The Philosopher Jests

As a columnist, I enjoy a certain celebrity status on campus. SafeRides chauffeurs me around free of charge, a VIP exit by Subway gets me my Great Hall meals for free and I spare no expenses on my no-limit account us celebs call Flex. Most of you don’t know what I’m talking about. In fact, most of you don’t know who I am. You don’t know what I look like, and you probably never will.

This column has not done what it promised for my sex life. But seriously, I’ve gained nothing from this column except making my job hunt more difficult, destroying the possibility of a good first impression and, to be honest, facilitating my genuine enjoyment. I’ve loved every second of writing for you and will miss pushing the boundaries of what you consider funny.

In regards to the words of Arthur Koestler, the great George Carlin said, “The jester makes jokes, he’s funny, he makes fun, he ridicules. But if his ridicules are based on sound ideas and thinking, then he can proceed to the second panel, which is the thinker—he called it the philosopher. The jester becomes the philosopher, and if he does these things with dazzling language that we marvel at, then he becomes a poet too. Then the jester can be a thinking jester who thinks poetically.”

Now, I’m not a poet. I’m not a philosopher. I’m not even a jester. At most I’m a con artist who somehow tricked his editor into believing his words were fit for print. But even as I’ve snuck this column in every other week, I’ve done so with at least some purpose beyond entertaining you.

Freud explains that comedy is where the subconscious can safely release anger. Regular readers can attest that I’ve only got a little bit of fire inside me. This passion stems from an acknowledgement that the world is a different place than our parents lived in, and I aspire to make it different still. But as I learned the other night, sometimes the world just isn’t ready for an abortion joke or a kill-your-pregnant-girlfriend joke or a I-just-killed-two-birds-with-one-stone joke. As the esteemed Koestler said, “Humor has a dose of aggressiveness.” To me, that aggressiveness can only be on the attack.

Now that my time is coming to an end—I’m graduating and soon I’ll be dead—I’ve realized only one thing here. In life, I need to become so important that when they finally invent a time machine, they will come back and get me. “That kid Jack Wilkinson—oh hell yes, we have to go back and get that dude.” In this day and age, nothing you publish or do will ever be lost. No tweets, Facebook pictures, no stupid biweekly columns will ever suffer the fate of Ozymandias. Everyone’s legacy will be saved on some hard drive, some place, by someone.

My legacy is not safe. It’s not politically correct. It’s not satisfied with the norms of society. Maybe some people aren’t ready for it, but I believe that one day this world will be ready for tolerance, not out of fear but out of genuine respect for race, sex and religion.

Someone wise once said, “The more you joke about something, the more it takes the form of a joke, shedding its facade of bigotry and leaving only humor where once there was hate.” I’ve tried to realize this in word. Maybe some of you have understood that, or maybe you’ll just see my writings as an aimless weaving of ruin like the scribbles of dead grass left by a garden hose when, after too many days of baking in the sun, it is finally coiled up.