A while back I purchased a copy of Groundhog Day at HalfPrice Books intending to watch it religiously every February 2. I credit Jonah Goldberg with putting me onto Groundhog Day and I see that he gets a lot of credit at La Wik.
Oh, and by the way, don't miss the Jeep Groundhog Day commercial from yesterday's Super Bowl.
And then there is the real Groudhog Day life of screenwriter Danny Rubin.
But when I watched the movie last night, February 2, 2020, which, from its numbers 02/02/2020 should be the groundhoggiest Groundhog Day for millennia to come, I realized that the whole thing echoes Nietzsche's notion of Eternal Recurrence. And, of course, when I Googled "groundhog day nietzsche" I found that thousands had already tumbled to this. Even La Wik gets into the action.
OK, so I only read Nietzsche over the last year or two. So I have an excuse.
But let us be clear what Nietzsche was on about, before the "Nietzsche was the Nazis' favorite intellectual" chorus starts up. I notice that most of the quotes on the Internet come from The Gay Science but I take my text from The Will to Power.
It is all about the sequence of morality, decadence, nihilism, eternal recurrence, will to power. You can get my long form in "Nietzsche in 900 Words -- If You Can Take It."
First, there is morality, as in a stable religious tradition. It "protect[s] life against despair and the leap into nothing." But when God is Dead, then you get decadence. Nothing to be ashamed of, it's part of the rhythm of life, growth and increase are followed by "waste, decay, elimination." Obviously, when people lose the faith that protected them against despair then they start to lose their bounce and joi de vivre. So we get to nihilism:
And that, pretty clearly, is what is happening to Bill Murray's character Phil Connors in Groundhog Day. But is that all there is? Not at all. The next step is the Will to Power. In other words, to break out of the descent into decadence and nihilism and the eternal round of Groundhog Day, the same-old same-old day after day you have to break out. And you don't have to be a Homeric hero.
The interesting thing is that, in the Special Features of the DVD, in "The Weight of Time," the director Harold Ramis, who is part lapsed Jew and part Buddhist, related that he got calls from just about every religion thanking him for being one of them:
Maybe there is hope for us and for America and for the world after all.
Oh, and by the way, don't miss the Jeep Groundhog Day commercial from yesterday's Super Bowl.
And then there is the real Groudhog Day life of screenwriter Danny Rubin.
But when I watched the movie last night, February 2, 2020, which, from its numbers 02/02/2020 should be the groundhoggiest Groundhog Day for millennia to come, I realized that the whole thing echoes Nietzsche's notion of Eternal Recurrence. And, of course, when I Googled "groundhog day nietzsche" I found that thousands had already tumbled to this. Even La Wik gets into the action.
OK, so I only read Nietzsche over the last year or two. So I have an excuse.
But let us be clear what Nietzsche was on about, before the "Nietzsche was the Nazis' favorite intellectual" chorus starts up. I notice that most of the quotes on the Internet come from The Gay Science but I take my text from The Will to Power.
It is all about the sequence of morality, decadence, nihilism, eternal recurrence, will to power. You can get my long form in "Nietzsche in 900 Words -- If You Can Take It."
First, there is morality, as in a stable religious tradition. It "protect[s] life against despair and the leap into nothing." But when God is Dead, then you get decadence. Nothing to be ashamed of, it's part of the rhythm of life, growth and increase are followed by "waste, decay, elimination." Obviously, when people lose the faith that protected them against despair then they start to lose their bounce and joi de vivre. So we get to nihilism:
Nihilism is a symptom that the underprivileged have no comfort left; that they destroy in order to be destroyed; that without morality they no longer have any reason to "resign themselves"[.]And so when you have descended into nihilism, you are reduced to "existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: 'the eternal recurrence'."
And that, pretty clearly, is what is happening to Bill Murray's character Phil Connors in Groundhog Day. But is that all there is? Not at all. The next step is the Will to Power. In other words, to break out of the descent into decadence and nihilism and the eternal round of Groundhog Day, the same-old same-old day after day you have to break out. And you don't have to be a Homeric hero.
Who will prove to be the strongest in the course of this? The most moderate; those who do not demand extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense; those who can think of man with a considerable reduction of his value without becoming small and weak on that account: those richest in health who are equal to most misfortunes and therefore not so afraid of misfortunes -- human beings who are sure of their power and represent the attained strength of humanity with conscious pride. (§55)In Groundhog Day we can see that the key is for Phil Connors to stop being a cunning rascal, figuring out how to flatter the babes to get them into bed, using knowledge about people to manipulate them, but just going ahead to serve others -- even if they don't thank him -- and also becoming the man that the girl of his dreams would like him to be.
The interesting thing is that, in the Special Features of the DVD, in "The Weight of Time," the director Harold Ramis, who is part lapsed Jew and part Buddhist, related that he got calls from just about every religion thanking him for being one of them:
The first inkling I got of what is was going to mean to me was [that] someone called and said the Buddhists love this movie. And I meet a yogi that said this is the yoga movie; this totally expresses our philosophy. Then I started getting letters from Jesuits, from fundamentalist Christians, all saying the same thing... you must be one of us because this movie perfectly expresses our philosophy of life.So. There's something that Nietzsche gets and just about every religious believer gets that gets expressed in an ordinary -- OK, not so ordinary -- Hollywood movie about a jerk of a weatherman and how he got to be unjerked.
Maybe there is hope for us and for America and for the world after all.
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