Rick and Morty | The Search for Meaning

it is no secret that deep and meaningful relationships play a vital role in our overall well-being but when relationships go wrong they can be our greatest source of suffering the problem is that human beings are endlessly complex and maintaining relationships requires attention and involvement with the other person and that is why Rick treats his relationships like an equation to be solved rather than engaging with them in a meaningful way [Music] Rick and Morty is one of the most beloved shows on television and while I struggle to follow along at times due to my sub 200 IQ there are many interesting themes that run through the show it begins by following a classic coming-of-age story Morty is taken out of his banal everyday life and he's being thrown into adventure struggle and he's learning just how big the world out there truly is early on we learned that Morty is a bit of a slow child which is in glaring contrast to his grandpa Rick the smartest man in the universe Rick's brilliance has led to an inflation of his personality to a full-blown god complex though not an officially labeled personality disorder this condition is characterized by uncontrolled narcissism and a need to subjugate and ridicule those deemed to be inferior or unworthy while most who suffer from this complex are delusional about their abilities Rick's control over the world around him is godlike a fact that makes it harder when things don't go his way that's seen by his failed attempt to get Jerry out of the family while those with a god complex can seem so sure and in love with themselves some experts suggest they suffer from low self-esteem and are insecure about almost everything which is why they constantly require attention and admiration from those around them for better or worse this is who Morty has to look up to as Rick is the main person steering his development he sees that his parents are a mess and Rick is the one man who seems to have all the answers this break from the parents is one of the most important moments in the coming-of-age process most of us grow up trusting our parents implicitly we don't ask questions and we accept whatever meaning is passed down by our family and our culture the first step towards becoming a self-sufficient human being is when we begin to question things we take for granted it's granted with a D take things for granted did you actually think it was we all know growth is painful as we cross into our teenage and adult years we inevitably take on new responsibilities like paying bills keeping a job building relationships and deciding the ultimate direction of our life making the wrong decision in any one of these situations is enough to make us curl up into a ball and never leave the house but it's not just that day-to-day struggles that cause us anxiety we often run into philosophical ideas that make us uncomfortable ideas like who am i why do I exist and what do I believe since the beginning of time we have hungered for meaning in the face of uncertainty disaster death and old age in the past questions like these were left to the shaman medicine man or priest but ready-made answers no longer seemed to satisfy our modern sensibilities so we keep digging it is no surprise as super genius like Rick has developed a clear philosophy regarding matters of meaning and purpose it doesn't matter for some that is comforting for others terrifying those who seek their own answers to life's ultimate questions will inevitably come face to face with life's absurdity in philosophy the absurd refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and our inability to find any in a meaningless chaotic and irrational universe an idea popularized by Albert Camus and Soren Kierkegaard the Rick and Morty universe is the very definition of the absurd and as we watch each character confront this we gain clues about the various ways of dealing with life's absurdity Morty's family seems to deal with the absurd by ignoring it despite the insane things they see every day summer is still obsessed with her popularity in school Beth can't stop thinking about the life that could have been and Jerry just really wants to find his weed whacker while this approach allows them to go about their day-to-day lives they never have that harsh confrontation with reality that is often a vital to long-term growth for Morty this moment comes when he is forced to bury an alternate version of himself this was an unavoidable confrontation with his own mortality a problem we all must face a philosophy and existential crisis is often seen as apposite as it means we have confronted life's absurdity and can now begin the process of accepting it Albert Camus believed acceptance of the absurd where one continues to live despite life's absurdity is how we achieve the greatest extent of our freedom by rebelling against the absurd while simultaneously accepting it as unstoppable he believes we can find contentment through the personal meaning constructed in the process but there is a risk to this approach throughout the show there's a consistent breaking down of Morty's innocence and idealism on some level this is necessary as innocence can lead to naivety and people taking advantage of us but if we completely lose touch with that childlike part of ourselves we risk growing cynical and detached just like Rick the only mentor figure morty has to look up to this is one of the strange things about Rick's character he is almost universally looked up to and admired and yet no one wants to be like him this seems to be Morty's struggle he tells summer that Rick shouldn't be your hero but with each passing episode he becomes more Rick like in nature it is a growing belief that the more intelligent a person is the more unhappy they become this idea is expressed very clearly in the episode the Rick's must be crazy when the smartest person in each Microverse mini verse teeny verse are all miserable despite their incredible control over the world around them Kyle commits suicide zeep is left with the knowledge that his God is a dick and Rick remains cynical and depressed plenty of people like to jump on this bandwagon often writing off their own shortcomings as a simple byproduct of their intelligence the first problem with this belief as shown by a cognitive bias known as the dunning-kruger effect is that most people vastly overrated of intelligence the second problem is that their