Cartoons and Nihilism
Greetings, my name is Cesar and I want you to think about a cartoon you loved as a child. Did that cartoon had a villain or a character that was psychotic in a sense? From their perspective, what do you think their meaning in life was? Your responses might’ve been, just to spread chaos or doesn’t really care about life and every living being or they don’t have a clear role in life. All they believe in is just chaos and that there is no consequences for their action. Characters like these interest me ever since I started watching cartoons and I often pondered about why they do the things they do. What is the main inspiration of these cartoon villains and characters? Why do they all share the same view and basically the same goal? I sought to answer these questions and expand my knowledge on these types of characters. The more I examined these Vile and Chaotic characters I discovered something. They all behave as if every decision they make don’t matter and they are just doing it to avoid a truth in life or because they are just bored. People who behave like this are known as a Nihilist. Nihilist is someone who believes or follows the belief of Nihilism. Nihilism is the belief of rejecting all moral principles and religions, because they believe life is ultimately meaningless. One might think that building a character on this belief will make them a generic and bland character, but actually it’s the opposite. Characters like these are extremely interesting, because it leaves them with a motivation that can be relatable at times. Those motivations being loneliness, life is basically nothing, or trying to find a meaning in life. Back then, authors wrote about the character vs the environment or a political issue. Nowadays, we get things like character vs God, character vs self, or character vs life. All of these are basically the same thing. All of these things mock life and everything along with it. We now have stories that revolve around the belief of Nihilism. Years ago, we thought the universe revolves around us human beings. However, the more we understand about the universe, the more we understand that we are nothing more than a useless speck of dust in a forever expanding and dying universe. The more we realize that life’s biggest joke is that life is meaningless. Now this project is not meant to shut you down and tell you that life is meaningless, in fact we still don’t know what the meaning of life is. I am simply expanding your view on life. We usually are set with one view on life and we stay with that one view. However, we can not simply choose option 1 over 2, without examining 2. I want this project to give you beautiful people another view on life and that there are many interpretations of life. Hopefully, at the end of this project you have learned another view in life. Regardless, I have developed a clear and orderly plan to successfully teach you wonderful people about Cartoons and Nihilism. Each week I have made different questions and it’s up to me to find the answer to that question. For week one, the questions are: What is Nihilism? Who coined Nihilism? What is the history behind Nihilism? Then I simply have to search for the answer and briefly summarize my findings in a separate document with all my sources. For week two, the question is: What are the three main branches of Nihilism and who coined these branches? During this week, I will tackle on the three main branches of Nihilism in which I know one right off the bat, Existential Nihilism. Also during this week, I will start to find pictures that perfectly depict Nihilism. For week three, the questions are: Briefly summarize and find a cartoon character that best fits these main branches. This week in my opinion will be the hardest, but also the funnest week. The hard part is to find a character that best depicts the specific branch of Nihilism. The fun part is finding the character that best depicts the specific branch and explain why they fit that certain branch. Now for Week four and five, they are no longer questions but more or less goals I have to complete for the final weeks. For week four, work on conclusion and start simplifying my findings to the masses. This is where I start cutting some parts of my research and actually creating my script for my TED-talk and trying to make sure that people know what I am saying, not to mention try to make it funny. For week five, Edit any mistakes in the script and bash it into my brain, also work on final surprise. Simple rehearse week where I start to practice what I say and make sure to look for spelling errors or grammar mistakes. The surprise thing, yeah it’s a surprise I’m not gonna spoil it. Some may doubt about my plan, but I assure you it will work well for me. My Rationale for my plan is this, twice a week I will research additional notes on Nihilism and answer every question stated. Not to mention this plan also allows me to have a moderate amount of time to complete the project, while completing other projects from my other classes. I believe that within this amount of time, I will complete the project along with my other projects. As of now, I will begin to tackle my first question and write down my notes on it.
Progress Post 1:
The project is steadily moving along and I have finished the first phase of the project and I have just begun the second phase. My organized format I made for this project is working surprisingly well. Focusing on a question for each week and coming up with a well thought out answer that is both long and an accurate response to the question. Phase one of the project was all about the basics of Nihilism trying to understand the basics of the philosophy and the history behind the belief. It was overall pretty easy to understand, because I already knew a good chunk of the belief. Phase one gave me a better understanding of the belief and I now know the origins behind the belief. With my organize format and me easily finishing Phase one I have high hopes that I can finish this project quickly.
