Introduction:
Imagine if a few idiosyncratic characters were able to participate in dialogue with one another. I propose the reader to imagine a dialogue between four fictional strangers. Two of these strangers are family; Rick is a super-scientist from earth dimension C-137, who takes his overly-anxious grandson, Morty, on adventures. Zarathustra, a prophet of the Übermensch, who wanders sundry mountainous terrains proclaiming the death of god. Finally, Meursault, a detached and indifferent French Algerian, caught up in the sudden death of his mother and subsequent murder of an Arabic man. This experiment places these four strange(r) characters in theoretical dialogue with one another. This is a post-modern work that points towards the necessarily contemplation on murder, the death of god, and the revaluation of our values, including the necessity to break away from traditional writing styles. I suppose this could be called: existential fan-fiction.
Facing similar existential queries, these characters and their respective creators present the reader or viewer with various philosophical reasonings on what to do after the death of god and more broadly, what our existence should mean, particularly in light of what it means to murder. Or really, how do we make meaning out of a meaningless existence. Meaningless in the sense that transcendental values have been abolished. The result is essentially a new found freedom, unbound by traditional epistemologies and metaphysics such as Christianity, Capitalism, or Nationalism. A result Nietzsche phrases as, “…when we hear the news that ‘the old god is dead,’ as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectations. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright…” And Camus phrases as, “Now if the absurd cancels all my chances of eternal freedom, it restores and magnifies, on the other hand my freedom of action.” To gather a gist of these iterations, I paraphrase Dostoyevsky, “If god is dead, all things are permissible.” Though different, these iterations all embrace notions of unfamiliar horizons that expose not only a complete freedom of action, but also a responsibility for those actions. If one accepts these conjectures, then one is faced with endless, possibly overwhelming, yet imaginative and almost experimental responsibilities. These responsibilities illustrate the overflow of gratitude, amazement, premonitions, and expectations, which Nietzsche describes, yet shows the viewer the darkness of this horizon. Darkness not in the sense of evil, but rather of the unknown. This unknown, as I categorize it, encompasses the self-overcoming of pity and the acknowledgment of an Absurd universe. Furthermore, not only an acknowledgment of an Absurd universe, but an embracing of this Absurd universe.
This embracing happens through satire, sarcasm, comedy, pessimism, benign indifference, critical hermeneutics, self-awareness, and self overcoming. Though no answers are proposed through this acknowledgment and move towards self-overcoming, it is more of an attitude. This philosophical attitude and general approach toward reason, progress, and what it means to be modern should question all that is sacred and profane and hold above all else freedom and authenticity, yet one should never truly know what it is to be truly free and authentic. If you ever feel as though you found the answer to that question, what it means to be truly free and authentic, then you have already become lost.
1.
I often worry that philosophy is dead. I worry that there is a serious lack of honesty in philosophy among many academic traditions. Science must replace the humanities entirely they say. When philosophy is a ‘will to truth,’ it lacks honesty. It is trapped in fetters and is inauthentic. However, when science has its way, it is a ‘will to power.’ Just as the old testament placed the ground work for the new testament, so did philosophy lay the ground work for science. No, truly that line of thinking must die and philosophy must be allowed to breath again. Every citizen of earth must breath some of its noxious fumes. One ought to live at least a little sickened. But not all philosophy is noxious, some philosophy smells too sweet. Anything that strives towards truth is too sweet. That is why God had to die. God was truth. God is dead. Truth is dead. Truth inhibited freedom and authenticity. Truth enabled metaphysical and grammatical tautologies to dictate how we lived, waged war, died and loved. There has been no worse or more audacious mistake made by humankind that thinking everything was not merely a mistake.
2.
