Meaning Out Of Chaos

Let’s imagine meaning as a thing that, in its essence, is born out of chaos. It’s like trying to assemble a coherent story out of a collection of disconnected fragments, which is, of course, a paradox itself. This is the absurdity at the core of meaning-making: we are constantly trying to make sense of something that, by its very nature, resists sense.

Take, for instance, the way Escher’s art plays with the dimensions of space—his impossible constructions (like staircases that ascend and descend simultaneously) are meant to make our minds twist and turn. They don’t follow the rules of physics, and yet, they invite us to see those rules in a new way. They ask us to reconcile the absurd with the possible.

Now, if we apply this logic to meaning, it’s clear that meaning-making operates on a similar level of contradiction. What we call ‘meaning’ doesn’t arise from a simple, linear process of adding one thing to another. It arises in the tension between the seemingly absurd and the recognisable, the chaotic and the ordered. It's as though meaning is built from the fragments of an impossible puzzle, yet it holds together enough to trick us into thinking it makes sense.

Take language itself. It’s a system of arbitrary signs—there’s no intrinsic connection between the sound “tree” and the object it refers to. Yet, we all agree that “tree” means a certain thing, and this shared understanding becomes a foundation for all of our interactions. But if you take a step back, it’s an absurd foundation—there’s no “tree-ness” in the word “tree” at all, except the one we’ve collectively invented. In a sense, language is not a reflection of reality; it’s a leap into reality.

This absurd leap is what makes all meaning creation an act of radical imagination. When we make sense of the world—whether through art, language, or thought—we are trying to make sense out of something that doesn’t inherently have sense. It’s a construction, a system of rules, yes—but at its core, it is no more rational than the bizarre geometries of Escher’s drawings. Meaning exists because we agree it exists, but only because we’ve created a context in which it’s possible to make that agreement.

And in this way, absurdity is the very fabric of meaning-making. Every time we encounter something new, something unexplained, we have to create meaning around it. We invent concepts, systems, metaphors to impose order on chaos. This is exactly what Campbell means when he speaks of myth as a lens to view the cosmos. We create these “myths” out of the absurd to explain the unimaginable.

So, absurdity isn’t a bug in the system of meaning; it’s the engine that drives it. And just like with Carroll or Escher’s work, where meaning bends, twists, and loops in on itself, meaning-making exists in this delicate balance of coherence and chaos. It’s constantly pushing against the edges of sense and nonsense, refusing to settle neatly into either category.

In fact, the most profound meanings might be the ones that recognise their own absurdity. Those meanings that don’t shy away from contradiction, chaos, and paradox are the ones that speak the deepest truths, because they expose the very act of meaning-making for what it is: a playful, creative, and absurd human invention.

And the paradoxical beauty of it is that, even though it’s absurd, we still manage to live our lives as though it’s perfectly reasonable. We put meaning in everything. In art. In language. In our beliefs. In our stories. Even in the most absurd parts of the world, we see meaning. It’s a cosmic joke, and the punchline is that we all get to play along.