Theory Fiction: Adventure Time
Panentheism Theory Fiction using Applied Process Philosophy-Theology
Theory Fiction: Adventure Time, “Everything’s Jake”, Pantheism versus Panentheism Analysis
“The waffle doll shall fall,
Lest you eat the yellow dough.”
- Magic Man’s song to Jake as he places the curse
In Adventure Time’s episode 18 of Season 6, “Everything’s Jake”, the episode starts with the dastardly magic man (Yutzah Hurrah embodied trickster demi-God) placing a curse onto Jake (and singing the above incantation). This curse seemingly causes Jake (the demi-God whose power is shapeshifting) to ‘fall into himself’. To properly understand this, we must turn to the concept of panentheism vs pantheism (Whitehead’s Spinozan panentheism take) where Spinoza can help us out - well sort of. Is Spinoza a pantheist or a panentheist? Spinoza splits Nature (God) into two divisions: Naturing nature (active force of God) and Natured Nature (passive force of God). This begs the Spinozan question, are God’s creations simply God himself (Pantheism, God = Nature) or is God distinct from the creations - that is to say is God separate from nature? (Panentheism, God encompasses nature, but nature is a separate/distinct thing ‘inside’ of God).
Jake ‘falling into himself’ is the concept I wish to explore using Spinoza. More precisely, Jake’s face sinks into his body (the mysterious conatus in a strange land, the body [the scary-elusive Spinozan Body]), and he wakes up in a world made up of his own flesh (body-extension) in a field with seemingly nothing in sight (Of course ‘nothing’ can be deceiving). In this field, he has an instant realization (direct understanding, gnosis) and says out loud (to us the audience supposedly), “Everything is made of me”. Following this utterance of Jake (God), this Logos spoken (in the biblical sense, synoptic gospel of John) - a landscape (flower, mountain, bushes) emerges seemingly out of the void, to which Jake (the God almighty) proclaims it Good (it being the Natured nature [passive force of God], and God being the Naturing Nature [active force of God]) or in Jake’s words “pretty neat”. After proclaiming this ‘work’ (landscape) good, (brought into being by his utterance of the Logos) he continues. He then utters “I bet there’s like a cool city or something around here”, and thus emerges the Kingdom of the almighty - Jake sees this Kingdom and proclaims it Good (in his words “Nice, Jake Cit-tay”). Now Whitehead would caution us here with his Process Theology, God or Spinozan Nature, is the God as highest emanation of creativity par excellence - but God is also the principle of limitation by creating the limited possibilities available (from his infinite eternal forms reserve, St Augustine’s induces Plato’s totality of forms into the Mind of God such that from this God delivers us the eternal possibilities of life. If we are to use Whitehead’s Spinozan panentheism we must address also Whitehead’s principle of limitation, that is God sets the limitations (Whitehead’s three-fold nature of God and its relationship with the three-fold nature of an Event). With Jake the Almighty then, his utterances then have limitations. His utterances not only have limitations but they define the limitations of Jake’s seemingly alternate reality. Example being when Jake first comes into Jake City, everyone greets him with a familiar smile and wave. “This place is awesome” utters Jake, our King of Affirmation. From this, he spots a store front and decides to do a little window shopping - in this window shopping (Whitehead event) he spots objects of desire (antique dolls) in the window front, and instantly thinks of his kids and if kids would like them. This launches him into another event, this one a little more Spinozan-Affective pointed (consciousness is always about something) towards the self dialogue he has within himself (inside himself in Jake city), “I wonder what my kids are gonna have for dinner, maybe pizza?” This type of meta-dialogue within Jake city (self consciousness) causes an earthquake (“a Jake-quake”) to occur and ‘shake’ Jake out of his self conscious event (Inception, the dream is starting to catch on and get a little funny). Why does this Jake-quake occur?