Mistakes are meaningless. For the sake of time, let us call everything people perceive as not-a-mistake a religion. Merely for the sake of time remember… I call these not-a-mistake religions because it strikes a particular chord of which I find resonates with many people. It switches a particular switch and makes them listen. Just because God is dead does not mean religion died with the old man. Religion is very much alive. Religion is when a not-a-mistake becomes an end in itself. When this happens a herd is formed. There are herds of nationalists, herds of capitalists, herds of communists, herds of Christians and Muslims (all shapes and sizes.) There are herds upon herds who love these religions. They dream of them at night. They pray their loans away and that their dividends soars ever higher. They pray for a fair and equal world. They are willing to sacrifice time for equality.
3.
They fail to see that the world is cruel and unforgiving, and no one at the end of day is waiting for you to hold and cure you of your ills. Your sublime capitalisms and communisms will not save you from dying alone. All the cowboys and vigilante law men and their empty chairs cannot save you. There is nothing from which to be saved. Well, the one thing from which one could and ought to be saved from, is resentment. There is no place for resentment. Resentment is most easily fostered in reason. Reason is the mistaken idea that one can understand the world. Reason will lead to resentment. We must relive ourselves of this spiritual nostalgia and see rationality and reason for what they truly are, mistakes. Reason, rationality, and religion are all bedfellows. It is time to change the sheets.
4.
Money, fame, success, these are your Gods now. Reason leads us to believe in these things. Religion tells us to be faithful to these things. God may have died. But when religion did not die, so too did it revive new Gods.
5.
God is a waste of time.
-Dialogue One: Arrival-
A spaceship, essentially made from trash and various items found about a suburban garage, comes crashing down through the clouds and lands on a tall mountain, overlooking a vast sea of winding abysses. Flying over the sea is a eagle with a snake, carefully biting its own tail and coiled around the eagle’s neck. The two travelers emerge from the spaceship. The smaller one is rubbing his neck in discomfort.
“Awe jeez Rick, wha-wha-what do you think happened?”!
“*Belch*…there must be something wrong with the micro-verse battery again. I’ll *belch* take a look.” A tall man, wearing a lab coat, scratched his wild blue hair and opened the hood of the space vehicle. A young boy, about fourteen years of age, kicks a pebble along the mountain path they landed on, while nervously pacing around. Morty looks up at the strange sight of the eagle and the snake.
“Woah, jeez Rick what do you think that is?” Morty points towards the sky.!
“Morty…Morty…*belch* can’t you see I’m trying to concentrate here?” The tall man named Rick, then took a large gulp from his flask, suspiciously looked around, wiped his lips, and continued tinkering under the hood of the vehicle. Morty watched the eagle and snake fly in circles over the windy abysses.
Suddenly, there was a rustling coming from behind a nearby bush. Morty, absentminded, still gazed at the soaring animals wondering why the eagle was not eating the snake as he learned eagles do in science class, while Rick rapidly drew his space-aged laser-gun from his inner coat pocket and pointed it at the bush. “Alright, who *belch* is there?!” Out from behind the bush emerged a man, wearing simple clothes, with white hair and a long beard. Rick, still pointing the laser gun at the man, asks, “Listen, muchacho, not sure if you’ve seen anything *belch* like this ship I made out of garbage *belch* in your dimension before, but I am not *belch* in the mood for you to freak out and start worshipping us. I just need some time to fix the battery. The man laughed and said,
“Call me whatever you like; I am who I must be. I call myself Zarathustra. I worship none, for I am a fisherman of the overman. I love man and give him the gift of the overman. For once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth. The overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!” The man paused and sniffed the air about him, “But I smell fowl air. O nausea, nausea, nausea! Give me fresh air! Pity! You have come to seduce me to my final sin.” Zarathustra stopped laughing and was over taken by melancholy. Rick, still holding up his laser gun responded,
“No, I’m a man of science, just like to shoot straight, get to the point. Also, I’m not *belch* one who is too picky about who I seduce, but you’re a little old for me.” Unexpectedly, the eagle and snake flew from the winding abysses and landed next to Zarathustra.
“O Zarathustra,” they said, “he may be a man who lies in a sky-blue lake of happiness.”