My format is pretty easy to understand and gives me the results I need. There are four categories in the format, the question, the answer, additional notes, and resources. The question category are questions I made for this project and as a way to help me start writing and find the answer for other questions about the subject. For example, Phase one’s question ask the basic question of Nihilism, but I add two more questions that I genuinely wanted to know and add to the project. Those questions were, who invented Nihilism and the history behind Nihilism. These questions made researching Nihilism so much easier and the whole project easier. It gave me a starting point for project and all I have to do is just build off the question and come up with a well thought out answer. If I were to not use this method, I would be picking out little facts of Nihilism that don’t properly transition from one subject to the other. The next category is the answer, or the place where I write my response . Pretty simple, this is where I record my findings and I try to come up with the best response. This will therefore give me a better understanding of the subject and an easier time simplifying my answer. The third category is additional notes, very straightforward any facts that I find that don’t relate to the question or answer will go in this category. The fourth category is my sources, this category holds all the website and sources I used when I was searching for the answer. This, in my opinion, was the hardest and the most annoying part of the project. Websites on philosophy are hard to come across and that there is only a handful of trustworthy sources that can give me the information I need. To add on, majority of the reliable sources are books that I don’t have. Yes, I can preview the book online, but it only gives me a few pages. I honestly rather get a physical copy of the book with all the pages. Regardless, sources were rather hard to find and I end up going back to sources I already used. However, I will persist and continue to find trustworthy sources no matter how rare it is to encounter them.
Progress Post 2:
I am now officially half way throw the project and I have reached funnest part of the project, looking up and analyzing cartoon characters that fit the branches of Nihilism. So far, I found some potential candidates for Nihilism and I am currently analyzing how they function and explaining why they are Nihilist. This is also naturally the hardest part of the project, because I have to find a character that accurately represents the branch and explain why. Trying to dissect the character bit by bit and trying to find an accurate example clearly showing that they are Nihilists really annoys me and will take really long.
This is the funnest part, because I take any cartoon character I want and I can take any recommendations from anyone and gladly dissect the character for them. As I take apart these characters the more and more I realize this is how you create an interesting and compelling character. For example, the Joker from the Batman series is a very complicated character as is. However, the more I went into his past and actions, it made me love him even more as a character. The more complicated the character and the more compelling and interesting the character becomes. Every time I found something that made him a Nihilist open my views on the character and I couldn’t help but find him as one of the best written characters ever. How did a clown prankster turn into a homicidal Nihilist that exist to bring chaos and “laughter” around Gotham.
However, this is the hardest part, because of how much research went into understanding these characters. I had to read article after article about what is Nihilism and its many branches. Then I had to read article after article to understand a certain branch. Even then, those articles were hard to find from trust worthy sources. Bringing up the Joker, because he is the only character I finished analyzing, it was so aggravating trying to find evidence that clearly shows he was a Nihilist and trying to find the right Nihilist article that can help me prove he is so. Its so time consuming and at certain points I just wanted to give up and move on to the next character on the list. However, I manage to pull through and complete his analysis. However, the pain won’t stop, I still have more characters to complete and analyze, there is no time for stopping.
Progress Report 3:
I have completed all of my notes taken on the project and I am ready to create my presentation. All the characters I have chosen have been broken down and explained, some of these characters you do know and some of these characters you don’t know. So far, I am honestly proud of the work I have done. Just because I’m feeling good and I want to show you lovely people the work of done here are some characters and screenshots from my note document.
