Brother Dave Gardner was a southern comedian at his height in the sixties. What I liked about him was his ability to introduce different ideas to his audience. He majored in philosophy at the University of Mississippi — a reflection of his natural grasp of a wide range of viewpoints. He had one of those minds that looks at the world in a unique way, and his inner conversations were translated through different voices in his routines.
Southern audiences in the sixties were not exactly acclaimed for their open-mindedness, and Brother Dave was subtle and inventive in expressing his philosophy. During a show in Texas, he began talking about the Hindu reverence for cows — in obvious opposition to the interests of the cattle and beef industry represented in his audience.
A spectator shouted, “Be careful!”, and Brother Dave replied, “If you’re careful, then you might break it!” The man shouted back, “Break what?” Brother Dave laughed, “Anything! It don’t matter!” Unperturbed, he continued:
“They say that for every cow you kill, you will spend that many years in that dark abyss as there is hairs on a cow’s body…wouldn’t that make folks think twice about slewin’ a bovine?” He ended the piece by saying, “I gotta go along with them Hindus on that.”
If his audience began to murmur discontentedly over the breadth of his ideas, he simply steam-rolled them into another story with such a mix of hilarious voices and off-beat speech, they were soon laughing uncontrollably. He knew his audience, and he knew how to make them laugh — even when introducing ideas which provoked hostility.
His addition of the word “Brother” to his stage-name was a direct satire of the southern, Bible-belt perspective comprising most of his audience. In one show he explained the idea of “dualities” (the one behind his reply to the man in Texas) like “hot and cold — heaven and hell”, and then he paused: “I never thought I’d ever say that word, unless I became a preacher.” and then he added, “Actually, I am, you know. The only difference is that I’m preachin’ for it.”
He parodied race relations in the south by using a black vernacular and tone in his voices, even when obviously referring to his white counterparts. He philosophized often on stage with a blend of varying styles of speech from beatnik or hip, to redneck, to African-American.
His philosophy was as unique as his style, which brings me to the real point of this post: the introduction of new ideas. I received my first Brother Dave album from my sister for my eleventh birthday. I had little notion of philosophy then, and as I listened to his album through my teen years, certain things he said stuck in my mind. One of his on-stage discussions with himself centered around his own version of epistemology:
“Them that don’t know are better off than them that think they know, because by them that think they know, that pins it down and crystallizes it to the point where it’s all hung up in limitations.” and then, in a different voice he questioned the statement, “Said, if it’s all pinned down and crystallized, then what’s all that around it?” I thought about it for many years, wondering what he could have meant.
What Brother Dave had hit upon was an intuitive idea of the difference between rational and irrational (or symbolic) thinking; the difference in the organization of conscious and unconscious experience.
Goethe sounded the same idea in Faust: “To what the mind most gloriously conceives/An alien, more alien substance cleaves.” These two ideas from such widely divergent times and cultures are analogies of a symbolic language and how it differs from conscious thought.
What all that is “around it” in Brother Dave’s reference to knowledge is the creative process of unconscious association — the same “alien substance” to which Goethe referred.
Jung explained these ideas in his discussion on two types of thinking. Directed thinking is that rational, conscious thought which requires concentration. The more intense and focused it is, the more it’s expressed in language. Ideas are organized and clarified through speech or writing.
Directed thinking requires much effort and can’t be maintained but for relatively brief periods. When directed thinking stops (observe it in yourself), fantasy-thinking immediately begins. Thought is less focused, lapses into reverie or stream of consciousness as associations gather around vague ideas.
The connections aren’t readily apparent because of the undirected form of unconscious fantasy. That they’re the foundations of thought, however, can be observed by anyone who makes the effort. How fantasy works is documented by Jung in the many examples he supplied in his, Symbols of Transformation.
“Them that think they know” remain imprisoned in a logical structure of thought which is unable to see the hidden web of unconscious idea-formation. The loose associations must be linked together consciously to grasp the unconscious information they convey. It’s opposed to the way we normally think.
To get outside this fence of false pretense and certainty, to connect with the mystery of unconscious ideas, requires a recognition of fantasy and the role it plays in the development of thought. It requires studying those associations and their relation to ideas, translating and reconciling them to what and how we think. We then find ourselves beyond the boundaries of science and what is known. We’ve moved outside statistics and collective opinion and toward the uniqueness of our own personalities.
This dark, uncertain world requires effort to illuminate, but before that can begin it must be reflected. Again, Goethe had it “pinned down and crystallized” over two centuries ago: “Formation, transformation / Eternal mind’s eternal recreation.”