Freedom and the Jester

What exactly is freedom?

Freedom means being able to act, think, and speak without coercion. To make your own choices without external force. Yet it isn’t boundless; it can be limited to safeguard society and to curb selfishness. Your freedom ends where another’s begins.

That sounds good, and in a well-organized society we’ve laid that out neatly in laws. When reality or the spirit of the times changes, we adapt those laws. Simple. Freedom today looks different than it did hundreds of years ago. That’s called progress — or civilization, depending on how you see it.

Lately, there’s been a lot of noise about freedom of expression.
It’s a fundamental right to express an opinion and to receive information without interference from above — vital to any democracy. Still, there are legal limits meant to prevent harm: incitement to hatred, calls for violence. A government’s role is to protect that right, not decide what may or may not be said.

Yet this right seems to be under pressure. Opinions are more quickly perceived as offensive, as attacks on someone’s integrity. You can see it clearly in comedy. What was considered a good joke a few years ago is now often off-limits. Does that mean freedom of speech has been curtailed? No. The government isn’t deciding what’s funny — the zeitgeist is. A new moral order has emerged, one in which every individual has become too important to serve as the butt of a joke. That growing awareness of social injustice often clashes with humor, because humor by nature provokes, teases, crosses lines.

So should comedians adapt to this new morality? Not at all.
The way stand-ups now tiptoe around every pitfall, careful not to offend anyone — that’s sometimes funnier than their jokes. Humor, they say, tests the boundaries of free speech. And when that right erodes, not much remains.

Once, the court jester existed to entertain the king — but also to hold up a mirror. To speak truth in jest, to criticize, to expose blind spots.

That’s still humor’s true function:
to question, to puncture, to challenge power and pretension — without fear.

I read how comedians complain about cancel culture. Whether it truly exists is beside the point. The fact that they feel it does says enough. In a time when everyone has thin skin, it’s impossible not to step on toes. So why try so hard to avoid the inevitable? Tell your joke. Say your piece.

“It’s always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it’s just hilarious.” — Bill Hicks