I want to revisit perhaps my favourite movie of all time: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. Previously, I’ve described the film as grappling with absurdism, defeatism, and nihilism. (You can read my original post here.) In trying to overcome them, I thought it did a great job. The film both validated those difficult philosophical questions, and suggested that there are things that give life meaning, regardless of how freaking absurd everything is. It portrays love, though it may be destined to end eventually, as something worth living for, and this is beautifully depicted in the conversation between Jobu Tupaki and her mother near the end. I am not ashamed to say that I shed many tears, and still do, whenever I watch this movie. However, I ended my last post by saying that there was still more to be said—this movie is, for me, the gift that keeps on giving—and now, I feel, is the time to say it. Because while I have spoken at length about the “meaning-making” of this movie, I haven’t greatly explored what I anticipate are some objections that would arise in its wake. For example, one might say, “Well, Paul, this is great and everything, but this isn’t really a solution to nihilism. What guiding morality is there? What’s to stop people from doing wicked things?” I’m glad you never asked, and here is my answer.
What is nihilism but a perception of meaninglessness? “All is vanity,” it says in Ecclesiastes. When everything is revealed to be ultimately pointless, you’re left with “a lifetime of fractured moments, contradictions, and confusion,” as Jobu says. Everything gets “sucked into a bagel”, and nothing matters at all. If you die, it doesn’t matter. If you live, it doesn’t either. Whether you turn left or right at that intersection, take that job or leave that job, or whether you suffer or you’re happy—who gives a crap? Of course, these things might matter to someone, but these are not absolute values. They wouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things since, in an absolutely nihilistic worldview, they have no significance. In the world of EEAAO, all of these things are just a “statistical eventuality”, and so Jobu—who perceives all of these eventualities at once— arrives at the same conclusion. Who cares?
I’ve recently become enamoured by a group of philosophers from Japan, called the Kyoto School. One of its members, Keiji Nishitani, grappled with nihilism a great deal in his book Religion and Nothingness, and in doing so, he anticipates one of the most common objections against absolute nihilism—an objection so common that I was made aware of it in my first year critical thinking class. In a nihilistic world, not even nihilism matters. In other words, when nihilism is emptied even of itself and emptied of its representations and connotations, you are left with total emptiness. It’s important to note that for Nishitani, this is different from the kind of nihilism that is effectively expressed as angst, which he would call this relative nothingness, whereby there is still the representation of nothingness in relation to a self, which is, too, nil at its very core. Who, after all, are you truly? By contrast, absolute emptiness consists in just that: no representation, division, subject or object altogether. Even to refer to it as a black void would not do the concept justice because that is a representation itself. You have to get even emptier than that. And the word he uses to describe this is sunyata, a Buddhist term, which echoes the (in)famous claim of the Heart Sutra that “form is emptiness, [and] emptiness is form”. Trippy stuff, no?
So, try to imagine such a state—preferably sober. You can’t quite get there, of course, and neither can I. Ironically, in order for you to get there, you’d have to realise there isn’t really a you to get there in the first place; but I digress! Try to imagine what this is like, and venture even deeper than Jobu Tupacki’s own relative nihilism, meaning a nihilism that is perceived or felt by someone. For while she was still trying to negate her own existence (in saying, “[The bagel] wasn’t to destroy everything. It was to destroy myself. I wanted to see if I went in, could I finally escape? Like, actually die.”), on the field of absolute emptiness, such a concept would be nonsensical—or rather, the idea would be sensical and nonsensical at the same time, as though quantum physics met existentialist philosophy. In such a place, you are empty along with everything else, and all that emptiness would also be you. Now, when you’re at this stage mentally, consider: what are you—who is still a person in the world—to do?
You could burn everything to the ground, and it’s true: perhaps you wouldn’t have any moral objections to it, since those would have gone out the window. But you won’t, and do you know why? Because, frankly, there is no reason to do so. There may be no reason not to do so, but there is no reason to do so either. It would seem, then, that we are at an impasse, however I would argue that this conclusion is simply based on our difficulty to understand the concept of no-self. When we imagine things, we tend to do so from an individual perspective. If I try to walk a mile in your shoes, for example, I would simply try to imagine as best as I can what it would be like to be you. But if there is no-self, there is no perspective to imagine. This is why the concept of no-self is difficult for us to understand. You cannot imagine a perspective that is no perspective at all. And with no perspective, what rage could there be to destroy anything? There is none. In realising the concept of no-self, one becomes self-less. In other words, all that is left is compassion. Perhaps, then, it is not so much nihilism that endangers us: it is the consequences of relativity. For as Keiji Nishitani tells us:
It is the standpoint at which absolute negation is at the same time … a Great Affirmation. It is not a standpoint that only states that the self and things are empty. If this were so, it would be no different from the way that nihility opens up at the ground of things and the self. The foundations of the stand point of sunyata lie elsewhere: not that the self is empty, but that emptiness is the self; not that things are empty, but that emptiness is things.
Keiji Nishitani, God and Nothingness (emphasis added)
This perspective is evidently lacking in the film, but it is hinted at. The kinds of things that are proposed for a meaningful life—such as love—are the sorts of things that carry a person beyond themselves. For what is love if not something that sweeps you away? You can do all sorts of crazy things when you’re in love. This is perhaps why Plato called it a “divine madness”. And we are fortunate that this is so because it’s rare for things to ever make perfect sense. How much more screwed up would the world be if we needed rational arguments to entice us to love one another? Or, as Waymond beautifully said:
The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind. Especially when we don’t know what’s going on.
Waymond to Evelyn in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
You can be as angry, frustrated, or confused by the world as you like; but try as you might, you will never find a good reason to throw a stone at it.
Context (for those wondering)
Waymond Wang: [to Alternate Evelyn; subtitles] You think I’m weak don’t you? All of those years ago when we first fell in love… your father would say I was too sweet for my own good. Maybe he was right.
From Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
Waymond Wang: [to verse-jumpers] Please! Please! Can we… can we just stop fighting?
Waymond Wang: [subtitles] You tell me it’s a cruel world… and we’re all running around in circles. I know that. I’ve been on this earth just as many days as you.
Waymond Wang: I know you are all fighting because you are scared and confused. I’m confused too. All day… I don’t know what the heck is going on. But somehow… this feels like it’s all my fault.
Waymond Wang: [subtitles] When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything.
Waymond Wang: I don’t know. The only thing I do know… is that we have to be kind. Please… be kind… especially when we don’t know what’s going on.
Waymond Wang: [subtitles] I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight.
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