My mind v Groundhog Day

This is a warning that the following post is me battling myself in trying to understand Nietzsche via the lens of Groundhog Day. If this post could be transformed into a thing, it would be a wrestling match between two ill-equipped and equally strong monkeys. In my attempts to understand both Nietzsche and the general commentary of Groundhog Day, I have yet to find a resolution.

But here we go:

Watching Groundhog Day as an eager student does, I tried to pick apart every line of every scene to find the ~true philosophical meaning~ of the film. This got exhausting after the first 10 minutes and so I told my anxious self to calm the f down.

People have bad consciences (which Nietzsche argues is our animal instincts turned inwards) that they suppress in order to be functioning members of community as a way to repay our debts to the community for supplying us with shelter and security. But what happens when there are no consequences to the release of our animal instincts? When we can finally kill whomever we want and wreak havoc with no punishment in exchange? Phil shows us one way.

Nietzsche argues that law and order in society exist to facilitate the exchange of promises via the creation of predictability. In Groundhog Day, Phil is faced with literal predictability – time and place repeats itself. With a life so predictable, he no longer needed the laws and rules of society. He knew exactly what was going to happen, every day, and whether or not laws existed didn’t affect his reality. The predictableness of life existed because it was a literal repetition. So maybe this movie argues that we do, indeed, need laws in society, and that only in an exaggerated context where everything (including time) constantly repeats can we be freed of society’s constraints.

Yet, Phil starts to see life as meaningless once he’s lived out all his animalistic dreams – does that mean there’s a limit to how outward we can project our animal instincts, and that as humans we’ve evolved past being capable to live solely off animal instincts? Are we now as humans evolutionarily-wired to be robots of society? Have we lost our capability to be truly “free”?

But then again, Phil wreaks more havoc then he ever would in a normal scenario exactly because of how predictable life is. Or no, because he could predict that he would receive no punishment for acting on his bad conscience. Or maybe it was a combination of both, that in life being predictable/a literal repetition, he had to entertain himself somehow, initially through havoc and then afterwards via a path of self-betterment (piano + ice sculpting = self-fulfillment)

So in a society where time and life is normal, laws and order are necessary to create a code to living that makes society member’s actions more or less predictable, in order to ensure that promises are fulfilled.

And then in a society where time and life are not normal and constantly repeating like in the film, where predictability cannot be attributed to something else, and exists as its own phenomena, there is no necessary code. For actions are predicted and parties engaged in a promise are certain of the future, regardless of the existence of laws. But then would promises even need to exist? If things were as predictable as they were in the film? That all parties involved already knew what was going to happen in the next minute or hour, and no affirmation made in the morning would change the events of the evening regardless of what’s said?

Though that line of logic (or more like illogic, as my questions are confusing me and probably you) assumes that all members of the society are experiencing life as Phil did. But then if an entire society experienced the same day every day, there would be no point in existing. There would be no growth, people would know their efforts make no difference, that at 6am all their work would go to waste. There would be no happy ending like Phil had, where he has one romantic connection with a woman who has known him for a day, and then BOOM! Back to normal! Because that is the power of love, people! Be an aging man with bags under your eyes, charm a naïve and younger woman who works under you, and there we go! Your existential problems are gone, and you are no longer scarred by your dozens of suicide attempts!!

But I digress…

Do we need laws or not? Is it good to release your animal instinct, like Nietsche suggests? I still have no idea.

Lost modern Man is looking for his way

Ideals, better than reality

Everybody has some ideal, something that he believes in : for some it would be God, for others Science, and for others cars. #Nietzsche asserts that Man loves being deceived : and this, History can prove. Reality being too often cruel, man prefers illusions, to distance himself from it. That's why he likes going to theatre, where he knows he is going to see an artificial show, or to the cinema, or reading some novel. He likes being told some stories, and to believe it, because it's reassuring for him to create such marks, mostly when it's someone else that explains him what he should think, avoiding him a tiring job of thinking by himself. Therefore, Man is himself acting the naif one, pretending he doesn't understand he's being told some ridiculous stories. This is a cooperation, more or less volunteer, between the believer and the one who spreads the belief in question.

