Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

The Books of Bokonon. I: 5

What makes me brave and kind and healthy and happy? What are the things that make me me? I have the hardest time describing who I am. I always depend on the clichés which people so often fall back upon, though they don’t accurately describe anything. If someone asks me to describe myself, I might start by saying that I am a college student. I am artsy. I love dogs. I am a Christian. Beyond these things, which really could describe almost anyone, I tend to tell people what they want to hear. If I am talking to someone who likes tattoos, I talk about my piercings. If I talk to someone who likes sports, I might mention volleyball. If I’m in an English class, I can tell people I’m a reader. Who I tell people I am is a reflection of what I think those same people will like. I become the parts of myself which most fit whatever situation I am in.

My identity, which forms itself to the situation that I am in, serves to explain the world. That characteristic is not singular to me, though. Identity as a means to describe oneself is actually a way to make sense of the world.

Jonah, narrator of Cat’s Cradle does the same thing. "Call me Jonah," he says. "My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John. Jonah-John- if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still." Jonah explains that his name is fitting "not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be at certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided." I am a Jonah too, by that reasoning. The "Jonah moment" that most readily offers itself in my memory is the move my family made from Alaska to Washington. My parents’ jobs didn’t cause the move, nor did family; my parents had decided that 25 years in Alaska was enough. I, having had only 14 years in Alaska was not ready to move, but they didn’t really ask me, so my freshman year of high school I found myself in Blaine, Washington. For years I made every effort possible to remain the same person I had been in Alaska, but then change occurred against my will. I begin to accept Blaine as home, and when I did, I could respond to the personalities around me. I couldn’t understand for years why we had moved. Eventually it struck me that "somebody or something" caused the move, so that I could develop as a person. My parents of course did their part, but that "somebody or something" bigger than myself and my parents was responsible for the idea of moving. I know that if I had stayed in Alaska, surrounded by the same small group of friends, I would still be largely the same person I was 6 years ago. I needed the chance to change so that I could be an individual instead of a copy of my friends.

Jonah and I have a common belief there: we believe in some sort of fate or destiny. For me, it is more of a rationalization than a spiritual belief. Claiming that my move from Alaska was the doing of some outside force is really my way of rationalizing that an event that was so traumatic for me must have some redeeming factor. Jonah is much the same. He is informed flat out that Bokononism is based on "shameless lies" and still he uses it to describe his life. He attributes meaning to himself with something that he can’t prove the truthfulness of. This attribution of meaning and rationalization are both just fancy words for foma, "harmless untruths."

Each of these little explanations that Jonah or I use as part of our identity, each rationalization is an individual foma. The religion of Cat’s Cradle, Bokononism, represents the compilation of these foma in our lives. Identity is formed by these lies. It follows, then, that Bokononism is identity. In the context of Cat’s Cradle, it is a means of describing oneself, as Jonah does. As a larger concept though, Bokononism is the idea of identity, of a self that is created of lots of little parts that can describe the world around me.

Jonah, before he discovered Bokononism, was unhappy with his life. He was divorced, he drank and smoked, and was disillusioned with Christianity. Bokononism exists for people like Jonah; it exists for people who want reason and meaning in their life, even if it’s all foma. Cat’s Cradle creates a religion that can explain everything. It doesn’t claim to have all the answers. Bokononism can’t tell me why the earth is round or the sky is blue. Instead bokononism tells me that the earth is round and the sky blue because they are supposed to be. To believe all of the foma of Bokononism, I am not asked to believe anything more than that it is because God said so. God made everything, including the rules, and all we are asked is to go along. Jonah defines himself with Bokononism. He has a karass, those most important people you associate with in life; he learns his wampeter, that goal for which your life is aimed. With Bokononism Jonah can make sense of his life, even with the imminent end of the world. Jonah faces the end of his life with only one question: "I know what my karass has been up to, Newt. It’s been working night and day for maybe half a million years to get me up that mountain…But what, for the love of God, is supposed to be in my hands?"

Jonah’s identity is Bokononism. Bokononism contains foma for every facet of a life, but it fdoesn’t have to fit for each of us. Jonah is created for Bokononism, or vice versa, so that when Jonah learns of Bokononism he can completely identify himself with it. My own Bokononism is part Rushing, part Christian, part artist, part dog-lover, part all of those other things that I use to describe my world. My Bokononism is incomplete, there are still gaps in my identity and contentment and understanding that foma can help to fill. My Bokononism will be complete when I have achieved bravery and kindness and health and happiness. Jonah’s Bokononism is complete to provide an example of what a complete identity is. He is complete once Bokononism has entered his life. That he contains qualities such as fairness and morality suggest that he is a "good" person.

The examination of identity in Cat’s Cradle is incomplete without an identity that starkly contrasts Jonah’s. That’s where ice-nine comes in. Ice-nine is a pool-pah, "the wrath of God," the corruption and evil and stupidity and genius of the world all wrapped into one horrible thing. Ice-nine is Felix Hoenikker. Dr. Hoenikker is presented as innocent and child-like, and yet he creates something that ends the world. The identity of the doctor cannot be separated from this destructive force which he has created. Each of his separate qualities may not be so horrible in their own right (genius is not inherently dangerous) but the collection of his traits all wrapped up create a horrible being.

As an extension of Bokononism, ice-nine is a corruption of being able to explain everything. Instead of the comforting aspect of Bokononism that calls on faith and encourages the use of foma, ice-nine represents a need for truth and proof and ultimate rightness. Dr. Hoenikker is all of those things; he is only interested in himself and his ideas, and believes that whatever he does is the right thing to do. (Not a moral right, but a right by way of not being a wrong.) By having a designation for things such as ice-nine the pool-pah, Bokononism makes allowances for negative aspects of humanity, just as identity can’t be exclusively negative or positive.

"Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy." The Books of Bokonon give direction for the harmless lies that you should live by. Just like any system though, I have the ability as an individual to take or leave what parts I will. For people like myself, Mona, Newt, Jonah, and others we tend to look at the sort of things that lead to bravery, kindness, health, and happiness in roughly the same ways. I couldn’t invent something like ice-nine and allow myself to believe that I was brave or kind, nor could they. But Dr. Hoenikker types don’t consider the effect of ice-nines on their being.

The type of identity that is formed around me, or Jonah, or anyone, falls into a range of identities exemplifying or distorting those qualities called for in The Books of Bokonon. Each individual person feels that their identity was formed of the things that make them brave, kind, healthy, and happy. The things that make up my identity could be things that someone else tries to avoid. Bokononism, identity, does not require us to be static identical figures. All of those things that I become depending on the group I am in are actually parts of my complete identity; I am different from some one else because of each of the elements of my Bokononism. I used to think that I was a social butterfly. But Bokononism, with its Jonah’s and ice-nines has taught me that I am a social chameleon; I change to match my surroundings, but my identity means I am still a distinct figure in the foreground.