Nonsense and the Ecology of Meaning: IV Nonsense and Threshold: The Managed Risk of Collapse

In any meaning system, surplus cannot persist indefinitely without tension.

Surplus is generative. But it also accumulates pressure.

Every system has thresholds — points at which density, expectation, or constraint risks collapse.

Nonsense poetry thrives at these thresholds. It manages risk without extinguishing potential.

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1. Thresholds in Meaning Systems

Meaning systems are structured potential.

Each cut, each construal, locally actualises part of that potential.

But as activation accumulates:

• Patterns densify

• Expectations intensify

• Redundancy grows

Left unchecked, the system risks over-constraining itself — producing Boojum-like collapse, as we saw in the Snark.

Nonsense operates precisely at this edge.

It exposes thresholds without forcing over-determination.

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2. The Discipline of Edge-Activation

Unlike random chaos:

• Nonsense maintains syntactic and rhythmic constraint

• Lexical invention is bounded by combinatorial plausibility

• Patterns repeat with variation, allowing local stability

The system is activated without being annihilated.

Each “impossible” phrase is an exploration of potential, not a leap into incoherence.

It is play with structural discipline.

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3. Managed Instability

Threshold management is delicate:

• Too little activation → the field remains inert; surplus is invisible

• Too much → instability collapses meaning into confusion or absurdity without structure

Nonsense calibrates this:

• Repetition and rhythm reinforce predictability

• Lexical innovation introduces tension

• Semantic deferral maintains surplus

The effect is a controlled instability: the field is alive, active, but resilient.

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4. The Ecological Function of Thresholds

Why place the system at the edge?

Threshold exploration allows the ecosystem to adapt and expand:

• Readers develop flexibility in construal

• The system reveals patterns otherwise hidden

• Future cuts can exploit latent potential

In other words, thresholds are productive.

They allow the ecosystem to sense its own boundaries and extend them safely.

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5. Lessons from the Snark

Remember the Boojum?

The Baker disappears because the system was over-constrained — an overreach of potential.

Nonsense poetry avoids this fate:

• It preserves surplus

• It explores density

• But it never exhausts the field

It teaches a crucial ecological law:

Surplus is generative. Collapse is structural.

Edge activation must be disciplined.

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6. Thresholds as Semiotic Opportunity

In practical terms, nonsense invites the reader to:

• Tolerate provisional meanings

• Navigate ambiguity with structural cues

• Activate constrained potential without insisting on closure

Thresholds are not just danger points.

They are sites of creative actualisation — a laboratory for relational meaning in motion.

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Next Step

Post V will shift the focus from systemic thresholds to the reader’s cultivation:

How engaging with nonsense develops tolerance for incompleteness, activates flexibility, and trains the interpretive apparatus itself.