Just don't look at this too long

The most frightening things for Man are future, that he can't predict, and death, that he can't know until it comes : fear comes obviously of ignorance. To avoid fear and bad moments in life, he'd prefer finding an answer to all this : and God, or whatever what he believes in, is a pretty good answer. Indeed, one's deeply believer in God should not worry about what happens in his life, and should not get tired looking for the right choices : God has already planed everything for him, and he, humble man, surely won't go against God's will. This is a way, to Nietzsche, for weak people to justify all what is wrong in their life : this is like this, because God wants it to be like this. In this case, the believer just stops trying to lead his existence : he abandons his surd, living one absurd life, according to what #Kierkegaard explains.

In fact, Nietzsche writes in his Genealogy of Moral, Religion, with the virtues it chose as the good ones, creates guilt : a good number of the animal instincts that exist in Man, and elements of his nature, are forbidden, not being virtuous. This leads to what #Freud would call repression of urges, what Nietzsche calls internalization of instincts ; and finally, to frustration. Man is getting to a point that he has trouble with himself, hating what unvirtuous creature he is, disgusted of life itself. Thus, bad conscience emerges in him, because he can't be like he should be, religion putting on him a real pressure, threatening him not to get to salvation. So religion will tell him what is wrong and what is bad, and how he should behave to be a good person. He shouldn't think too much by his own (reading other things than religious texts is out of the question), and he shouldn't listen to his instinct : in fact, he should be a « new man », turned towards God, and forgetting what he feels or thinks as a rational animal, coming to that point that Kierkegaard calls « theological suspension of obligations », forgetting his human life and thinking only of the one that will come afterward. Apparently, according to certain religious representatives, masturbation would even get his hands pregnant in the afterlife.

Sorry, it's in French, but here's the link to the video of the Imam telling that : 

http://www.20minutes.fr/insolite/1615839-20150526-video-turquie-masturbation-rendra-mains-enceintes-dela

Where is freedom in all this ? 

Music of the movie Django

Today, individual Man is looking for freedom from those kind of morals, according to Nietzsche, and understands that power is where there is no need of it : maybe this is the age of the lion, the first metamorphosis in Thus spoke Zarathoustra, the lion trying to get rid off metaphysics. Phil, in the Groundhog's day, discharges from any responsibility and consequences of his action, by living again and again the same day, everything of what he has done during the day being removed at the end of it : he even beats death, not succeeding in getting suicide : thus he is no man anymore, and calls himself « a god ». He is the most powerful human because his actions are simply not limited by any barriers : not law and not mortality ; and he can totally live according to the « carpe diem » of #Horace. But still, he can't be happy with the aesthetical life he has, enjoying everything in excess, because at the end, he is alone the following day, no one being able to record what he has done the previous day : continuity in life can't exist without others ; to feel one's existence, one needs the others to recognize his existence. 

And this we can also notice in #Kafka's Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa, by changing his appearance and becoming useless to his family, is spectator of his family forgetting him : Gregor, that is totally conscious despite his new nature, comes to question what has been certain to him before, not feeling familiar with the furniture of his own bedroom anymore. Phil also needs a real contact with another surd, and for this, he changes his own surd, adopting an ethical life by binding emotionally with Rita. His simulated freedom is in fact an alienation, excluding him from human condition. Thus, freedom cannot be found by disconnecting from others, because, like #Aristote underlined, Man is by definition a social animal.

Humans become more and more strange animals

Modern men, since Nietzsche's time, tend to have a paradoxical purpose : distance themselves from their nature, and Nature in general, that they fear ; thus they fear themselves. The ones that have organized states have, at the same time, stolen freedom from men, because they were the most powerful, so obviously, they were not interested in contract theories that would have taken some power from them. In the lineage of #Hobbes, taking for granded that men are bad and are not able to live peacefully, needing authority and fear to do so, they have promised punishment to those who don't respect their law ; punishment, Nietzsche asserts, is a way to show to others one's power.

