Eternal Recurrence and Edge of Tomorrow (2/4)

This is Part 2 in a series examining Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence through film and literature. Expect spoilers.

“Live. Die. Repeat.” –Edge of Tomorrow tagline

The recent science fiction movie Edge of Tomorrow (2014) provides an excellent example of recurrence as a plot device. The film, based on the novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt as soldiers fighting an invasion by aliens called gitai, and it has more Nietzsche in it than just eternal recurrence.

 

The device of repeating the same day over and over functions similarly to Nietzsche’s thought experiment of eternal recurrence. We see how Cruise’s character, Major Cage, changes when faced with repeating the same events, many of them horrifying, on endless repeat. He’s scared witless at first but then embraces his situation and uses it to improve himself. This from the novel (translation mine):

 

I can take something with me. I will take the best of this world with me to the next day. I’ll narrowly dodge enemy bullets and kill gitai with one blow. Rita Vrataski gained overwhelming combat skill, and I will use infinite time to do the same. That's all I can do.

Cage, known as Keiji in the novel, begins improving himself as a soldier and eventually masters the large blade that hitherto was Rita Vrataski’s signature weapon. She too was once stuck in time and used the successive loops to polish her combat skills. Eventually, she became the hero and legend known as the Full Metal Bitch. Both Cage/Keiji and Rita turn a life of suffering and death into an occasion to shed their old selves in favor of new ones.

Nietzsche may not have been a systematic philosopher, but his ideas have a way of grouping up. With Edge of Tomorrow as a lens for viewing his philosophy, the close relationship between eternal recurrence and the Übermensch, or Overman (previous post), comes into focus.

The Overman has often been portrayed as a concept elevating some individuals over others--indeed Nazi intellectuals mined Nietzsche for quotes to justify their idea of a master race, and works by Nietzsche tend to show up in the libraries of America’s mass shooters, whose psychoses seek an authority elevating them above others--but Nietzsche only meant something akin to what in today’s common parlance we would call self-realization or personal growth. The Overman is master at overcoming his or her own individual limitations so that yesterday’s horizons give way to new ones. The person who needs to lord it over others would--like Brandon and Phillip in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, which explicitly refers to Nietzsche--be a poor example of the Übermensch indeed.

Eternal recurrence as formulated by Nietzsche would not allow for any such overcoming from one cycle to the next, for everything repeats in exactly the same way, but the thought in this cycle that you will live the same wretched existence in the next cycle could--as it does for Cage in Edge of Tomorrow--inspire reform this time around:

 

Live. Overcome. Live better.

Previous posts in this series:

Eternal Recurrence and Nietzsche (1/4)

 

 

The Impotent and the Potent, Part 4—In Which the Android Sings

(continued from "In Which Zarathustra Spake")

One big problem with adherents of reactionary worldviews like that of Return of Kings is that their definition of themselves comes with a definition of others. Men must be masculine according to certain rules and women must be feminine according to certain rules. Norms of their choosing are to be imposed.

There is no room in this for a boy who decides to wear a dress to school. I remember watching Robert Smith of The Cure describe on Later . . . with Jools Holland the ridicule he faced when he did just that. I found the anecdote fascinating and respected him all the more because of his bravery. A world without Robert Smith, without The Cure, without men who wear mascara, is a poorer one. The same could be said for many of the world’s great artists, scientists and thinkers--as well as nonfamous folk--who don’t conform to their time’s or culture’s idea of masculinity or femininity and who in many cases bestowed their particular beauty on the world precisely because of that refusal.

 

To return to Nietzsche, while he spoke of the Übermensch, Kaufmann says he also spoke of the Normalmensch, the sick creature that results from conformity. I’m no follower of Nietzsche--his thought isn’t a system to be followed anyway--but I do believe that individuals are happier in a pluralistic climate and that pluralistic societies are healthier as a whole. America isn’t at the forefront of creating more open and inclusive societies, but it is making progress, and that’s what puts The Fear in male chauvinists. Their egos can’t handle a world that doesn’t spin around their phallus.

Sometimes, people such as myself who make a point of visibly griping are criticized for devoting too much attention to numbskulls, thereby generating interest in their causes and even making the feeble and unknown into the strong and famous. I have a nagging feeling that such criticism may be just in this case. The worst of the manosphere is unworthy of attention.

