April Fool’s Day is no joke.
Lost in the prank playing and joke telling and general foolishness of the first day of April is what should be its true meaning: The day we commemorate all the fools of the world. And there have been plenty.
Fools, historians tell us, can be found in every civilization – kind of a common thread running through human development. Yet their contributions often have gone unappreciated; sociologists speculate that this is because fools are one of the most persecuted and belittled minorities in history.
Fools’ lot has not been a happy one. Often ridiculed and generally held in low esteem by society, fools have struggled to carve out their own identities and claim some measure of respect. This has not been an easy task. The popular image of fools is of court jesters and drooling idiots, yet this stereotype fits fools poorly. In truth, they come in all shapes, sizes and degrees of sophistication.
Modern historians now tend to view fools from a revisionist perspective, more appreciative of their roles in the advance of civilization. Take some of the earliest known fools in ancient Greece and Rome; long thought to be little more than diversions at feasts or lion fodder at the local coliseum, fools are now seen as having played a much greater part in the development of those cultures.
Archeologists recently have unearthed evidence that fools were instrumental in producing some of the greatest ideas from some of those eras’ greatest philosophers and thinkers and writers. The theory is that the prevailing wisdom of society and government of the day were sufficiently foolish as to inspire and provoke more rational and logical analyses of the human condition.
Fools were rampant in the Middle Ages, or course, and were later blamed for almost all the ills of that period. But a more reasoned examination of that time of turmoil and upheaval reveals fools at the forefront of change. The Dark Ages, for instance, have long been blamed on pin-headed nitwits who equated knowledge with evil. We know now, though, that without the Dark Ages there would have been no subsequent Age of Enlightenment when knowledge bloomed. Without idiots running things, people would never have realized that perhaps they would all be better off if that dribbling idiot of a king had no head.
Far from being relegated to court jester status as popular myth would have it, Middle Age fools – or “phuylles” as they were called then – actually had a hand in almost all the big events: The Inquisition was thick with fools, the Black Plague was spread with the help of foolish doctors and other self-proclaimed “health experts,” and almost all the wars were not only started but headed up by fools.
Obviously, foolishness was not always recognized immediately for what it was, and sometimes prejudice against fools was retroactive. It was only years after the Inquisition, for example, that victims could laugh about how silly the whole religious persecution nonsense had been.
We can’t blame all religious persecution and suppression on fools, obviously. Plenty of non-fools clearly must shoulder some of the blame. This is why a veritable boatload of fools sailed to America on the Mayflower, escaping foolish persecution in the Old Country.
Over the years, Americans helped elevate foolishness to new heights, yet it has only been in recent times that this persecuted minority has been able to make great strides in becoming part of mainstream society. Now, Americans are guaranteed their right to be fools. Laws are on the books to protect them; if they start a business, there are government bailouts available when they file for bankruptcy. Fool-bashing is frowned upon in modern society; it’s not considered politically correct to laugh at them, or to make fun of them, or to give them anything but equality, credit for their achievements no matter how dubious, and even the respect they may not deserve.
As we have seen in recent years, in America any fool can grow up to be anything. We certainly keep electing them to public office. My theory is that we secretly like having fools around just like the court jesters of old; they’re often entertaining and they make us feel superior, smarter, less gullible and more enlightened than perhaps we really are.
Not everyone is tolerant of fools, however. My wife, for one, has never suffered fools gladly. She has no time for incompetence, stupidity, idiocy and irresponsibility. Hers is a rational world where everything is supposed to add up, the bottom line is balanced, rational thought rules, and things make sense. And perhaps, after all, that is a world we should all seek and strive for, rather than the one we have filled with nitwits, nincompoops, buffoons and chowderheads.
I’m just glad she still seems to have a soft spot for me when my inner fool stumbles forth.