But, Alices are also rare and precious – they are the ones who noticed something was wrong and worth calling out, and, who were willing to actually push past social awkwardness about it.
Some of the people who succeed at being Alices in an on-going manner are comedians or, in the old days, jesters. People who use humor, sometimes self-deprecation, to speak truth and provoke change. Pushing the inconvenient trust still sometimes gets them killed or cancelled or deeply depressed. But comedian/performer types of Alice seem to me to be more self-aware, often choosing to play an infinite game. Whatever the desired outcomes to their comedy / activism, play subsumes the goal.
I am often Alice and, after getting pissed off at people’s “willful ignorance” during a project I ran on Sunday, I figure that going forward I will aim to filter my Aliceizing through humor. And stop focusing on (or even caring about, ideally) the end goal since it turns out to be a moving target anyway. Though I don’t expect anyone to be tickled by one of the project’s taglines, Convenience = Death, I will amuse myself finding out what’s possible.
Some of the people who succeed at being Alices in an on-going manner are comedians or, in the old days, jesters. People who use humor, sometimes self-deprecation, to speak truth and provoke change. Pushing the inconvenient trust still sometimes gets them killed or cancelled or deeply depressed. But comedian/performer types of Alice seem to me to be more self-aware, often choosing to play an infinite game. Whatever the desired outcomes to their comedy / activism, play subsumes the goal.
I am often Alice and, after getting pissed off at people’s “willful ignorance” during a project I ran on Sunday, I figure that going forward I will aim to filter my Aliceizing through humor. And stop focusing on (or even caring about, ideally) the end goal since it turns out to be a moving target anyway. Though I don’t expect anyone to be tickled by one of the project’s taglines, Convenience = Death, I will amuse myself finding out what’s possible.
What I like about this strategy is that it encourages difficult, out-of-the-box, 10x+ creative thinking.
Are there historical examples to learn from?
Is this strategy especially effective depending on where in the Overton window an issue is at?