As you can see, in some of my notes it can short or long, emotional or non-emotional. I have full control over my project and I have the right to write it in any way I want. You can also see in these screenshots, I have started to make my analysis comedic. Making my analysis comedic was really fun in my opinion. I can show videos to prove my point and I can rant about the character’s decision and how messed it is. I really enjoyed analyzing Ren and Stimpy, because they are already messed up as is and it made me laugh every time I tried to explain their actions and looking for evidence to prove they are Nihilist. However, at the cost of doing something so fun and hilarious, I had to cut things short. My little surprise had to be cut because it would take too long and not to mention some characters I wanted to be in the presentation had to be cut because it will also be too long. I need to make this project perfect and as short as possible. Adding on too many things will slow me down and I won’t have time for working on my presentation. With that being said, I am currently working on simplifying my answers and just about to start my presentation and I’m gonna have to stop typing here.
Final Post:
Hello my name is Cesar Meza and I want you to think of a villain or a chaotic character from fiction. Does that character have a meaning in life? Does that character want to destroy everything in sight? Does that character believe in morals? If you answered yes to all of these questions, then the character you have chosen is a Nihilist. A Nihilist is a person who believes life is overall meaningless and reject all things morals. For my passion project I wanted to build a bridge between Nihilism and Fiction. This idea was formed way back in the summer of 2018 when I had nothing else to do except watch cartoons, read comic books, play video games, and dive into philosophy. One day while I was galavanting, I found a video about Nihilism and two certain cartoon characters. The video was mildly entertaining and gave me a new view on life and it surprised me that two famous cartoon characters are destructive in nature and have no exact meaning in life. One of these characters didn’t even look or act like a Nihilist. However, the evidence he presented clearly show he was Nihilist. This then got me thinking, there has to be more character that were secretly Nihilist. So when this opportunity was presented to me, I knew exactly what to do. At first, I wanted to do only cartoon character, but then I started diving into different continuities, like comics, movies, and books. Then I just changed it to Nihilism in Fiction. I did not find this change as a bad thing, if anything, I found it as a great change for my project. This now allowed me to widen my horizon and gave me even more characters to that they are Nihilist. While I was researching and finishing this project I learned about another view on life. When we are born we are taught by our parents certain beliefs and we end up following said belief. However, we are rarely taught about other beliefs and views on life. This project made me see that life is endless and that it is meaningless to give life a meaning, because life in fact has infinite meanings, it just all depends on how you view life. You can be a Nihilist and say its meaningless and that we should destroy everything in site. You can be a Religious person and say it was a gift and that we should appreciate what God or whoever the heck gave it to us. You can be like me and appreciate the life you were given and wait till you die to see who was correct, the Atheist, the Buddhist, the Catholic, or the Islamic.
To do this project, I first needed to understand Nihilism as a whole and the three main branches I choose. For the first week of my project I had to answer these questions, “What is Nihilism? Who coined it? What is the history behind it?” With some research and some prior knowledge on the subject I wrote about a one page answer describing Nihilism and the history behind it. To summarize my findings, Nihilism was popularized by the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche or the man who invented the Ubermensch Philosophy which can be translated to the Superman Philosophy. Nietzsche stated that that morals were invented by human beings to keep us away from Nihilism and lead us down a path of chaos and destruction. He constantly brought this up in his books trying to prevent the extinction of humanity and perfecting humanity as a whole. Some people like Max Stirner, another philosopher, states that, “Individual freedom is the only law; and the state, which necessarily imperils freedom, must be destroyed and existence is an endless war of each against all”. To simplify Stirner’s view, he says that our life is the law and that anything that opposes our goal in life should be destroyed. He describes existence as an endless war between humanity and life itself. He argues that morals and laws restrict us from our true purpose in life, therefore restricting us from our creativity and knowledge. To win the war against existence, we must first demolish our morals and laws to give us the upper hand in the war and find the true meaning of life. After I looked at different views in Nihilism I then started my research on the three main branches of Nihilism: Existential, Moral, and Epistemological. Existential Nihilism are people who try to search a meaning for themselves in such a cruel and chaotic world. Moral Nihilist believe that every moral decision we make is overall pointless and that our decisions won’t matter in the end. For example, a moral Nihilist can go on a genocidal rampage and doesn’t care about it. A Epistemological Nihilist will