Modern men have become, in Nietzsche's words, « valuating animals as such », looking for measuring all aspects of their life. Men live in comparing one to another, trying to always be better than the other : competition is everywhere, in social as economic level. They now live in such a system where there is a creditor and a debtor, and where this debtor has to pay his debt back, no matter how, would it be with his most valuable possessions, as life. This is just the illustration of larger modern society, so called consumption society, where individuals are living to consume, more and faster. We can even notice this aspect in romantic relations : now partners are found on such technological tools like Tinder or Meetic, where it is possible to select what you precisely look for _and to order it. The individual's interests are what really counts, leading to something that is not so much society anymore, because individuals don't want to respect the contract they have implicitly signed for by living in community.

And this, instead of leading to the third metamorphosis, the age of the Child and of creation of new values, can explain a revival of a spiritual research : men are looking for new ideals that have been lost in the emancipation from religion in Western societies. A phenomenon like islamic fundamentalism offers a very rigorous frame, a community, and salvation if the indoctrinated person does his or her duty. Like Phil, islamic fundamentalists are looking for ethical life by binding to other people ; like Abraham, they come to what is for Kierkegaard the madness of faith, not understandable because so irrational. Maybe God is not dead yet, and the Mad Man is still not heard.

Were Nietzsche and Kierkegaard think buddies ?

       While watching the lectures concerning Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Birth of Tragedy, I couldn’t help going back to Kierkegaard’s philosophy and the way it intertwines with Nietzsche’s. Indeed, it feels like Kierkegaard’s research for the Self through the aesthetic, ethic and religious personalities, and Nietzsche’s frenzy to unearth Truth are strangely alike. They both see existence as a notion that cannot be fully grasped; it is a subjective and therefore unseizable truth for Kierkegaard and a well-designed ensemble of illusions that covers up the real Truth with a « veil of forgetfulness » for Nietzsche. 

Yet, they both seek this True existence, through the authentic life with Kierkegaard, the aim of which is to avoid the temptation of the absurd, and through the destruction of illusions, that is to say of metaphysics with Nietzsche. Therefore the idea of the absurd and of metaphysics resemble each other; they’re dreamlike and pleasant illusions that humans run to so that they can go on living pleasantly without pondering and trembling over the ultimate and only Truth that is they are going to die. For both philosophers, the discovery of « real » existence involves a violent and cruel tearing apart of one’s self, an exhausting internal turmoil. It can only be achieved through rigorous self-introspection for Kierkegaard and through the utter destruction of all values for Nietzsche.

And yet, Nietzsche is such an optimistic guy compared to Kierkegaard ! Indeed, whereas Kierkegaard can never find the Self (it could never be defined in the first place anyway so it was kind of a lost cause from the beginning) and is left with trembling and utmost despair, Nietzsche thinks that man finally done with « the dragon » is left with the endless possibility of childhood. In the latter’s opinion, the nothingness of nihilism does not mean the annihilation of the hope to discover the « True » world. On the contrary, it symbolizes the literal rebirth of mankind that rediscovers sensuous existence and can create and ingenuously play with its rules, not having yet forgotten the way metaphors work. 

Nietzsche is firm with the certainty that destruction of morality means renewal. He is not left, like Kierkegaard, with the despairing view that only doubt remains when the absurd goes. Whereas he follows his idea that tragic poetry is perfect, and therefore that staring into the abyss of death, that is to say to glimpse at Truth, is an inevitable step towards the liberation of mankind, Kierkegaard cannot help but fall into the abyss when looking into it, and his numerous attempts to find the Self become a way into the absurd, escaping the terrifying Truth that has been revealed, and these attempts fail, of course, as he realizes he’s fallen into the most abstract absurdity. Kierkegaard is then left with the only comfort of despair, as it is the last abstraction left before death. 

And through the acceptation of our own death, that is the only Truth ever achievable, Nietzsche defeats Kierkegaard. Man is freed form the absurd, it has accepted and embraced its Truth and has freed himself from the carcans of religion, morals and even of reason. Amor Fati is the only path to cheerfulness, to this new era that characterizes the Übermensch, to existence.

Hum, but isn’t it a little more complicated than that ? 