“You buffoons,” Zarathustra exclaimed to his animals, “What wonderful metaphors you use. A higher-man, a last-man, does the overman stand before us now? Has he bitten off the head of the snake he swallowed? I smell the innocence of a child. A child without pity standing in the brilliance of noon. But soon night arrives, and with it the spiders of pity. A thousand paths to the future stand before his innocence and life must be overcome again and again.”
“Ok, *belch* I’ve had about enough of this, talking animals?” Rick poised to fire his laser gun and disintegrate the three strangers standing in front of him. Before he could, Morty reached up and grabbed Rick’s arm.
“H-h-hold up Rick, I want to hear what they have to say. I mean he may talk strangely
Rick, but but let’s hear him out. You know Rick, you can’t just go around shooting people.”
“I’m not in the mood for this Morty.”
“Oh come Rick, w-w-when was the last time you saw an eagle and a snake talk and be friendly. We just learned about how eagles eat snakes in certain ecosystems.”
“Alright, alright. Well, I can’t *belch* count on my fingers how many times I’ve seen a some stupid, over confident prophet and his animals try to confuse random travelers with parables and tales invoking gods dying. I’m a *belch* genius Morty. I don’t have time for this sort of nonsense. It gets in the way of my research Morty.” Rick, pointed his gun between Zarathustra, the eagle, and the snake, and with his other hand drew his flask from another inner pocket and took an oblivion seeking slurp. This moment, feeling eternal, was tense.
“Well Rick, I haven’t seen this in any dimensions. Isn’t this just part of the adventure?
Just cruising around Rick and Morty style, just letting what ever happens happen, right Rick?” ! “Alright Morty, I won’t disintegrate these buffoons, but if I get bored I’m shooting them, and if I fix the ship we are leaving.”!
“Oh jeez Rick…ok…s-s-sounds like a plan. I still don’t think you should shoot them.” The door to the space ship opened and out came a man in a plain white collared shirt smoking a cigarette. Rick whirled around and pointed the laser gun at the man.
“Ok, now who the fuck are you?!”
-End Dialogue One: Arrival-
6.
What is the Absurd? The Absurd is a healthy illness. Kierkegaard calls this illness despair, yet it is a necessary despair. It is not some disorder that ought to be cured, but instead a disease in which one ought to revel. A reveling that leads to ‘truth and deliverance.’ Human progress is then dictated by the ability to become self-aware of this sickness. To be self-aware is to deny one’s dependence of the ineffable, and then through this denial one gains the ability to acknowledge one’s dependence of the ineffable. This is Absurdity; however, this process of acquiring self-awareness does indeed look different to different people. Is a dependence on the ineffable all that necessary? It could be an individualize conception of God, a proclamation of the death of god, or a benign detachment from society. It could certainly be all three. However, somewhere within the individual who embraces the Absurd, there is a suffering despair, and through that despair the individual arrives at a rejoicing of the bleak abandonment of all things transcendental. The Absurd is to take action, even if that action is inaction. What sort of action can we use to define all other actions? The act of taking life.
7.
The Absurd is an ‘abyss of negation and nihilism’ but also a rejection of nihilism. In other words, every action is neither good nor bad and has neither pros nor cons, even murder. Camus, when describing a Nietzschean take on how to contemplate murder, says, “Then the world will no longer be divided into the just and the unjust, but into masters and slaves. Thus, whichever way we turn, in our abyss of negation and nihilism, murder has its privileged position.” This is the product of the ‘abyss of negation.’ The Absurd is taking action when one acknowledges that one might as well do one act or another, and that action may as well be murder. That act may as well be suicide too. The propensity or predisposition to take away life is the key question towards unlocking the paradox surrounding the Absurd, at least for Camus. For Camus, there is a, ‘desperate encounter between human inquiry and the silence of the universe.’ However, this encounter ends, for the self, when the self commits the act of suicide. The end of this encounter would negate the rejection of nihilism required by the Absurdist’s reasoning. Camus says, “… such a solution [Suicide] would be equivalent of flight or deliverance….” ‘Flight or deliverance’ is not the Absurdist solution. What about ‘truth and deliverance?’ One should have deliverance from truth.
8.
