Wednesday, September 16, 2009
My Fake Religion Can School Your Centuries-Old Traditions
Cat's Cradle is a satirical criticism of both the atom bomb and religion as a whole. However, people who knowingly follow a religion based on lies are more realistic than other kinds of believers. From page 2, the narrator starts talking about karasses, or a team that unknowingly does God's work. The word "team" implies something like a family, a group of people who work together and take care of each other. A religion, after all, is defined as spirituality with a commitment, a group of people that meet with specific intent. Maybe to worship in a church, a synagogue, a mosque. Around icons, texts, or the simple space of nothing at all (wampeters). In Cat's Cradle, John's karass revolves around ice-nine. The idea behind the religion based on lies is that its followers know going in that it's not true. There's no high expectations or false hopes here. If it gets them through the day, great. If it brings them together with other people who need the same things they do, even better. They aren't waiting for a messiah, or life after death. They're just telling themselves happy, sweet, safe lies to get through the day, which is an incredibly realistic way to behave.
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That was a really good way of putting it.
ReplyDeleteThis matches my thought exactly. I know that I personally am not waiting on the second coming of the Messiah, and I often times have trouble taking in what is preached to me in church. So really, Bokononism is where it's at for me - just enough to get me through the day.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good perspective on religion. I agree with you. Why should it matter if a religion has to be realistic based on texts or temples. As long as they have a belief in some idea and it ignites positive emotions in themselves then that's good enough. It should be enough to let them get through one day to another.
ReplyDeleteInteresting and succinct post. But I have to wonder how "safe" such doings are... considering that it is this very karass that brings about an apocalypse. Given the day to day goings on, I agree with what you've stated above. Given the bigger picture, I think the scene has shifted dramatically. Perhaps this suggests one way to read Vonneget's novel: there is the personal view and there is the historical view, the particular view and exponential view. And thus it would be the relation (or lack thereof) between them on which we should focus?
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