Jake re-finds himself in Jake city post Jake-quake, having a dialogue with an entity named “Goose”. Goose greets Jake as an old friend, instantly ‘recognizing’ Jake - whereas Jake does not instantly recognize Goose (God can forget his creation [He has so many], but how could the creation forget about God, the celebrity [the sacred and profane]). Plato’s theory of memory, all knowledge is inside of us but simply needs to be ‘re-membered’. After Goose (Natured Nature) utters back to Jake (Naturing Nature) in his most Affective way, “Come on man it’s Goose! Your best friend Goose!” To which Jake responds, “Oh uh… of course, Goose!” with the type of spirit you would have when someone sees you in public where they recognize you but you don’t necessarily recognize them - yet from the Affective aura the person approaches you and induces a sort of intuitive understanding into you yet you can’t “recall” the knowledge of knowing them (episteme vs gnosis) - in this interaction due to the friendliness of the person they do seem like they might be a friend of yours and if they are not well maybe they ought to be. This is Jake the Affirmer’s great Affirmation of the event - yet Jake maintains with Goose that he’s never been to Jake City, to which of course Goose takes as a joke. (Kierkegaard’s joke of the clown rushing onto stage at a theater to tell the audience of a fire backstage, to which the audience laughs and applauds thinking of it as a joke [since that’s the context of clowns, they tell jokes and demand laughter/applause in return], to which the clown repeats his utterance only for the crowd to roar even louder with laughter and applause - Kierkegaard proclaiming “I think this is how the world might end, to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke”.) Jake laughs nervously at Goose's laughter at Jake’s apparent joke, but again Jake the Nietzschean Affirmer continues to play the game further after Goose tells him of a party where everyone is waiting for him there (the dream/alternate reality/Liminal Space continues).
Jake arrives at ‘Jake City’s Party for Jake’ to the applause of the crowd happily proclaiming, “Jake’s here!” Jake then proceeds to engage in simple pleasures that Jake City has to offer (playing cards with Goose, getting Goose to generally entertain him). Jake is only interrupted from this ‘pleasure island’ by a drama myth told by Goose. Goose reminds Jake of “the five bucks you still owe me”, to which Jake replies, “uh what five bucks?” - resulting in the punchline of Goose “Cheeseburger cheesecake ring a bell?”. Not only does this ring a bell, another Jake-quake happens. Why does this Jake-quake occur? Now we have a little more insight as the event has happened twice. The Jake-quake first occurred from Jake thinking about pizza, then this one about cheeseburgers - this is the sensation of Jake getting hungry (Schopenhauer’s Will: we may choose what we eat, but do not choose when to get hungry). Jake experiences Whitehead's three-fold natured Event - the Affect first (objective data, sensation of hunger), the conceptualization stage (eternal possibilities, what to do about this hunger), and then finally makes a creative decision from these possibilities. Now something funny happens here to disrupt this process. Goose (natured nature, passive force) influences Jake (naturing nature, active force) in such a way to persuade his creative decision - even though Jake is the one who ultimately makes the decision. After the Jake-quake (objective data, sensation of hunger) Jake asks Goose, “What is that?”, to which Goose replies, “Oh that? Don’t worry about that. Do not. Don’t worry about that”. This reply from Goose causes Jake to have an internal dialogue with himself, “Guess I better not worry about it”. From this internal dialogue, Jake re-visits the hunger problem with Goose (objective data, sensation of hunger), only this time Jake has different ‘a priori’ knowledge so to say - or better yet he has propagandized knowledge. Such knowledge that affects, influences, persuades Jake down a certain route. More precisely for Whitehead, this persuasion by Goose (passive force) influences the infinite eternal possibilities for Jake (active force), in concretes the universal so to say (Whitehead’s God is also the principle of concretion, not to be confused with concreting but latin root of conscresence meaning ‘growing together’, God keeps the growth going into that harmony of a symphony, but not by himself). Goose, the passive force, has influenced Jake, the active force in such a way, limited his eternal possibilities that Jake now ‘decides’ (creativity) to take Goose’s offer on the nacho basket and stuff in the fridge.
