Talk:Bokononism

Quote

Such very different people in the same device. In every edition I've seen the line is So many different people in the same device. Finn (John T) 15:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Boku-maru

Bokononistic sex is a union of two souls achieved by placing the soles of two people's feet together. Er.. from what I remember the touching of the soles of the feet was not sex. Maybe I am confused?

You are correct. Boku-maru was not sex; it was an ecstatic ritual instead of sex.

the mingling of soles... Perhaps one of the best literary puns. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.123.76.62 (talk) 19:31, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Bokanovsky process

on an interesting note... does anybody think there's a relation to Bokononism and Bokanovskism (of Brave New World)? that sure would put an interesting twist on things... Dreamer.redeemer 21:51, 19 April 2006 (UTC) I came to this article after coming to the same conclusion. It makes sense to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mlc5015 (talk • contribs) 19:30, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Another possible BNW reference...

Is it just me, or does the sound and meaning of Foma - "Harmless [and/or comforting] lies" - seem a positive spin on Huxley's "Soma" - a sort of "perfect opiate" that acted as a social shock absorber and means of escape into personal comfort and blissful contentment rather than face the unpleasant realities of life? Does anyone know if the two are connected in any way? Could we ask Vonnegut?

Vonnegut is dead. Wormcast (talk) 02:48, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

IIRC he wasn't, when the question was asked in the first place. --87.185.176.80 (talk) 09:14, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

He is now though. AFAWK. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.115.70.49 (talk) 01:42, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Noteworthy?

According to the appendix of the Principia Discordia (first edition, at least) the practice of "Bokonism" will be punished by "[getting] the HOOKonon, or whatever". I have no idea what that means, but it does sound punishy. Should it be noted, that the PD forbids practicing Bokononism? — Ashmodai ^{(talk · contribs)} 12:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Strongly recommend you read Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle to learn about the context in which Bokononism was originally presented... in the novel, Bokononism is an "outlawed" religion on a tiny impoverished island nation ruled by dictator "Papa" Monzano; the punishment for being a Bokononist is to get "the Hook", a gruesome form of public impalement. There is more, but I don't want to spoil you; it's really a fantastic mind-opening novel, and I wouldn't want to ruin it for you.

But back on topic: PD is probably just jokingly mentioning the in-novel prohibition against Bokononism; you'd have to read the novel to get why this prohibition is seen as a joke. Cheers, Kasreyn 16:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I was disappointed with the definition of karass. I need to read "Cat's Cradle" again before stating more here, but I know Vonnegut expanded on this topic far beyond the basic definition used by the Bokonists.

Regarding "Bokanovsky's Process," it was basically a cloning technique, not a religion. The Soma/Foma connection is a little closer to the mark. But while they served the same function, Foma represents the essence of Bokonism, while Soma was merely a means of achieving an ideological end. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Recursive Prophet (talk • contribs) 23:47, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Copyright problem?

Those lyrics seem way too long to claim fair use for. We can use short extracts, but not that much. 86.132.140.45 (talk) 23:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Cite problems??

You don't have to cite a work directly for quotes taken from it. Or you only have to cite it ONCE. Putting a cite tag on this wiki is grossly inappropriate. I've seen the same thing done with quotes from Hamlet. Come on, folks! SBHarris 00:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

This time quotes have been deleted again by the same person, for a different reason

Now he says they represent too much content (2-3 pages out of a full novel about something else). I can only conclude that he just doesn't like this page. I'll revert once more, but any of you who are interested in this page had better chime in. Next revert we go to ArbCom or something. SBHarris 01:29, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

It has been suggested that we remove some of this material

Perhaps if we keep the sayings and definitions, and perhaps the best calypso (God made mud), that would be enough to satisfy the objectors who say that this has too much primary material to be Fair Use as in WP:FUC? I need some other inputs, here, folks! SBHarris 23:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Merge

This is an obvious candidate for merging with Cat's Cradle, which I propose we do. --Jenny 05:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, Ents and Hobbits are obvious candidates for some deletion and trivia cleanup, until they reach a length short enough to be crammed up into The Lord of the Rings where they belong. And Gollum and Sauron, too. Could you maybe do that, first? SBHarris 05:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you could make an argument for those merges. I'd like to discuss this merge though. Bokonon and bokononism are specific to Cat's Cradle, though there are one or two external references (such as Vonnegut's own Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons which merits a mention in this article because of his re-use of the words). It would probably be better to discuss bokononism in the context of the book than to have redundant material in a separate article. There is little to write about this fictional religion outside the context of the book in which it features. --Jenny 06:03, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

This merge is like all merges. What purposes does it serve that won't be undone by somebody who wishes to add more to the section on Bokononism, and somebody else who suggests a subarticle spinoff because it's getting too long?

I do not not agree that it would be better to primarily discuss Bokononism in the context of the book (though certaily a summary may be left there), because most of Bokononism contains aphorisms of Vonnegut about life which really have very little to do with the plot of the book. They are Vonnegut's answer to the sermon on the mount. This is a lot more than we can say about the culture of the Klingons, Vulcans, Elves, Trolls, and whatnot, all of which have a lot more Wikispace than this article does. If you will examine the sayings of Bokonon, you will find that many are almost context free [1]. The calypsos have been performed and separately recorded, for example, without mentioning anything about the plot of Cat's Cradle.

As for religions, all of them are synthetic, after all. ("Of course they're trash!" says Bokonon). Unless you really wish to argue that Mormonism and Scientology were handed down from God Almighty, along with Christian Science.

Previously, before the deletionists got to it, this article was 8 kB, as compared with about 10 kB of Cat's Cradle which does not concern Bokononism. Clearly, there is some interest in the ideas themselves, which is on par with the story. SBHarris 06:39, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The statement "most of Bokononism contains aphorisms of Vonnegut about life which really have very little to do with the plot of the book" doesn't make sense.

