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Coincidance - Principia Discordia

Coincidance - Principia Discordia

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FORE—WORDS<br />

Into the Labyrinth<br />

Like many another wild and anarchistic wanderer of our shattered times,<br />

I spend a lot of time asking myself questions that are officially classed as<br />

"nonsensical" by the Cambridge custodians of linguistic analysis. I ask, for<br />

instance, why are there 12 eggs in a grocer's box and 12 citizens in a jury<br />

box—or why Nagasaki is mentioned in conjunction with uranium in a book<br />

published in 1939—or why attitudes toward the female breast correlate<br />

closely with attitudes toward war and conquest. Naturally, as the Cambridge<br />

group warns, such nonsense questions lead to nonsense answers.<br />

Some of the nonsense answers that have amused and delighted me are<br />

collected in this anthology. If there is a thesis hidden in these random<br />

explorations, it might be that nonsense has its own meanings and that<br />

Lewis Carroll, the fantasist, was just as wise as Charles Dodgson, the<br />

logician, who happened to inhabit the same body as Carroll. Or it might be<br />

that nonsense and poetry are inescapable parts of human experience as long<br />

as we have two hemispheres in our brains, one logical and the other intuitive.<br />

Or it might be that dialectical Marxism (Groucho variety) can answer<br />

questions that sane sober people can't even ask in the first place.<br />

I have added a running commentary, here and there, which sets these<br />

pieces in their historical context, expands them, adds new thoughts, or just<br />

exemplifies the sad fact that, like most writers, I cannot resist any<br />

opportunity to explain my explanations.<br />

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