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jrf's picture

nonsense as mind-expander

I really like what I understand of this post-- the idea of different understandings of how the world works/should work as different realities makes sense to me, I think, and helps me understand ShaynaS's post more. I'm confused, though, about what you mean at the end of the post. What is the "way" that Alice dreams/lives? Is the value of her dream-adventures in the possibility they suggest for expanding our understanding of how the world works to include multiple realities? If, as ShaynaS and Yann Martel suggest, our personal and chatter-established collective realities are "all in our heads," do nonsense stories serve to remind us of the impossibility of establishing an objective truth, and thereby help us imagine the possibility of truths besides our own?

I'm not sure how to connect the possibility of a "universal truth" that is discoverable within ourselves to a nonsense story, although I'm sure it can be done. Interpreting something like Alice as a reminder of our own absurdity seems to me to suggest no ultimate truth, but Carroll's own Christianity would suggest that he believed one existed. Perhaps rather than arguing the impossibility of an objective truth, a nonsense story merely points out our own imperfections in order to encourage further searching in a different direction?

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