I cannot help but be skeptical about Nietzsche’s Übermensch. If we destroy metaphysics and get into a stage where new meaning is to be invented, doesn’t it involve that eventually, we will be back to metaphysics, with different values and different over and devaluation of these values, but with metaphysics nevertheless ? Isn’t building new meaning creating a new illusion, another small truth that will eventually be transformed into a metaphor, into a veil of forgetfulness  that will get us back at stage one ?

What Nietzsche truly condemns is the devaluation of life though metaphysics. Yet the act of rediscovering Truth, of reasserting life through the acceptance of death in a Dionysian perspective, is in itself the construction of a new metaphysical world in which two values, life and death, oppose each other isn’t it ? 

As with Kierkegaard’s philosophy, we’re then left with the idea that the search for the Self or for a new order liberated from metaphysics is a mere illusion, and maybe the greatest of them all ! Therefore don’t we find ourselves back to Kierkegaard’s absolute uncertainty except in death, the latter which actually stands for ultimate doubt and for the greatest unknown ?

And yet, and I’d like to finish on that, isn’t ultimate doubt what Nietzsche relishes most ? He fully acknowledges the fact that he doesn’t have a clue how the world will look after metaphysics has been destroyed. Even if it is only a step of an eternal cycle, what does it matter if it means the new metaphysical world is completely different from the precedent one and can be destroyed at anytime so that rebirth can happen again ? The Eternal Return of the Same here takes on all its meaning; it is no burden as humans do not perceive it as such, and  as it is never quite the same as they are never fully conscious of it. Here, the Übermensch has been achieved ! Humans endlessly play with this eternal rebirth of metaphysics, invent new rules and destroy them as time goes by, living through endlessly different combinations of overvalued and devalued moral systems. 

Whereas uncertainty is despair for Kierkegaard, it is pure cheerfulness for Nietzsche ! The two philosophers are then the two faces of the same coin ! They are fear and joy over doubt. 

Loneliness is absurdity :  Humans need Humans 

During the infinite way of the search of self, it’s important, according to Kierkegaard, to meet the other self. Meeting the other self makes us probably closest to meeting our own self. I found this idea in Kierkegaard’s philosophy very interesting, so i wanted to write about it, but through a thinker i’m more familiar with, our local Jean Paul Sartre who was, i think, very familiar with Kierkegaard’s writings. 

I’ve always been very interested in the way Sartre considers the « other » as the most important need of a human being. How this other can be vital ? why do we need this other presence, this other consciousness to Be ? why is the other our last hope to fight against absurdity ? 

Last week, i went to the theatre for Huis Clos, one of Sartre’s greatest plays. The play is about three people who died meeting somewhere that is supposed to be hell. They knew they were going to stay together for a lifetime, they first thought it was very cool, a hell without any fire, without any torture, but then, they learn that being obliged to be face to face 24/7 is worst than any hell. Hell, is the other looking at me, the other making me feeling guilty, the other that is torturing me because i still feel alive through him, through his positive or negative judgments. 

According to Sartre in Existentialism is a Humanism, when trying to discover oneself, we need that Other. It’s the Other that makes us as a human being, a self. Since the other is there, facing me all the time, there is a part of me that is his’s and i can’t help it, i cannot avoid  that whatever i do. I cannot be the self i want to be in people’s eyes, they have their own eyes, and their judgments are going to affect me, their judgments are probably the side of my self i dont want to see or the SURD i personally ignore about my identity. The presence of the others is oppressing, they are our permanent judges, they hold us in a prison because they can have a part of us and judge it, so they have this power on us and we cannot run away from that, we actually won’t like to run away from that because it’s through the other that we exist, if the other is not there anymore,with his judgments on our acts,  we are half dead, we don’t existe anymore. 

The presence of an other, the Other, is important. If we want to use religious mythology we can think, from a different perspective, that God created Eve because Adam couldn’t evolve, invent, become a better man if there was not this other self that is Eve. Maybe, Eve was not created to be Adam’s wife and create earth’s population the way it is explained in christian mythology, maybe, the main reason of creating Eve is existentialist, : to be Adam’s conscious. God couldn’t let a human being alone on earth because if there is no conscious of the self, no comparison to that «other self» there would be no progress, and no life. 

