But laissez-faire appeared absurd, as well as morally abhorrent, to Keynes.
His anxiety about new words such as "mob" and "banter" now appears absurd.
The possibility that the universe wants, in some way, to become conscious will "appear absurd" or "strange", he warns.
Some political structures will appear absurd: Russia, Britain and France, three of the current, permanent, veto-bearing members of the U.N. Security Council, will have a combined population less than that of Indonesia.
On the face of it, that appears absurd, since many such loans will be paid off, and those that default will not be total losses.
It's easy to see how the public demands for blood might have built momentum for a case that, on its own, would appear absurd.
But such a tiny minority holding on to such an outdated view on the right to exclusivity would increasingly appear absurd, as redundant as the royal family.
The implicit parallel in the book between personal catastrophe and political crisis – between the break-up of the Bloch marriage and the earthquake and subsequent Arab-Israeli stand-off – might at first appear absurd, hubristic.
Strange junk mail appears – absurd but expensively produced free magazines with names like The Hill and invitations to "wealth management" seminars, one promising that "fortunes are made during a boom, dynasties during a recession".
Look at these images in reproduction, on a tiny scale in the comfort of your own home, and they may well appear absurd, the white hawthorn bursting out in great maggoty slugs, the shadows making glove puppet bunnies.
