Nonsense

Why do we love nonsense? Why is it that all those old English songs are full of

"Falderiddle Ido" and "Hey Nonny Nonny" and all those babbling choruses? Why is it

that when we get hep with jazz, we just go "Boody Boody Boopty Boo" and so on and

enjoy ourselves swinging it?

Welcome to the Love of Wisdom with Alan Watts. As one of the century's most

eloquent philosophers, Alan Watts introduced a generation in the West to

the fascinating ideas of the Far East, the wisdoms of the Orient. In the 1960s

and early 70s he lectured throughout the English-speaking world and was recorded

in a variety of settings, from seminars aboard his ferry boat the Vallejo in

Sausalito, California, to keynote addresses at major universities. The

author of books on Christian theology, psychology, ecology, and Eastern religion,

including his classic The Way of Zen, Watts' scholarship is deep and timeless.

However, it is also his wit and playful approach to life that endears him to us

today. In this public radio broadcast from 1960, which was heard originally

live on KPFA in Berkeley, California, Alan Watts explores the origin of the desire

for meaningfulness. In the search for satisfaction, what is it that is really

sought or yearned after? The talk turns from academic discussion into poetry.

What is the meaning of significance if trees, stones, clouds, and stars are the

Alleluia chorus of the universe? Alan Watts, the sense of nonsense.

It's very commonly said that the root of most human unhappiness is the sense that

one's life has no meaning. This is, I suppose, most frequently said in circles

interested in psychotherapy, because the feeling of meaninglessness is often

equated with the existence of neurosis. And so many activities into which one is

encouraged to enter, philosophies one is encouraged to believe, and religions one

is encouraged to join, are commended on the basis of the fact that they give

life a meaning. And I think it's very fascinating to think out what this idea

itself means, or what it is intended when it's said that life has to have a

purpose. I remember so well as a child listening to sermons in church, in which

the preacher would constantly refer to God's purpose for you and for me. And I

could never make out what it was, because when questioned about this, the

Reverend Gentleman seemed to be evasive. What is the purpose of God for the

world? We used to sing a hymn, too, "God is working his purpose out as year

succeeds to year." And the nearest clue one got to it was in the sort of refrain

of the hymn, "nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be, when

the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea." And of

course that raises the question, what is the glory of God? Well now, it's pretty

obvious, I think, that when we talk about life having or not having a meaning,

we're not using quite the ordinary sense of the word "meaning" as the attribute of a

sign. We're not saying, are we, that we expect this natural universe to behave as

if it were a collection of words signifying something other than

themselves. It isn't a point of view which would reduce our lives and the

world merely to the status of signs. And it's obviously in some different sense

than that that Goethe wrote his famous lines at the end of Faust, "Alles

Vergehentliche ist nur ein Gleichnis." Forgive my pronunciation of German. All

that is mortal or all that is perishable is but a symbol. And so a symbol of what?

What do we want to feel? What would satisfy us as being this meaning behind

this world? It's so often, you know, that we don't follow our ideas and our desires

through. Most of the things that we want very fervently are things that we've

only half glimpsed. Our ideals are very often suggestions, hints, and we don't

know really exactly what we mean when we think about it. But there is this obscure

sense in which we feel that life ought to have significance and be a symbol in

at least that sense, if not just so arid a symbol as a mere sign. Or it also may

mean that life is meaningful. An individual feels that his life amounts

to something when he belongs and fits in with the execution of some group

enterprise. He feels he belongs in a plan. And this too seems to give people a

sense of great satisfaction. But we have to pursue that question further too. Why

is it that a plan, why is it that fellowship with other people gives the

sense of meaning? Does it come down perhaps to another sense of meaning that

life is felt to be meaningful when one is fully satisfying one's biological

urges, including the sense of hunger, the sense of love, the sense of self-expression

in activity, and so on. But then again we have to push that inquiry further. What

do our biological urges really point towards? Are they just, however, things

always projected towards a future? Is biology and its processes nothing but

going on towards going on towards going on? Or there's a fourth and more

theological sense of the meaning of life. In all theistic religions at any rate,

the meaning of life is God himself. In other words, all this world means a

person. It means a heart. It means an intelligence. And the relationship of

love between God and man is the meaning of the world. The sight of God is the

glory of God, and so on. But again here there's something to be further pursued.