God is dead : i still have you ! 

Now « God is dead, and we are alone » said Nietzsche. God is dead , may be seen as Dad is dead, so we are orphans which is very sad, but not absurd.  Absurdity is not the death of God. I believe absurdity is the death of the other self,  the other self that is not me, but that is just like my own-self, the « alter ego », a human i can be compared to, i can see me evolving through his eyes, the other i’m always trying to impress, the other that makes me want to become a better self. We are all permanently on stage, acting for that other, because we need his looks, we need his attention, we need his judgments even though we sometimes try to stop that and think we are fed up with it. 

I always find that funny, when i hear people talking about someone who achieved something and say , he is a self-made man. I believe Self-made man is a myth, we are the product of other selves, of the selves we wanted to look like, of the selves we wanted to avoid to be like, of the selves that made us doubt about our dreams ones, of the selfs that once made us feel ridiculous and worthless, it’s the participation of all those people that made a « man » out of us, we are a construction that a lot of people build, starting with the parents, our success is a success of a project, all the merit is not for us. 

The Groundhog Day and Zarathustra's speech

The movie The Groundhog Day really helped me to understand Nietzsche’s theory of the Death of God, thus, of metaphysics.

In fact, this movie clearly depicts the three metamorphosis Nietzsche says are essential to the death of metaphysics and the birth of new values in a society.

In the movie, Phil is a metonymy of this Society going thought big changes of values. Indeed, Phil at the beginning of the movie is an egocentric man who is very cynic and who looks on his surrounding with disdain. But when he understands he has to live the same day over and over for eternity, his vision of life changes. He then goes through three metamorphoses that we can find in Zarathustra’s speech.

When he realizes his actions do not have consequences for more than a day, he first decides to make the most of that day. He enjoys the pleasures of life without restrictions such as food, sex, delinquency… This phase of the movie could correspond to Zarathustra’s phase of the freeing of the camel, where the spirit, burdened by the values of the society, frees itself from them.

These values, which are now separated from the camel, become a dragon that the spirit has to fight. The fight against the dragon begins when Phil realizes he cannot live the same day over and over for eternity. As a consequence, he decides to kill himself. By committing suicide, he wants to destroy his life which is becoming useless and boring as he follows his traditional value of egocentrism. For Zarathustra, during this fight, the camel transforms into a lion. Phil is in a phase of nihilism as he does not believe in anything anymore.

The fight eventually finishes with the lion’s victory and the spirit transforms into a child. In the movie, Phil becomes a new person with new values. He cares about the others, their life and their happiness. Phil adapts himself to his new life like a child and lives without fear of the consequences of his actions. He plays the same game but with different rules and it gives him pleasure. Phil is free of his old values and can enjoy life by playing piano in front of a crowd that doesn’t know him, by sculpting in ice or by saving lives in a restaurant of in a park. We can clearly see Phil becomes a real altruist as he acts as if there was a tomorrow when there is not.

Along the movie, we can see that the values of the Society are reversed. Human life, which was devalued compared to God’s, is valued as we understand when Phil tries to avoid the death of an old man by all means. The movie is also presenting a change as for the opposition between God and the human being. In fact, Phil repeatedly declares he is God, an assertion which undermines the theory of the opposition between human and divine. Phil thinks he Is God because he can change the destiny of people if he wants to and he knows everything about them. The director of the film actually confirmed that Phil had lived more than 10 years on the same day.

Thanks to this movie, I got to understand Zarathustra’s speech about the freeing of the spirit and the changing of the values that resulted from it. But I still have a question for you: Do you think the freeing of the spirit is eternal, irreversible?

IS FEELING FREE A SENSE OF FREEDOM? And a lot of other unanswered questions about “Requiem For A Dream”.

I have been postponing this movie since my teenage years. I think that I kind of already knew that I would be traumatized from watching it.

So I did watched it, as I finally had a purpose to, and I hated doing so. Which actually means it is a great movie, because it made me feel a mess of feelings that I was surely not expecting: anxiety, sadness, mental distress, loneliness, imprisonment and an odd desire to throw up.

