Bokononism
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- All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
- — Bokonon
Bokononism is the fictional religion practiced by many of the characters in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle.
It is based on living by the untruths that make one happy, called foma. Many of the sacred texts of Bokononism were written in the form of calypsos.
Bokonon is the founder of the religion. He was born Lionel Boyd Johnson. "Bokonon" was the way the natives of San Lorenzo, the tropical island where the shipwrecked Johnson started his religion, pronounced his family name.
Bokonon has also been quoted in Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins.
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Vocabulary
Vonnegut created various concepts, and intentionally 'silly' words to describe them, in order to outline the Bokonist faith as a background for his story.
- boko-maru
- A union of two souls achieved by placing the soles of two people's feet together. It is a bokonist ritual that is taboo and forbidden on the island of San Lorenzo, referred to as "footplay". Many people in real life practice boko-maru as learned from this book.
- foma
- "Harmless lies" (e.g., "Prosperity is just around the corner"). Bokonon describes his own religion as foma, created for the purpose of bringing comfort to the people of Bokonon's island. The people of San Lorenzo live under a poverty-stricken Third World dictatorship, but thanks to the comforting untruths of Bokonon's foma they are better equipped to face reality (following Vonnegut's early theories about the true usefulness of religion).
- duprass
- A karass made of two persons. "A true duprass can't be invaded, not even by children born of such a union."
- granfalloon
- A false karass. People who identify themselves by state or country of origin or in other various ways to form a group. There is much granfalloonery in the world.
- karass
- A group of people who, unbeknownst to them, are collectively doing God's will in carrying out a specific, common, task. A karass is driven forward in time and space by tension within the karass.
- wampeter
- An object which is the focus of a karass; that is, the lives of many otherwise unrelated people are centered on a wampeter (e.g., a piece of Ice-9 in 'Cat's Cradle'). A karass will always have exactly two wampeters: one waxing, one waning. The term first appears on p. 52 of Cat's Cradle (in the 1998 printing by Dell Publishing). It is analogous to a MacGuffin.
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See also
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External links
- Bokononism All of the text from Cat's Cradle which refers to Bokononism (including the Books of Bokonon).
- The Books of Bokonon - a collection of all excerpts from the Books of Bokonon from Cat's Cradle
- The Creation of BokononismA musical exegesis of Bokononism (links to MP3).cs:Bokononismus