Way back in the mists of time, I did an episode on a show called "Rick and Morty,"
a very popular cartoon series with a cult following that will soon be returning for a second season.
For the uninitiated, "Rick and Morty" follows the adventures of Morty, a 14-year-old nervous wreck,
and his grandfather Rick, who is a mega-scientist and interdimensional adventurer
and a massive, massive arsehole, and the show is bleakly hilarious and funny,
and, at times, powerfully moving, and really addictive as well.
I showed my girlfriend the pilot episode one morning and when I got home that evening,
she had watched the entire first series.
In that old video, I said that the show can be read as a critique of Western attitudes towards science,
but it's also a cool illustration of a particular variety of existentialism.
Existentialism is a broad church, but the show is a cool way to specifically understand
the ideas of Albert Camus.
Camus was concerned with what he called "the Absurd" with a capital 'A,'
which he saw as the contradiction between people's desire to find meaning in life and the universe
and the universe itself, which is completely meaningless,
and he compared human existence to Sisyphus, the character in the Greek myth,
who is condemned to roll a boulder up a hill every day
and then watch it roll back down again pointlessly forever.
And he thought that contradiction could make you sick.
it could keep you up at night wondering what to do when faced with a meaningless universe
that you can't help but look for meaning in,
and he thought that there were three possible responses to the Absurd: suicide, denial, or acceptance.
In the end, he advises that we accept the Absurd, accept that life is meaningless,
but that's not an acceptance that should get us down.
It's not like Vladimir's acceptance at the end of "Waiting for Godot," when he realises that it's all pointless
and he has a bit of a breakdown.
Camus thought that accepting the Absurd would be revolutionary, literally an act of revolt.
We've realised that life is meaningless, we looked at it square in the face, and we keep going anyway, dammit,
and, if we can, we enjoy it. Sisyphus, you get your ass back to that rock and you own that pointless task!
Life is revolting in both senses of the word.
Cool historical fact: a lot of that fighting, revolutionary spirit came from the fact that Camus himself
was part of the French Resistance against the Nazi occupation,
and he wrote his book "The Myth of Sisyphus" in Nazi-occupied France.
Looking at the show again, Rick is an absurdist hero. He openly acknowledges that life is pointless,
saying in front of his grandchildren that there is no god and it's best to rip that band-aid off early.
At one point, he builds a sentient robot just to pass him butter at the breakfast table,
and, when the robot realises that's all it's for, it has a bit of an existential crisis, and Rick just says,
"Yeah. Welcome to the club, pal."
Later on, Morty adopts that same point of view saying,
"Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's going to die."
The show confronts the Absurd head on. But it doesn't just confront it, it fights it.
Rick is always going his own way, always fighting the system.
In one episode, he even fights himself. A collection of Ricks from different parallel dimensions
have formed an interdimensional council, and the Rick we know wants absolutely no part of it.
He doesn't want to be part of another system. He sees that as denying who he really is,
saying that to be a Rick is to be a rebel. He fights against his own inclination to deny the Absurd.
I've done two videos about Camus's ideas before
and how they're important to the show "Welcome to Night Vale."
I even gave a lecture on that topic to a university once, and, in retrospect,
I really wish I had chosen "Rick and Morty" as my example.
Now, Camus doesn't really offer a step-by-step guide as to how to fight the Absurd.
Rick does do it, but Rick's also an arsehole. So maybe what the show is doing
isn't just exploring Camus's ideas, but building on them.
It's hinted towards the end of Season 1 that Rick might be softening up a little bit,
might be getting in touch with his grandkids, and maybe that'll be explored in Season 2.
So maybe fighting the Absurd is an activity that still leaves room for a little compassion.
What do you guys think? Is "Rick and Morty" existentialist? Or, more accurately, is it absurdist?
I've got an important announcement about what's going to be happening
to the channel during the month of August.
TL;DR: There are still going to be philosophy videos every Friday, so do come back and check those out,
and I'll give you the full version after we do the comments from last time
when we talked about human rights, libertarianism, and police brutality, so let's see what you all had to say.
So I mentioned libertarianism in that video, and a lot of people in the comments said,
"That's not libertarianism, what you said! Libertarianism is actually this!"
And what was funny was just that pretty much everyone seemed to have their own definition of it,
and that's because "libertarianism" is one of those words in philosophy that's used a lot
to mean lots of very, very different, separate, and technical things.
It's a little bit like "relativism" or "nihilism." It's a word that crops up in lots of different places
and has lots of separate meanings. So the way I used it was actually correct in the context that we talked about,
and it may well be that everyone else's definitions of "libertarianism,"
which some people realised were kind of talking about different things in the comments, were also correct.