Aside from that, it made me wonder (a lot), in the context of the course, about addiction, alienation and self-ownership. By the story, the images, the music, the succession of shots, we discover a reflection on desire and excess.

So I asked myself from that: is feeling free a sense of freedom? Are we still the holder of our free will when on drugs? So in a way, can we trust our senses, our perception of reality when it comes to freedom and happiness?

During the whole movie, every character seems to be on their own pursuit of happiness, which consume and destroy them little by little. We discover thus a society of disillusions, where happiness is merely temporary.

Does experiencing reality through an object mean you live in a world of disillusions? To what extend can we trust our senses, our perception of reality?

I noticed the importance of time in this movie, when we can ear the clock ticking, feeling the pressure of time passing by. By accelerating or slowing the motion in some scenes, we can feel the total lack of time references of the drug addicts.

All the characters experience reality through an object or a substance, that is television for Sarah Goldfarb, and heroin/cocaine for her son and his friends. Their vision of the world is misshapen as it is based on illusions and hallucinations.

We can take the example of Sarah Goldfarb, who deeply wants to fit in her red dress, symbol of her past happiness. She starts (with the use of amphetamines to keep her thin) picturing herself in the TV show, which becomes a reflection of her interiority and wishes and on the other hand the TV show’s hosts enter in her intimacy, projected in her living room. In doing so, we understand how Sarah is progressively loosing her points of references, and she looses touch with reality, eventually ending up in a mental hospital.

At the end of the movie, we see characters such as Marianne or Tyron take a fetal position, as if they couldn’t go any deeper, and they were reaching out for something familiar, somewhere that felt safe, like a mother’s womb.

In loosing their points of reference, they lost contact with reality.

It seems that the characters are by the middle of the movie utterly dependent on drugs. Thus what is the room for free will? Are they free because they feel free? Or do drugs, which have taken control over them, destroyed their free will?

If we define free will as the ability to become self-conscious and as the ability to make a choice then, are we still free when on drugs? I think that it makes them “indifferent”, in the way Descartes defines it; as a state in which your will is when it is not pushed from one side or another by what is good and right. It means that if they experience “indifference”; as a lack of reasons to choose between two ideas; their will turns away  “from what is true and good”. So there is no free will and no rule of morality. The system of values, of what is good and right is completely torn upside down. Thanks to television and the consumer society that she lives in; the mom thinks that in order to be happy, she needs to be thin, to fit in her red dress, to have a husband and a married son.

How come their desire for drugs inevitably causes them suffering?

Apart from the obvious mental and physical suffering created by their addiction (Harry’s arm with gangrene for example), their desire for drugs is a state of suffering.

If we follow the thesis of Schopenhauer, their want of drugs coming from a lack of substance, puts them in a situation of frustration that can only be exceeded by using again. Yet the use procures the individual only a brief moment of happiness until the desire is back again. Thus, his thesis shows us that all desire, here the desire to use drugs, will create a state of suffering, from which you can only be temporarily freed. But If we accept that, then we accept the fact that their consumption of drugs is only a vicious circle from what they cannot really escape, destroying everything.

According to Hegel’s philosophy if I understood at least of bit of it, consciousness discovers that it’s itself the author of its own errors and mistakes and so it becomes conscious of itself. Does this mean that the characters on drugs are not conscious of themselves, as they are not the authors of their mistakes? Or do we consider that even on drugs, consciousness is responsible for its own actions? I choose to say that they are not responsible for them as they are not their “true” self. I think they fear the possibility of self-creation. On drugs, they avoid actualizing the possibilities they have, avoid engaging in their freedom to create themselves, avoid making choices, so they send away their surd and live absurdly.

Yet I wondered, why do they sometimes seem very happy? Marianne and Harry’s love appears to be true.  So in the end what is true and what is not? Can we even know what the “true world” is? I’m choosing to decide that I don’t have an answer to that question and I warmly welcome any answer anyone can bring me, as I am even more lost now than I was before beginning this blog post.