Yet There Is Method In It

I am quoting one of my favourite paragraphs from Notes from Underground. The narrator’s point of view, which he calls “underground”, is extreme philosophical scepticism. This has undermined all justification or motivation, so he doubts the value of his own actions. At the same time, he feels himself superior to normal “men of action” and consequently, he has the expectation of achieving something profound. But his scepticism makes this achievement impossible to define, let alone attain. The narrator also tries to state why “underground” is superior, by argument to the consequences. This is a classic argument when defending the “truth” of a belief but is technically a logical fallacy. Just try to search for “what does atheism have to offer” and “what does Christianity” have to offer, on the Internet. Of course, the narrator can’t sustain his argument from his sceptical point of view. He is caught forever between seeking for “truth” and of questioning if “truth” has any value. Anyway, over to Dostoyevsky:

The long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do nothing! Better conscious inertia! And so hurrah for underground! Though I have said that I envy the normal man to the last drop of my bile, yet I should not care to be in his place such as he is now (though I shall not cease envying him). No, no; anyway the underground life is more advantageous. There, at any rate, one can … Oh, but even now I am lying! I am lying because I know myself that it is not underground that is better, but something different, quite different, for which I am thirsting, but which I cannot find! Damn underground!

BTW, you can get the audiobook on librivox.

AC1

I have been watching the idiot box (the TV) recently. I saw “I ♥ Huckabees” (aka I Heart Huckabees), a comedy film about characters trying to find existential answers in their lives. I probably need to watch it again because it covers many topics in existentialism, almost too many – it discusses them without dwelling on them. And although many ideas are discussed, the characters barely have time to act on their situation based these ideas. Still, it has many funny moments. This film is philosophically self-conscious and tries very hard to be very existential (jargon is sometimes used to blind and confuse the audience) – this is almost the opposite of movie “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, which does not try hard enough to capture the philosophy of the original work!

Vivian Jaffe: What do you think would happen if you didn’t tell the stories? Are you being yourself?
Brad Stand: How am I not myself?
Bernard Jaffe: [musing on the question] How am I not myself?
Vivian Jaffe: [musing] How am I not myself?
Bernard Jaffe: [musing] How… am I not… myself?

Two main existential interpretations are presented: “everything is interconnected” optimism and “the world is full of pain” pessimism. The film doesn’t come to any firm conclusion on existentialism, which as appropriate for the topic, except to hint a middle way between the two extremes is a solution (rather like Aristotle’s golden mean, or Hegel’s synthesis). The topics discussed in the film tend to be late existential ideas (Sartre, Camus), while I have a personal preference for the early existential period (you know: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, etc.). “I ♥ Huckabees” is jargon heavy (almost it enjoys the sounds of the words rather than the just the concepts), while understanding the jargon is actually irrelevant to having an existential approach to life – although I guess the audience probably would not notice unless it was made explicitly clear. “Are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to the light ones?”

I recently finished “The Wire” series 2 and 3. It is a TV drama revolving around police work and organised crime in contemporary Baltimore – rather like LA Confidential meets Traffic. It is hard to overstate the quality of the series – intellectually and as a story. As William Julius Wilson said:

“[a]lthough The Wire is fiction, not a documentary, its depiction of systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the urban poor is more poignant and compelling [than] that of any published study, including [my] own.” Slate

Series 2 was notable in having multiple tragic characters that are worthy of a Shakespeare play. Tragedy as entertainment is a very interesting philosophical area – how does an audience derive pleasure from watching a sympathetic character’s downfall? and what does that tell us about the world? And after all the hard work of the police, are peoples lives any better? is the actual crime rate significantly changed? The Wire can be bleak on occasion! (“Listen carefully”)

Series 3 is more preachy than previous series, but it happens to be advancing an idea I agree with: drug legalisation (or pseudo-legalisation in this case). A senior police officer, approaching retirement with nothing to lose (or so he thinks), attempts a social experiment by tolerating drug dealing within certain limits. In the series, this reduces overall crime in his district, since the police have more time to solve other socially harmful crime while drug dealing is relocated outside occupied neighbourhoods. When the top level police and politicians find out, there is trouble… (If people think this wouldn’t work, remember the end of prohibition.)

