Death in Rick and Morty | A Philosopher Reacts

What's up, joking Michael, here to try to prove to me and my mother once again that I didn't, in fact, waste my 20s studying the work of dead

philosopher

s while my friends achieved financial stability and bought houses for their burgeoning families, so So for this round we wanted to revisit a staple and something everyone asked us to cover in Rick and Morty season 4. Now the show deals with a lot of philosophical themes, but I want to focus on one that is very present in season 4 and is one of my favorites.

death

, so let's channel our inner goths and get into this philosophy reacting to the fourth season of Rick and Morty, as always, there are spoilers ahead before we get into this, I want to take a second to talk about the Patreon jokes and how They can help you stay away from them. the kind of all-encompassing existential despair that we'll talk about in today's video because existence can be difficult and sometimes it's the little things that keep us going.

Prank users get awesome benefits like early access to ad-free versions of everyone. of our videos, a private discord server for prank fans to hang out and chat about everything from memes to favorite fast food, philosophy, and regular users-only streams where we chat about recent prank content, upcoming videos, and talk with users about what they are currently doing. read, watch and eat, and memberships start at just two dollars, which is just eight quarters of the best of the entire community you'll find on the jokes patreon will save you from complete existential dread as you ponder the possibility of being alone in universe and if that doesn't work at least you can distract yourself with all the bonus content so head over to patreon.comwisecrack today to watch it now let's get back to the show and now let's take a look at the first episode where Morty gets his hands on some

death

crystals that allow you to see how and when you will die based on the decisions you make, obviously this is going to end well, let's watch the clip.

Do they kill you? You're thinking about bullets. Morty's Death Crystals show you how. You are going to die, Jesus Christ, I die a million times, your future comes from your present, which if you live well it keeps changing, okay, now I really like this death crystal thing, since it gives me an excuse to talk about one of my favorite

philosopher

s. Kierkegaard, on the one hand, was obsessed with death and this obsession made its way into his philosophy. One of his books is called The Sickness of Death, which instead of being a study of the pandemics of the 19th century, was about a disease with which he believes we are all infected. of the despair of birth and unfortunately there is no vaccine for this for Kierkegaard's despair makes us walk like balls of tension trapped between all the freedom and wonder that our big brains are capable of and the cold need that we still have to eat and sleep and one day Die because of this we exist in the present moment and at the same time we are aware of all our future possibilities and Morty's crystals make all of this literal.

He allows himself to be seduced by the possibilities of the future without taking into account what his actions mean in the present and that is even later. his grandfather tries to hit him with some wisdom, the truth is that anyone who knows how they are going to die is definitely very boring or about to be shut down, okay, um, for kierkegaard, this is actually true what

rick

said, anyone Let him know how you are going to die and lose what makes us human, which is our freedom. Well, now Kierkegaard probably wasn't considering death crystals when he argued that, but to embrace our humanity we have to accept all the incredible unknown possibilities, including the fact that your high school crush will do it. one day sobs over your dying body and the depressing reality that we are all going to die one way or another Rick, on the other hand, and this is strange, shows a relatively healthy understanding of our relationship with death, warns Morty not to become obsessed with its inevitability. because it recognizes that the self is a balancing act between a healthy acceptance of our mortality and the freedom to continue living our lives, okay, let's move on, just use this to win fights, I don't use them, people who spend their lives . avoiding death they are already dead they are rich too and I like to spend my life with their money oh my god jessica oh I love that people who spend their life avoiding death are already dead that's okay besides being a great yearbook quote from last year

rick

's advice here really vibes with kierkegaard's discussion of despair because when trying to avoid death you end up sacrificing your freedom which leads to a lot of despair and in other words when you try to avoid death you actually you're avoiding living your life and obsessing over how his life will end

morty

will miss out on everything potentially good about his present you'll be much happier if you focus on the moment instead of how you're going to die who's worried about that rick once again ?

It's right when you can't live life in the moment your life is going to be miserable for Kierkegaard this idea of ​​the moment is crucial to how we understand our existence because when we focus on living in the moment we don't worry about a future that we can't control or get depressed. thinking about a past we can't remake obviously at this point in the episode

morty

still hasn't learned anything although for once rick is giving advice that isn't just cold cosmic nihilism so let's move on to the end after all the death and destruction To see what happens when our guys are safe in the garage, let's see what they've learned.

Hey, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you and I tried to kill the whole world and stuff, I guess I have to learn to live in the moment a little more, oh boy, so you really learned something today, what is this full house where I was living in the moment all day and the Nazis kept killing me? I think you have to think about the future and live in the moment once again. He is right. He's telling Morty to think about his life both in terms of what's happening now and what the future holds. For Kierkegaard, death crystals would probably seem to allow.

One of our worst tendencies is to obsess over all the possibilities of the future instead of narrowing them down and deciding to do something different. If you're obsessed with a non-existent future Jessica, you might miss the real Jessica right in front of you. Of you, a bunch of us girls, we were going to go skinny dipping later if you wanted to join in, no thanks, I guess maybe we'll get together when we're 40, if desperation is an obsession with infinite possibilities, how to get over this is to reduce it. to a possibility and then actualize it in the moment, i.e. maybe don't turn down the opportunity to date your crush just because a death crystal tells you to avoid it, so you'll die with them in 70 years , so it's great that Morty realized this, not so great that he realized this after basically becoming a domestic terrorist.

