Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Value in Lies
After reading Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and physically playing cats cradle in class, I realized the extent and frequency to which we believe in illusions in our everyday lives. In class, we discussed that everything is an illusion and if we can understand this while dealing with reality, we will be closer to the actual truth. What we think is always an illusion, but we also discussed that "meaninglessness" is also a form of meaning. The game of cat's cradle may not have a clear goal or winner, but people play the game for amusement and entertainment. Even though after playing a complete cycle of the game, you are aware of the next move or outcome, you often keep playing until someone messes up. This dynamic tension required to succeed in the game is really interesting and fun. Much like the fiction we just read, T.V. shows, movies often start with a variation of the statement, "What you are about to see is complete fiction." Despite this caution or warning statement, we chose to watch or read the untrue story because perhaps even an untrue story can possess some "truths" that we can learn. Although "foma" is not a real word, we often employ foma on a day-to-day basis. As stated in the pretext we certainly, "live by the foma that make [us] brave and kind and healthy and happy" (Vonnegut). We believe in lies that make us feel better. Sometimes we believe in lies hoping that they will become truths. Lies are not pointless. We shouldn't ignore lies because there can be important truths that come from them. This dynamic tension between lies and truths is very prevalent in the decisions we make and I am interested to see what other texts we read this semester will represent and explain this dynamic tension.
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I agree that although everything we see and believe in are lies, they are more than just lies. Like you said, we can always find some truths within those lies that can better our understanding of the world we live in. Lies are everywhere and it is upon our freewill to make the decision whether or not to believe in those lies. What struck me as most surprising was how much the San Lorenzans chose to believe in Bokonon especially when they all committed suicide. I think that was a point where the San Lorenzans no longer felt like they could obtain enjoyment from the lies.
ReplyDeleteI like the investigation of the value of lies in our everyday lives. I was very interested to see you bring up the disclaimer that precedes many television shows and movies. Vonnegut's own book contained the same sort of disclaimer. I think that since we see this disclaimer all the time, it falls into our subconscious, and we don't think about it, but it certainly retains all of the value that it has in the beginning of Cat's Cradle.
ReplyDeleteI like what you said about how sometimes we, to use your words, "believe in lies hoping that they will become truths." It reminded me of a TED talk (Amy Cuddy: How your body language shapes who you are) that was shown earlier in the year at Hamilton about power poses and how one can become more confident through faking it. Fake it till you make it. If you see a way, everyone else can. I think there is a fine line between believing "harmless untruths" and harmful lies.
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