After Goose (Ram Dass Hanuman), brings (serves) Jake (Hanuman’s personal God, Rama) what he desires, “Cold-cut-and-nacho sandwiches!” Goose happily dives in and starts slurping it up (see Cypher in the Matrix, fetishistically disavowing the false reality to keep the false reality alive through the affirmation or pretending it's still real with the knowledge that it isn’t - or maybe Goose isn’t Cypher at all but more of a Inception like character in the dream, an automaton [Aristotle Efficient Cause] simply serving as the background to the foreground that is Jake and his ‘drama’ [process Event]). Jake sees Goose eating the food, and sees that he is enjoying it, he interprets this the food being Good - prompting Jake to bite into the seemingly delicious burger (natured nature) that is directly in front of him with his sharpest of teeth (the shapeshifter). With Jake’s strongest bite and sharpest teeth he bites the burger, only to hurt himself equally in magnitude doing so. This causes him great pain that he can not deny, his whole demeanor changes from happy affect to sad affect, exclaiming to Goose, “Something is wrong“. Jake exclaims to Goose, “Jakey can’t eat any of this food, but Jakey needs food” talking about himself in the third person singular - why can’t God just create food to nourish himself? Isn’t he the almighty, all powerful, universe creating God? Not to Whitehead and his conception of God as the highest emanation of creativity, but at the same time the principle of limitation to His reality - this is Whitehead’s Ultimate Reality (Spinozan Panentheism). Back in Jake’s ‘real’ home, Finn (background character in this episode, who needs Finn when you have infinite Jakes) sees Jake lying on the sofa with his face sunk in. Finn taps Jake but can not rustle him - this does not inspire Finn to shake harder as if to disturb Jake (let sleeping dogs lie), but Finn leaves Jake alone to his own devices. Finn initially was concerned that Jake was unresponsive, but ultimately shrugged it off and went about his own way.
Back in Jake universe, Jake has been whisked away to the high palace to meet the Mayor of Jake City. The Mayor (highest decorated order of Jake City) wants to speak to Jake (God) to alert Jake of an existential event that has been occurring since Jake’s arrival. This existential event or events are the ‘Jake-quakes’ (Jake’s unconscious emerging into his conscious awareness), and these events, according to the Mayor, “have increased exponentially since your arrival” (your Majesty). To analyze these findings (objective data), the Mayor has assembled a team of the best Minds of Jake City to diagnose the symptom that is Jake Quake - it’s that existentially serious that the survival of Jake City is contingent upon these Jake Quakes being diagnosed and treated as soon as possible. This group of minds wish to perform tests on Jake to find the root cause of the symptom (like the ancient Hindu process of medicine or using Buddha’s four noble truths):
the truth of suffering: sensation of hunter exists
the truth of the cause of suffering: attachment is the cause of suffering
the truth of the end of suffering:
through eating the suffering can subside
more radically that there may be other ‘Ways’ of ending attachment to hunger, or maybe attachments in general
The truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering: the discovery of experiencing directly that paths that lead to the end of suffering (if they exist, and insofar they can be traveled)
The group of minds' request to existentially analyze their creator is denied by the creator (Jake), Jake (the Creator) says, “There’s no need. I got it figured out. The Jake Quakes are happening because Jake is hungry, and his stomach is growling, and the hungrier he gets, the worse the quakes will become!” In reply to this Jake monologue, Jake’s audience laughs - The Creator’s statement (wisdom) is taken as a joke (Kierkegaardian Clown) and met with laughter. They (Natured nature, the group of minds’ attempting to analyze Jake) do not believe such an absurd statement in their universe (their language doesn’t allow for it, their discourse community). Jake (active force of God) retorts, “I’ll prove it” - they (passive force of God) hear this retort and collectively incredulously reply, “Huh?”.
Notice how they did not continue to laugh or applaud, like in the Kierkegaard clown joke - the limits of their collective (group of minds) imagination seemingly allows for such a discourse albeit on the limits of their collective conception of absurdity (liminal space?). We can use Deleuze-Whitehead-Nietzsche-Spinoza-Bergson to trek further, but can only do so nomadically.
