‘Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy. (The Books of Bokonon. I:5)’. Thus reads the epigraph of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1963 novella Cat’s Cradle. Despite the fact that Cat’s Cradle was written at the height of the Cold War, I cannot help but feel the suggestion that life is based around foma, or ‘harmless untruths’, is as relevant today as it was in the apocalyptic paranoia of the 50s and 60s.
Cat’s Cradle is based around a fictional religion called Bokononism, which uses this strange type of foot sex as a form of worship. Foot fetishes aside, it’s a religion that knows it’s bollocks, but likes the fact that it’s bollocks. You tell yourself that everything is hunky-dory even though you know that it isn’t; all you have to do in order to achieve this state of ignorant bliss is follow the foma of The Books of Bokonon. All this is based on the handy visual metaphor of the cat’s cradle (the bridge-like construction children make between their hands with a loop of string). The network of string stands for the lies and conceits that we embroil ourselves in on a daily basis, despite the fact that we often know that these beliefs have no founding in reality whatsoever – they are merely held up by our own hands. Vonnegut was writing during the Cold War. Like many he’d seen the effect of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and had experienced the atmosphere of mirage and brinkmanship at play between the world’s superpowers. Cat’s Cradle is certainly a product of this era, an era that dubbed atomic weapons ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’. For Vonnegut these crass ‘untruths’ imbue the world with a sort of beautifully twisted humour
Admittedly the clear cut binary I have drawn between truth and untruth in the above synopsis is overly simplistic. The novella itself is not concerned with revealing ‘truths’ amidst a sea of corruption. It is, rather, based on a much more subtle sense of existential doubt than I have suggested. However, the idea that we, as humans, in our interactions with the world, choose to remain consciously ignorant of uncomfortable things (I won’t say ‘truths’) is nonetheless suggestive.
Yet, every now and again ‘Breaking News’ will burst this little cosy bubble for us. The issue is, however, that this ‘News’ is only new to the extent that it is the first time it has been forced into the public conscious by the mainstream media. Recent months have to have borne witness to a number of these revelations. It started with the MP’s expenses scandal; then we had WikiLeaks. For about a month at the end of last year the whole world sparked into debate over the level of transparency with which official diplomacy should be treated, as thousands of sensitive documents were leaked into the public domain. Yet, the organization has been leaking documents on the internet since 2006 with very little public attention and the organization, or one similar, will probably continue operating long after WikiLeaks is such a hot media topic. Furthermore, we may consider the recent revolts across North Africa. The US and UK have been supporting Mubarak for the past 30 years; they told themselves foma in order to keep themselves happy. Only now are they changing this position, which will undoubtedly in turn lead to a new set of foma being formed. The thing is do we really need the media to reveal these things to us? Do we already know them or do we find it more convenient to ignore them whilst weaving our own utopian narratives?
In Vonnegut’s words ‘so it goes’. That’s the way the world works. The public constantly kid themselves and those in power are all too happy to keep the conceit rolling. Jump back to April 2010. Jump back to Westminster. A gaggle of Lib Dems are congregated around a table. ‘I just want power’ sulks a petulant Nick Clegg, ‘Tell me, you bunch of wet flannels, tell me what on earth can I do?’ An ambitious aide stands up, ‘I’ve got an idea’ he says, ‘It’s very clever, and really not that clever at all. Tell the nation’s students that we’ll give them free university education.’ ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’ whines Nick. ‘Ah!’ replies the cunning aide holding up his hands, palms facing, about six inches apart, ‘See the cat? See the cradle?’