What is it that we want in love with a person, and even a person in the sense of

the Lord God? What is the content of it? What is it that we are really yearning

after? Well now, if we go back to the first point,

taking Goethe's words that all that is transitory is but a symbol, and that we

want to feel that all things have significance, it does seem to me that

there's a sense in which we often use the word significance, where the word

seems to be chosen quite naturally, and yet at the same time it's not quite the

right word. We say, for example, often of music, that we feel it to be significant,

when just at the same time we don't mean that it expresses some particular kind

of concretely realizable emotion, and certainly it's not imitating the noises

of nature. A program music, you know, would simply imitate something else, and

it deliberately sets out to express sadness or joy or whatever, is not the

kind of thing I mean. So often when one listens to the beautiful arabesque

character of the Baroque composers, Bach or Vivaldi, it is felt to be significant,

not because it means something other than itself, but because it is so

satisfying as it is, and we use then this word significance. So often in those

moments when our impetuous seeking for fulfillment cools down, and we give

ourselves a little space to watch things as if they were worth watching, ordinary

things, and in those moments when our inner turmoil has really quietened, we

find significance in things that we wouldn't expect to find significant at

all. I mean, this is after all the art of those photographers who have such genius

in turning the camera towards such things as peeling paint on an old door, or

mud and sand and stones on a dirt road, and showing us there that if we look at

it in a certain way, those things are significant. But we can't say significant

of what so much as significant of themselves. Or perhaps significance then

is the quality of a state of mind in which we notice that we're overlooking

the significance of the world by our constant quest for it later. All this

language is of course quite naturally vague and imprecise, because I think the

wrong word is used, and yet not entirely the wrong word, because as I said it

comes so naturally to us. It was Clive Bell, the great aesthetician, who wanted

to say that all the characteristic of art, especially the characteristic of

aesthetic success in painting, was the creation of significant form. Again, a

very vague, imprecise expression. But it certainly is an attribute, not only of

those moments in which we are tranquil inside, but also of moments of deep

spiritual experience, of what would be called "moksha" or release in Hinduism

or "satori" in Zen, that in those moments the significance of the world seems to

be the world, seems to be what is going on now. And we don't look any further.

The scheme of things seems to justify itself at every moment of its unfoldment.

I pointed out that this was particularly a characteristic of music. It's also a

characteristic of dancing. And in the sensation of belonging with one's fellow

men, in the carrying out of some significant pattern of life, which I

mentioned as a second sense of the world being meaningful, again the character of

this feeling is, again, something that is fulfilled in itself. To dance is not to

be going anywhere. When we dance in the ballroom, we don't have a destination,

we're just going round the room. And it's in doing this, it's in executing the

pattern in singing the music with other people, that even though this doesn't

point to anything outside itself, we again get the sense of meaning. And this

is also obviously the case so often in the satisfaction of the biological urges.

Does one live to eat or eat to live? I'm not at all sure about this. I'm sure I

very often live to eat, because sitting around a table with people, I don't like

eating alone, and enjoying food is absolutely delightful. And we're not

thinking when we do this, at least certainly I'm not, that we have to eat

because it's good for us. And we've got to throw something down the hatch, as

Henry Miller said, and swallow a dozen vitamins, just because our system needs

nourishment. I remember quite recently there was an article in the Consumer

Reports about bread, and there'd been some correspondence and protests saying

that the bread one bought, white bread one buys in the stores, is perfectly

inedible and lacking in nutrition, and that it was much better to eat peasant-type

breads, rough pumpernickel and things of that kind, and the experts replied that

our white bread is perfectly full of good nutrients, and there's nothing really

the matter with it at all. Well I felt like saying, it isn't a matter perhaps of

the bread being deficient in the essential vitamins. Bread isn't medicine,

it's food, and one's complaint against it is that it's bad cookery. It tastes of

nothing, and we do tend, don't we, to look upon food so often for what it will do

for us, rather than the delight of eating it. But if the satisfaction of

biological urges is to mean anything, surely the point of these urges is not

the fatuous one of mere survival. We might say the point of the individual

is simply that he contributes to the welfare of the race, and the point

of the race is that it reproduces itself to reproduce itself to reproduce itself

and keep going. And that isn't really a point at all. That's just fatuous. Surely

the race keeps going because going is great, because it's fun, and if it isn't

and never will be, then there's no point obviously in going. I mean looking at it

from the most hedonistic standpoint. But then when we come to the question what

is fun, what is the joy of it? Again we come down to something that can't very

well be explained in the ordinary language of meaning, of leading to

something else. And this I think becomes pre-eminently true if we think of it in

theological language, that the meaning of life is God. In any of the theistic

religions what is God doing? What is the meaning of God? Why does he create the

universe? What is the content of the love of God for his creation? Well, there's the

frank answer of the Hindus that the Godhead manifests the world because of

Leela, which is the Sanskrit word for play. And this is likewise said in the

Hebrew scriptures or the Christian Old Testament in the book of Proverbs, where

there is a marvelous speech by the divine wisdom, Sophia, which in describing

the function of the divine wisdom in the creation of the world, the world in other

words as a manifestation of the wisdom of God, wisdom uses the phrase that in

producing men and animals and all the creatures of the earth, wisdom is playing

and it was the delight of wisdom to play before the presence of God. And when it

is likewise said in the scriptures that the Lord God created the world for his

pleasure, this again means in a sense for play. And certainly this seems to be what

the angels in heaven are doing according to the traditional symbolic descriptions

of heaven. They are ringed around the presence of the Almighty, calling out

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia through all eternity. Well, Alleluia may have meant

something originally, but as it's used now it doesn't mean anything except, well

in our own slang, whoopee! It's an exclamation of nonsensical delight. And it

was Dante in the Paradiso who described the song of the angels as the laughter of