And yet, if someone doesn’t speak against the numbskulls, they will overrun the marketplace. In thinking about this, I keep coming back to alternative soul artist Janelle Monáe. From what I know of her life, her talent, and her values, she seems to be particularly skilled at self-creation of the sort Nietzsche might approve, going so far as to reinvent and portray herself as an android. Her song “Cold War,” suggests there is a fight to be fought, at the very least through moral example:

 

 

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The Impotent and the Potent, Part 3—In Which Zarathustra Spake

(continued from “In Which the Übermensh Has a Pair")

 I wrote the preceding passage about the Übermensh based on fairly extensive reading of Nietzsche and secondary sources in my free time years ago. To make sure the years hadn’t introduced a swerve to my understanding of the material, I went back and reviewed, adding in some unread material I’d been dying to get to, and I was surprised to find that the emphasis on self-improvement in Nietzsche as well as scholarship about his writing is much stronger even than I remembered.

Consider this from Walter Kaufmann’s classic introduction Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist:

“It was not the military or political successes [of Caesar] that Nietzsche looked to, but the embodiment of the passionate man who controls his passions: the man who, in the face of universal disintegration and licentiousness, knowing this decadence as part of his own soul, performs his unique deed of self-integration, self-creation, and self-mastery.”

Also from Kaufmann, and simply put:

“Tyranny over others is not part of Nietzsche’s vision.”

But the real meat is always in the primary sources. One of my favorite concepts from Nietzsche is giving style to oneself:

“One thing is needed. – ‘To give style’ to one’s character – a great and rare art! He exercises it who surveys all that his nature presents in strength and weakness and then moulds it to an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason, and even the weaknesses delight the eye. . . . It will be the strong, imperious natures which experience their subtlest joy in exercising such control, in such constraint and perfecting under their own law . . . ” (from The Gay Science)

And more, this from “Of the Way of the Creator” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

“Can you furnish yourself with your own good and evil and hang up your own will above yourself as a law? Can you be judge of yourself and avenger of your law? It is terrible to be alone with the judge and avenger of one’s own law. It is to be like a star thrown forth into empty space and into the icy breath of solitude.”

That’s true potency and it’s hard work and it has nothing to do with telling others who to be. Calls for a return to a past order that marginalizes those who don’t easily slot into that order are the whimperings of impotents. Real men, the man of the future, the manly man, the alpha dog, and so forth should be so grounded in themselves that other people behaving differently is not a threat, but a reason to celebrate.

 

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The Impotent and the Potent, Part 2—In Which the Übermensh Has a Pair

(continued from “In Which the Manosphere Needs a Pair”)

 

Return of Kings does, of course, deny misogyny. Yet the eight key beliefs themselves define women in terms that many women simply do not want for themselves and that is a big problem. No one gets to decide for others what their sex or gender roles should be, with whom they should sleep, or where their value primarily comes from. Threatened by a world in which their worldview is losing, they make up a code for reality whereby they are the rightful winners. Instead of Return of Kings, they should name their website Return to Infancy, where instead of a scepter, every man wields a baby's rattle.

To be clear, I am not saying there is anything wrong with being a man or woman who exemplifies, respectively, masculinity or femininity as traditionally defined. Nor am I saying that all arguments by feminists, gay rights advocates, etc. are above criticism. But Return of Kings makes it clear that there is a specific and very limited order to which people should conform, and for this I have only condemnation.

Also to be clear, I’m still exploring the manosphere as I write this. It appears that not all aspects of it are as backwards as Return of Kings. Poking around the Internet, I ran across this post by Kid Strangelove via Manosphere.com that isn’t all bad. The post raises ways traditional and emerging social practices adversely and unfairly affect men. Apparently, other environs in the manosphere skip the social commentary and agon in favor of simply celebrating traditionally masculine fashion, sports, etc. If you simply must participate, be vigilant. Compared to the darkness of Return of Kings, Maxim looks positively enlightened.

My advice to men threatened by powerful women, gay men and others who unsettle them is to improve themselves. Self-improvement already appears to be a big part of the manosphere’s philosophy, but the focus is often on getting “game” and it comes with an awful lot of hate: slut-shaming, fat-shaming, homophobia, etc. These would-be kings have discovered, as have many before them, that one of the easiest ways to feel good about oneself is to insult others. 

Even though Friedrich Nietzsche was not addressing gender roles when he formulated his idea of the Übermensh, I feel like it is instructive here. Übermensh is often translated as superman or overman. It designates a particular type of superior individual, which has unfortunately made it an attractive concept to every jackass looking for an authority to tell him he is better than everyone else.

The problem for those who use the idea of the Übermensh in this way is that the overman is defined by the strength to overcome him or herself. The Übermensh is so superior due to this ability to grow as a person that he or she does not need to lord it over anyone. In fact, as soon as you begin to do so, you immediately lose the right. If you would be über, my dear Mensch, then you must master thyself and look no further.

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