Joker

A role that may be played during the conferencing process. It can be an assigned role or a role adopted by one of the participants masked or who may be dressed in an appropriate and distinguishing costume traditionally including a cape and bells. Court jesters, clowns, fools or buffoons are mythic figures representing the inversion of the powers of leaders (as the possessor of supreme powers) -or as their alter ego. They are therefore often the victims chosen in folklore as the substitute or foil for the leader in rites whereby the people respond frankly and unceremoniously to such powers. They were often masters of song and dance, and could be a dramatic foil to pomp, superficiality and falsehood of any kind.[Advantages]

Ideally they are a powerful reminder of the distortion of the human condition -more immediate than the photographs disseminated via the media. Additionally, due to the freedom from censure and responsibility for their actions which they are accorded, they are able to mirror, parody and mimic court situations in such a way as to bring out truths which would otherwise be collectively and carefully ignored. As an ambiguous and often androgynous figure, the jester can function as a powerful social catalyst - for good or for ill, depending upon the response of those by whom he is surrounded. The fool is an enigmatic symbol of the point of crisis when the normal or conscious appears to become the irrational, the unconscious and the abnormal. As such, the fools are to be found on the fringe of all orders and systems, outside all conventional categories, processes and social rules. They are the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious (and between the attributes of the right and left hemispheres of the brain) -a reminder that, after having failed in our effort to order and understand the universe in the light of our intellect and instinct there nevertheless remains another way. Eliminating the jester from the conference is as risky as allowing him to play this role. For, if "foolishness" is not given a channel through which to express itself, it seeks its own channel anyway. Summit meetings and international assemblies, particularly those in which each is conscious of the high purpose and seriousness of his role, run a considerable risk of incorporating distortion into their proceedings and results because of an inability to accept what a jester would reveal. (Political cartoons offer a partial remedy, but they lack the significance of being accepted as part of the proceedings and thus have little effect on them.)< [Disadvantages]

It requires greater maturity on the part of all participants, especially the chairperson and principal speakers, to play their parts in the face of such instant feedback. In the absence of children at international assemblies, who can say whether international emperors wear any clothes ?