Life itself is good. Camus says, “Absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is precisely life that makes this encounter possible…From the moment that life is recognized as good, it becomes good for all men. Murder cannot be made coherent when suicide is not considered coherent.” How solid of a proposition is this? Can we so easily say that murder and suicide are never permitted by Absurdism? What if overpopulation threatened the entirety of human existence? Would it not be permitted for the colonized to kill their colonizer? Would it be permitted to kill someone who annoyed you? As long as the act was not out of resentment? These are questions of becoming, not questions of being.
9.
The eternal return, the eternal moment is The Absurd. It is a metaphysics which highlights the inherent inconsistency of metaphysics. And not only metaphysics, but ethics and epistemology. It highlights the process, not the result. It asks, what did something mean, what does something mean, and what will something mean? What does it mean to you, and what does it mean to them? That being said, the Real is a fish to be reeled in; whereas the Absurd is a film reel, to be watched, altered, and never completed. It is a work that will always be left undone. This is to say that everything is always more nuanced. The Absurd and the eternal return symbolize self-reflexivity. Self-reflexivity is a requirement to avoid resentment.
10.
Ask a question everyone has but were to afraid to? You are a genius. Ask a question nobody has, then you are insane.
-Dialogue Two: Meursault-
The man emerged from the spaceship smoking a cigarette. He flicked some ash on the ground. The man yawned and spoke, “I am Meursault.” Rick retorted quickly,
“How did you get in my ship?! Jesus Christ!” Zarathustra chimed in,
“Ah, the one true Christian…” Rick glared and continued,
“Morty, we need to keep a closer eye on the back seats of the ship.” Morty mumbled,
“Maybe if you didn’t drink so much, Rick.” Meursault continued speaking,
“Well, you crashed into my jail cell in French Algiers. Instead of waiting to be executed or waiting to see if my appeal goes through, I decided to hide in the back of your flying car.”
Morty jumped in,
“E-E-Executed?! For what?!” Meursault continued with his story,
“It is a long story, but essentially I shot an Arab man. It is all kind of blurry, but the sun was in my eyes. I remember my eyes were blinded by salt and tears. The sunlight felt like a dagger, piercing my eyes. I became very tense and pulled the trigger. I think I fired four more times into his body, but I can not remember exactly.” Morty asked,
“Well, well, w-w-what did that man do to deserve that?!” Morty was becoming slightly agitated.
“He had stabbed my acquaintance,” Meursault paused, “My friend, Raymond in the face and arm. These Arabs were unhappy with how Raymond treated his girl, one of the Arab’s sister.” Morty responded poignantly,
“So you shot him?!” Zarathustra, feeling a strong melancholy, spoke,
“Virtue is a pure truth. It is the spider’s truth. Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, black scarabs grow; your poison makes the soul whorl with revenge. A filth of words: revenge, punishment, reward, retribution. You love your virtue as a mother her child; but when has a mother ever wished to be paid for her love?”
“It wasn’t out of revenge that I shot the man. The jury didn’t believe me either. My lawyer thought of my as the Antichrist. In fact, I think he called me ‘Monsieur Antichrist.’ The prosecutor called mostly witnesses from Maman’s funeral. It seemed as though I was on trail for not crying at Maman’s funeral. I don’t know why I hadn’t, but what did it really matter? I wondered why anything mattered more than something else. Once convicted of having no soul, I certainly wasn’t going to waste my time on God. The chaplain who visited me was saddened to hear I didn’t require his services. I can no longer accept such arrogant certainty. I had never felt so free in that cell upon my realization that, ‘Well, so I’m going to die. Sooner than other people will, obviously. But everybody knows life isn’t worth living. Deep down I knew perfectly well that it doesn’t much matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either case other men and women will naturally go on living—and for thousands of years. If fact, I couldn’t remember anything that had been so clear to me.” Zarathustra looked to his animals,
“A higher-man. The ugliest man. There stands the murderer of God. He has the overman at heart. Man is always something to be overcome. But I can love in the man that he is an overtone and a going under. Here we have a despiser. A higher man, who lets me hope, that he is a great despiser and a great reverers. He has become subject to what the small man lords over. O nausea! Nausea! Nausea! Overcome these masters of today, O my brothers— these small people, they are the overman’s greatest danger. It is the small virtues, the spider virtues, the small prudences, the ants’ riffraff, the wretched rabble.” Rick rolled his eyes and put down his gun.