Anti Citizen One

Continuing my haphazard series on existential films, there are a few movies that deserve a special mention. One of the foremost in artistic and philosophical scope is Malick’s The Thin Red Line (TTRL). It might be superficially considered a war film, but it is very distinct in its genre. I am hesitant to even label it a war film for that reason. The closest comparison might be made to Apocalypse Now with its examination of good and evil in each person (a la Heart of Darkness). TTRL strikes a different chord – one of life and death, creation and destruction, friendship and estrangement, loss of innocence and the value of individual people. The wandering style of the movie meant it never received much popularity and it was overshadowed by the much less interesting Saving Private Ryan (ok fans of TTRL are still bitter over that!).

The start references the beauty of nature and also the existence of suffering and death. This motif recurs thorough out the film. The camera often cuts in an action scene from fighting to an injured bird or an interesting plant. This links the moral evil in war with the natural evil in nature (and makes it the same thing, twice named).

[First lines] What’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two?

Aesthetic and moral considerations are shown as independent of life and death, as both are shown to have both ugly and beautiful, good and bad aspects. It reminds me of the beauty of seemingly trivial things and of death, as used in American Beauty. The beauty of death is also central plot point in TTRL, it is first verbally discussed and then directly experienced by a main character.

The value of individuals and organisation of individuals is an important theme in TTRL. The character Witt is shown to be a free spirit but also stating he loves his army company. “They are my people.” His commanding officer, Welsh, is generally a stone cold, pragmatic soldier – and a philosophical collectivist and pessimist. Welsh threatens Witt with punishment for is insubordinate behaviour. But even Welsh has moments of emotion, heroism and intimacy. Through the convoluted plot, these two repeatedly meet and trade a few words from their respective world views. Welsh argues, in a world gone mad, only institutions can make any meaningful difference. Witt’s diametrically opposite view is one man can make a difference, even in war – but personal relationships are also key.

Welsh: In this world, a man, himself – is nothing. And there ain’t no world but this one.
Witt: Your wrong there, Top. I’ve seen another world. Sometimes I think it was just my imagination.
Welsh: Well then you’ve seen things I never will.

Welsh: What difference do you think you can make, one man in all this madness?

Welsh: [looking down on grave] Where’s your spark now?

Welsh: They want you dead… or in their lie.

The film contrasts finding existential meaning with the arbitrariness of war and life. Welsh is a material pessimist, but unlike most other pessimists, he does not believe in an afterlife where justice will be done. This makes evil in the world without meaning, from his perspective. And evil is doubly unfair, as it harms people independently of circumstances, rather than as punishment for previous sins. “Every great pain, whether bodily or mental, states what we deserve; for it could not come to us if we did not deserve it.” Schopenhauer. With good and evil events seemingly having no teleological purpose, the characters are forced to independently find meaning to their actions.

Welsh: There’s not some other world out there where everything’s gonna be okay. There’s just this one, just this rock.

Storm: It makes no difference who you are, no matter how much training you got and the tougher guy you might be. When you’re at the wrong spot at the wrong time, you gonna get it.

TTRL examines themes of loyalty, friendship and love with several relationships being important to character and plot. Welsh, being an anti-individualist, makes this ironic observation:

Witt: Do you ever feel lonely?
Welsh: Only around people.

Witt: Everyone lookin’ for salvation by himself. Each like a coal thrown from the fire.

I have only scratched the surface of this film in this post, but it is worth multiple viewings. I love it and regard it as the greatest existential film (tied with Lost in Translation, at least from among those I have seen).

Anti Citizen One

PS Optical Illusions, seeing isn’t believing…

PPS Another top 10, completely different to my preferences. The Matrix is not really an existential film IMHO (except for about 2 lines, including “the matrix cannot tell you who you are”). And another top 10.

I have been recovering from a stomach thing (“the father of all afflictions”). The good news is I’ve read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. It was awesome, but certainly not light reading. I had maintained notes of approximately 50 recurring characters! For this literary genre, the length is second only to War and Peace. I mention this book on this philosophy blog as it is a dense philosophical and psychological work. Apart from the many moral situations faced by the characters, they are not afraid to discuss social, spiritual and philosophical issues in depth. Also, it is not obvious to me the author is pushing a particular agenda, although others have dismissed Dostoevsky as merely pushing orthodox christian propaganda. He seems to make a strong case for and against christianity and moral relativism.

