My book Tricky Times – Navigating the Messy Middle of Change is about how we are in a stage of transition on many fronts. Anthropologists call this liminality. It is a confusing betwixt-and-between time, when things are neither what they were nor what they will become. Liminal periods put us in an out of the ordinary situation where hierarchies and established norms dissolve, sacred symbols are scorned, all forms of authority are called into question, governments undermined and old rights shaken. Nothing seems to really matter anymore, yet everything feels hugely consequential. It feels peculiarly disorienting to have certainties pulled out from under you, and liminality makes people more than u3sually susceptible to those who claim to know what’s what and offer nice, easy fixes. This fluid time is a prime playground for the archetypal trickster.
The permanent liminality of modern societies has enabled tricksters to push their way into the centres of power, argue political anthropologists Arpad Szakolczai, Ágnes Horváth and Bjørn Thomassen. This intriguing thesis is one I gradually came to agree with in the course of my own research.
The trickster is an important archetype. Archetypes are universally recognisable patterns rooted deep in humanity’s collective unconscious. They embody fundamental human desires, fears and motivations and help us to understand ourselves. We all know the trickster from stories and are sure to recognise trickster traits in ourselves and others. Tricksters get you thinking about what is right and wrong, though they themselves are neither. The trickster is a familiar folk and mythological figure that shows up in every culture. Pinocchio, Anansi, Robin Hood, Loki, Krishna, Legba, Prometheus, Woman Hollow, Coyote and Raven are just a few. Also in film and books, in characters like Captain Jack Sparrow, Pippi Longstocking and Dobby in Harry Potter.
Tricksters are experts at pushing boundaries; they are edge workers and thrive in the confusion of liminality. The trickster is the god, the hero and the villain of the liminal space. Tricksters bend moral boundaries, whether out of simple civil disobedience, out of good intentions, occasionally to wreak destruction and violence, but for the most part purely because they can. The trickster is ambiguous, ambivalent, contradictory, unpredictable, deceptive, mischievous, bumbling, unmannered, cunning, humorous, funny and dangerous all at once. Tricksters draw you in through laughter and gain trust with tall tales and jokes. They are crafty, sly and always one step ahead. The archetypal trickster is unruly in all things. (More background information: The Trickster (1987 – Paul Radin), Trickster Makes This World (2008 – Lewis Hyde).
I have to confess that, in the course of my trickster research, some individuals regularly sprang to mind. ‘Trickster!’ I would shout at the evening news. Strictly speaking, though, that’s not quite right, and this is an important point to make. Humans are not divine, amoral mythological beings. People have a heart, a soul, a conscience. We are responsible for how we act and are always accountable for what we do. The full-blown trickster archetype exists only in myths and folklore. No one is born a trickster or literally is a trickster. You may well cross paths with real people who are awfully good at using trickery. What they are after will vary. Some feel a positive calling to challenge prevailing, entrenched ideas and overturn conventions to make way for a new order. Others may act out of naivety or stupidity, and still others might be clever, crafty or malicious, out to advance their own interests or even to wilfully harm others and the world. What matters is that we keep talking about it.
The trickster archetype is inextricably tied to the urge to rebel against established norms and societal conventions. Scientific reports casting new light on reality can lead to new and different conclusions and policies. Performers and artists can force us to look in the mirror and rethink things we took for granted. The trickster archetype is also showing up in the way people are challenging mainstream media nowadays. Anyone can publish their own books, and podcasting and YouTube offer spaces for marginalised voices, unconventional ideas and diverse views. Alternative platforms have enabled us to throw off the rules and restrictions of mainstream media. The archetypal trickster challenges people to see things differently; he questions established stories and exposes hidden truths. Because of this, mythological tricksters are also considered culture creators. Disrupting conventional narratives and power dynamics can give us a more nuanced understanding of complex issues. The most crucial thing is that we keep thinking critically for ourselves and don’t blindly accept trickster tales. People may use trickster tactics to toy with boundaries. This can make us stop and think, push us to check our assumptions and stretch our understanding, letting us redefine what is true and not true with a fresh perspective and a critical mind. But this is also precisely where things are often going wrong these days. The internet and growing influence of AI have been game changers in human history. Disinformation, misinformation and bullshit are nothing new, but have become so pervasive that it is difficult to tell what is real and what is fake. This is perfect playground for tricky tactics of all kinds, which are only breeding more chaos.
