You caught me, that is not exactly a catch-22. The definition of each:
Hobson’s Choice: a situation where you have a free choice, but only one option is offered. You can either take it or leave it. This is named after a stable owner in the 1500’s by the name of Thomas Hobson wanted to make sure that all 40 of his horses were being worked equally. Instead of letting his customers pick their horse to ride, he offered them the horse in the stall nearest the door or no horse at all.
Buridan’s Ass: Buridan’s ass is when you find yourself in a difficult decision between two equally appealing options – the decision making process is so slow you would be better off just picking one. Let’s assume an ass will always go eat the hay closest to him. In our fictional scenario an ass walks into a barn and finds himself equidistant between two identical bales of hay. Unable to make a decision which hay to eat, the ass remains in the same spot and starves to death. This one is named after 14th century philosopher Jean Buridan (although Aristotle wrote about it first) and is often quoted to exhibit the folly of politicians.
Morton’s Fork: the opposite of Buridan’s ass is Morton’s fork (obviously right? no duh). This is when you are forced to decide between two equally unpleasant options. Between a rock and a hard place. Wikipedia’s history lesson: the expression originates from a policy of tax collection devised by John Morton, Lord Chancellor of England in 1487, under the rule of Henry VII. His approach was that if the subject lived in luxury and had clearly spent a lot of money on himself, he obviously had sufficient income to spare for the king. Alternatively, if the subject lived frugally, and showed no sign of being wealthy, he must have substantial savings and could therefore afford to give it to the king. These arguments were the two prongs of the fork and regardless of whether the subject was rich or poor, he did not have a favorable choice.
Catch-22: a situation in which you need something that can only be acquired by not being in the situation you find yourself in. This phrase came about from the book by the same name (no, the book wasn’t named after the phrase). The cliff notes on the book: an air force pilot wishes to be grounded from combat flight duty. To be grounded, he must be officially evaluated by the squadron’s flight surgeon and then found “unfit to fly.” “Unfit” would be any pilot who is actually willing to fly such dangerous missions: as one would have to be mad to want to take on such missions. But the problem is that to be declared unfit, he must first ask for evaluation, which is considered as a sufficient proof for being declared sane. These conditions make it impossible to be declared unfit. The “Catch 22” is that “anyone who wants to get out of combat duty, isn’t really crazy.” Hence, pilots who request a fitness evaluation are sane, and therefore must fly in combat. At the same time, if an evaluation is not requested by the pilot, he will never receive one (i.e. they can never be found “insane”), meaning he must also fly in combat. Therefore, Catch-22 ensures that no pilot can ever be grounded for being insane – even if he were.
Photo: Hakan Dahlstrom