Thursday, December 9, 2010

Postmodernism Applied To Cat's Cradle

So let me start off by saying... Will we ever not have to connect something to Postmodernism? Haha just kidding... But really.

Essentially Postmodernism was derived by 18th century thinkers who wanted to get rid of all myths and holy ideas. They wanted to emphasize the ideas of science, logic, and reason.

In the text early on it states, "The first sentence in the Books of Bokonon is this: 'All of the true things I am about to tell you are harmless lies.'" (5) So what this means is that the religion itself is not truly a religion at all. All of the rules and books are just made up lies, proving that you should believe what you feel is morally right. I think this ties in with Postmodernism well. A large amount of people would agree that today's religions are lies made up to keep people to have faith in what they have no idea to be true. The same goes with the ideas of Postmodernism. The thinkers of that time period wanted to eliminate religion and societal myths as a whole. Cat's Cradle's religion of Bokononism shows that it is possible to have a religion in which nothing is true. Which to me just shows that it isn't truly a religion at all, if anything just the opposite.

Another quote I found very interesting in the text is, "'Nothing generous about it. New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.'" (41) So this in itself shows that truth and knowledge is powerful. In Postmodernism, this is the exact idea they were getting at. By eliminating lies and the myths that society holds, they become all that more powerful. Science is also a major idea of this text, and finding the truth and having more knowledge. With Postmodernism, these same ideas emerge. The people who came up with Postmodernism came to believe that science is the power of logic, which seems to tie in with the scientist's idea in Cat's Cradle as well.

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