The character Alexey (Alyosha) is perhaps the closest to the author’s ideal man, in this work. Prince Myshkin from this earlier book, The Idiot, is perhaps a higher ideal. But both love humanity and the world. Both are deeply religious and principled. They rush around trying to fix everything and usually, tragically fail (is this the author’s ideal!?). Indeed, Myshkin is driven to insanity by his high principles. Alexey keeps his head but is more human and more passionate than Myshkin. He is after all, the son of this father: the “sensualist” Fyodor Karamazov.

Ivan: “It’s a feature of the Karamazovs, it’s true, that thirst for life regardless of everything; you have it no doubt too, but why is it base?”

Alexey’s brother Ivan Karamazov is an intellectual, a strident moral relativist and possibly a strong atheist. His view is: given the rejection of God and an afterlife, the are no laws to say “love thy neighbour”, therefore “everything is lawful”. This brief expression, rather like a sound bite, borders on a false dichotomy, but Ivan (and the author) is smart enough to not over simplify. He is referring to the existential questions raised by the apparent absence of objective morality. When Ivan is attributed with “everything is lawful”, he said it plainer as “But in my wishes I reserved myself full latitude in the case”. Full latitude in this context includes murder or indeed any other action.

Rakitin: “And did you hear his [Ivan's] stupid theory just now: if there’s no immortality of the soul, then there’s no virtue, and everything is lawful?”

Ivan also states his parable of “The Grand Inquisitor”, in which Jesus returns to Earth, but is taken from the people by agents of organised religion and told he is now superfluous considering the current aims of the church. The inquisitor recalls the three temptations of Christ in the wilderness and which are metaphorically faced by the church. The church now chooses differently than Jesus’s choices in the biblical story. This amounts to an accusation of the atheism of organised religion. This chapter has been published separately from the rest of the book.

I was interested to read an expression of the eternal return, which just precedes Nietzsche’s statement in The Gay Science (1880 vs 1882). Although they seem to have expressed the same concept, the way the idea is described is strikingly similar. Dostoevsky has Ivan, driven towards insanity by (possibly misplaced) guilt, hallucinating a devil appearing and talking to him. Nietzsche also writes of a demon appearing at night to foretell the eternal return. Nietzsche appears to have discovered Dostoevsky between 1886 and 1888, based on his sudden gushing praise in Twilight of the Idols. Gypsy Scholar thinks they both may have found the idea in Heine.

Devil to Ivan: “Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may have been repeated a billion times. Why, it’s become extinct, been frozen; cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again ‘the water above the firmament,’ then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun it becomes earth — and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly and exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly and insufferably tedious…”

I mention this as the idea is given far higher weight in Nietzsche, being a central theme in Thus Spake Zarathustra. In Karamazov, the world view which Dostoevsky calls by short hand “underground” is touched upon, as Dimitri is faced with the possibility of being sent to Siberia for 20 years (singing hymns to God from underground). This was of course discussed in depth in Notes from Underground, which serves as a sort of preface to his longer masterpieces. I am inclined to think that Smerdyakov is the most underground character in the book, in competition with Rakitin and Ivan, on bad days.

Anti Citizen One

PS The Onion reports on a film adaptation of many peoples experience of the book…

I thought I would write a few random thoughts on The Open Society and Its Enemies by Popper. First off: it is excellent. It is a defence of democracy though an analysis of Plato’s The Republic. At times, it seems rather supportive of Socrates and mentions many occasions in which he was liabled by Plato. I am very suspicious of both because they are both philosophical idealists. Popper connects idealism to totalitarianism when applied to political problems (if I understand his point). He also restates the basis of humanitarianism because it was straw manned by Plato. Plato claims that egalitarianism is itself injustice as it treats naturally unequal things as equal – leading to social problems. I was very happy when Popper avoids this and avoids the is-ought problem and the naturalistic fallacy to say that it is individual demands that give the state legitimacy. Popper defines an open society if the government can be changed without recourse to violence. If the individual is forgotten by the state, it ceases to have a claim to justice. The analysis is very critical of Essentialism, Radicalism, Utopianism and supportive of gradual, piecemeal and empirical social change. The ultimate moral responsibility rests on individuals within the state – which is almost an existential basis for a state (strange but true). This interpretation is subtle – when the state is formed to reduce suffering, it is not because the ultimate judgement we make on the world is it is a suffering place. Nietzsche here would warm us of making judgements of that sort! (Fellow suffering is the “deepest abyss”.) But we can take measures as individuals, with our judgement being the “first motion” of ethics, and the judgement that we should help the suffering is contingent (and may change in time). This effect puts the doctors choice to be doctors as the basis of health care. Since their choice lead them to that vocation, it might be expected they have the self motivation to do a good job. If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. This is the antithesis of our customer and victim centred culture, of course!

