One of the rising stars of Australian comedy, Damien Power has found a higher calling.
His new show, The Disillusioned Ego, highlights the conflicts between our unconscious primitive desires and our 'higher purpose as humans'. It might not sound like a recipe for a laugh riot, but if anyone can turn righteous indignation into comedy gold, it's Power.
“It's sort of like this Greek saying,” he explains. “'In order to achieve utopia, we need to know what sort of creature we are.' We have ancient parts of our brain that make us do the bad things we do. The modern part of our brain, which is only about 50,000 years old, is the thing that can override that. So our 'higher purpose' comes back to… the possibilities of humanity, and all the great things we know we're capable of.
“But there's also the lizard part of our brain, and the monkey part of our brain, that keep fucking us up. It's that constant contradiction. Humans are incredibly smart, but they're incredibly stupid. We're facing extinction with overpopulation and constant war and disease and famine. The place is a fuckin' mess. I want to explore why we act this way, and it goes back to those ancient parts of our brain.
“Look at in-group / out-group psychology. That comes from the chimpanzee part of our brain, where we want to be part of a group. Being a part of a group makes us feel better… you look at religious conflict, racism, sexism, war, nationalism… all these ideas work on that psychology. We wonder why there's racism, and it's because people want to say, 'I'm in this group and you're not in this group, fuck you!'
“It's predictable human behaviour, you know, like powerful men cheating on their wives. When you rise in status, your testosterone rises, and the testosterone of the women around you rises, which means everybody around a person of high status wants to have sex. That's evolution! The big monkey dude who was in charge was the one who would always end up breeding the most.
“So when we see David Petraeus, the former head of the CIA, cheat on his wife in a big scandal and leave the Pentagon, it's not really a surprise. The dude was the most high status person in the fuckin' world. This guy could napalm your house. The primal urges for him to have sex with another woman… not to mention all the women around him are feeling the same thing, because he's a high status male!
“You know, they bagged him in the media and tore him down, but we never step back and say, 'well, you know, this is why he did it'.”
Where does that refusal to step back come from? Why are we so averse to analysis, to asking the tough questions?
“I think the core of it is the ego and the idea of self,” Damien offers, “and this idea being nurtured, this idea that you are this person, this ego, and you are special and it's a self-driven world. When something doesn't affect you, and the promotion of yourself, and the things that you want and the things you think are important, you're not going to care about it.
“You know, I'm going to a rally today about the development of the Great Barrier Reef, and what fascinates me about these enormous developments — UNESCO are talking about removing our World Heritage listing, five major coalports are being developed, a million square metres of seabed are being removed — is that when I mention it in a comedy club, people are like, 'what are you talking about?’
“They’re developing the reef. What fascinates me is not whether it's right or wrong for Australia to do that. What fascinates me about it is that nobody even cares. To me, that's what's interesting. So I'm not going to this rally to say, 'yeah, down with the port development!' I'm going to show that I at least know what's happening. It astounds me. People are against talking about these issues.
“People are like, 'why are you sharing that link? Why are you talking about that? Why's this guy talking about the world we live in that affects me directly? Why would I wanna talk about that?' People almost dislike you for it. ‘Post a photo of your eggs benedict! I don't wanna hear about the reef my children won't see! Eggs benedict, man! Don't post this other stuff. It's not about me, so I don't get it. Why aren't you talking about me? Look, guys, I had a coffee!'
“I mean, what the fuck is that? It is actually insane. Truly insane. But the people who actually go out and say, 'hey, guys, maybe we should do something about this stuff'? They're seen as the crazy ones. We're driving this car that is civilisation towards the edge of a cliff, and instead of watching where we're going, we're looking back at Kim Kardashian's tits, going, 'what's she doing, what's she up to? Wow, she's touching herself, this is awesome.'”
So how do we change that, then?
“I think the answer is the culture. First of all, obviously the government and major corporations are trying to get away with as much as they possibly can, and we're letting them do it. It's slowly building, this corporate and government relationship, it's building and building. We're seeing major reductions in civil liberties and insane legislation. I think people secretly know, on the inside, that we're facing impending doom.
“I've come to the conclusion it's not about left wing politics and it's not about right wing politics, it's about culture. It's our culture that will put someone like Taylor Swift up on a pedestal, some enormously rich and powerful girl. 80,000 people will go see her play, and she's talking about nothing at all. She's just singing drivel. She's an okay singer, but I know friends that are better.
“A sane society would say, 'boo, you don't deserve that', and she would become nothing, but we're not a sane society. We say she's successful, and we're looking at her and putting her up as this great thing to aspire to. And that, in turn, influences politics and it influences what we buy, it influences whether or not we choose to engage with politics.
“So it all comes from us. If we were a culture that valued working less, that valued community and friendship — people value things more than people now — then that would, in turn, influence politics. So it really needs to change from the bottom up. That's why talking about these ideas and making them popular is important. Gay marriage is a perfect example. That's a hugely popular issue, and the momentum behind that is enacting change.
“The reason gay marriage is so heavily supported is that it's such a simple issue. Of course they should be able to get married. Gay people exist, and society has conceded, 'okay, yes, they definitely exist'. That's really the issue here. Are there gay people? Yes, there are, there always will be. People are gay. What are we even talking about here?
“Some people actually dispute that there are gay people, they think they just become gay or watch Britney Spears or something and suddenly just want to have sex with people of the same sex, but everyone else just says, yes, of course there are gay people.
“But when you talk about central banking and the devaluation of the currency, people don't understand it. It takes work to understand that issue, so people aren't as willing to say, 'yeah! I'll support that!' Even with the Great Barrier Reef, which I thought was a bit of a slam dunk, people are still like, 'oh, I don't know...' But I think generally, people don't even know it's happening. My gut feeling is that most people don't know it's happening.
“I base that on going into rooms of people and saying, 'who knows this is happening?' Very few people put up their hands. Isn't that crazy? We're talking about the Great Barrier Reef. That's shit you can see from space. It's a big deal. And people are like, 'yeah, so? Where's the joke, faggot? What the fuck?'”
Damien Power plays Brisbane Powerhouse from March 19-24.
