There are times when all we want is to know other people
to discover and rediscover that we are all indeed mad.
Twice Two
Having spent a lot of time thinking about the world through the frames of objective measurement and falsifiability –which would sometimes lead to a tendency toward cynicism and a perspective tinged with a particular sterility – it was a novel and pleasurable experience to consider that twice two could equal five.
The Underground Man (Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky, 1864) said that though we may be driven – through natural curiosity or otherwise – to capture patterns of behaviour, describe them with formulae, and thus predict the results of any and every series of actions (e.g. 2+2=4), this is not actually what we want. What we want, according to him, is to live in freedom and in uncertainty, in a world where, despite the certainty that 2+2 should always equal 4, it could also happen that we would reach the irrational result of five.
In a world without uncertainty there are no questions that need answering and no goals that need realising. In a world with no pain, joy loses clear definition.
We are fortunate in that we will never be one-hundred per cent certain of anything (except perhaps death), and so the Underground Man's concern about a dystopic tabulated world will never become a reality. (But then, here is a paradox; it is certain that nothing is certain!) The attraction of twice two making five is that, as a rational impossibility, its occurrence would indicate that anything is possible. It will probably never happen, but it’s still strangely pleasant to entertain the possibility that it might.
© Jolyon Miles-Wilson
to discover and rediscover that we are all indeed mad.
Twice Two
Having spent a lot of time thinking about the world through the frames of objective measurement and falsifiability –which would sometimes lead to a tendency toward cynicism and a perspective tinged with a particular sterility – it was a novel and pleasurable experience to consider that twice two could equal five.
The Underground Man (Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky, 1864) said that though we may be driven – through natural curiosity or otherwise – to capture patterns of behaviour, describe them with formulae, and thus predict the results of any and every series of actions (e.g. 2+2=4), this is not actually what we want. What we want, according to him, is to live in freedom and in uncertainty, in a world where, despite the certainty that 2+2 should always equal 4, it could also happen that we would reach the irrational result of five.
In a world without uncertainty there are no questions that need answering and no goals that need realising. In a world with no pain, joy loses clear definition.
We are fortunate in that we will never be one-hundred per cent certain of anything (except perhaps death), and so the Underground Man's concern about a dystopic tabulated world will never become a reality. (But then, here is a paradox; it is certain that nothing is certain!) The attraction of twice two making five is that, as a rational impossibility, its occurrence would indicate that anything is possible. It will probably never happen, but it’s still strangely pleasant to entertain the possibility that it might.
© Jolyon Miles-Wilson