When I was a teeny bopper, I read Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. It became my all time favorite book. In time, other
books became my all time favorites, but there are still amazing things from Cat's Cradle that shape who I am today.
One concept that always stuck with me was the idea of a "karass". Vonnegut proposes that there are people in this world that you meet that you are somehow (cosmically) connected with. You meet them and you somehow just know about this connection. This does not mean love-at-first-site or anything like that. It's just that there is a connection.
Then there is the idea of granfalloon. This is an artificial construct designed to be karass-like. Vonnegut's examples: "the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company—and any nation, anytime, anywhere."
For a moment, I wish to bring balance to the force, by exploring the darker side of these ideas. I could find nothing through google to suggest something that was the opposite of a karass or granfalloon.
I propose three more words:
furass: for every member in your karass, there is a member in your furass. I just made this up. I wanted to end the word with "rass" and start it with something that suggested something negative. I went with "fubar". Although now that I have written the word down, I suppose it could be "fury". The idea is that somebody in your "furass" is somebody that you are naturally repelled by - but there is no reason. They seem like a perfectly normal person in every way, but rather than a mysterious connection there is a myserious repulsion.
enfalloon: a granfalloon that is the enemy of your granfalloon(s).
fabadiddle: the group of people that don't like you for any or no reason. The people in your furass would be in this group. There are people in this group that have never met you, but you are part of a granfalloon that is an enfalloon to them. (I have no reason why I chose this word other than it sounds funny)
Now that I have expanded my vocabulary a bit, I can begin to fill a library of books with observations about these things. But for now I have just one: if you publicly share anything of interest, your fabadiddle will grow. As we look at the great people of all time, every last one of them has detractors. The more good they did, the larger their fabadiddle grew. When they died, they stopped publicly sharing things, so their fabadiddle became smaller. If they never shared anything, their fabadiddle would have stayed small.
As I write this, I am temped to introduce some more words and more thoughts about these words, but I know that once I start on this exploration of the dark side, forever will it rule my destiny. And I have other things I need to do today.
