In which I take a deep dive into Jeff Bezos's inimitable laugh.
Is Jeff’s laugh a direct route perhaps into the secrets of his soul, which is to say, the essence of his type, his personality? Or just an auditory MacGuffin, a distractor, a smoke screen in order to shield what Carl Jung called the shadow of our personality, those qualities and impulses we often deny in ourselves but have no problem seeing in others: egotism, narcissism, laziness, insensitivity, carelessness and cowardice. Or perhaps an inordinate love of money, possessions and personal freedom? What does Jeff Bezos’s laugh really say about Jeff Bezos the human animal clothed in his archetype of language and identity? Can the noise we make called laughter perhaps tell us more about a person's "essence" than the words that come before and after that sound?
Who better to ask than someone who went to school with Jeff and was sitting in the assembly hall when he delivered his far-sighted valedictorian speech to the graduating class of Palmetto Senior High School in 1982.
Also: my allotment neighbour Tom's Tomato Palace; the magical-mystical allure of Enneagram Type Fives; thoughts on Jung's chapter “On The Concept of the Archetype” in his book Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious; playing Getting To Know You Musical Chairs in my Longform Improv class at The Free Association in London; pi-guy; PLUS Revenge of The Nerds (the 1984 film, as well as the silicon valley/business culture that bloomed in its wake).
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I'm very, very grateful to the following people who have supported me and this project with their Love (time, energy, creativity).