“Jeez louise Morty, I can never tell who this guy is talking about. Nausea this, Nausea that. Nausea over here and Nausea over there.” Meursault seemed to be confused as well. Morty was eyeing down Meursault. Morty, like the jury for Meursault’s trail, was unimpressed with Meursault’s supposed behavior at his mothers funeral. “Am I right, Morty? I mean who does this guy think he is? *Belch* I mean, Jesus Christ or someone? Kinda behind the times, sheesh,” Rick rolled his eyes, “Science killed God a long time ago. I mean remember when I beat the crap out of the devil? Morty you *belch* remember that? That’s *belch* basically the same thing.”
“I don’t know Rick. I-I-I mean God helps a lot of people Rick. I-I-I-It’s good for some people you know?”
“I think the chaplain finally knew,” Meursault continued, “I think that’s what made him so angry. That, and I did not call him father. He wasn’t my father. No, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future. What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate. I felt clean after I realized these things. God is just a waste of time.” Rick began rubbing his temples,
“Who do you think you are? Sartre? Edgar Allen Poe or something? Get a load of these two, Morty. Acting like some well know literary *belch* figures.” Morty, addressing Meursault, said,
“Y-Y-Y-ou can’t just go around saying everything is meaningless…H-H-How can you not cry at your mother’s funeral.”
“I don’t know Morty, sounds pretty *belch* liberating to me.” Meursault then shrugged his shoulders and lit another cigarette. He looked at Morty, but gazed past him,
“Everyone is privileged. What does it matter who you know and what relationship you have with them. What does it matter that some old man’s dog is worth as much as his wife to him. What would it matter if I had been executed in front of a roaring crowd. I could only wish there would be a large crowd to greet me with their cheers of hatred. Zarathustra spoke up,
“I would only believe in a God who could dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall. Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity! A new pride my ego taught me, and this I teach men: no longer to bury one’s head in the sand as the spirit of gravity does, but to bear it freely, an earthly head, which creates a meaning for the earth.
Spiders hum around you with their praise too: obtrusiveness is their praise. They want the proximity of our skin and your blood. They flatter you as a god or devil; they whine before you as before a god or devil. What does it matter? They are flatters and whiners and nothing more. Die a good death, not a spiders death.”!
“W-W-What does anything of this have to do with not crying at your mother’s funeral!” Morty was becoming enraged, “Y-Y-You…w-w-who does that? Y-Y-You have no soul! Y-Y-You do deserve to die! Only a bad man would not cry at his mother’s funeral!” Rick began to speak,
“Jeez Morty, you are starting to sound pretty purgy over there…*belch* remember what happened last time you got this judgmental?” But as Rick was talking he had set his laser gun on the hood of the spaceship. Morty lunged for the gun and fired.
-End Dialogue Two: Meursault-
11.
Only a child is truly authentic. Too soon do we teach children to be camels and many never have a chance to even become lions. They teach us to be camels, but rarely does anyone teach you how to be a lion. No one can ever teach you how to be a child again. One develops into childhood not taught. One is cultivated into childhood. It is a self-cultivation. Religions of the not-a-mistakes lack this self-cultivation through self-overcoming. These religions do not allow for self-reflexivity. Is that not the bottom line for the existentialists? To become is to be self-reflexive: whereas, to be is to be blind to one’s self and how one might think.
12.
Being an idiot comes from the notion of idios or “one’s own.” It has now come to mean an ‘ignorant, uneducated person.’ Nietzsche thought Jesus was an idiot. Not in the sense that he was ignorant or uneducated, but in the sense that he was an epileptic prophet. Idiot in these sense can refer to someone who does their own thing, in the own way, and that way is against society. That could be why society calls those who they do not understand an idiot. Then again, some people are idiots, but we ought to just call them stupid.
