The Heart Of Evangelion

When I first watched Ikari Shinji stumble into EVA-01, I was 15 and living in a dream. I could not understand why Shinji was such a little shit. Shinji had been called up by his estranged father out of the blue, and in the span of a few hours, he went from having zero expectations placed on him, to being the only mopey teenager who could pilot a giant robot and save the world.

The enemy he had to defeat, he had been told, was an Angel – a godlike monstrosity beyond human comprehension.

Beyond anyone’s expectation, especially his own, Shinji utterly destroyed his enemy – not with strength or skill or the power of friendship, but with the feral rage of a cornered rat. He then withdrew into a shell and refused to pilot ever again – until, of course, the next time he was forced to.

When people congratulated him, Shinji rejected them. “You’re just using me,” he said, “I’ll do what I’m told because I have to, so you don’t need to pretend to like me.” When people reminded him, hey buddy, maybe be a bit more grateful to the people supporting you, Shinji rejected them. “They didn’t need to help me,” he said, “I didn’t want to do it anyway.”

When I first saw this, my reaction had been, “What the fuck, why is he such a little shit, he had everything handed to him, an opportunity to pilot a giant frigging robot are you kidding me, and everyone around him wants him to succeed, so why is he like that?! This is a shitshow and a shit show.”

Now, though, I get it.

Watching Evangelion as an adult feels like moulting. All the incomprehensive bullshit that the show’s creator, Anno, had crammed into their world now makes sense, in the sense that it has never tried to make sense. Story, plot, how the world works, why there is a penguin in Misato’s apartment – none of that matters, because Anno did not give a fuck about any of that. The show has only ever convey one intangible thing: that feeling of starting a new job on Monday; the feeling of spending the last hundred dollars you have on a one-way ticket; the feeling of always going to work because, if you don’t, the people you love will leave you; the feeling of waking up and having to face down the incomprehensive, unknowable enemy that is life itself, without any idea of how to do it, or why you are waking up in the first place.

The berserker rage under which Shinji defeated the Fourth Angel is a cringe-fest of teenage angst, but he could not have done it any other way. This is life or death, he had been told, but Shinji had no understanding of what life means to him. Defeating the Angels was just another thing he had been told to do, and if he didn’t do it, he would have to confront the version of himself that did not do it. The stakes, then, were the same as anything else he did: fighting tooth and nail to avoid acknowledging himself.  

The other EVA pilots defeat the enemy with professional detachment. It was just a job. You can be good at it, mediocre at it, doesn’t matter – the only criteria were that the thing explodes and you live. There was no reward. In fact, the very expectation of reward was outlandish to them. Do people get rewarded for breathing?

This was why they thought Shinji was a piece of shit, which he was. Only a piece of shit would expect to be rewarded for simply breathing. When Shinji succeeds, they are surprised: how can someone with this shitty of an attitude ever overcome any difficulty, let alone Angels?

Eventually, they come to a semblance of understanding that Shinji is fighting Angels 24/7. Whether the enemy is some alien monster or the act of talking to a friendly stranger, he fights them all in the same way: feral, ugly, live-or-die. This is why the other pilots always give up before Shinji. For them, it’s just a task, and if it’s objectively too hard, then it is too hard, and they let it be. Shinji does not understand the concept of difficulty, because to him, everything is difficult, impossible even, and he overcomes them with the same fight or flight response he applies to every minute task.

The catharsis of Evangelion comes in the final movie. After two decades of restarts, retcons, and reboots, Anno had decided that the story should come to an end. The series itself is incoherent; the tie-in movie even more so. Nothing about the show makes sense, even now, after so many iterations.

The show is ending because its creator, like Shinji, has at last come to terms with their enemy. The enemy is not the convoluted plot, or the nonsensical worldbuilding, or any geometric oddity with AT Fields or giant CGI heads floating in space. The enemy is their perceptions of themselves, and it can only be defeated by letting go. No easy task, that. Not when every morning begins with Angels.

The Flying Aussieman

The arbiter of all that is good and righteous, Scott Morrison, is metamorphosed between two monumental choices: to speak of nothing, or have nothing to say.

He who has mastered the crucible of the contemporary politician – that of simultaneously being a puppet and a puppet master – is capable of ejaculating many controversial opinions, yet at the same time remain totally inept at having one for himself.

Life would be easy if one could simply subsist on the Murdoch feed trough without having to worry about what one is eating, but every now and then a spine would have to be shown – toward a dictator or two, a rape victim or three – so reluctantly, the teat-suckling is put away in exchange for a tough-guy suit.

‘I have values,’ he says. ‘Of what values exactly, I’ll need to check with whoever is paying me today, but it is important that you understand that I have them, and you should behold my fortitude and temperance at possessing values, and refrain from remarking that I have none.’

Watch how deftly he manoeuvres between the powers that be, how eloquently he speaks – for hours on end, expressing nothing, pleasing everyone that need to be pleased, and offending those who cannot muster enough political leverage to adversely affect his position.

It is like watching a blindfolded figure skater navigating an obstacle course with one skate and no toes. No seasoned diplomat, no veteran deal-maker, is as effective at political survival as he.

Yet, somehow, some way, he has managed to piss off everybody, even those who had put every word he has ever spoken into his mouth. How can it be, when he is the ballerina of the political theatre, the RTX 3080 of the power-trip cabal, the arbiter of all that is Catholic-certified pure and Murdoch-approved virtuous? How can one grow to be so hated, when one is trying his best to please whoever he needs to please at any given time?

Well, the thing about being the arbiter of all that is rambunctious and cantankerous is, you are going to take hate no matter what you do, because scumbaggery is in your nature.

