RE: Plato's big lie

From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue May 20 2003 - 21:10:54 MDT

  • Next message: Mike Lorrey: "RE: PHYSICS: our increasingly strange universe"

    At 07:12 PM 5/20/03 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
     
    >> I'm guessing it was the Prophet Bokonon and the other guy, forgot his name,
    >> who was the military dictator of the island where Cat's Cradle is set.

    >Oh, yes. Sounds right.

    No need to guess.

    `Bokonon, cynically and playfully, invented a new religion... 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.'
            When all life on Earth is destroyed by the apocalypse of ice-nine, no
    divine judgement has been rendered: this is brute contingent absurdity,
    facilitated by the irresponsibility of its inventor and the philosophy of
    industrial militarism. While `no cradle, no cat' is precisely and
    chillingly the metaphysical truth of the world, vicious lies like karass
    and Pro Patria enable human beings to abandon any sense of personal
    responsibility.
            Bokonon hurls his mountebankery in the world's face:

            Don't be a fool! Close this book at once! It is nothing but foma!

    and

            `I thought this was trash.'

            `Of course it's trash!' says Bokonon.

    ================

    Damien Broderick



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue May 20 2003 - 21:24:06 MDT