13.
The Absurd and these philosophies remind me of truly great jazz musicians. To be the best jazzer, said jazzer must be the most idiosyncratic jazzer. There are levels of jazz. Rather, metamorphosis of Jazz. First one repeats. Many do not leave this stage. Next one replicates. Many stage on this stage and make a career out of it. Finally, there is the creation stage. Imagine music as a brick wall. On the other side of that wall is the ability to play whatever comes into your mind. The better you become the more bricks you remove. Only a few are able to remove all the bricks. Many spend their entire career as musicians never removing any bricks; they only stare at the wall.
14.
Emerson says “a friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.” Nietzsche says, “a friend is your best enemy.” Many friendships lack sincerity and enmity. Just as most Gods lack the ability to dance. To dance one must be honest, cheerful, and yet steadfast. Is a friend virtuous? Is virtue what is excellent? Is virtue what is best? Are the virtuous the best people? !
15.
Do not think of philosophy as a love of wisdom, but rather the becoming of what is important.
-Dialogue Three: Departure-
Meursault lie dead on the ground next to the spaceship. A laser blast had pieced him between his eyes. Rick placed his palm on his forehead, “Morty…what a mess. L-L-Look *belch* look, you got blood on my car.” Morty looked stunned and appalled at his own actions. “Morty…Jesus Morty, just a second ago you were the guy would just loooooves the preservation of life, and now look at this. You killed a guy for not crying at his mother’s funeral. I didn’t cry *belch* at my mother’s *belch* funeral, Morty. Are you going to shoot me? I wasn’t even at my mother’s funeral. I was too busy being called a terrorist by the Galactic Federation and fighting for freedom.” Morty dropped the laser gun and took a few steps backwards. “Well at least we don’t have to deal with this hitchhiker anymore. Morty, Morty…just look at this mess.” Rick nudged the body off of the spaceship with his foot. Zarathustra spoke,
“Alas, where in the world has there been more folly than among the pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the folly of the pitying? Woe to all who love without having a height that is above their pity! Believe me, my brothers! He died too early. In the man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less melancholy: he knew better how to die and to live. Free to die and free in death, able to say a holy No when the time for Yes has passed: thus he knows how to die and to live. All names of good and evil are parables: they do not define, they merely hint. A fool is he who wants knowledge of them!” Morty sat on the ground and remained astonished at his actions.
“Oh man Morty, I think his gun just called you a fool! *Belch* are you going to shoot him now?!” Morty seemed unaffected by Rick’s mockery. As Rick jested at Morty, ten men walked up the path towards the scene. Two kings and an ass, a soothsayer, a magician, the last pope, the ugliest man, Zarathustra’s shadow, the voluntary beggar, and a bleeding man covered in leeches. These ten men were accompanied by Zarathustra’s animals, the snake coiled around the eagles neck. Zarathustra greeted them,
“Oh brothers! You are mere bridges: may men higher than you stride over you. You signify steps: therefore do not be angry with him who climbs over you to his height. My guests, you higher men, let me speak to you plainly. It is not for you that I wait in these mountains. It is for those who are higher, stronger, more triumphant, and more cheerful, such as are built perpendicular in body and soul: laughing lions must come! Oh brothers! A camel strikes down a laughing lion today, out of pity and resentment.” Zarathustra fell silent and a longing came over him. His eyes and mouth were shut and his heart had been moved. All the men fell silent as well and stood in dismay. A melancholy so thick one could cut it with a knife fell upon the crowd. The two kings moved past Rick and picked up Meursault’s body and placed it upon the ass. Zarathustra walked over to Morty and placed a hand on his shoulder, “The higher its type, the more rarely a thing succeeds. You higher men here,” He gestured to all the men standing around him, “have you not all failed? Be of good cheer, what does it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves as one must laugh! All good things approach their goal crookedly. Like cats, they arch their backs, they purr inwardly over their approaching happiness: all good things laugh. You higher men, the worst about you is that all of you have not learned to dance as one must dance—dancing away over yourselves! What does it matter that you are failures? How much is still possible! So learn to laugh away over yourselves! Lift up your hearts, you good dancers, high, higher! And do not forget to laugh.” Zarathustra then led the procession of men up the path towards his cave. Once the procession was out of sight Rick spoke,
“Well Morty, you sure screwed things up.”
