I’m liking this book more and more. Not only is it interesting but it’s also informative in a way that makes you think about your personal life and about lies.
My title is the name of a new movie coming out. The concept of the movie reminded me very much of this book. The main character lives in a world full of truths; people don’t even know what a lie is. But somehow he finds out about lying and starts testing the idea out. After realizing what lying does for you, he keeps on lying to benefit himself and soon after others learn how to lie. I’ve only seen the preview so I can’t say how the movie ends (i.e. if lying is worth it), but what the movie is based on is almost exactly what Bokononism is about: lying, if done correctly and results in the happiness of people, is ok to do. But of course it also depends on what one defines as a “lie.”
For example, Minton says that “There is not an American schoolchild who does not know the story of San Lorenzo’s noble sacrifice in World War Two.” Jonah bluntly writes that he told a lie but we (as a reader) don’t know if he really thought that was he said was true. What if someone lies to him and made him believe that information was true? And if he truly believes that all Americans know what San Lorenzo did for WWII, is he really “lying?” Again, I go back to my point that the interpretation of the word “lie” is totally up to the individual. Newt made this point clearer to me when he explained what a cat’s cradle was. The string between the hands is supposed to be a cat and a cradle but to the average eye it’s clearly not. But what if there is a person who sees the string as a cat and cradle? Are they lying or are they just stating what they personally see?
You are totally right! A lie is only a lie if you know. Take Galileo for instance, the church had always said that the sun orbited the earth, but he found out that the earth orbits the sun. Was the church really lying? As far as they knew the sun did orbit the earth, all the evidence they had suggested that, so they technically weren't lying. But they thought Galileo was, although that is a discussion for another day!
ReplyDeleteGreat post, btw.
Great post. I got a little worried that it was veering off topic with the movie reference (though the reference clearly resonated!), but then the second half of the post really took off. In fact, I wonder if the question about "lying" is not whether or not it's occurring, but how perception works. For instance, what if the "average eye" directly understands the metaphor for which the cat's cradle game stands? And so the so called lie is, in fact, metaphor itself. And if you think of the way we often communicate, speaking in figures, comparisons, analogies, etc., is not "lying" a bit too limiting a term for our everyday sleights of hand?
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