I wonder what part 2 will be like? I love the title, also. I love emphasising the second part “… and its ENEMIES….”.

Anti Citizen One

Whilst staring at the stars the other day I entered into a reflection about Pascal’s Wager.

The wager in brief posits that reason is insufficient to prove the existence of God and thus provides no rational justification for belief, but this is a problem about the limits of reason, and not a negation of God. In the absence of reason then Pascal suggests that living one’s life as though God exists is possibly infinetely more rewarding (if said God does turn out to exist) as opposed to infinite recriminations if one lived life as though God didn’t exist only to discover that one is wrong.

There is a plethora of criticism attached to Pascal’s Wager from almost every philosophical position regarding God.

I personally think the Wager is often misunderstood or misinterpreted for specific philosophical ends. However the Wager is by its simplicity open to such attacks.

What is the wager? Well it certainly isn’t an attempt to prove the existence of God. God is merely a probability.

It is however two other things (other than an exercise in probability); firstly it is a proto-existential work (and is increasingly identified as such) for it attacks certainty and celebrates choice, secondly it is an ethical proposition, for if we expand the idea of ‘living as though God exists’ then we are making statements about what type of life ‘God’ wants us to live.

The first element is frequently neglected by Pascal’s critics (more of which in a moment). The second element is the main focus of such criticism.

Without going into any great detail the ethical element of the Wager leaves different people (theist and atheist alike) with a bad taste in their mouths. For even though Pascal was rejecting certainty and the role of reason in proving the existence of God, and even though God was reduced to a conceptual possibility, the promise of reward and its inverse the threat of punishment (the main ethical theme of the wager) is de facto heavily loaded with Judaeo-Christian assumptions about the nature and intention of God. However in his rejection of reason there is no attempt to validate or justify these assumptions.

One attempt may be suggested, an ontomystical justification. i.e. revelation. One may say that the assumptions that one has about God are based on revealed messages either personally recieved or generally read in scripture. This justification however collapses under the weight of cultural relativism, why should one revelation (i.e. Judaeo-Christian) be any more valid or acceptable than another (i.e. Hindu)?

The answer of course is that other than through cultural conditioning, there is no reason why one set of revelations should be more relevant than another.

This reflects another criticism of the Wager, that religious belief is not explicitly a conscious choice.

Yet this does not seem to me to completely kill the wager off. All it does is reflect the limitations of it. It is if you like a closed wager, it only works and its conclusions are only valid if one accepts the various underlying assumptions contained within it and just as importantly if one aspires to achieve the most desirable end result.

This last bit, the desire to achieve the most desirable end result smells a lot like utilitarianism and the felicific calculus. (1.How strong is the pleasure? 2. How long will it last? 3. How likely or unlikely will it occur? 4. How soon? 5. How often? 6. Or not. 7. How many will benefit?)

Dawkins in the God Delusion posited an anti-Pascal wager, which goes as follows “Suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that God exists. Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on his not existing, than if you bet on his existing and therefore squander your precious time on worshipping him, sacrificing to him, fighting and dying for him, etc.”

It does alas bore me, only because it says nothing that Pascal hadnt actually considered himself. Also the anti-wager again is a closed system, its conclusions work best when one accepts certain assumptions, and its most desirable end result (a better fuller life). Needless to say the latter, the most desirable end result relies upon the assumptions being acceptable in order to be desirable. In Dawkin’s case (without doing a deep analysis) one of the assumptive areas is that God-probability is minimal therefore maximal Godcentric-activity is a disproportionate use/waste of time.