“Shut up Rick! I feel bad enough as it is.”
“Well Morrrrrty, I think that was Zara-what’s-his-names point. You aren’t suppose to feel guilt. I know I don’t. Remember when we killed all those people to save that one girl you liked? Remember that Morty? You didn’t *belch* feel so bad then. Or remember when we saved that gaseous creature, FART? Yea, lots of gear-heads dead when we did that Morty. And you killed your little FART-friend after all that. Jeez Morty, get a grip. Shit happens. Maybe you should take a *belch* clue from those weirdos. Nothing matters Morty. Nothing matters but my research,
Morty. Break the cycle and focus on science.” Rick slammed the hood of the spaceship shut. “Ok Morty, time to go. Let’s get out of this weird place, and we’ll make sure to tell your mom that you love her and you will cry at her funeral. Will that make you feel better, Morty?”
“Just shut up Rick, I-I-I have a lot to think about.” The pair sat down in the spaceship and after a second of the engine not turning over the spaceship started.
“Oh yea Morty, *belch* listen to that baby purr.” Rick took a swig from his flask and the two took off into outer space.
-End Dialogue Three: Departure-
An Epilogue:
A good conversationalist is a mirror. People often forget they can only look at themselves. However, sometimes people hear someone else talking on the other side of the mirror. Someone who whispers kind criticism rather than pitiful praise. Someone who tells you there will only be another cave to step into, that it is not only irresponsible, but arrogant to believe in truth. But one who will quickly tell you that that is truth in itself, that is the kind criticism. That voice will tell you to be chagrined is to become the wiser, but will tell you not to make a mistake. That voice staring back at you will say that mistakes ought to be made. That mistakes are profound and grotesque, honest and frightening, but never are mistakes true and appalling.
Now, I am not saying I’m special, in fact I am saying no one is special. I’m not saying I am privileged, I’m saying that everyone is privileged. Those who are alive are privileged to be so, even if all you want is to die. Are some people better than others? Sure, however it depends on who you ask.
The bottom line is, through all this Absurdity, one ought to try to be kind and well meaning, but question that till the day they die. That should cause a ripe enough anxiety to keep you creative, but not enough anxiety to cripple you into suicide or deep nihilistic relativism.
Judgements should and can be made, but no judgement is ever final. A simple pithy statement concerning truth encapsulates this sentiment: A needle in a haystack is sharp and hidden, do not seek it.
Nietzsche, Camus, the creators of Rick and Morty, were and are on the right track. The point is to be a polemicist, and through that which is taken for granted into question. In this way we can move forward. We must throw away notions such as waiting for the redeemer to show us all the way and look towards the many esteemers all around us. Be an esteemer and craft a notion of life that works. Be honest, cheerful, and courageous, that may lead to freedom and authenticity.
I will end with a parable from The Stranger. Meursault knew an old man. The old man’s wife passed away long ago. The old man lived with his dog. Dog and man alike were covered in red scabs and wispy, wiry yellow hair. Truly ugly. The two would go on two walks every day for eight years. The dog would pull the old man along until the old man would trip and fall, swear at the dog and beat it. The man would not allow the dog enough time to urinate and yank the dog along, so that the little old spaniel would leave a trail of drops. Echoing down the hall you would hear the man yell, “Filthy, stinking bastard!” However, when the old dog finally ran away, the man was lost. The man knew not what to do with himself. He was truly saddened by the loss of his filthy, stinking bastard of a dog. When it was suggested that the old man, Salamano, get a new dog he replied, “no, I was used to that one.”
Considerations & Fictions 
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