You are currently viewing What Makes Trevor Noah So Brilliant?

What Makes Trevor Noah So Brilliant?

I have recently watched Trevor Noah’s brilliant master class on effective messaging at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Trevor is in a class of his own when it comes to messaging.

What makes him so brilliant? What most people don’t realise is Trevor’s mastery of nuance. That’s what makes him so special.

So, what is nuance?

Well, there is a dictionary definition and there is a reality that the dictionary seeks to define. I will focus on the latter.

To get a good appreciation of nuance we have to journey all the way to the cradle of philosophy as we know it today.

Almost every Greek philosopher that has been influential in the shaping of Western thought in the past 2 500 years, such as Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, has postulated their argumentation using binary frameworks.

Binarism is a way of thinking that focuses its didactics on the nodes of two opposing extremes: for example, right vs wrong, democracy vs socialism, good vs bad, etc.

The history and evolution of Western thought has been shaped through binary didactics.

To be sure, binarism is a powerful tool for distilling and shaping bodies of knowledge. However, it has a debilitating blindside: it diminishes nuance.

So, nuance is everything in between the continuum of any two extremes. There are a lot of nuances between right and wrong, and good and bad that Western thought, especially didactics, just struggles to process.

This is why there are such stark, if not irreconcilable, societal divides on pertinent issues such as society and economic models, religion and gender orientation.

Incidentally, I have recently been invited by one of the largest Christian NPOs in the world to participate in a process of distilling its corporate Christian identity in the 21st Century context. I intend to challenge my fellow participants to engage in a process of transcending thought systems that have shaped us.

But I digress…

Back to Trevor; if you analyse Trevor’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, he roasted the extremes and spotlighted the nuance with masterful poise. He is simply the king of nuance!

  1. Before someone lectures me about the Western thought not being the only thought system! Yes, that’s true, but it’s by far the most hegemonic and has, almost exclusively, shaped the world systems as we have them today.
Close Menu