Cat's Cradle

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“Live by the foma1 that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”

We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon, and the instrument, the kan-kan, that brought me into my own particular karass was the book I never finished, the book to be called The Day the World Ended.

“If you find your life tangled up with somebody else’s life for no very logical reasons,” writes Bokonon, “that person may be a member of your karass.” At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tells us, “Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass.” By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries.

‘Why should I bother with made-up games when there are so many real ones going on?’

“Likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it,” says Bokonon—an easy warning to forget.

The girls sang “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I am not likely to forget very soon their interpretation of the line: “The hopes and fears of all the years are here with us tonight.”

A wampeter is the pivot of a karass. No karass is without a wampeter, Bokonon tells us, just as no wheel is without a hub. Anything can be a wampeter: a tree, a rock, an animal, an idea, a book, a melody, the Holy Grail. Whatever it is, the members of its karass revolve about it in the majestic chaos of a spiral nebula.

At any given time a karass actually has two wampeters—one waxing in importance, one waning.

As Bokonon says: “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”

Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

It was in the tombstone salesroom that I had my first vin-dit, a Bokononist word meaning a sudden, very personal shove in the direction of Bokononism, in the direction of believing that God Almighty knew all about me, after all, that God Almighty had some pretty elaborate plans for me.

I have not seen Krebbs since. Nonetheless, I sense that he was my karass. If he was, he served it as a wrang-wrang. A wrang-wrang, according to Bokonon, is a person who steers people away from a line of speculation by reducing that line, with the example of the wrang-wrang’s own life, to an absurdity.

They were, I think, a flawless example of what Bokonon calls a duprass, which is a karass composed of only two persons. “A true duprass,” Bokonon tells us, “can’t be invaded, not even by children born of such a union.”

Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere.

It was the belief of Bokonon that good societies could be built only by pitting good against evil, and by keeping the tension between the two high at all times.

“There is a legend, made up by Bokonon,” Philip Castle wrote in his book, “that the golden boat will sail again when the end of the world is near.”

We Bokononists believe that it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving the person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended.

Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?” Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

“This certainly is a cheerful conversation,” said Angela. “I think everybody would agree that these are cheerful times,” said Castle.

He had made me feel as though my own free will were as irrelevant as the free will of a piggy-wig arriving at the Chicago stockyards.

I learned some things, but they were scarcely helpful. I learned of the Bokononist cosmogony, for instance, wherein Borasisi, the sun, held Pabu, the moon, in his arms, and hoped that Pabu would bear him a fiery child. But poor Pabu gave birth to children that were cold, that did not burn; and Borasisi threw them away in disgust. These were the planets, who circled their terrible father at a safe distance. Then poor Pabu herself was cast away, and she went to live with her favorite child, which was Earth.

And what opinion did Bokonon hold of his own cosmogony? “Foma! Lies!” he wrote. “A pack of foma!”

“Maturity,” Bokonon tells us, “is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”

Duffle, in the Bokononist sense, is the destiny of thousands upon thousands of persons when placed in the hands of a stuppa. A stuppa is a fogbound child.

children…. All things conspired to form one cosmic vin-dit, one mighty shove into Bokononism, into the belief that God was running my life and that He had work for me to do.

“It is not possible to make a mistake,” she assured me. I did not know that this was a customary greeting given by all Bokononists when meeting a shy person.

“A sin-wat!” she cried. “A man who wants all of somebody’s love. That’s very bad.”

“What is sacred to Bokononists?” I asked after a while. “Not even God, as near as I can tell.” “Nothing?” “Just one thing.” I made some guesses. “The ocean? The sun?” “Man,” said Frank. “That’s all.

It posed the question posed by all such stone piles: how had puny men moved stones so big? And, like all such stone piles, it answered the question itself. Dumb terror had moved those stones so big.

Fata Morgana. Mirage!

“Gott mate mutt,” crooned Dr. von Koenigswald. “Dyot meet mat,” echoed “Papa” Monzano. “God made mud,” was what they’d said, each in his own dialect. I will here abandon the dialects of the litany. “God got lonesome,” said Von Koenigswald. “God got lonesome.” “So God said to some of the mud, ‘Sit up!’” “So God said to some of the mud, ‘Sit up!’” “‘See all I’ve made,’ said God, ‘the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.’” “‘See all I’ve made,’ said God, ‘the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.’” “And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.” “And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.” “Lucky me, lucky mud.” “Lucky me, lucky mud.” Tears were streaming down “Papa’s” cheeks. “I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.” “I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.” “Nice going, God!” “Nice going, God!” “Papa” said it with all his heart. “Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.” “Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.” “I feel very unimportant compared to You.” “I feel very unimportant compared to You.” “The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.” “The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.” “I got so much, and most mud got so little.” “I got so much, and most mud got so little.” “Deng you vore da on-oh!” cried Von...

What they had said was, “Thank you for the honor!” “Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.” “Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.” “What memories for mud to have!” “What memories for mud to have!” “What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!” “What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!” “I loved everything I saw!” “I loved everything I saw!” “Good night.” “Good night.” “I will go to heaven now.” “I will go to heaven now.” “I can hardly wait…” “I can hardly wait…” “To find out for certain what my wampeter was…” “To find out for certain what my wampeter was… “And who was in my karass…” “And who was in my karass…” “And all the good things our karass did for you.” “And all the good things our karass did for you.” “Amen.” “Amen.”

‘Now I will destroy the whole world.’” “What did he mean by that?”. “It’s what Bokononists always say when they are about to commit suicide.”

“Sometimes the pool-pah,” Bokonon tells us, “exceeds the power of humans to comment.” Bokonon translates pool-pah at one point in The Books of Bokonon as “shit storm” and at another point as “wrath of God.”

“What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?” It doesn’t take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: “Nothing.”

But, as Bokonon tells us, “Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.”

broadcast. Nor does life broadcast to this day. This I assumed: tornadoes, strewing the poisonous blue-white frost of ice-nine everywhere, tore everyone and everything above ground to pieces. Anything that still lived would die soon enough of thirst—or hunger—or rage—or apathy. I turned to The Books of Bokonon, still sufficiently unfamiliar with them to believe that they contained spiritual comfort somewhere. I passed quickly over the warning on the title page of The First Book: “Don’t be a fool! Close this book at once! It is nothing but foma!” Foma, of course, are lies. And then I read this: In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness. And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely. “Everything must have a purpose?” asked God. “Certainly,” said man. “Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And He went away.

Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, And our God will take things back that He to us did lend. And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God, Why go right ahead and scold Him. He’ll just smile and nod.

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,” Bokonon tells us. “He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”