Warning: Deep Dive into the heart of Process Philosophy Metaphysics ahead (ex wax poetic)
Jake (the Almighty, active God) conceives of a thought experiment to prove to this group of minds (passive force of God = in this case instantiating as Foucault’s cult of Marcuse’s Instrumental reason - a limited force but a force nonetheless, a collective force that acts in a unified manner - we must use Nietzsche’s analysis of Will-to-Power as a guiding factor in viewing the world as a infinite Plurality of Forces). This group of minds has a limited understanding of Whitehead’s Ultimate Reality (Being vs Becoming: reality as becoming, built with becoming metaphysics ala Heraclitus [all there is is change] as opposed to reality as being metaphysics ala Parmenides [change is illusory]). Through the limited understanding of the group (read as limited knowledge as well, knowledge and understanding in the Platonic sense where Knowledge does not equate to Understanding). Due to this limited understanding, this limited knowledge (epistemology) it leads backwards (or forwards or meets in the middle) their limited knowledge/understanding of reality (ontology/metaphysics). How do we know anything about the world until we define what the world Is? Is the world God? Is the world Nature? From this axiomatic metaphysical assumption we have to make (to play the game), Deleuze says we have to adopt a metaphysic to derive an epistemology, from epistemology we can derive a morality, from an individual morality we can derive a morality at the societal level (for better/worse, right/wrong, down/up, north/south). What’s good for the spider might not be good for the scorpion, Pluralism (Leibniz, Deleuze Pluralism = Monism, Monism of Spinoza).
Jake approaches this thought experiment with a happy glea, like a newborn baby (Nietzschean Child, the great affirmer He is), like Socrates corrupting the youth - the context of Jake was focused on the logic of the argument (of the thought experiment), and not of the consequences that might occur as a result of the argument. Jake launches into the thought experiment (with a seemingly good faith audience, the group of minds plus Mayor), he asks the crowd, “Mention a food item”, gleeful scientist in the front row (the entire crowd has a happy reprieve about them) answers back to Jake, “Omelet”. A low rumbling occurs (Jake Quake) but during this rumble, the scientists hold expressions of awe (creative imagination doubt, Jake is empirically providing direct evidence to their empirical scientific minds) whereas the Mayor continues to hold a happy gleeful smile. The rumbling stops, and Jake continues the thought experiment in good faith (Sartre), this time the crowd contains a different emotional state (Spinoza Affect). Three of the four scientists hold emotional states in their expressions (existential analysis on the existential analyzers) that consists of a combinatory state of being (emotions), two emotions the majority of the scientists seem to hold at the same time (in a cognitive dissonance type of way):
that of existential doubt to their previous model of their world:read as Piagetian social construct, we use models to interact with the world and through new objective data [Whitehead] we either ultimately choose to:
accommodate our model to this new data: change our model according to the new external data
assimilate our model to this new data: change the framing of the data coming in to conform to our model
Fear of the unknown colored by the Existential Doubt: this doubt experienced by Jake’s thought experiment is not comforting (Zizek: philosophy should not comfort us, it should discomfort us - there is a reason we ultimately tell a child to stop asking, “Why?” we simply don’t have the answers and will need to impose our force to enact that).
The two remaining members of this crowd are one scientist and the mayor. Both of these individuals still hold the previous state of being held by the group - that of gleeful happiness. We can notice a pattern here, the Mayor’s outward emotional expression has not changed throughout the entirety of Jake’s thought experiment (Whitehead duration of Event). The last remaining scientist of the group who is still gleefully happy (Knight of finite resignation) shouts a food item to which another Jake Quake occurs, this time the most powerful yet (exponential increase) - this causes the true emotional (Affective) inflection point of Jake’s thought experiment. A pole has fallen and caused material violence in the crowd’s world, this existential heady threat now has real world (unforseen if we play the game) consequences to a particular crowd (inhabitants of Jake City). The last remaining scientist of the headiest group (discourse community) of the society of Jake City now has the same expression as the majority of the scientists had previously to the pole falling - that of fear. Now this fear is grounded in their physical, touchable reality. Their reason falters, it fails them so to say, the limits of it can not give them the existential answers they seemingly need to overcome the ‘Great Barrier’ (Fermi Paradox) to keep Jake City alive.
