without intimacy, proximity only provokes hostility. (Dante’s concise definition of hell, in fact, was ‘proximity without intimacy.’)
- Elias Canetti opens Crowds and Power (the definite book on this whole topic) with chilling paragraph on The Fear of Being Touched: There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange. In the dark, the fear of an unexpected touch can mount to panic. All the distances which men create round themselves are dictated by this fear. The promptness with which apology is offered for an unintentional contact, the tension with which it is awaited, our violent and sometimes even physical reaction when it is not forthcoming, the antipathy and hatred we feel for the offender, even when we cannot be certain who it is – the whole knot of shifting and intensely sensitive reactions to an alien touch – proves that we are dealing here with a human propensity as deep-seated as it is alert and insidious; something which never leaves a man when he has once established the boundaries of his personality.
- Canetti goes on to describe a powerful phenomenon, which is the release of energy that happens when a group of individuals all of a sudden throw off their differences and defensiveness, and merges into a crowd. Crowds form when the perceived distances between people drop to zero, and intimacy within the group suddenly swings from negative to positive. This can mean a physical crowd – one common place people have viscerally felt this physical “coming together” is at sports games or concerts – but the same thing happens during team formation, when there’s this distinct moment where a group of individuals aware of their differences suddenly transforms into a united crowd that becomes capable and powerful.
- it’s very important that your physical surroundings be actively uncomfortable. (There’s a famous Jane Jacobs line that ’new ideas need old buildings’, which is almost correct – it’s not the age of the building that actually matters, it’s the size and shabbiness of the rooms. An old building that’s been beautifully renovated with all the walls knocked down doesn’t count.