search for knowledge of the universe and life. This search for knowledge is basically their meaning in life and can be related to existentialism. Sadly, even though it is a major branch of Nihilism, there is not enough information to further expand on Epistemological Nihilism. While I was researching, my mind started to open up and I realized that life is basically infinite. The many beliefs I was taught in middle school combined with my research on Nihilism, I learned that there is no exact meaning in life. It is up to us as human beings to find our own meaning. We all can’t follow one meaning, we all have to find our own purpose in life by any means necessary. Something has put us on this planet to achieve something and see it through till the end. We as human beings have been given this thing called freewill. The thing that gave us life wanted us to use freewill and express it by using anything. People expressed their life and meaning through countless pieces of art like, movies, pictures, games, and even drawings on a simple piece of paper. When I encountered the different views on Nihilism and its multiple trees it solidified my idea of life being infinite and it meaningless to find an exact meaning. Life is absolutely random and chaotic and you can’t really analyze or simplify something that is already chaotic by nature. The only way to live with something chaotic is to deal with it. Everything is not perfect and there is no reason to be perfect. If life’s not perfect, then your not perfect. In this infinite existence, perfection is a myth and chaos rules all. With life being chaotic and infinite by nature, it is really hard and impossible to find a meaning of all of life. Instead, its best to find a meaning for yourself and not life in general. Some people may claim they have no reason to live, by they do have a reason to live. They just haven’t found their meaning yet or they do have a meaning and they just haven’t found out yet. No religion is right or wrong, because we don’t honestly know if they are truly right. All we really have is a couple of miraculous and a book that records the words of a mighty prophet. Was that prophet right, we don’t know. Maybe that prophet was lying the entire time and were just following him just for fun, we don’t know. However, what we know is this, life in general is meaningless, but our individual lives are not.
Now that I had a good understanding of the branches of Nihilism, it was about time to look at some of my mine, and hopefully your, favorite characters from fiction. First, I selected a few characters I loved and are overall chaotic and destructive in nature, with some exceptions. An example of the characters I choose was the Joker from the Batman Series. If you think about it, bronze age joker, or modern age joker, only has one inherited meaning in life, to drive batman mad and insane. He wants batman to suffer like he has and drive him completely made like him. Joker serves as a foil to batman as a way to show that if batman were to give in into his rage and vengeance will only make him become Joker. Joker does this multiple times throughout the comics, cartoons, and even in movies. He will kill people in front of their love ones and even Batman to prove a point. He will make very complex and elaborate decisions and puzzle that will break the bat. In the mini cartoon movie saga called, Return of the Batman, at the end of Part 1, when Joker hears that Batman has return he smiled once again and gets excited to terrorized the Bat. Before this, he was dull and did not even express a single emotion. He no longer had a meaning, because the Batman was gone. In part 2, he states that their meant to be together and that they can’t exist without each other. Joker is an Existential Nihilist, because his only meaning is to kill the Batman and when that goal is gone there is nothing else for him to do. Nothing can bring him happiness and the only thing that can fill that void in him is the Batman. Two other characters I choose was The butter robot and the Meeseeks from Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty are perfectly representation of Nihilism, because of how much chaotic characters and environments in the series. Not to mention Rick is a great character in general, more on him later. However, I came not to talk about the show, but two of my favorite minor characters, Butterbot and the Meeseeks, sounds like a terrible rock band. First, let’s tackle on the butterbot, his only meaning in life is to past freaking butter. Once he found out his exist is meaningless, he simply says the famous words of, “Oh my God”. This bot had one meaning and it got shot down right in front of him. The bot now has no meaning and is now disillusion, because of Rick being Rick. Now the character is not a Nihilist, but this is how the show depicts Existential Nihilist. An existential Nihilist has their meaning set out and has something to motivate them in this universe, via religion or a really hard goal to achieve. However, if they find out their goal does not exist or is unachievable they will break down and have this lovely thing called, Existential Crisis. Now they have no meaning there are only a handful options left. One of the options is how the Meeseeks react when their goal wasn’t achieve. They start screaming out that they want to die and began to kill each other and eventually have a new goal of forcing Jerry to get a hole in one. Meeseeks are created to complete a certain task and once that task is complete, they just stop existing. However, if the goal isn’t complete the Meeseek will continue to exist. If your meaning in life is to do a single thing and that task is complete or isn’t complete, there