They may not have anything to do with the plot of the book (having read it I agree with that) but they are undeniably in the book, and any article about this book will discuss Bokonon's sayings, and not just the plot. If recordings of the calypsos have been published, they may merit articles of their own, depending on their prominence. -Jenny 07:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The Sermon on the Mount has very little to do with the plot of the Gospels. It's possible to have one article on Jesus' life and one on his philosophy. We don't have to have them in the same Wiki. Anyway, time to solicit others opinions. This Wiki used to be twice as long as it is, now, and was a lot better article, then. SBHarris 07:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The reason we have an article about the Sermon on the Mount is because there are hundreds of reliable sources giving third party references to that section of the gospels, in fiction, philosophy, politics, and many other fields. Now how many reliably sourced third party references to bokononism do we have? If not many, then merging is probably appropriate. --Jenny 08:38, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

This is why people don't bother contributing to wikipedia. --Anon 02:47, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of articles that shed light on unusual and interesting philosophies. This article would be one of those if it weren't for those deletionists . . . which, I understand, were making sure that the article was up to Wikipedia's standards. There just isn't enough sourced information to warrant a separate article, no matter how much one user would prefer it otherwise. You can't quote pages and pages of a single book for copyright reasons, and there aren't other meaningful sources.— Preceding unsigned comment added by True Pagan Warrior (talk • contribs) 22:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

If other information crops up and this again deserves its own article, so be it! But for now, I say merge.--otherlleft (talk) 22:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

• Dont merge Bokonism can stand on its own duprass Annette46 (talk) 05:23, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Jenny. The Cat's Cradle article goes into detail on Bokononism, and by merging the two article we can consolidate the information. The problem with Bokononism as an article is that Vonnegut does not discuss it in other books, so it is not a general topic of interest. It is only relevant in the context of Cat's Cradle, and discussing it in a separate article is the equivalent of discussing the same book in two separate places. Rm999 (talk) 22:05, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't merge. It is readily accessible and works as it is. I just used it to explain a point I was trying to make to a coworker. The rest of "Cat's Cradle" and other Vonnegut books weren't necessary and would have simply made it more difficutl to find what I was looking for. Please don't merge it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.231.88.4 (talk) 20:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't merge. While Bokonism was only talked about in detail one book it has become a valid entity in it's own right, where people in the real world will talk about practicing Bokonism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.1.103.84 (talk) 00:01, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Don't merge. As a confirmed, practising Bokononist, I take mild offense at the suggestion to merge the articles. Bokononism has grown far beyond the confines of Cat's Cradle and has a life of it's own. Google has recorded nearly 40,000 searches for "Bokonon" and "Bokononism" by lost souls seeking peace through boko-maru. Travis28 (talk) 15:30, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

You can't merge this Cat's Cradle. Bokononism is a fictional religion yes, but no more fictional than Christianity or Islam. The point is that I know of at least two people who are practicing bokononists. They are a couple who are friends of mine and have been practicing together for almost a decade now and they plan on raising their young son and daughter as bokononists as well. I"m sure they aren't the only ones. Bokononism has grown larger than simply being a fictional religion from cat's cradle. Who are you to say which religions are real?

In fact, who are we to say anything at all, other than desperate human beings without the education necessary to be editing or authoring an online dictionary? For shame that the world has become such a stupid place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.206.35.70 (talk) 04:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Don't merge. Let me give you another point. If you do a Google Books search on "cat's cradle", you get 1,415 hits[2]. If you try "cat's cradle -vonnegut" to filter out the string game itself, other books of that name &c you get 1,328 [3]. This leaves 87 concerned with the book, compared with the 250 you get when trying the same with "bokononism" [4]. It seems obvious that if any merge should be done (which I oppose, of course), it should be done by incorporating the less important article on the book into the more important article on the religion. Crazy? Not more than insinuating that over years Bokononism hasn't grown into something standing on its own and is still just a facet of the book in which it first appeared. --Duncan MacCall (talk) 03:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't merge. I think saying that Bokononism, while originating from the text of Cat's Cradle, is confined only to the context of the novel isn't fair to the idea. I think you can draw a comparison to Catch-22. There is no doubt that the concepts of Catch-22 existed before Heller coined the term, and now in wikipedia the article exists independantly of the novel (even though it was a term invented in the novel). I think that because of the ideology underpinning it, Bokononism is not a strictly 'new' concept. It was just so masterfully presented by Vonnegut, and I think deserves an article of its own. However, I do agree that more sources that refer to Bokononism or the ideas it presents would be helpful... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.234.5.138 (talk) 09:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

"Don't merge." There are certain elements of Vonnegut that stand on their own. Kilgore Trout comes to mind. The problem is that if you attempt to merge this, it will lose significance and become more difficult to use as a reference. In other words, Bokononism as a fictional concept would need to be researched in a manner that would make it more difficult to understand how Vonnegut used Bokononism as a vehicle to drive the novel. It is, in this way, unique and should not only be left to stand as is, but anyone with time and resources should be encouraged to research and add to it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.170.169.245 (talk) 10:15, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

References?

Perhaps the references (except for #1, which I just added today) should be re-categorized as "references in pop culture." They don't really seem to support the material in the article.

(P.S. I'm new to the talk pages/editing and bad with technology so I apologize for anything I might be doing wrong.) 114.78.220.235 (talk) 11:12, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Bokor

Is there any link between Bokonon and a Bokor? 205.215.175.154 (talk) 18:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think so. Cat's Cradle was published in 1963 and as far as I know, Vonnegut only mentioned Voodoo for the first time in Deadeye Dick, published almost two decades later in 1982. --Thrissel (talk) 22:55, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

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