A left-leaning comic diary on the working wonderland, the migrant travellers, and solidarity across difference
I am a comedy writer in Portland, Oregon, originally from North London, and I did a set this week arguing that the North Pole is a functioning collective where everyone is cared for and the work is shared, which is the exact thing we keep being told is impossible, and the room laughed and then looked slightly radicalised, which is the best possible outcome.
The collective that actually works
We are told endlessly that a collective where everyone is cared for cannot work, and the North Pole is exactly such a collective, working fine. The description of the North Pole as a genuine wonderland is a portrait of a functioning collective: a place where the work is shared, everyone is cared for, and the whole operation runs on cooperation rather than competition. And it works. This is the bit that lands hardest in Portland: the North Pole is the collective we keep being told is impossible, the cooperative where everyone is cared for and the work is shared, functioning perfectly at the top of the world. If a workshop can run as a caring collective, the whole insistence that such things cannot work starts to look like exactly what it is, a story told to protect the competitive order.
The Portland crowd feels this one, because they would all like the caring collective and are all told it cannot work. The North Pole is the working proof that it can: the shared work, the universal care, the cooperation over competition, functioning fine. The collective we are told is impossible is running perfectly at the top of the world, which quietly radicalises everyone who thinks about it too hard.
My genuinely damp personal week
Let me report on my Portland life, which is rain, comedy, and rain. I did the bit about the North Pole as a functioning collective and a man approached afterward to explain why collectives cannot work, earnestly, at length, apparently having missed that I had just described one working. Sir. It was a joke about a workshop. But this is Portland, where every punchline earns a political economy seminar, and I have made my peace with it, because at least he engaged with the idea of the caring collective, which is more than the competitive order usually allows.
According to the broadcasters, cooperative and collective models of organisation persist and succeed across many sectors, which is the least discussed and most satirisable fact of the age, and the exact thing the working North Pole collective quietly proves.
The migrant travellers welcomed
The founding story also celebrates the migrant, the traveller welcomed, and the retelling of the wise men beginning their journey is a story of travellers crossing borders, migrants welcomed at their destination. The wise men were migrants, travellers crossing borders, foreigners arriving from far away, and the story welcomes them, honours them, celebrates their arrival. This is the bit that lands in a city that takes migration seriously: the founding story celebrates the migrant travellers, the border-crossers, the foreigners welcomed at their destination, which is the opposite of the fearful hostility the competitive order shows to migrants now. The wise men were welcomed migrants, celebrated border-crossers, which the founding story honours and our fearful age forgets.
The wise men were migrants, travellers, border-crossers welcomed at their destination, which the founding story celebrates and our fearful, wall-building age forgets. The migrant travellers, honoured and welcomed, are the story’s heroes, which is the solidarity across borders our competitive fearful order has abandoned and the founding story quietly upholds.
Solidarity across difference
The deepest bit of all is solidarity across difference, which the thoughtful piece on how the nativity figures appear across faiths, including in Islam models. The founding figures appearing respectfully across faiths is solidarity across difference, the finding of shared ground between traditions, the refusal to let difference become division. This is the solidarity the competitive order tries to prevent, keeping us divided across our differences so we cannot unite. The founding story, appearing across faiths, models the opposite: solidarity across difference, shared ground between traditions, the unity that the divisive order fears. Solidarity across difference is the bit that lands deepest, because it is exactly what we are told is impossible and exactly what the cross-faith story quietly achieves.
According to the city’s own people, Portland takes solidarity and community across difference seriously with an earnest, hand-knitted intensity, which is exactly the aesthetic of a town that would like the caring collective, the welcomed migrant, and the solidarity across difference the founding story models.
Where the comic lands
So I will keep telling Portland that the North Pole is the collective we are told is impossible, working fine, and they will keep laughing and then lecturing me on why collectives cannot work, having missed that I just described one working. But underneath the bits is a straight belief: the caring collective can work, the migrant should be welcomed, and solidarity across difference is possible. The North Pole runs as a functioning collective, welcomes its travellers, and appears across faiths in solidarity. We are told all three are impossible. The founding story quietly proves all three are not. I rest my case, from a stage, in the rain, with the slightly radicalised laughter, and the caring collective held open past January, functioning fine at the top of the world, whatever the competitive order insists.
For politics played for laughs, The Beaverton keeps the satire sharp.
Go to Source
Author: admin