Jon Durrant asked if I can do a video on why we have human rights at all. Yes. Yes, I do want to do that.
I want to do a video on a philosopher called Onora O'Neill, who has very interesting ideas
as to which human rights we need. She's very, very cool. So that will happen at some point.
Nitsugalego says that sweatshops have benefitted a lot of people.
I know that the problem of sweatshops isn't just about shutting them down and not using them,
it's about tackling the economic conditions that make them attractive to work at in the first place,
because, you're right, a lot of people who maybe don't have a lot of other options
do get jobs in sweatshops and, to an extent, they do need those jobs, so if we just shut them down,
it's actually going to cause more problems later on,
and, yeah, the problem is really how to replace sweatshops with something better,
and I don't have the answer for that right now. I probably couldn't do it in, you know, ten seconds,
but we should remember that saying that things could be worse is consistent
with saying that things could, and therefore maybe should, be better. Yes, things could be worse.
There could be something worse in the place of sweatshops, and, yes, they do sustain --
that might not be the right word -- some people, but that doesn't mean
that we shouldn't actually be trying to change the situation. That's my two cents on it, anyway.
Dallas Wood made an excellent point, saying that if you have a duty to save a drowning child,
it's clear what sort of actions you need to take. You need to run in and save him,
whereas if you have a duty to design a social system in a certain way,
it's not exactly clear what you're supposed to do.
Thomas Pogge, one of the philosophers we talked about last time, said that human rights give us duties
to design social systems in a way that makes those rights secure,
and that's not entirely clear what the person on the person on the street is supposed to do about that.
Well, Pogge has in mind things like voting for economic policies that are more just
or maybe distancing yourself from the benefits of unjust economic systems. His focus is very economic.
Or maybe something like writing a letter to your politician who can protect it, and things like that.
So, there are things that the person on the street can do, but I'll definitely grant you that's it's not as easy
to find out what you're supposed to do.
Pogge said that human rights give us duties to design social systems and institutions
in a way that secures access to rights, and lars0me asked, well, how do we know
when it's secure enough to be respecting somebody's rights? Well, Pogge doesn't give us an exact formula
for determining how secure it needs to be, but I guess if we shot for as secure as we can possibly get it,
then, if we fall short, we'll know that at least we couldn't possibly do any more,
and, if we can't do any more, then it can't be the case that we morally should do any more,
so, I mean, if we were designing a social system to secure somebody's right to life,
we're never going to secure it 100% because everybody dies sometime, but if we just get as close as we can,
then we'll know that we have respected that human right as much as we possibly could.
Now, remember, that's consistent with what we should do being very much more demanding
than what we are currently doing.
Michal Parusinski asks "What is an institution?" Well, I know Pogge doesn't really give us
an exact definition of one. Things like the IMF is what he mainly has in mind when he's talking about the economy,
'cause he's very focused on economics, but I guess any organisation or institution
that could violate somebody's human rights would be one that needs to make sure that it doesn't,
so if you're designing a company or an international financial agreement or a sports team or a theatre troupe
or a YouTube channel, you need to make sure that it's designed
so that it doesn't violate anybody's human rights, so, yeah.
I'm not sure that would really be much of a problem for them.
That's all the comments we have time for, so now, announcement time.
So, during the month of August, I am going to be the lead role in a play in Edinburgh in Scotland.
Obviously that's going to take up a lot of my time with rehearsals and actually doing the play and so on,
so I have prepared videos in advance that will be released over the month of August.
There's going to be some Gentleman Thinkers coming up, and you guys can watch those and enjoy those
and I'll still be active on Facebook and Twitter, so everything should -- should, fingers crossed --
just run pretty much as normal, and then, when we come back after August,
I'll be back into doing full-length episodes like this one,
and I've got some really cool collaborations planned, as well.
If you are going to be in Scotland in August, then the play is called "Patriots." It's about politics.
I play a guy whose boyfriend was a Christopher Hitchens-style newspaper columnist
very polemical, very antipolitical, and, now that he's dead, I have to sort through his old notes and articles
and decide what to keep and what to throw away, and it should be very, very bleak and, at times, moving
and, at times, very, very funny as well, so it should be an awesome show.
There's a link in the description where you can find out when and where it's happening and get tickets
if you think you might want to do it. And if you do come and see it, well, then I'll be happy, obviously,
to say hi afterwards and sign stuff and take photos and do whatever you want, do the whole YouTube thing,
so if you're around in Scotland in August, then it would be great to see you there!
That is all the time we have for this episode. Thank you very, very much for watching,
and for more videos about philosophy, please do not forget to subscribe.
Byeeeeeee!
