Being “Done”
I used to really like Louis CK. I liked his approach to connecting with his fans, where you could download his specials for a tiny amount of money instead of having to subscribe to HBO. I thought his TV show, at times, approached brilliance. He had an admirable commitment, inspired by George Carlin, to throwing out all his material every year and starting over. He blended pathos with laughs and had a style of humor that interrogated his own personal weaknesses as well as those of his class of wealthy white men.
I sound like I’m eulogizing him, here, but really I’m lamenting the loss of what he was. More accurately, the loss of what he appeared to be.
A few years ago, stories started to make it into public knowledge that he had some pretty gross habits of non-consensually exposing himself to women. When #MeToo started sweeping through the entertainment industry, anyone who had been paying attention knew that it was only a matter of time before it was his turn. It eventually was, and he issued a statement that was… well, it wasn’t great. It was far better than other accused abusers’ responses, but still pretty short of understanding. He kept the attention on himself and the admiration these women had for him.
At the end of the statement, he says, “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.” This was the right response for any of the #MeToo accusers! Just go away! Listen to the people you’ve hurt, try to learn about yourself, and don’t come back until you’ve made some pretty serious improvements. (Others might go even further and simply say “don’t come back;” that’s also a reasonable position, given that there is no shortage of talented comics in the world.)
Recently, Louis has been popping up to do surprise sets at comedy clubs in New York. It’s been greeted ambivalently, mostly because he seemed angry at his loss of stature and wealth rather than remorseful. In short, he hadn’t done the work. Then just a few days ago, some audio of one of his new sets leaked, and, well, Louis seems to have just charged straight to the right, making jokes at the expense of Parkland High survivors, trans people, and multiple different ethnicities and races.
There’s a long discourse to be had about the role of edgy material in comedy: how much a comedian is allowed to transgress, how offensive Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor were, etc. I won’t dive into it here except to say that most kneejerk defenses of objectionable comedians fundamentally misunderstand the substance of the objections, and that while no subject is conceptually off-limits for comedy, there’s a responsibility to consider who is the butt of the joke.
I don’t really want to write about Louis CK, though, other than to point out that in just over a year he went from acknowledging (albeit weakly) that it was time for him to learn to simply embracing the simplest, easiest mindset possible to generate some of the laziest, oldest, most hackneyed jokes he’s ever delivered. On top of being offensive, this new material lacks any kind of depth, examination, or viewpoint apart from “I’m a straight cis white guy and I don’t care enough to try and understand the rest of the world.”
And here’s where, at long last, I come to my point. Louis used to get a lot of goodwill from people because his public persona was that of a good person, a combination of humility and wit that granted him wealth and celebrity which he wore with a reluctance. All public personae involve a degree of performance, and we all know the dynamic of famous people acting differently in their private lives. But the speed with which he began performing this very different public persona is as distressing as it is unsurprising.
Being a good person is not something you ever finish. It’s not a prize you win by holding a sufficient number of “correct” opinions, or a state you achieve upon a specified level of “wokeness.” It’s an ongoing process, a way of engaging with the world where you constantly seek to expand your view, better comprehend yourself, empathize with others, and improve. It’s acting with an understanding of how your actions affect the world. It’s a preparedness, at every step, to be wrong, to be shown to be wrong, and to be willing to make corrections.
Nobody is ever “done.” (Until they are dead.)
There’s a huge swath of people in the world who think they’re “done,” and no longer need to do the work. That they’ve positioned themselves as being on the side of the good team, so they can’t have done bad things. (Looking at you, Aziz and Neil.) This goes beyond personal improvement, though — there’s the hope that if I just hit this salary level, or move into this house, or succeed in this relationship, or get this degree, etc., then everything will be fine. Then I’ll be good. My real life can begin after I reach the mountaintop.
But each mountain just reveals another ridge beyond it, and a whole lot of valleys between here and there.
You’re never quite done. For some people, that notion is terrifying and they live a life trying to convince themselves that they are already done. (Consider the unearned confidence of every born-wealthy, willfully ignorant cretin who achieves any modicum of influence.) When your motivations arise out of fear, though, they’ll almost always take you to a worse place.
For others, not being done is exciting, and they relish any opportunity to learn. They’re excited when they meet someone who has a perspective they never considered. They also have to deal with a constant (mild-to-moderate) anxiety over past mistakes and the possibility of present misconceptions. But the motivations are coming not out of fear but out of a desire to be the best version of themselves.
I’ve spent most of my adult life bouncing between these two outlooks. One of them I’ve been a bit more proud of than the other; one leads to growth, the other to stagnation.
So my hope for everyone in the new year is that we’re able to embrace not being done. May you be lovingly shown to be wrong, and have the grace to accept it as an invitation to grow.
Peace and Prayers.
(If you found yourself intrigued by the ideas of figuring out which emotions drive your decisions, what I described is basically Ignatian “discernment of spirits” with the more spiritual language stripped away. It’s a useful rubric for personal navigation regardless of your belief system. If you’re interested in seeing it more in its original religious context, “consolation” and “desolation” are two central concepts explained well by Margaret Silf.)