Now the exploration of death continues in episode 2 of the season, where an encounter between Rick and an invading killjoy on his sanitary planet forces them both to think about what the point of our existence really is, okay, let's start at the Rick's poop planet right after he suspects someone else is using his secret bathroom, reverse digestion, extrapolation time to meet your maker, oh boy, now Rick understands something super important here, every philosopher probably does. they have made. several times, so is there at least something vaguely philosophical about needing to defecate? Okay, no, no, that's not philosophical at all, so let's catch up with Rick after he goes and locates his ghost killjoy.

You dropped that. I'll have to call you again. Where do you want to die? Life has been hollow since I lost it. Using your bathroom was nice, although I'm a little shy. I'm so sad I'm ready when you are. Wow um and he yells at you. Any shy killjoys watching this we see you and we respect you so Tony who is our bathroom thief thinks he's about to die and I don't know about you but if that were me he would be really scared. I don't want to die yet, but as many philosophers have pointed out, going back to Socrates, it's a little stupid to be afraid of death because why would we be afraid of something we've never experienced? that something tasted disgusting before we had a chance to eat it, so why would you be afraid of death if you haven't died now?

A more appropriate response to death and maybe what Tony is really going through here is anxiety, now this is happening. It's a state of mind explored by our friend Kierkegaard and later by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who is not our friend at all and you can Google him to find out why, but Heidegger thought that the real task of philosophy was to think about which means that our lives are one way trips to the grave now heidegger called this being towards death and this being towards death seems to be what tony begins to experience here when he assumes that rick is about to kill him now heidegger thought that when we face the fact of our dying we become anxious and this anxiety differs from fear because we fear something decisive like Rick's fear of letting Tony in as a real friend.

Now anxiety, on the other hand, does not have a fixed object, it is like a total existential state of mind, as existence is. The pain in me seeks a language now for Heidegger In anxiety we come face to face with our true selves and block out all the day-to-day nonsense that distracts us from really thinking about our existence, so anxiety turns out to be a species from The Good and for Tony it seems that his anxiety has shown him that his authentic existence has a lot to do with pooping in privacy and being proud of it.

You know what it's like to poop shy, Rick, it's a futile bid for control, you want to take the right one. part of the life that you truly believe is yours and you want to protect it from a universe that takes what it wants, it took my wife, it clearly took something from you, we can spend our lives fighting it, but we can choose to be free, I'm not kidding , that's legitimately beautiful when Tony says that we can choose to be free, he's not just talking about pooping, he's addressing the relationship between how we think about death and our own freedom, and this is something that was crucial for Heidegger, who thought . freedom really only comes through the recognition of our mortality now Tony seems to take this seriously and from this he seems to overcome his death anxiety so he can truly live at least until we move on and see Tony dead, excuse me. he quit his job he started living life to the fullest he crashed into a tree space skiing mountain space everest mountain space space everest okay uh Jesus I have to process this okay um r.p.p. tony obviously but it sounds cliche to say that everyone dies but not everyone really lives but like other famous cliches, the broken clock can still write twice a day, a dog in a hat is better than a fish on the end , you know the way to go, if you know the way to brew two beers before breakfast, you'll master that math. proves that there is truth in this now for heidegger we can only live an authentic life if we face the reality of death and find meaning in our lives despite it it is that anxiety thing that we already talked about and tony seems to have embraced his life and He spent the past doing things that had meaning to him, like base skiing and riding space Everest, without the fear of death stopping him and I'm sure that's what Rick will take away from this whole experience, so let's see what lessons he learned over there.

There's our guy, congratulations Tony, enjoy using it all by yourself while you sit there and think about how no one wants to be around you and how you ruined it because you're a big piece of shit. Look at you sitting there like king on your throne of loneliness the saddest piece of trash in the entire cosmos well that's legit very sad it seems like Rick didn't really learn much here or at least Tony didn't inspire him to start living his life, although to be fair, a lot of my favorite philosophers are miserable pieces so maybe rick is ultimately living too philosophically or something or maybe I'm just idealizing toxic intellectual father figures to deal with my own problems yeah, let's finish it with this now um now to paraphrase the great fiction novelist eli cash we all know that death is the worst part of human existence, but what this video presupposes is that maybe it isn't, whereas we could think of death as a limiting factor in our experience, philosophers and timid killjoys alike have considered how long our finite lives last.

They are what give meaning to our lives in the first place and the fourth season of Rick and Morty really makes us think about how reflecting on death can enrich our existencebecause let's face it, hopefully we'll all die painlessly and in our sleep, but at least one of You're going to choke to death in the Burger King parking lot after trying to swallow a hole of fried chicken. You know who you are and I'm sorry, but that's why you put sauce on fried chicken to lubricate it when it goes down your throat, but for the rest of us, death can be something that makes us take advantage of the time we have to do everything interesting possible or you know, poop and stuff, but what do you think Rick and Morty can do to help us reflect on the surprising joys of our finite existence or are we just overthinking the scariest part of life, let us know think in the comments and definitely let us know if there's anything else you want to see me do my best to make a philosophy thanks to our sponsors.

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