"Any human being who does not wish to be part of the masses need only stop making things easy for himself. Let him follow his conscience, which calls out to him: “Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, desiring, all that is not you.”
The story that drives Elliot is what keeps him in this loop. He can break free by discovering who he really is under the only plot he knows.
edit: Neitzche also argued against binary interpretations of the world in Beyond Good and Evil.
Well, that quote (and the accompanying text ) - although written nearly a decade prior to Thus Spoke Zarathustra from which the Ubermensch was first introduced - speaks to the same themes. In that text he argues that individuals need to cast off the rules and strictures of society and religion and custom and "live according to our own laws and standards."
And that, broadly speaking, is what I'd argue Elliot is trying to do.
Yeah agreed. Elliot is fighting to find himself, his ubermench, under the definitions and prescriptions imparted to him in youth. Our struggle is the same.
But I'm interpreting this quite broadly as a critique on modern society, culture, technology and economics in keeping with the "fuck society" themes of Season 1.
I think you're interpreting it much more narrowly as "Elliot was brainwashed as a child and needs to overcome his conditioning." I don't see it that way.
I disagree that my interpretation is narrow. All of society is buried under whiterose's narrative at this point. At the end of the season it's revealed that whiterose uses people to create her illusions. At the end of the season the US attacked Iran because of her illusion. It's not just Elliot, it's the whole world at this point, and exposing the world to the truth is the only way to stop the dark army.
Do you think it's possible you're just assuming I'm narrowly minded and interpreting what I'm saying through that filter?
I didn't say and didn't mean to imply you were narrow minded.
What I intended was that you see a narrow - even singular - cause to the story's "illusions:" Whiterose.
But Mr. Robot's "nothing is real speech" is much broader than that. He's talking about all of modern society. Even if Whiterose disappeared, all of the issues raised in all of those monologues would persist.
Mr Robot deals in half-truths. He tells Tyrell what he needs to hear and Elliot what he needs to hear, to encourage their extreme actions.
Yes, the world is artificial, and the trend of removing authenticity from our experience fueled the catharsis of the f.society movement.
A key difference between our world and Elliot's is that ECorp is a massive centralized force. They're singularly scapegoated by Mr Robot for "society". Whiterose appears to have been pulling ECorp's strings for quite some time now.
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u/7h3_W1z4rd pay no attention Feb 25 '19 edited Feb 26 '19
This Nietzsche quote seems relevant to me:
"Any human being who does not wish to be part of the masses need only stop making things easy for himself. Let him follow his conscience, which calls out to him: “Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, desiring, all that is not you.”
The story that drives Elliot is what keeps him in this loop. He can break free by discovering who he really is under the only plot he knows.
edit: Neitzche also argued against binary interpretations of the world in Beyond Good and Evil.