“What if everything made sense?” I ask.
“Fool,” you say, “the proposition is self-contradictory. If everything made sense, then whatever anyone did or said would have to be logical to everyone, even that which we now perceive to be illogical. And we can logically show that, since even logic is ultimately not logical, something has to be illogical, and, in that sense, not make sense. We know what makes sense because we know what doesn’t, regardless of any logician’s or mathematician’s arguments to the contrary. Tragedies, for example, interrupt lives, and their intrusion into seemingly sensible lives is often inexplicable. ‘Why me?’ or ‘Why them?’ is not a question that we easily answer after a tragedy, such as a random act of violence or the chance encounter with a pathogen or an oncoming truck (probability is not an absolute).”
“Yet, we seem to live our lives as though we want everything ‘to make sense.’”
“What?”
“Two things are going on here. One has to do with categorizing the stuff that defines our character. The other has to do with how that stuff changes, but keeps a large semblance of its initial meaning. Humans love to see patterns. Maybe that’s why computer-driven images of fractals are so mesmerizing. We look for patterns, and we categorize. The categories and patterns that we recognize clothe our worldview. We squeeze as much of this clothing as we can into the suitcase of meaning for our trip through life. What we carry seems to make sense. We personally packed everything, didn’t we? We must have had a reason? We rarely take something out as we continue to pack more into the suitcase. Once we establish what fits into patterns we recognize, we look for inclusion, and we don’t realize that we alter the packing arrangement, making our own shifting fractals of meaning that play on a mesmerizing screen. Throwing something out of that bag is an admission that we made some mistake, that we had included the senseless in the suitcase. Sorry for the mixed metaphors, but if you look in the suitcase you now have, you’ll discover something.”
“Now, what do you think I’ll discover?” you ask.
“That during the journey the suitcase has been banged around. The contents have shifted. The socks that were once in a neat stack are now mixed in with the shirts. The categories are all a-jumble. They aren’t mutually exclusive. The senseless is the sense of the arrangement. You’ll have to go picking through everything to find a piece of meaning here or there. If everything made sense during and after the life journey, then nothing at the end of the journey would be different. Why make the trip?”
“Exactly,” you respond. That’s why I called you a ‘fool.’ Only the foolish want everything to make sense. ‘Sense’ changes. ‘Meanings’ change. ‘Patterns’ change as we include or exclude. That trip you talk about has many stops and many opportunities to examine what you initially packed.”
I add, “In her book on category theory, Eugenia Cheng writes, ‘rationality is a sociological notion’ (155).* Then she says, ‘Well I believe it’s a good thing to be aware of what you’re assuming.’ In a sense, what she argues that what makes sense makes sense. We can mix metaphors or stick with just one; it’s your choice. The suitcase full of categorized meaning will be jumbled during the trip. The fractals of meaning seem to change, then repeat, then change, sometimes changing only in scale. The suitcase is full of axioms; it is full of assumptions that remain largely unseen even though they are there organizing and reorganizing the socks and shirts. What makes sense makes sense only because you want it to make sense. You’ve been taught what makes sense. On that teaching, you make more sense in scales large and small. And everything makes sense until it doesn’t. Now, back to my question: What if everything made sense?”
*Eugenia Cheng, How To Bake π. Basic Books, 2015
“Fool,” you say, “the proposition is self-contradictory. If everything made sense, then whatever anyone did or said would have to be logical to everyone, even that which we now perceive to be illogical. And we can logically show that, since even logic is ultimately not logical, something has to be illogical, and, in that sense, not make sense. We know what makes sense because we know what doesn’t, regardless of any logician’s or mathematician’s arguments to the contrary. Tragedies, for example, interrupt lives, and their intrusion into seemingly sensible lives is often inexplicable. ‘Why me?’ or ‘Why them?’ is not a question that we easily answer after a tragedy, such as a random act of violence or the chance encounter with a pathogen or an oncoming truck (probability is not an absolute).”
“Yet, we seem to live our lives as though we want everything ‘to make sense.’”
“What?”
“Two things are going on here. One has to do with categorizing the stuff that defines our character. The other has to do with how that stuff changes, but keeps a large semblance of its initial meaning. Humans love to see patterns. Maybe that’s why computer-driven images of fractals are so mesmerizing. We look for patterns, and we categorize. The categories and patterns that we recognize clothe our worldview. We squeeze as much of this clothing as we can into the suitcase of meaning for our trip through life. What we carry seems to make sense. We personally packed everything, didn’t we? We must have had a reason? We rarely take something out as we continue to pack more into the suitcase. Once we establish what fits into patterns we recognize, we look for inclusion, and we don’t realize that we alter the packing arrangement, making our own shifting fractals of meaning that play on a mesmerizing screen. Throwing something out of that bag is an admission that we made some mistake, that we had included the senseless in the suitcase. Sorry for the mixed metaphors, but if you look in the suitcase you now have, you’ll discover something.”
“Now, what do you think I’ll discover?” you ask.
“That during the journey the suitcase has been banged around. The contents have shifted. The socks that were once in a neat stack are now mixed in with the shirts. The categories are all a-jumble. They aren’t mutually exclusive. The senseless is the sense of the arrangement. You’ll have to go picking through everything to find a piece of meaning here or there. If everything made sense during and after the life journey, then nothing at the end of the journey would be different. Why make the trip?”
“Exactly,” you respond. That’s why I called you a ‘fool.’ Only the foolish want everything to make sense. ‘Sense’ changes. ‘Meanings’ change. ‘Patterns’ change as we include or exclude. That trip you talk about has many stops and many opportunities to examine what you initially packed.”
I add, “In her book on category theory, Eugenia Cheng writes, ‘rationality is a sociological notion’ (155).* Then she says, ‘Well I believe it’s a good thing to be aware of what you’re assuming.’ In a sense, what she argues that what makes sense makes sense. We can mix metaphors or stick with just one; it’s your choice. The suitcase full of categorized meaning will be jumbled during the trip. The fractals of meaning seem to change, then repeat, then change, sometimes changing only in scale. The suitcase is full of axioms; it is full of assumptions that remain largely unseen even though they are there organizing and reorganizing the socks and shirts. What makes sense makes sense only because you want it to make sense. You’ve been taught what makes sense. On that teaching, you make more sense in scales large and small. And everything makes sense until it doesn’t. Now, back to my question: What if everything made sense?”
*Eugenia Cheng, How To Bake π. Basic Books, 2015
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