We must get into muddles, play games, have conversations, question rules? What kind of rules? How can we have some sort of order to not go mad, change the rules, no glue, build together, storytelling, life is a game.

F: Wait a minute. This is difficult to say. First of all—I think that we get somewhere with these conversations. I enjoy them very much and I think you do. But also, apart from that, I think that we get some ideas straight and I think that the muddles help. I mean— that if we both spoke logically all the time, we would never get
anywhere. We would only parrot all the old cliches that everybody has repeated for hundreds of years.

D: What is a cliche, Daddy?

F: A cliche? It's a French word, and I think it was originally a printer's word. When they print a sentence, they have to take the separate letters and put them one by one into a sort of grooved stick to spell out the sentence. But for words and sentences which people use often, the printer keeps little sticks of letters ready made up. And
these ready-made sentences are called cliches.

D: But I've forgotten now what you were saying about cliches, Daddy.

F: Yes—it was about the muddles that we get into in these talks and how getting into muddles makes a sort of sense. If we didn't get into muddles, our talks would be like playing rummy without first shuffling the cards.

D: Yes, Daddy—but what about those things—the ready-made sticks of letters?

F: The cliches? Yes—it's the same thing. We all have lots of readymade phrases and ideas, and the printer has ready-made sticks of letters, all sorted out into phrases. But if the printer wants to print something new—say, something in a new language, he will have to break up all that old sorting of the letters. In the same way, in order to think new thoughts or to say new things, we have to break up all our ready-made ideas and shuffle the pieces. Pg.25*

(*Gregory Bateson - STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROPOLOGY, PSYCHIATRY, EVOLUTION, AND EPISTEMOLOGY)