In the previous post, we explored surplus vs. normativity: nonsense preserves multiplicity, mythology channels meaning toward stability and shared interpretation. Now we turn to thresholds, those points where comprehension, interpretation, or experience is tested — the liminal spaces where meaning is activated, transformed, or consolidated.
Both nonsense and mythology manage thresholds, but in profoundly different ways.
1. Mythology’s Prescriptive Thresholds
Mythology dramatises thresholds as ritualised and codified experiences:
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Heroic quests, rites of passage, taboos, and transformation narratives guide participants across existential or social boundaries.
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Meaning is stabilised by providing a predetermined path: the challenge, the test, the reward, or the cautionary lesson.
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These thresholds are normative and collective: the individual is trained in patterns that endure across generations.
Here, risk is contained. Activation occurs within a scaffolded narrative, and participants learn how to cross thresholds safely by rehearsing the archetypal trajectory.
2. Nonsense’s Exploratory Thresholds
Nonsense, in contrast, creates thresholds that are local, relational, and exploratory:
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Readers or participants encounter moments of ambiguity, paradox, or playful disorientation.
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Activation is immediate: one must navigate possibilities without a prescribed path.
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Risk is rehearsed, not codified: thresholds test comprehension, expectation, and pattern recognition rather than moral or existential alignment.
Nonsense trains the agent in tolerance for incompleteness, multiplicity, and unpredictability, offering rehearsal without dictating the outcome.
3. Comparing Threshold Technologies
| Aspect | Mythology | Nonsense |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation | Prescriptive | Exploratory |
| Scale | Collective, transgenerational | Local, immediate |
| Outcome | Consolidation, closure, norm internalisation | Activation, multiplicity, rehearsal |
| Risk Management | Contained through codified narrative | Contained through structured play and patterning |
| Function | Guides crossing thresholds safely | Trains navigation of thresholds flexibly |
The contrast is clear: both systems train agents to engage thresholds, but mythology prescribes the passage, whereas nonsense rehearses the capacity to engage multiple passages simultaneously.
4. Thresholds as Relational Opportunity
From a relational and ecological perspective, thresholds are not obstacles; they are activation points.
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Mythology stabilises meaning by channeling engagement at these points, preserving interpretive coherence.
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Nonsense amplifies potential at these points, maintaining surplus and enabling multiple interpretations.
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Both are necessary in a semiotic ecosystem: one ensures continuity, the other ensures generative flexibility.
The interplay of these strategies shows that thresholds are not merely tests. They are sites of meaning-making, rehearsal, and ecological calibration.
5. Reflection
Through thresholds, nonsense and mythology reveal different but complementary aspects of meaning:
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Mythology teaches endurance, structure, and codified navigation.
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Nonsense teaches flexibility, multiplicity, and rehearsal without closure.
In experiencing thresholds through nonsense, participants cultivate a relational awareness: meaning arises in the encounter, in the navigation, in the activation, rather than solely in the codified path or moral lesson.
Both technologies are indispensable: one stabilises, the other activates. Together, they sustain an ecology of meaning that is resilient, generative, and infinitely richer than either could achieve alone.
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