Around the fallen pole, two of the scientists in the group huddle (seemingly were to believe that they are the head scientists of the group, Lord of Flies style) resting their clipboard (administrative bureaucratic artifact of power [see Freud’s Totem and Taboo]) on the fallen pole. These scientists talk softly amongst themselves, trying to not be heard by Jake (think of it in the 2001 Space Odyssey sense, the humans trying to hide their intentions from Hal) they block their mouths with their clipboards as they speak to one another. One scientist says to the other, “Analysis, Tim”, to which Dr Tim the scientist replies, “It’s too early to say, this evidence is anecdotal” - they cast doubt on to their very eyes (ideologically possessed Zizek might say), a Marcusian immanent critique done onto the very reasoning the scientists adhere to by Jake still is not enough to shake the (seemingly) head scientists of the minds group to accept Jake’s position in his thought experiment (Socrates). Jake interrupts these two scientists and says to them, “Look, just let me stretch outside to get something to eat, and the quakes will stop.” Dr Tim the head scientist (ideologically possessed as aforementioned by his scientific cult of reason [discourse community]) responds to Jake, “That doesn’t sound very sciency”. But Dr Tim’s use of sciency here itself begs the question of a definition. What exactly is science then to these scientists? What evidence exactly would this group of supposed minds need to see to prove to them Jake’s little thought experiment? Right as we are about to damn the group of scientists as a whole, the other scientist part of the conversation at the pole speaks up over Dr Tim, in continuation of Tim’s developing sense of the spirit of science in that moment. This different scientist looks at Dr Tim as if to say, trust me on the grounds of being scientists, which Tim seemingly accepts (gives his approval to the other scientist) and instantly in unison they turn to Jake. This different scientist continues speaking to Jake, “but you have my permission to test your idea.”
All of a sudden, from this developing event, we get an entire vibe change. A voice from the back of the crowd (one that we almost forgot), yells, “I don’t like that idea!”. Tim and the other scientist turn around and see this voice has come from a third scientist and in similar unison as before collectively utter, “Huh?”. In response to this confusion, this third scientist continues on his animation (the muse has visited him and bestowed him an idea). This third scientist addresses the group and says “If Jake leaves, that would mean the utter destruction of our world. I believe that Jake is an extra-dimensional being, a ‘Glob’ if you will - whose psychic field holds our world together. If he leaves, his flesh will reconfigure and everything and everyone here will disappear completely!” After this monologue by the third scientist, the first two scientist look at him with looks of laughter and incredulity - Dr Tim responds to this third scientist expositionally (at the seemingly unison feeling of the group) “Oh, Dr Erik Addamkimson - you’re just a ‘fringe’ scientist well known to have a crackpot of crazy theories.” Dr Erik, animated by the spirit of Science (read as Whitehead’s personal Science through creative decision), replies to Dr Tim (the apparent authority) “Maybe you are right, but are you really willing to take that chance?” Now this Dr Erik should not be taken lightly here, he is not happy about this statement - not motivated by some sort of revengeful impulse. He is not Cain damning God to damn society, but he exasperatingly decries these words - fully knowing the real consequences and repercussions that may arise from holding such a belief (Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith). Dr Erik is pulling rank and utilizing his position of power for the safety of the group (as a solution to the failure of the rational group to come up with a seemingly rational solution to this existential problem), Batman takes law into his own hands when he sees what needs to be done. Not only does Batman have technological might adding to his overall Will to Power, but it's the very magnitude of Batman’s Will to Power that begets the threat of it (whether a physical threat or virtual threat [where communism wields the baton, capitalism wields its propaganda]), Batman’s sheer power defines the playing field (sets the limits). In Dr Erik’s eyes, Jake has now become Public Enemy Number One - and Dr Erik feels he has a direct understanding of what to do to save his World.