The fact that it is getting harder to separate facts from fiction poses a real threat to our mental health, our democracies and hence our society. Trickster energy is essential to keep us from getting stuck in mental frames and constructs, but too much of it is bad. We must keep thinking for ourselves.
The laughing charlatan is a fun archetype, but if it starts defining the public space, the fun wears off. The trickster challenges people to take a moral stance on his tricky antics. This is one of the important functions of mythological trickster tales – to get listeners talking and debating about the story. Take Robin Hood. Hero or rogue? When a politician loses emails, misplaces receipts or doesn’t ‘actively recall’ something said or done, is that politically savvy, shameful or crooked? Is an executive who bolsters the annual figures by conveniently omitting critical facts the perfect leader, slightly absent-minded or a crafty fraudster? How about those who set up cultural oppositions like ‘urban versus rural’ or ‘real asylum-seekers versus foreign freeloaders’: is this acceptable to amplify your message, or does it distract from a discussion of the facts? And what about the implied division created when popular political figures champion ‘ordinary folks’? When is this a harmless communicative frame and when does it cross the line into manipulation and polarisation? It’s tricky. These are important questions to think about. Trickster tactics raise moral questions. It is up to each of us to answer them, so that we can lay a truthful basis on which to build realities together.
Trickster logic weaves a strange kind of spell. It muffles and numbs and exerts a pull that is near impossible to resist. We can feel in our gut that something is off. But we go along with it anyway. Trickster logic beguiles with targeted tactics that play on our will until at last we give in to the story being told. When I posted something about my research for this book on LinkedIn, one person sent me this message: ‘I regularly experienced un-reality in my job. Claims and plans were made on the basis of completely unrealistic assumptions. Everybody would rush right or left to follow the latest hype. All oohing and aahing, even though, as far as I could tell, the new path had nothing to do with the everyday reality. The odd thing was that I didn’t or hardly pushed back against that un-reality. In fact, I tended to support it. Even though I didn’t believe in it myself. It was madness. Maybe I wanted to form a united front with my fellow managers, or to avoid friction, or was afraid to look inept. I don’t know.’ This reminded me of my tea house experience, only in a sphere of strategic importance. When we don’t realise we are up against trickster logic, it can be severely disrupting.
Trickster tactics are legion. I have condensed them into seven broad categories, though there are bound to be others. These tactics are great for sowing confusion and getting people to buy into your story. They also create monsters of doubt which in turn make us even more susceptible to these tactics. Everyone uses them. From the left to the right, from top to bottom, at for-profits and non-profits and among activists and lobbyists. These tactics have an essential role to play in life, but get tricky when there are too many of them or they are used with bad intentions. . Read more about this and what we can do in my book Tricky Times.
Seven trickster tactics for sowing confusion, manipulating others and creating limitless insecurity
Trickster logic produces a strange kind of feeling of enchantment. It has a dampening and narcotic effect, and somewhere it has something peerlessly irresistible.
As exciting and exhilarating as the possibilities of the trickster are, they can also drive us insane. We can lose touch with our feelings and ourselves, each other and nature. Trickster energy is useful to spark renewal and change, but has to be kept in check. The trickster’s seductive pull can be lethal, and once entangled in trickster logic it may be difficult to get free. And, crucial as they are for change, too many tricksters creates mayhem. Which is exactly what we are experiencing now.
When we don’t recognise trickster tactics for what they are and mistake them for charismatic leadership, it is fun in a film but catastrophic in real life. Jack Sparrow is amusing to watch but you wouldn’t want him as your CEO, any more than you would elect Pinocchio to lead your country. Yet this is exactly what we are allowing to happen in many parts of the world. It sounds so logical: the trickster’s role is to question the rules from the sidelines, not be the referee. But somehow we started seeing tricksters as heroes and tricky tactics as leaderships qualities. And nowhere more than in politics and business. In marketing, in sales, in enterprise. We have made a huge mess and landed ourselves in a trickster clusterfuck.
