Stop Making Sense
Some newspaper headlines:
Farmer Bill Dies in House
Teacher Strikes Idle Kids
Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted
Miners refuse to work after death
Sisters reunited after 18 years in a supermarket trolley queue
Killer sentenced to die for second time in 10 years
Never Withhold Herpes Infection from a Loved One
Prostitutes Appeal to the Pope
Bear mating Fails, Veterinarian to Take Over
Peter Heath: “[Carroll's Alice is not a piece of nonsense, but a work] whose frolics are governed throughout, not by a formal theory of any kind, but by close attention to logical principles, and by a sometimes surprising insight into abstract questions of philosophy.”
Paul Watzlawick: “this must be what Nietzsche had in mind when he postulated that he who has a why of living will endure almost any how…Man cannot survive psychologically in a universe which for him is senseless….The loss or the absence of meaning in life is perhaps the most common denominator of all forms of emotional distress; it is especially the much-commented on “modern illness”. Pain, disease, loss, failure, disappointment, the fear of death, or merely boredom - all lead to the feeling that life is meaningless.”
Sigmund Freud: “It asserts its privilege of proceeding illogically, and although it admits that dreams are incomprehensible and absurd, it cannot summon up the courage to deny that dreams have any significance. Led by a dim intuition, it seems rather to assume that dreams have a meaning, albeit a hidden one; that they are intended as a substitute for some other thought-process, and that we have only to disclose this substitute correctly in order to discover the hidden meaning of the dream.” (Interpretations of Dreams)
Ludwig Wittgenstein: “"But the fairy tale only invents what is not the case: it does not talk nonsense"—It is not as simple as that. Is it false or nonsensical to say that a pot talks? Have we a clear picture of the circumstances in which we should say of a pot that it talked? (Even a nonsense-poem is not nonsense in the same way as the babbling of a child.) We do indeed say of an inanimate thing that it is in pain: when playing with dolls for example. But this use of the concept of pain is a secondary one. Imagine a case in which people ascribed pain only to inanimate things; pitied only dolls! (When children play at trains their game is connected with their knowledge of trains. It would nevertheless be possible for the children of a tribe unacquainted with trains to learn this game from others, and to play it without knowing that it was copied from anything. One might say that the game did not make the same sense to them as to us.)…
Don't take it as a matter of course, but as a remarkable fact, that pictures and fictitious narratives give us pleasure, occupy our minds. ("Don't take it as a matter of course" means: find it surprising, as you do some things which disturb you. Then the puzzling aspect of the latter will disappear, by your accepting this fact as you do the other.)
((The transition from patent nonsense to something which is disguised nonsense.))” (Philosophical Investigations)
Alice's Adventures in WonderLand and Through the Looking Glass
“Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: “Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!” And she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.” (pg.13)
“`Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable - '”“Found what?” said the Duck.“Found it,” the Mouse replied rather crossly: “of course you know what `it' means.”“I know what `it' means well enough, when I find a thing,” said the Duck: “it's generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?”” (pg.20)
““Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.“I don't much care where - ” said Alice.“Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat.“ - so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.“Oh, you're sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. “What sort of people live about here?”“In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.”“But I don't want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.“Oh, you can't help that,” said the Cat: “we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.”“How do you know I'm mad?” said Alice.“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn't have come here.”Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on “And how do you know that you're mad? “To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog's not mad. You grant that?”“I suppose so,” said Alice.“Well, then,” the Cat went on, “you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.”” (pg.56)
““Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”“Come, we shall have some fun now!” thought Alice. “I'm glad they've begun asking riddles. - I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud.“Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said the March Hare.“Exactly so,” said Alice.“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least - at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing, you know.”“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that `I see what I eat' is the same thing as `I eat what I see'!”“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that `I like what I get' is the same thing as `I get what I like'!”“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that `I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as `I sleep when I breathe'!”” (pg.61)
““You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.”“Perhaps it hasn't one,” Alice ventured to remark.“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess. “Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.” And she squeezed herself up closer to Alice's side as she spoke…the moral of that is - `Oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go round!'”“Somebody said,” Alice whispered, “that it's done by everybody minding their own business!”“Ah, well! It means much the same thing,” said the Duchess, digging her sharp little chin into Alice's shoulder as she added, “and the moral of that is - `Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.'”“How fond she is of finding morals in things!” Alice thought to herself.” (pg.80)
““That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet,” said the King, rubbing his hands; “so now let the jury - ”“If any one of them can explain it,” said Alice, (she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn't a bit afraid of interrupting him,) “I'll give him sixpence. I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it.”The jury all wrote down on their slates, “She doesn't believe there's an atom of meaning in it,” but none of them attempted to explain the paper.“If there's no meaning in it,” said the King, “that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any.” (pg.108)
““I know what you're thinking about,” said Tweedledum; “but it isn't so, nohow.”
“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it aint. That's logic.”” (pg.159)
“”He's dreaming now,” said Tweedledee, “and what do you think he's dreaming about ?”
Alice said, “Nobody can guess that.”
“Why, about you!” Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?”
“Where I am now, of course”, said Alice.
“Not you!” Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. “You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!” “If that there King was to wake”, added Tweedledum, “you'd go out - bang! - just like a candle!”
“I shouldn't”, exclaimed Alice indignantly. “Besides, if I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know.”
“Ditto,” said Tweedledum.
“Ditto, ditto” cried Tweedledee. He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying, “Hush! You'll be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise.”
“Well, it's no use your talking about waking him,” said Tweedledeum, “when your only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.”
“I am real, said Alice, and began to cry.” (pp.166/7)
“Alice laughed. “There's no use trying,” she said, “one can't believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (pg.178)
“”I don't know what you mean by `glory,'” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don't - till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'”
“But `glory' doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master, that's all.” (pg.190)
““I'm sure I didn't mean ----” Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted her impatiently.
“That's just what I complain of! You should have meant. What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning - and a child's more important than a joke, I hope.” (pg.226)
“”Now Kitty, let's consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear, and you should not go on licking your paw like that - as if Dinah hadn't washed you this morning! You see Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream of course - but then I was part of his dream too! Was it the red King?...Which do you think it was?” (pg.245)