The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil, and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.
– Joseph Heller, in Catch 22
the way I had to actually put the book down. the way my brain just shut down. the world of the book broken down into these couple of lines that really, really scare something in me and I can barely find the words to describe it. it is always baffling to see it in media - the values turned upside down, the viles masking for the virtues - and it is the underlying theme of the book, yes, but... gods, to make fun of things that aren't funny and actually succeed and then hit us with those words when the anecdotes repeated throughout the book no longer evoke laughter but pure terror, when the enclosure created by catch 22 not only becomes truly inescapable but also pressing, even crushing, on our minds. then we are told that in this enclosure, everything we believe might as well be the complete opposite. and it would not make a difference to the world.
except it would. nobody would just notice.
