During class on Thursday we spoke a lot about the line, “Nothing
in this book is true”. This was on its
own page along with the quote, “Live by the foma that make you brave and kind
and healthy and happy” The Books of Bokon
I: 5.” While from our class we found how interesting the words, “Nothing in
this book is true” were, I found the line from The Books of Bokon to have a
much larger impact on me while I continued to read Cat’s Cradle. I loved this
phrase because according to the reference in the book the word foma means
harmless untruth. The word harmless
makes this phrase so powerful. If it was
just untruth it would not have the same meaning because people picture untruth
as a negative idea. The word harmless is
added to untruth and it takes away some of the negativity of the word untruth
to the reader. The line from The Books
of Bokon is pretty much saying that there is nothing wrong with a harmless
untruth if it makes your life better and that people should just go along with
them. Personally the quote reset my
mindset for this book. At first I was
going to treat this book like a game and try to keep Vonnegut from tricking me
in any way. After reading the phrase, though, I decided to just go along with everything Vonnegut wrote and see where
it takes me. Nothing bad can happen from
just losing myself in the reading and according to The Books of Bokon, you
should, “live by the foma that make you… happy.”
It's interesting that for a religion as transparently constructed as Bokononism (as you mentioned, their pivotal book involves the creator telling them that this is all a carefully made lie), it is followed by so many San Lorenzans. It truly suggests the power of small lies and that they do play a major part in our lives. I would say there exists a benefit to these fomas and not to immediately associate a lie with being "evil" and harmful to a person, as is most customarily associated with lying.
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