Let’s be real: every-day scumbaggery-doos – pretend to arrange a meeting with a rape victim and then dragging it out, hoping that everything will blow over in a couple of months, and at the same time taking exactly four days to fire a guy the Murdochs disliked – have only become scumbaggery-doos because they got called out.

It is not possible to live as a human bean without either suffering from or becoming a progenitor of scumbaggery-doos. The shit-eating gene is a part of human nature; the difference being, sometimes you get called out for your shit and get punished, and sometimes you get away with a 99-year lease. Scamming 50 bucks off an unwary stranger has been a staple of human society since monkeys first grabbed two rocks and bashed them together.

Despite appearances, the Flying Aussieman is not despised for being caught partaking in low-level, every-day corruption. Everyone does that. It is called being a working man.

He is despised because of the indignant way in which he reacts to being called out.

‘It is unfair that I am being lambasted,’ he laments. ‘I am a leaf in the wind. I am only doing what I have been told to do, so why are you giving my trivial scumbaggery so much coverage?  I don’t deserve this manner of treatment! I am the arbiter of all that is magnificent and unassailable!’

He says a lot of nothing, but what he is really saying is one word: privilege.

A low-level employee uses company cash to buy lunch without approval; he gets told off. If he then proceeds to complain about the fact that he got told off to everyone he meets, chances are he will be put onto HR’s petty little list and have his career put under a chokehold.

A thief steals 50 bucks and gets caught. If in court he starts lamenting about how unfairly he was being treated, that he should have been allowed to steal 50 bucks, it was only 50 bucks, then the judge will put him up for contempt and pass a tougher sentence.

Yet, every day, the Flying Aussieman is complaining – that using taxpayer money to fund a private trip is no big deal, that he’s doing everything he could to tackle climate change when he’s just using it as an opportunity to hand out government contracts to his donors – and for some dastardly reason, he wants everyone to understand that he should be getting away with it.

He was getting away with it, until he started whining.

It’s OK to be scum, my man. Look around. Scumbags rule the world. Embody the shit person that you are, and you’ll realize that people will like you better.

Stop pretending to be the arbiter of all that is virtuous and correct. When you want to tell a rape victim to fuck off, just tell them to fuck off; it won’t please many people, but it will sure as hell please some goblins.

And if behaving like an authentic asshole makes you crash and burn – well, then you would just be like everyone else.

I Don’t Give A Shit

There are always people getting killed in some random country for reasons I don’t care about. Who gives a shit.

There are always people complaining about not being able to get work, not making enough for rent. Who gives a shit.

Every day you see someone posting about not killing themselves or being able to go outside or finally cleaning their room after a depressive spell. Why? No one cares. Do they want a parade every time they tie their shoelaces too? Every time they brush their teeth? Fuck.

There are only two things that matter. One: how I can live more comfortably. Two: how I can enjoy my life.

I can achieve the first by making money and spending money. If your problem has nothing to do with helping me make more money or spending more money in exchange for an improved lifestyle, then I don’t give a shit.

If slave-labour cotton makes my clothes cheaper, then I will by those clothes. If there are companies out there who are willing to do anything to give me quality products on the cheap, then I will buy from them. Who gives a shit what they do to get it – that’s not my problem. When it comes down to what I get out of a purchase, only two things matter: the price, and the quality relative to that price.

This is called market forces, bitch. It’s not my problem to source an ethical product while keeping prices low. My only concern is my wallet, and my enjoyment.

Speaking of enjoyment, I always cut out the toxic things that make my life less delightful, like how I just ghost and ignore the people I don’t give a shit about.

There’s always some news about some random people protesting in some random country and getting killed. Why is that my problem? Why do I need to know this? Get that shit out of my life. I don’t need to know about what happens in those countries, or those people whom I have never met and never will, so stop telling me about them.

I don’t want to know how they are repressed. I don’t care about how many of them starve and die. You telling me that information serves only one thing: to make my day less enjoyable. Knowing that shit make me depressed for no good reason.

So stop telling me about it. I don’t care. I’m not saying that I condone any of that stuff, authoritarianism, corporate greed, whatever, but what am I supposed to do about it? The only thing that comes out of me knowing is that it makes me depressed, and that’s no good. I want to enjoy my life. So don’t you go around ‘raising my awareness’ or complain. I don’t give a shit.

All these people telling me I should care about this issue, that climate change, this anti-democracy movement, that random disease that no one I know has – why? Why do you assume that I give a shit? How does knowing any of that stuff help me make money, or improve my life, or make my life more enjoyable? It doesn’t. They are useless and pointless.

If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. My life is good. I have money, I can do things I enjoy. Don’t ask me to concern myself with all that other bullshit. I don’t need ideas to make my life harder.

Don’t ask me to try random stuff that might ‘make a world a better place’. Why would I? Does it make my life better, right now? If it doesn’t, then why should I bother? Why do you assume that I’m up for doing anything when simply continuing my life as it is, already gives me what I want and need?

Stop. Get that shit out my face. I don’t give a shit.

Some people say, ‘oh but what if it happens to you, what if something happen to you, what are you going to do then? When no one around you gives a shit?’

To that I say, my life will never get bad. I was born in a good position, I live in a good position, and I fully intend on living my life like this. Everyone around me feel the same, that’s why we all work toward maintaining the status quo, so that we can all live out our lives without worrying about all that random bullshit that happens in other places, to poorer people.

So don’t you try and guilt-trip me. I don’t need your whiny little attitude. You’re just trying to ruin my life and I don’t put up with that.