the universe. And this sense of nonsense as the theme of the divine activity

comes out also very strongly in the book of Job. I always think that the book of

Job is the most profound book in the whole Bible, Old Testament and New

Testament, because here is the problem of the man, the righteous man, who has

suffered and all his friends try to rationalize it and say, well you must have

suffered because you really had a secret sin after all and deserve the punishment

of God, or because - rationalize it somehow. And when they've had their say, the

Lord God appears on the scene and says, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel with

words without knowledge?" and then proceeds to ask Job and his friends a

series of absolutely unanswerable conundrums, pointing out all the apparent

irrationality and nonsense of his creation. Why, for example, he said, "Do I

send rain upon the desert where no man is?" Most commentators on the book of Job

end with the remark that, well, this poses the problem of suffering and the

problem of evil, but doesn't really answer it. And yet in the end himself, Job

seems to be satisfied. He somehow surrenders to the apparent

unreasonableness of the Lord God, and this is not, I think, because Job is

beaten down and that he's unduly impressed with the royal, monarchical and

paternalistic authority of the deity and doesn't dare to answer back. He

realizes that somehow these very questions are the answer. I think of all

the commentators on the book of Job, the person who came closest to this point

was old G. K. Chesterton. He once made the glorious remark that it is one

thing to look with amazement at a Gorgon or a Griffin, a creature who doesn't

exist, but quite another thing to look at a Hippopotamus, a creature who does

exist and looks as if he doesn't. In other words, that all this strange world

with its weird forms like Hippopotami, and when you look at them from a

certain point of view - stones and trees and water and clouds and stars - when

you look at them from a certain point of view and don't take them for granted,

they're as weird as any Hippopotamus or any imagination of fabulous beasts of

Gorgons and Griffins and things like that. They are just plain improbable, and

it is in this sense, I think, that they are the Alleluia, as it were, the

nonsense song. Why do we love nonsense? Why do we love Lewis Carroll with his

'Twas brillig and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,

All mimsy were the borrow-groves And the mumraths outgrabe?

Why is it that all those old English songs are full of Fawlde-riddle-Ido

and Hey Nonny Nonny and all those babbling choruses? Why is it that when we

get hep with jazz, we just go boody-boody-boopty-boo and so on and enjoy

ourselves swinging it? It is this participation in the essential,

glorious nonsense that is at the heart of the world, that isn't going anywhere,

that is a dance, but it seems that only in moments of unusual insight and

illumination that we get the point of this and find that thus the true meaning

of life is no meaning, that its purpose is no purpose, and that its sense is

nonsense. But still we want to use about it the word

'significant'. Significant nonsense? Yes, nonsense that is not just chaos,

that is not just blathering balderdash, but that has in it rhythm,

fascinating complexity, a kind of artistry. It is in this kind of

meaninglessness that we get the profoundest meaning.

You've been listening to The Love of Wisdom with Alan Watts.

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The Love of Wisdom with Alan Watts is produced by the

Electronic University. I'm Neil Harvey. Thank you for listening.

Of course this is also saying that life is a kind of nonsense, in the same way

that music is a kind of nonsense, because music isn't supposed to mean anything

other than itself. And so in the same way when we use nonsense in words, we're

using words for their musical value, like Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear did. I mean

you can have a limerick like "thrummula thrummula thrilp, cum lipsable lipsable

lilp, dimthricon me thrumme lum gumptulous bum, is storm gurgle, um bumdula

bilp". Its humour doesn't consist in anything that it means, but rather in what

it doesn't. Same way with Edward Lear. There was an old man of spithead who

opened the window and said "fill jumble fill jumble, fill rumble come tumble",

that doubtful old man of spithead. And then again when Sir Arthur Eddington was

talking about electrons, he said that no one anymore is asking the question "what

is an electron?". Something unknown is doing we don't know what. That is what

our knowledge amounts to. I seem to have heard something like it before. 'Twas

brillig and the slivy toves did gar and gimble in the wabe. There is the same

suggestion of activity. And thus the people who founded the Institute for

Advanced Studies at Princeton made an act of faith in great scientists,

mathematicians, historians, that they could be allowed to sit in their studies

with no requirements whatsoever, except that they just be themselves. And they

trusted that if these scientists were allowed to goof off, to play around with

their sciences, they would eventually produce results. And all the better for

not being under any hurry or compulsion. And it's this kind of faith in the

inventive mind that is necessary for getting any really inspired insights

into the nature of the world. You can't demand spontaneity. This is the trouble.

I went out of my mind and then came to my senses by meeting a magpie who mixed

up his tenses, who muddled distinctions of nouns and of verbs and insisted that

logic is bad for the birds. With a poo-wee cluck and a chit-chit-chit, the

grammar and meaning don't matter a bit. The stars in their courses have no

destination. The train of events will arrive at no station. The inmost and

ultimate self of us all is dancing on nothing and having a ball. So with chat

for chit and with tat for tit, this will be that and that will be it. So that's that.