I’m not however an enemy of the anti-wager. The anti-wager works just as well as the wager, as does any number of variations on the God-theme. In fact the wager can probably be rewritten and reformulated in any number of ways if one plays around with the necessary assumptions.

And this diversity is rather good. It reflects the existential character of it that is so often ignored.

It was the Utilitarian character of it that struck me most in my early reflections, or rather its Utilitarian and Hedonistic applications. If one rejects Pascal’s necessary assumptions his wager simply doesnt work (nor is it desirable). And it is quite possible a la Dawkins to formulate a different wager that is based upon a different set of ethical values and assumptions and desirable outcomes.

Whatever way it has no bearing upon the existence or non-existence of God (who remains in the wager game simply a probability). It does however belong to the field of ethics and existentialism and as such is probably worth a lot more attention than it gets.

I was originally going to call this post “Bentham’s Wager” to reflect the Hedonistic alternatives (life’s too short, live life to the full; eat, drink and be merry for tommorow we die; be prepared for you do not know when the hour will come, etc.) But I settled upon calling it Babe Ruth’s wager after the bachannalian and iconic Baseball player, who once when asked to expound upon his philosophy of life, and sport, declared:

“I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

MIAMI—As the Super Bowl captures the country’s attention, excitement over the NFL’s championship game is muted somewhat by the persistent question of whether winning, or losing for that matter, holds any absolute value—a question that has many football fans pondering the meaning of the game itself. The Onion

Previous part

Three Colours Blue A woman’s family are killed in a car crash. Being of independent means, she decides to exist without any personal attachments. They say “no man is an island” but she attempts to simply existing without desire or pain. A fine plan, at first, but she is faced by repeated, unintentional entanglements with people and she begins to lose her apathy. She is also haunted by a musical theme that her late husband (possibly) was composing for the unification of Europe and probably represents fraternity (of the French motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité). The film is themed on “liberty”, in opposition to fraternity and the tension between these conflicting goals is played out through the film. Philosophically, this story is attempting to avoid existential choices by escape into nihilism. (This film might be the polar opposite to Taxi Driver.)

Julie Vignon: Now I have only one thing left to do: nothing. I don’t want any belongings, any memories. No friends, no love. Those are all traps.

High Noon A recently resigned sheriff (Kane) gets married to a pacifist, only to discover that his nemesis Miller (and his goons) are arriving shortly by train. The town, although grateful for him bringing peace and order, tells him this is not his fight and giving him every opportunity and excuse to leave. Although his usual allies are originally keen to help, they equivocate and eventually beg to not be forced to assist the sheriff. Kane is forced to make a choice: to step away from the town he helped create, or to suicidally fight Miller’s gang alone. The choice is made existential as it is without public support, potentially risky/fatal and motivated by personal values. I hear the film is also an allegory of McCarthyism and the failure of Hollywood to stand in solidarity.

Martin: You risk your skin catching killers and the juries turn them loose so they can come back and shoot at you again. If you’re honest you’re poor your whole life and in the end you wind up dying all alone on some dirty street. For what? For nothing. For a tin star.

See also: 13th Floor, eXistenZ

To be continued…

I recently finished Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Emerson. It was well worth reading. Emerson was ordained as a pastor but distanced himself from institutional religion. He developed his ideas of transcendentalism and the value of the individual. He utilizes paradoxes in writing and his call for to me at peace with your own nature puts him as a precursor to existentialism. (He is a contemporary of Kierkegaard but I am not aware of any cross influence. Nietzsche did read Emerson but probably not Kierkegaard.)

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

In his iconoclastic “Divinity School Address” he calls for ministers to use ones own instinct to reinterpret religious teaching and not to rely in previous experts to define doctrine that is set in stone.

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man [Jesus] is made the injurer of man.

Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.

They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.

As you can probably tell, his writing style is very quotable. But it takes a surprise effort to read, as his sentences tend to be fairly lengthy. This is not ideal for scan readers. In agreement with Kierkegaard, he does think there is an objective (and transcendental) truth behind everything. But the unknowableness of this objective truth makes it rather superfluous to my mind.

