Does It Matter?

“Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody’s gonna die. Come watch TV.” – Morty from Rick & Morty

I have loved cartoons my entire life. I still do, which is why I love that there are adult cartoons. One of my favorites is Rick & Morty. It’s not for everyone. Really, it’s not for everyone! It’s violent. Complex. Offensive. Grotesque. Hilarious. And it’s thoroughly philosophical.

For those unfamiliar, Rick & Morty is about an alcoholic, self-loathing super genius named Rick who goes on surreal adventures throughout the universe and the multi-verse with his horny naïve teenage grandson Morty. On the surface they are loosely, and I do mean loosely, based on Doc and Marty from Back to the Future – if Doc and Marty were written by Nietzsche while he was on psychedelic mushrooms and acid all the time.

The show is deeply steeped in nihilism with heavy doses of existentialism and absurdism.

Nihilism is a fascinating philosophy. One that has had deep influence on our modern world, especially recently. It is the rejection of all morals – religious, non-religious, or otherwise. It’s hard to specifically categorize the Nihilist catalogue, but many Nihilist philosophers believe different positions, including that human values are baseless, life is meaningless, knowledge is impossible, or some sets of entities do not exist or are meaningless or pointless. An article titled The Philosophy of Rick and Morty perfectly explains:

“From the very first season, Rick and Morty has pursued the idea about nihilism that seems to reject all meaning to life. The titular characters seem to jump from universe to alternate universe as often as someone fills up their gas tank. However, it does leave a scar on them both. In the eighth episode of season one, entitled Rixty Minutes, Morty confesses to his sister Summer that he is not originally from their universe. Upon their initial arrival, they had to murder their doppelgangers and bury them in the backyard. The fact that this high school boy has to in fact live just a few feet away from his own dead self is quite the eye-opener for this series. This, and seeing a vast universe of equally suffering creatures, has warped his perception of reality and life itself.

“Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everyone’s gonna die. Come watch TV.

“A small quote like this leaves a huge impact on the audience as to the show’s point of view on the universe. However, what solidifies Morty’s point is that their life in fact does go on. Whether they have dealt with the trauma or not, the episodes just reset themselves for the most part; life cruelly goes on. We may see a glimmer of emotions that briefly come through, but they are either masked or buried deep into the subconscious, because after all, everything is meaningless in nihilism.“

Everything is meaningless. This line of thinking leads us to the conclusion that morals and virtues are also meaningless. As someone who puts a heavy premium on virtue and “doing the right thing,” this logic deeply challenges me. It doesn’t disturb me – just makes me think harder.

Many plots of Rick & Morty, especially in earlier episodes, revolve around Rick doing something abhorrent or ethically detestable and Morty wanting to make things right. Inevitably, Morty makes things worse when he tries to make things right. Had he just left well enough alone, things would have been bad, but at least there wouldn’t have been societal collapses, nuclear wars, or mass murder sprees. Marty trying to do the right thing almost always leads to worse situations for everyone.

Without getting into too many spoilers in case you want to binge the show now, one example includes a time when Morty wanted to save a girl who part of a planet that has a “purge” (night of crime for any reason you want scot-free for one night only). Rather than just leave the young lady to her devices and let this society do its thing, Marty gets involves in an ill-fated attempt to save her, which results in more murders and death than would have happened otherwise leaving her alone.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the Trolly Problem, I encourage you to look into it!)

Seems asinine, right? Maybe not. There may be something to say for leaving things alone and letting folks to their won devices. The Tao Te Ching teaches that “when the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists.” It’s a clear endorsement of a libertarian style of leadership. Let people work out their own issues.

But it’s hard for me to fully embrace a philosophy that espouses that there is no such thing as morality. I don’t believed in sitting on the sidelines all the time. We have to be actively engaged in working towards making the world a better place, and that means getting involved. One of my core taglines is that I enjoy doing the right thing. I believe virtue and doing well by our fellow humanity is the only pathway to true happiness and flourishing.

Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself: “Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.” I try to live up to this myself. Now, what is the right thing? That is something that I have been trying to figure out, too, and planned on addressing in the future. So, for now, let’s just focus on doing right.

Part of the main argument for why morals don’t matter is that we’re part of a inconceivably vast void in space filled with seemingly endless nothing and a few sprinklings of dust here and there. As Scott Herschovitz asks us in Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with My Kids, we should ponder our smallness.

“The universe is unimaginably big, even if it’s not infinite. We occupy a small patch, and there’s not much special about it. Worse yet, it won’t even be ours for long. We’ll get eighty years, give or take, if we’re lucky. The universe has been around for more than thirteen billion years already, and it has billions or trillions to go.

“At best, we’re a blip. And that makes us seem awfully insignificant.“

It’s certainly something of a paradox. To exist in a time and space that is so inconsequential, yet to believe so strongly, as I do, in morals and virtues.

Ultimately, the depth of Rick and Morty is that it portrays Rick as someone who claims he doesn’t care, when in fact, he does. He constantly rips on Morty and his family saying hurtful and neglectful things. Yet, when push comes to shove, he always saves his family often hurting himself in the process. He holds a longstanding grudge against a multi-verse version of himself, who murdered his wife. Someone who doesn’t “care” would not hold grudges, seeking revenge, nor would they continually save people they proport to not value.

I think this is because while yes, we probably don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, our actions, beliefs, and thoughts matter to us as individuals. They matter to our friends and family. They matter to our workplaces and our communities. The fact that we believe we matter creates in and of itself the factors necessary for our mattering. Being here and now means you matter, and we should use those 80 years, if we’re lucky, to make the most of our insignificant time on this speck of dust floating around a ball of energy that’s almost as insignificant.

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

It doesn’t matter if we truly matter or not honestly. It’s absurd to think about that. Others have attached meaning to us. We attach meaning to us. We attach meaning to others. So, we should care about one another and ourselves. Even if it is absurd, it’s the human thing to do. We may as well care while we’re here.

That is why I try to do the right thing. It’d be absurd not to.

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