Well, it's been quite a while since I supposedly started this blog. I think I'm going to try it again. I need a place to just rant and rave and generally make cynical comments about life.
Cynicism: It's hard not to be cynical about a great many things. Take, for example, love. One day someone says they love you, and the next they're dating someone for whom they swore up and down that they never had feelings for. Go figure.
But, hey, it's good to get a healthy dose of reality now and then. I basically spent the last year of my life living in a world of illusions. It wasn't all wasted though: I learned not to date crazy people. Definitely a good lesson. If they're unstable and depressed, that's a sign that it's time to pull the plug.
Back on the subject of cynicism, I've been re-reading my favorite book of all time, Catch-22. It's actually the book from which I got the name of this blog and my profile name. It's really a...different is the word, I guess...kind of book. First of all, it's not written in chronological order. The timeline unfolds along with the plot, which makes things really interesting, as for once, the characters know more than the reader. There are a lot of events that are mentioned early in the book that you don't find out about until later. The biggest part of these is the death of Snowden, a young enlisted soldier.
The book takes place during World War 2, on the Italian island of Pianosa. It follows John Yossarian, a man who is so sane that he is crazy. At least, that's what everyone else thinks: they all call him crazy, but in reality, he is one of the few who sees things how they are. People call him crazy and paranoid because he thinks people are trying to kill him, which is true: every time he goes on a bombing run, there are hundreds of people shooting at him. He's kind of my hero, because he cuts through all of the crap that surrounds him and sees things as they really are. Even though many would consider him immoral because of some of his actions, such as his lack of patriotism and his constant drinking and debauchery. However, when one looks deeper, he really is just trying to cope with the insanity that surrounds him. When push comes to shove, he's an extremely moral person, especially with regards to the sanctity of life. For example, when his friend Dobbs approaches him with a plot to kill their commander, Yossarian acknowledges that the commander is trying to kill him, but refuses to murder him because, as he reasons, Col. Cathcart has as much of a right to live as Yossarian himself does. Just because he is a threat to Yossarian's life doesn't mean that Yossarian feels justified in killing him. He'll hope and pray that he breaks his neck falling down the stairs, but he won't be the one to push him. It's rather Christlike, in a way.
Anyway, the title of this blog comes from a question that Yossarian asks a fellow officer early in the book: "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" Snowden was a young gunner on one of Yossarian's missions. On the mission in question, to Avignon, Snowden was fatally wounded by a piece of flak. Yossarian attempted to help him, and did all he could, only to discover that the wound that Snowden had received was much worse than he thought, because it was ironically hidden from sight by his flak jacket. Snowden's death breaks Yossarian, for it forces him to confront the reality of death: Snowden did not simply disappear when his plane was shot down, he died in Yossarian's arms, slowly, agonizingly fading into nothingness. This breaks Yossarian's nerve completely, and creates in him an obsession with saving his own life. It really begins his awakening to the realities of the war and insanity that surround him.
His question, "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?", becomes a plea for sanity. It really is a profound question: what happened to all of the young, nameless, unknown people who sacrificed themselves for their countries, for anything, in the past? Who remembers the names of the countless millions who died in battle? This is also reflected in the plight of the dead man in Yossarian's tent: because of an administrative fluke, a new pilot was killed before he was officially in Yossarian's squadron, so no one knows what to do with his belongings. He doesn't really exist, because there is no administrative record of him. No one even knows his name. He has simply disappeared into the fog of war, and it is likely that no one he knew before will ever know what happened to him.
What happened to Snowden? What happens to the little man who is oppressed by the big man, the person who cannot defend himself while his "leaders" make decisions that will ultimately decide his fate?
This book ridicules everything absurd about life. It presents situations that seem so incredibly absurd, until one realizes that we encounter similar situations every day. The only way to overcome the absurdities, to escape the grasp of the all-powerful Catch-22, is to realize that they don't exist. There is no such thing as an unwinnable situation. You really are only bound by the truths you acknowledge. This fits very well into the gospel, for, as Paul taught, you are not bound by a law that you do not know. Once you accept a law, you are bound by it, even if it isn't really a true law of God. I can't really explain all of this well-it's a complex idea that has been running around in my head for a long time. It envelopes the idea of covenants, of laws, of progression, of repentance, of atonement.
Yeah. I really can't explain it well.
Whatever. I love this book. I hate the absurdities of life, and I hope to be able to see through all of the BS that surrounds us and see things as they are. After all, intelligence is "a knowledge of things as they are, as they have been, and as they will be." I want to be intelligent, unlike the squadron "intelligence" officer who is unable to respond to Yossarian's simple query-what about the little guy?
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