Anti Citizen One

Previous part

Rope Two anti-heros execute a murder as a form of art. They consider them superior beings that are not restricted by conventional morality. They host a party as a sort of game, to see if their friends will suspect them of murder. Their former mentor, invited to the party, was an advocate of this type of action, at least in principle. When he discovers the truth, he thanks them for putting him to the test, and U turns to claim the murders are evil. The film being produced in 1948, Hollywood films were not permitted to let the anti-heros win or escape “justice”. The film conveniently overlooks the choice faced by their mentor, Rupert Cadell: to approve of the murder as art or to personally inform the police, and therefore have then tried, judged and executed. This makes Rupert an approver of killing or an actual killer (but state sanctioned in the latter case).

Lost in Translation This film is perhaps the most direct treatment of enui and existentialism that I have seen. Two characters, who are “lost souls” and who’s marriages are in doubt have a chance meeting in Tokyo. Through their unlikely friendship, they struggle against boredom, insomnia and anxiety of the future. The message, in my view, is that their lives might be otherwise meaningless, but their friendship in that time and place was something worth valuing. Although the characters are usually alienated by Japanese culture, the aesthetic of the movie is in accord with Wabi-sabi (the acceptance of the transience of things).

Lydia Harris: Did you like any of the other colors?
Bob: Whatever you like – I’m just completely lost.

Bob: [picks up Charlotte's CD] Whose is this? “A Soul’s Search: Finding Your True Calling.”
Charlotte: [evasively] I don’t know.
Bob: I have that.

Charlotte: Does it get easier?
Bob: No. [pause] Yes. It gets easier.
Charlotte: (sarcastically) Oh, yeah? Look at you.
Bob: Thanks. [Chuckles]
Bob: The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.
Charlotte: I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be.

Blade Runner has many elements that raise identity and existential questions; in fact too many to list here. I will list a few provisional examples. A few characters discover or suspect their memories are artificial implants. Since our values are generally based on past events and experience, the loss of one’s past throws the basis of all future actions into unknown territory. Also, “appropriate” relationships between machines and humans, and between each other, has not been defined to any great extent in contemporary culture – the movie has several relationships that are perhaps unsettling in this regard. Finally, the movie has a memorable “anti-villian”, Roy, who is merely trying to stay alive and preserve lives of others. The “anti-hero” Deckard ends up questioning his orders to kill replicants on sight, including possibly Rachael – his robotic love interest.

Rachael to Deckard: You know that Voigt-Kampf test of yours? Did you ever take that test yourself?

Deckard: How can it not know what it is?

Groundhog Day is often cited as an existential movie and with good reason. Phil is confronted with reliving the “worst” day of his life a seemingly endless number of times. He can remember the whole experience, but everyone else doesn’t notice anything unusual. The writers speculated that he experiences the same day for 10,000 years. He soon realises that no action he takes has long term consequences and seemingly has no meaning. Hilarity ensues! (It’s Bill Murrey after all). His experience is similar to Camus’s analysis of Sisyphus being force to eternally roll a stone to the top of a mountain, only to see it roll to the base again. According to Camus, he is happy rolling his stone. By appreciating life in the moment, there is no expectation of a better life. A person’s attitude to life is simply a consequence of physiology.

Footnote: Groundhog day is occasionally mentioned in connection to the concept of the eternal return. Although the protagonist faces the possibility of him experiencing it, he only returns a finite number of times (in the movie anyway) and there is reality outside the “ring”. I hear that the movie K-Pax mentions the possibility of the eternal return in a more strict sense. It’s on my to do list.

[Phil explains how he spends eternity on trivialities.]
Rita: Is this what you do with eternity?
Phil: Now you know. That’s not the worst part.
Rita: What’s the worst part?
Phil: The worst part is that tomorrow you will have forgotten all about this and you’ll treat me like a jerk again. It’s all right. I am a jerk.
Rita: You’re not.
Phil: It doesn’t make any difference. I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t even exist anymore.
Rita: Sometimes I wish I had a thousand lifetimes. I don’t know, Phil. Maybe it’s not a curse. It just depends on how you look at it.
Phil: Gosh, you’re an upbeat lady!

To be continued…

In other news: When religion and games intersect—and how it often goes badly