More Thinking About Kurt Vonnegut

Much in New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut (Palgrave MacMillan, 2009; David Simmons, editor) for me to think about with little to make notes for you. I'd rather re-read the Vonnegut novels in our prion library (I write this as WXPN beings playing The Drive-By Truckers' "Armageddon is Back in Town." That feels strangely appropriate.) That said this quote gave me a kick in the guts, making me think of Vonnegut and of this era of Trump  and my own succumbing to the ugliness around me.

And here we come to the central issue, the central flaw with fundamentalism: That what is True must also be literally true. When we allow ourselves to be trapped within fundamentalist assumptions, we also become trapped in the oversimplification of being human. For the fundamentalist, the metaphorical alone si not enough. Vonnegut used Bokonism to pull us back far enough from our own religion, our won religious experiences and mythologies, so the at we can see this fabricated  religion being overtly hoonest about its dishonesty and I yet still meaningful....

"NO Damn Cat, and NO Damn Cradle": The Fundamental Flaws in Fundamentalism according to Vonnegut, Paul L. Thomas; p. 33

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A fundamentalist worldview - whether Christian and American, or Islamic and Middle Eastern - is satirized by  Vonnegut in Cat's Cradle, as the novelist calls for all humans to embrace a "heartfelt moral code" encouraging us to resist the urge to become stuck in metaphysics.

p. 36

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For fundamentalists, regardless of religion or denomination, both the truth and Truth are sacred...As Campbell and Vonnegut would argue, the fact that fundamentalists place the same significance on truth as Truth is a fundamental flaw of fundamentalism.

p.37

I'll add my two cents here: we cannot allow an either/or between fundamentalism and no moral code. I found out it doesn't work that way when I should have known better.

sch

3/5/20