intelligence becomes the scapegoat for the much more likely possibility that they are lacking some basic emotional intelligence or the capacity to build relationships as an increasingly depressed season for Rick seems to be figuring out it is not so much that his intelligence is making him unhappy but really he's just kind of a dick his suffering does not come from his intelligence but from his attempts to manipulate his relationships like one of his science projects this is where a very clear distinction needs to be made between intelligence and wisdom we often expect the smartest people in society to be the wisest but that is a mistake the opposite of intelligence is ignorance simply not knowing but the opposite of wisdom is not ignorant but foolishness to be foolish means we know the right thing to do but we keep doing the wrong thing we have the right information but there is a disconnect between our knowledge and our ability to apply that knowledge effectively in the world rick has an almost godlike control of the physical world but what good is all that knowledge if he can't even make himself happy many will counter this by saying that anyone who is paying attention to all the suffering in the world has no choice but to grow cynical but are those really the only two options ignorance or misery most of us would agree that we don't want to become a Rick but we don't want to become a blood is like a jerry either we want to live a meaningful life but not at the expense of our rationality rick is the embodiment of the hardcore rationalist and he tends to approach every part of his life from this perspective it would be simpler if the answers to life's biggest questions could be formulated like a mathematical proposition a math problem is very well defined there are very clear rules of what we can and can't do and we have a clear idea of what our end goal should look like our dilemma is that most of life's problems are very ill-defined think about a conversation it is saying the relevant thing at the relevant time in the relevant situation it is all very ill-defined another example is our relationships to others it is no secret that deep and meaningful relationships play a vital role in our overall well-being in fact research has shown the thing that is most predictive of how meaningful your life is is your meaningful relationships to others but when relationships go wrong they can be our greatest source of suffering the problem is that human beings are endlessly complex and maintaining relationships requires attention and involvement with the other person and that is why Rick treats his relationships like an equation to be solved rather than engaging with them in a meaningful way the mistake Rick makes as a mistake so many of us make in our materialistic view of the world the mistake is failing to see that we have two distinct modes of human needs as identified by psychologist Erich Fromm having needs and being means are having these are met by controlling or consuming something like food water or shelter to fulfill our having needs requires intelligence and problem-solving and the more control we gain over the physical world the easier it is to meet these needs being needs are met by the development and growth of our personality it is being in love or being happy or being more mature wise or honest in the having mode you are trying to manipulate the world around you to attain a very well-defined goal but in the being mode our goal is much more open-ended and what it takes to meet these needs is hard to pin down neither the having or being mode are wrong the problem arises when we use the wrong mode for the need we are trying to satisfy it would be a terrible mistake to fulfill our need for water by trying to be content without it but at the same time we fulfill our need for love by having lots of sex we think we will be happy by having a new Maserati or by keeping our testicles where are my testicles summer the problem of the hardcore materialist is that he constantly tries to meet his being needs through the having mode and this can cause massive problems the premise of nearly every episode is that rick is seeking some new exotic element that will finally be the breakthrough in his work the hope seems to be that he will eventually find some material thing that will make him happy and whole so he is constantly seeking from the outside what he does not possess on the inside and what he cannot build with the people around him this is why unity represents the perfect partner for Rick as a collective hive mind she's the only one who can offer Rick - endless novelty he craves but Rick's attitude towards the people he loves is ultimately what drives her away [Music] what this ultimately brings us to is a question about the fate of Morty at times he is able to do what Rick cannot and he uses the hardships of reality to empower the meaning of his own life rather than sinking into depression other times he seems more Rick like than ever in the face of life's absurdity it is easy to follow Rick's and nihilism and belief that nothing means anything but his co creator Dan Harmon himself points out the knowledge that nothing matters while accurate gets you nowhere the planet is dying the Sun is exploding the universe is cooling nothing is going to matter but when you zoom in on earth when you zoom into a family when you zoom into a human brain and a childhood and experience you see all these things matter once you get through the terrifying threshold of accepting that then every place is the center of the universe and every moment is the most important moment and everything is the meaning of life [Music] but it on the bud he'd sue

Channel: ThinkBigAnimation

Views: 12,988

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: rick and morty, dan harmon, justin roiland, adult swim, rick and morty philosophy, rick and morty season 3, rick sanchez, morty smith, meaning of life, meaning of life rick and morty, meaning behind rick and morty, nihilism rick and morty, nihilism, rick and morty season 4, rick and morty smartest man in the universe, high iq, rick & morty, philosophy of rick and morty, the search for meaning, rick and morty theory, rick and morty season 4 episode 1, video essay

Id: 2-liJSn-r1Y

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 05 2020

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[u/JackGillam123]

If you’re an Everton fan, existence is indeed pain