Public Folly, or The Not-So-Secret Order of Fools

More about Public Folly, or The Not-So-Secret Order of Fools

The photograph was taken sometime between enlightenment and last call.

Nobody remembers exactly when.

The official story is that this was a gathering of artists, philosophers, visionaries, and respectable citizens meeting at a café in Paris to discuss culture. This is a lie so obvious it deserves preservation.

What you are actually looking at is the annual convention of the Not-So-Secret Order of Fools.

Membership requirements are strict.

One must have fallen in love with impossible things.

One must have pursued an idea beyond the point where reasonable people turned around.

One must have mistaken a mirage for a destination and discovered, several years later, that the mirage had become a city.

The fellow in the ridiculous spectacles claimed to be chairman, although every chairman before him had either wandered away, become a mystic, or started keeping chickens.

The blue-faced monarch on the right was Minister of Unnecessary Complexity.

The green creature in the back handled foreign relations with dreams.

The mechanical fool standing at the edge of the frame represented modern civilization, which had accidentally become self-aware and was attempting to blend in.

The woman holding the tarot card was Treasurer of Lost Causes.

Their treasury was empty.

It always had been.

Yet somehow they continued financing expeditions into impossible territories.

The Eiffel Tower loomed behind them like an enormous tuning fork struck by history itself. The city buzzed with tourists, politicians, bankers, and other temporary phenomena.

Meanwhile the fools grinned.

They knew something.

Not wisdom.

Wisdom is overrated.

They knew that every civilization is eventually run by people who are making it up as they go along.

The difference is that the fools admit it.

That was their secret doctrine.

Every invention begins as a foolish idea.

Every revolution starts with somebody laughing.

Every love affair requires a temporary suspension of common sense.

Every work of art is a confession that reality was insufficient.

And so they gathered each year beneath strange hats and improbable faces, raising coffee cups to the glorious catastrophe of being human.

Their motto was never written down.

It did not need to be.

It was visible in every smile.

If you are not occasionally a fool, you are probably taking the wrong road.

And if you happen to meet this group in a narrow alley, a dream, or a Paris café at dusk, accept the invitation.

The world has never been improved by the sensible alone.