Yesterday I tweeted about a sort-of Catch-22 that I was having. When it comes to web development I’m more skilled in the back-end programming work than the actual, visual web design. But I have a hard time programming the back-end code when things don’t look correct. This leads to a cyclical trap where I want to get the programming done, but I can’t because I endlessly try to improve the front-end, and when I finally get around to doing more back-end work, it leads to more visual work. Now, I’ll be the first one to admit that this isn’t exactly a true Catch-22 since, given enough time, there is an end in sight. That’s not really why I’m here though.
The reason that I am sitting here writing this right now is to educate. After I tweeted my little story with the #Catch22 hashtag, I took the time to explore other people’s Catch-22s; what I found was appalling. There were nowhere near any real Catch-22s, and they were almost all so far off base that my jaw hit the floor. For the record, the fact that you don’t want to eat spaghetti because of the carbs is not a Catch-22, neither is trying to decide between different phones, or deleting a phone number so you can’t drunk dial somebody. No, those are just all decisions with consequences, plain and simple. If you do one thing, another thing happens. Congratulations, you figured out cause and effect.
To take a step back, let’s take a look at the original Catch-22; it began in the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, which I would highly recommend reading, by the way. In the story, Catch-22 holds several purposes, and ends up being a universal trap to stop characters from making choices for themselves. But the main Catch-22, and the first one that you’ll encounter in the book, is meant to keep pilots flying, through cyclical logic. The only way for a pilot to stop flying is if he is declared unfit to fly due to insanity, in order to be examined to be declared unfit a pilot needed to request an examination with a medical officer, but upon requesting the exam the pilot shows that he is mentally stable enough to know that he probably shouldn’t be flying, and is therefore mentally fit enough to fly. This whole scenario provides a logic trap that can never be escaped, thus forcing the pilots to continue to fly, no matter what.
Now that you have hopefully started to understand what actually makes a Catch-22, please, please, please, please, please try to use it correctly.