From shows and movies ranging from Monty Python's Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers to The Life of Brian and a Fish called Wanda, the comedian John Cleese has uproariously and relentlessly satirized politics and religion while stretching the boundaries of decorum and good taste like so many silly walks. Now 82 Cleese, who studied law at Cambridge University, has recently set his sights on political correctness and wokeism, which he says are the enemy not only of humor but of creative thinking in all areas of human activity. He appeared at Freedom Fest, the annual July gathering of libertarians in Las Vegas, to discuss creativity, the subject of his 2020 short and cheerful guide after giving a talk on the attitudes and habits he believes are necessary for creativity to 2500 attendees.
I interviewed Cleese about the importance of freedom of thought and expression for a flourishing society. Thank you, John, for talking about creativity. But I guess my first question is, do you regret not becoming a lawyer?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. You? I think I can.
You could tell me my favorite. No, no, this is my time. Oh, sorry.
No, please. Yeah, but there's no laughs now. Yeah.
No, I haven't. Sometimes called the antidote to humor. What about Cambridge Law?
You were about to. I was. No, I was about to say that my favorite joke about lawyers is that the US Postal Service a few years ago issued a commemorative series of stamps commemorating famous American lawyers, but they had to withdraw it within a couple of weeks because people couldn't figure out which side of the stamp to spit on.
You heard that before. That's great. You know, you I read your I have your creativity book, a short and cheerful guide.
It's available for sale. I highly recommend it. This is it's it's it's like cocaine for the brain, you know?
But why is creativity so important for a thriving society? Well, I think the most natural impulse that people have other than curiosity. Is to figure out what couldn't we do this better?
You know, whatever it is. And I think that's a pretty natural kind of response. But I'm afraid the educational system doesn't encourage it.
Right. I mean, it's not as bad as Japan was. For example, I had a friend who studied it there, and he said that the Japanese educational system was specifically designed to stop people thinking for themselves, you know?
You know. Do you I mean, you obviously grew up in England at a certain time where the school system was famous for being rigid and domineering and whatnot. Has it changed?
And I mean, America is often seen as a place, you know, people wear baggy pants and not anything goes. We're not structured enough. Is that a better environment or can you talk a little bit about the specific themes?
I think it's always a quesion of balance, isn't it? Because as a discipline is essential to any kind of learning and getting better. It's essential.
But at the same time, if you have too much, then you have a Chinese or Japanese system, as I say, where people they don't want anyone to be creative because they're frightened that they will lose control. So all I can tell you is I can only think of one example where my creativity was stifled. We had a very nice teacher called Jumper G and he taught me English, which seemed to me a bit redundant because I spoke pretty fluently anyway.
And he asked us to write an essay on time. And I'd already realized it's a very hard thing to write about. You know, you look it up in the dictionary and it says duration, and then you look up duration and it says time.
So I wrote the whole essay about the fact that I had not had time to write the essay. You know, you get good at that. It's not bad, is it, for 50, you know?
But he said to me, Please, this isn't a proper essay, you say. He didn't have a go at me, wasn't nasty, wasn't critical. Just we just don't seem to make things this way.
And that's how our creativity gets stifled. And I think it's creativity that kids do have at an early age.
