Bojack Horseman and the Pursuit of [False] Happiness

"The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't  a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense. And, eventually, you'll be dead." - Mr. Peanutbutter 

***Spoiler Alert***

If you know me personally, I love watching depressing and existentially nihilistic movies/shows. Bojack Horseman is a show that was recommended to me, and I loved it. I like to reflect upon nihilistic thoughts in order to appreciate the goodness of my religion. I like to think of it as being something akin to St. John's journey through the dark night. The following is likewise a reflection upon the meaninglessness presented by Bojack Horseman.

Pursuit of Pleasures
Bojack lives in a large house acquired by his acting career. With his wealth, he can buy a large boat just because, and drown a Tesla in a pool and not care much about it. He also often throws lavish parties with his wealth, a sure opportunity for him to have sex with women who approach him just because, back in the 90's, he was in a famous TV show.

     Running contrary to the supposedly attractive lifestyle he leads, the show's opening sequence makes one thing too clear: no matter how much you pursue pleasure, you will never be truly happy. The opening sequence switches between different places, and we see Bojack constantly consuming hard liquor. The places are usually places of pleasure or productiveness, ranging from a movie set to a rave party. Despite the amount of pleasures made available to him, he appears to be in need of something stronger to forget his unhappiness. What the show is telling us is that the pursuit of pleasures we often partake in, be it sex, money, or parties, they are all but distractions from our wretched condition.

Pursuit of Influence
We hear of of people who are married to their careers all the time. A lawyer who gets five hours of sleep on weekdays, a sales rep who does not spend enough time with his daughter, and a single investor who drops off her newborn with a nanny are our stereotypical model of individuals who do pursue their career as the focal point of their lives.

     This mentality is represented by Princess Carolyn. She is an agent who tirelessly works to find jobs for her clients, one of whom being Bojack Horseman. She is extremely jealous of her coworker that is married and with a family. Yet, when she stopped working and when she was introduced to a perfect man that could very well open up to a way of life she is so jealous of, she finds a way to distract herself by renaming her career from "celebrity agent" to "celebrity manager," acting as if the two are really different. The show seems to get at how people at times distract themselves even from happiness because of the very fact that they do not really know what leads them to happiness. To Princess Carolyn, she has told herself a lie long ago that succeeding at her career is the sure path to happiness.

     Another example is how Bojack does not feel anything once he found out that he was nominated for Oscars. In a conversation with Diane, Diane asked Bojack if winning an Oscar would make him happy, Bojack answered that it would... for a short while. To that, Diane asked: If the pleasure was only temporary and Bojack would go back to his miserable self again, why would winning it matter? Bojack admitted that him pursuing an Oscar is just a distraction. The meaninglessness of career heights is portrayed perfectly by Secretariat, a childhood hero of Bojack, who is incidentally a character portrayed by Bojack in a movie he got [falsely] nominated an Oscar for. Secretariat was the world's best runner. Even at his our of fame, Secretariat found a reason to commit suicide. To Secretariat, his running career was simply a distraction away from his pitiful state of existence.

Pursuit of Morality
Bojack Horseman paints a grim picture of our pursuit of moral accomplishments. The showmakers present how our moral pursuits are merely propelled by our selfish desires to feel better about ourselves.

     This bleak painting is represented by Diane Nguyen. She is the stereotypical feminist of modern age. She is a journalist who tweets for people, willing to risk killing her husband's career over a sexual assault scandal caused by her husband's coworker, and wants to help children by doing journalism in some war-torn third-world country. It can be argued that she is the most moral main characters of the show.

    However moral she may be, she never gets to be on top a hill, feeling like a hero for each moral thing she does. Even if she completes a supposed moral task, she feels defeated and feels as if nothing really meant anything. In an episode where she goes to Cordovia to document a philanthropist helping the children of a war-torn country, she realizes that the philanthropist only hired her not to publicize about the war, but to publicize about himself. Behind his selfish motive, she saw herself. Before going off to Cordovia, her main motive was to feel as if she was "doing some good" with her life; her motive for social activism was to satisfy herself not the common good. Another example is shown in the controversial abortion episode. Setting aside the debate on the moral weight of abortion, we find that Diane, soon after causing the making of a live-feed educational video on abortion fighting for the pro-abortion side, she talks of lying to the populous to make money; one perceived moral act done, an evil act done without blinking an eye.

     The showmakers, through Diane, exposes the moral character of our modern day. To an existential nihilist, such ardent activists like Diane, so zealous for their causes, are merely attempting to escape their meaninglessness. Nietzsche observed in his day how democrats and communists pushed for their ideologies. Behind their moral claims, all Nietzsche saw was an attempt to give meaning through will to power, der Wille zur Macht.  Do we not see the extent of this? We see too often so-called social activists claiming to be fighting for moral causes while committing habitually immoral acts such as intemperate outrages and lies to achieve their goals. In their minds, they feel as if committing to a moral cause would bring them happiness, or at least a fulfilling life, but ignore morality as a whole. True to Nietzsche's thought, their acts are merely distractions away from their mortality.

Does the Show offer Solution?
This is my take on what the show offers as a solution. I think that the show only offers only two possible solutions: familiar life and priestly life.

     The show often presents how Bojack desires a true family. There was an episode of Bojack fantasizing about having a wife and a daughter. One another episode, he gets to take care of a baby seahorse, and he seemed to have a fulfilling time doing it. The evidence supporting this is scant, so I do not bank wholly on it. I think the showmakers are tad too pessimistic to conclude that a family can bring you happiness.

     As for the priestly life, I do not mean that the show recommends a religious life. On the contrary, the show views religion in an unfavorable light. By "priestly life" I mean one which a person retreats away from the society simply to not give - to put it in modern colloquial terms - a shit. This concept is akin to the Absurd Hero, a hero who revolts against the absurdity of the world to stay happy as opposed to choosing suicide. This attitude is displayed by the hamster pictured above.

Is the "Priestly Life" a Valid Solution?
I think not. The idea of Absurd Hero is supposed to revolt against the absurdity and the wretched condition of the world. But how, exactly? This idea is merely in the hypothetical, a belief of which would be just as good as blind faith. If anything, believing in this idea is another form of distraction. In order to make us truly happy in light of the full realization of the absurdity of the world would need an ungodly effort toward psychological conditioning.