are only two options. Try to find another meaning for yourself or off yourself. In the eyes of an existential Nihilist, if one has served their purpose in life or that their meaning is a lie these are the two options. They usually go for option two, because it find it as the easiest thing to do and they try to do option one, and it sometimes work. At the end of the episode, the meeseeks are released from their torment and are happy to stop existing. This was just the first character I analyzed in the project and while I was analyzing I started to ponder about people who have the same goal as the Joker. People who have one view and purpose in life and what happens if they complete their goal. They just become an empty shell of what they use to be and they just accept that their life no longer have meaning. If a person completed their goal, they will be happy that they have achieved their goal and that they can finally relax. Their goal may be complete, but they still have a life ahead of them and they don’t know what to do. Their life becomes meaningless and they no longer value life as is. They instead find life as a burden and only have a few options left for them. You can’t help but feel bad for Existential Nihilist. Without a goal their life is meaningless and there is no reason for them to continue. They will end up reacting like the Meeseeks in Rick and Morty, they would want to end their life and beg for sweet release. It made me think that Nihilism is not only a chaotic and destructive belief, but a really sad one as well. These people are Nihilist, because life has not treat them kindly and this is their way in responding that life is overall cruel and unjust. Some people will get the highs of life, while some people are left in the dust and suffer the worst in life. Just like the Joker stated in the Killing Joke, “All it takes is just one bad day”. All it takes is one bad day to change someone’s view on life and find out that life is overall meaningless. Nihilist are people who want to get back at life and as Stiner argued, “existence is an endless war of each against all”. Nihilist are the fighters in this war and want to prove once and for all life is meaningless. While researching my cartoon characters, I started to ponder again about existence and the infinite possibilities. Ever since we were born we have been fighting something our entire life, that thing is life. Life is neither friend or foe, because life is chaotic and random. We were taught to appreciate life and all of its glory and we should still. However, we have to admit that life is never what it seems. The only way to describe life and existence is that its random. You have a chance of life being absolutely horrible and you can’t help but get back at it. These characters I have chosen had that unlucky role and have engaged in head on combat with life. They will do anything to prove that life is meaningless and that morals, religion, and laws are just things that hold us back from our true chaotic nature. While researching these characters I genuinely thought that life is evil and chaotic and the only way to survive is to embrace this. However, I was taught that peace and tranquility is the only way to survive in this life. I was taught to appreciate life and that chaos and destruction was not a viable answer in this world. While researching my view of life changed, life is equinox with peace and destruction, balance and chaos, good and evil. For one to truly survive life and find meaning, one must embrace both. One must find balance between the chaos and order to end the war with life. These characters help me see what happens if one truly embraces one side of life. Characters like Carnage, Joker, and Rick embraced the chaos of the life. However, Characters who are light shining in darkness, like Superman, Spiderman, and any other uplifting characters embrace the order. However, one character that I truly believe embraces both is Deadpool. Deadpool in some story lines, like the recent sad clown line perfectly show the order in Deadpool and the chaos in Deadpool. He is an accurate representation of what life truly is. Life is nothing more than an equinox between order and chaos, yin and yang, good and evil.
Overall, Nihilism in fictions have helped me understand another interpretation on life. At first, I just wanted to show how to create an interesting and depth character. However, this soon developed into me searching a new answer in life. Nihilism have many branches and what I just showed you were the tip of the iceberg. There are more out there and each one of them are meant to prove something wrong about life. I also showed you famous fictional characters that are possibly Nihilist and with evidence from different continuity showing they are. Finally, I showed you throughout this project my view on life has changed, because of this project. It is wrong to call life one thing and that it is overall meaningless. Life is in fact infinite and the meaning all depends on you as an individual. Don’t think of life as a whole, but think of it as a singular thing from your point of view. Don’t think about everyone else, but think about only yourself and how you view it. Life is neither good or bad, but both. For one to truly embrace and live life, one must accept the evil and the good in this world. One must accept the good and evil within you. In the end, we all share one thing in life, our goal. Our goal in life is to live and enjoy life. Some may say, “You only live once”. Some may say that you will a new life. However, we don’t surely know what lies at the end of life. All we know is live it to the fullest and in the end we will all know what lies at the end of life.
