Cat's Cradle Reflection

It’s All False

Meaning is not inherent or intrinsic to anything. It’s made up. We create and assign meaning to countless things in life, some with more importance, some with less, as if we actually know how to do so. Often this meaning is assigned without careful thought. Meaning is just thrown and stuck to the first thing that comes our way. For example, people who are born into Christian families (or any other pre-organized religious structure) are spoon-fed ideas since birth. Dictated what is right and wrong, these folk foster a dogmatic dichotomy between good and evil, similar to what Vonnegut calls “Dynamic Tension.”

It provides them something to believe in, a backbone, something to fall on.

Maybe, for those with no pre-disposed faith, it might be harder for them to find something to do with their lives. It’s scary not to have something to lean on. In the lyrics of “Something To Believe In,” by The Ramones:

“Take my hand
Please help me man
‘Cause I’m looking for something to believe in
And I don’t know where to start
And I don’t know where to begin, to begin”

And again, in the words of Philip Castle, “…Something to do with my life, I guess. A way to be busy, a way not to be lonesome.” (pg 161)

We want to connect to someone or some shared concept or goal, even though some believe truth and meaning aren’t achievable. Truth and meaning are just ideas to make us feel comfortable. The idea of truth is held as something beautiful and revered, but reality simply isn’t so. Real is just real. What is just is. But to be consumed by that perspective leads to misery, even if it other people believe it, too.  There is no comfort in the idea that, if we’re all alone then we’re all together in that aloneness.  

“Truth was the enemy of the people, because truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies,” Julian Castle (pg 172).

People ally themselves with something and pit themselves against something else. It seems we crave something to oppose, something to fight. Without opposition our existence becomes unclear and ultimately unimportant.

“McCabe was always sane enough to realize that without the holy man to war against, he himself would become meaningless,” Julian Castle (pg 175).