Catch 22

Economics Political Theory
1

I don’t know why I tend to find myself in political squabbles with laymen-coworkers, but I always do. Recently a coworker entered my classroom to make the one-liner “for a proclaimed anarchist, there sure is a lot of order in this classroom”. I indulged the point, pointed to it illogical nature (quoted some chaos theory) but felt the need to pursue the point more via e-mail.

His ending remarks were that freedom and power were a catch 22 and that I would change my mind if I read the 1960 fiction book Catch 22. I don’t intend on shifting through 300 pages of fiction to get to the meat of the ideas, so I’m hoping someone can save me. Has anyone here read it?

2

catch 22 is one of my favourite books

3

It looks to me like his point is to get you to keep running around and waste your time.

4

Maybe he means something about that^

5

I have it in audio if you want it (and I’m sure I can find a PDF). My family gets mad at me because I refuse to read fiction for the most part, but this book isn’t bad. Still, I don’t see what you are going to learn from this book and it is a case against statism, rather than anarchy.

6

That doesn’t make sense. That book is about absurdity of bureaucracies and that sort of thing.

7

I can’t find interest in fiction books anymore. But I can watch movies all day.

8

Maybe he’s trying to argue the Catch-22 part. I haven’t read the whole book. Read near half and put it down to go back to and haven’t yet. Some sections actually made me laugh out loud but I lost interest as the mound of books grew in line waiting to read. What I mean by the Catch-22 is ‘you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t’. The Catch-22 for the guy in the book was he continues to fly and come back home with honors (he’s in a war and flies a plane), but the catch is he may die and the criteria to have fullfilled his duty is he has to fly so many times. Yet the generals keep increasing the number every time he gets close to what used to be the necessary number of fly times. So he’s screwed by staying because they keep extending his fly times and he could die. Or he pretends he’s insane and gets to go back home but without honors and the trouble is he may not get a job and society will have to label him insane the rest of his life. So a damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He might be saying you’re damned for wanting freedom cause it rids the ability to sustain freedom, ie. power. But with power comes the lose of freedom. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He’s saying life is a Catch-22 and no matter what you do you end up getting screwed anyways. ‘So why bother?’ is probably his message. He might also be literally saying that if you continue to act and state you’re an anarchist then society will think you’re insane, but he knows if you stay with the game you might end up metaphorically dying and losing yourself anyways and go insane. But this last part is not a necessary addition to what I suggested throughout the post as to what might be suggesting. Probing him more may give you these answers. I haven’t read the full book but that’s what it sounds like to me.

9

from wiki:
Concept

Among other things, Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase “Catch-22” is common idiomatic usage meaning “a no-win situation” or “a double bind” of any type. Within the book, “Catch-22” is a military rule, the self-contradictory circular logic that, for example, prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions. In Heller’s own words:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

Other forms of Catch-22 are invoked throughout the novel to justify various bureaucratic actions. At one point, victims of harassment by military police quote the MPs’ explanation of one of Catch-22’s provisions: “Catch-22 states that agents enforcing Catch-22 need not prove that Catch-22 actually contains whatever provision the accused violator is accused of violating.” Another character explains: “Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.” The theme of a bureaucracy marginalizing the individual in an absurd way is similar to the world of Kafka’s ‘Trial’, and George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ The concept of ‘doublethink’ has definite echoes in Heller’s work.

Yossarian comes to realize that Catch-22 does not actually exist, but because the powers that be claim it does, and the world believes it does, it nevertheless has potent effects. Indeed, because it does not exist there is no way it can be repealed, undone, overthrown, or denounced. The combination of force with specious legalistic justification is one of the book’s primary motifs.

The motif of bureaucratic absurdity is further explored in 1994’s Closing Time, Heller’s sequel to Catch-22. This darker, slower-paced, apocalyptic novel explores the pre- and post-war lives of some of the major characters in Catch-22, with particular emphasis on the relationship between Yossarian and tailgunner Sammy Singer.

/wiki.

The author wrote that it is not a work of fiction exactly, but rather a description of army life as he lived it. Including the guy who bombed his own army base to make money.
It is a hilarious book, written by a perceptive genius.

10

That’s it. I remember that part now. Good quote.

11

Catch 22 is hilarious. I love it. I’m not quite sure how it disproves anarchism though.