The boundless quality of long-term societal liminality invites trickster behaviour. In a trickster culture, we’re all continually pulling the wool over each other’s eyes. Ratings turn out to be fake because anyone can buy them. Degrees are worth less in reality than implied on paper. So-called objective research turns out to be financed by interest groups. Politicians conveniently ‘misplace’ important memos. Advertisements promise more than they can deliver. Photoshopped images make beauty ideals literally unreal (and now plastic surgeons are being asked to remodel faces to match Instagram filters). This is a culture that fits with the post-truth, or what some even call post-reality era we now live in, in which feelings and opinions seem to trump facts, which is steeped in distrust and in which emotions are leveraged for political gain. In a trickster culture, it is tricksters who produce truth. Which means we are being fooled, screwed, lied to, cheated and conned all over the place. The difference between truth and lies hardly matters in a trickster culture. It is perfectly fine to bluff, to blatantly contradict yourself and to dismiss criticism out of hand as fake. If someone disagrees, you make them a laughingstock. Those who play this game best become leaders. Pretty soon, we are all at war over who’s fooling whom and the divisions grow ever deeper. It sometimes feels as though people are all inhabiting different worlds depending on which media outlets they follow. Some politicians and organisations neatly turn this to their advantage. Because, in a trickster culture, sowing discord and confusion is quite an effective business model.
It sounds so logical: never choose leaders who are masters at trickery. Use them to challenge the status quo, to shake things up, but don’t believe their distorted tales and don’t invite them into the arena of power. Don’t mistake confidence with competence. Someone who plays with boundaries cannot set them, cannot make tough calls, manage people or speak their own truth – because they have none. The trickster is a vital marginal force that has somehow worked its way into our culture’s very centres of power. We have allowed this to happen, and the impact is catastrophic.
Tricksters can fool others as long as there are people to be fooled. The biggest danger is not actually the trickster at all, but that we fall for his trickery. That we too easily allow ourselves to be led by our instinctive desire for good stories and quick fixes. We have more to fear from our own naivety than from anyone with evil intentions. Our fervent desire for charismatic leadership during the uncertainty of a liminal period makes us fall into the massive trap of mistaking trickster tactics for charisma.
Trickster logic and tactics are not bad in themselves. They have a mythic creative power. But in the absence of healthy pushback, they drag us all into a negative spiral of smooth talk, lies, deception, insults, abuse, exploitation and pitting people against each other (on X and elsewhere). That’s when the once so playful and witty trickster becomes increasingly selfish and unaccountable for his actions, revealing himself a master at dodging responsibility and bending boundaries.
As exciting and exhilarating as the possibilities of the trickster are, they can slowly drive us insane. We can lose touch with our feelings and ourselves, each other and nature. Just when we need these connections most of all. Tricksters belong at the peripheries of power, not at its centre. Change often involves liberating ourselves from constricting straitjackets, pushing boundaries and tearing things down. But I think we need a completely different kind of change or revolution now. Not more growth and new ideas, but back to basics. We have to set limits and counter our runaway trickster culture with human truthfulness, realism, silence, intuition, meaning, relationships and nature. To navigate the liminality of the big changes of our times, we need interconnectedness, authenticity and sincerity. So that, as we let go of what we know, we can hold on to each other.
The whole trickster culture is an integral part of the major problems that so urgently need to be addressed. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, the saying goes. It feels to me like the kitchen is broken. My response? Let’s fix the kitchen. It is time to rethink the design, tools and rules of the kitchen in ways that enable more thoughtful conversations and better choices.
Antropologisch onderzoek laat zien dat we in deze dynamiek wereldwijd en in alle culturen, altijd en overal hetzelfde bijzondere personage tegenkomen: de trickster. Er is geen mythologie, geen oorsprongsverhaal, geen film zonder trickster. De trickster is de meester van de grens, het archetype van de twijfel.Soms een schurk, soms een held. Denk aan Pinokkio, Anansi, Robin Hood, Loki en Jack Sparrow.
De vrolijke charlatan is een leuk archetype. Maar niet als die de discussie gaat bepalen en we in een cultuur van halve waarheden belanden, vindt antropoloog Jitske Kramer.