Dr Erik calls for the arrest of Jake. What an absurd sentence if you think about it existentially. Dr Erik is a passive force (natured nature), and Jake is an active force (naturing nature) - shouldn’t this instantly result in a power imbalance (short circuit) where the active force (God) ‘automatically’ wins the game against the passive force? (God’s creation). The Seventh Seal is a 1957 French movie where a Knight returning to Sweden from the great Crusades encounters the Black Plague through the personification of death (grim reaper) coming to take his life. In this Event, he plays the existentially medieval Knight strategy where he challenges the grim reaper to a battle of wits ala the ‘pure’ game of chess. If he can’t win against Death (Thanatos) in a game of chess to save his life, at least as long as the chess game is going, existentially, his life is prolonged and buys himself more time to possibly get out of this event (as the process is still on going as long as the chess game is on going). This is the Knight of Faith’s gambit (nomadic tool). Dr Erik, Knight of Faith in the tradition of Scientific instrumental reason of his own personal brand (think Don Quixote), makes a similar Knight of Faith gambit to Jake (the more powerful being in the power dynamic of the event). Whitehead says even God is subject to the Event (even God experiences the process, and all there is are processes, and these processes have durations). Due to this fact, and adding in a little Deleuze-Spinoza for good measure, we can find clarity in the actions of Dr Erik in his absurd statement to imprison Jake (God) in Jake City (place of God’s creation).
Jake (God) is in shock that Dr Erik would even suggest such a thing! Why can’t they see it from my perspective? Don’t they see the logic of my thought experiment and how I proved it using their own language of reason? Dr Erik affirms this objective data, but through a persuaded altered perception limits the eternal possibilities to a very finite set of choices (ala Whitehead God interacting with Nature [three-fold Nature of God relating to the three-fold Nature of the event]). And from these choices (eternal possibilities), from his perception of the event (finite limitations of eternal possibilities derived from the objective data presented to him) - Dr Erik sees the light, so to say, and makes a choice from the choices. But he does so with an absurd commitment (a willingness to go as far as necessary to see this job is done, for there is no greater job than that of saving your world [think Don Quixote]). This is what shocks Jake (God). Jake replies, “What?! No Way!” and is in complete bewilderment at the suggestion offered and the quick turn of events (becoming unfolding even to God himself). Now, Jake finds himself in an event where he is seemingly on the other side of the bargaining table - Jake versus Dr Erik. Jake, the Nietzschean child he is (always acting in good faith as well) continues his detestment to such claims and tells Dr Erik, “The world’s not going to end just because I go get a bagel.” With this utterance he restarts the world process, AND ANOTHER Jake Quake occurs (event trigger bagel). This time Dr Erik has gained the apparent power in the room (derived from the previous event’s ‘bargaining table’), so much so that after the rumbling subsides this time the Mayor is convinced.
The Mayor is the political representation of the political power of Jake City. What the Mayor says goes in Jake City because he is treated as divine. Freud, in Totem and Taboo, can shine some light on this situation when he talks about the dual nature of the King (Natured nature):
The King is the representative of power
Member of the living dead
The dual nature of the King can be understood through the concepts of both totem and taboo: totem in the sense that the body of the King is an icon to worship, yet taboo in a sense the body of the King is ‘not allowed’ to be touched. Taboo in a way defines what’s normal (Kierkegaard, “to label me is to negate me”), to play the game of duality (Hanuman says when in duality play duality, when in non-duality don’t - Ram Dass). Taboo is what exists outside the socio-symbolic signification (Lacan, Zizek) therefore sustains the normal realm (Whitehead event). Julian (J&J) says in his ebook Hermeneutic Temptation, “The King therefore is the stand-in for the indivisible remainder between the Sacred (Totem) and Profane (Taboo)... The lowest is the highest, standing in as the inner limit of the social relation itself.” Freud’s Theory of Anxiety stems from a fear of loss; whereas Lacan’s is getting too close to something, which ends up being a type of loss. Get too close to the King and he is no longer the King. But for both Lacan and Freud, fear was always and is always preferable to anxiety. This is for a simple reason: anxiety is indeterminate, anxiety is when you don’t know what you should be afraid of and all the details (the devil you know) (the devil is in the details).
Through the simple act of Dr Erik (Affected, impassioned entity ‘possessed’ by the Spirit of Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith [infinite resignation]) a ripple effect has occurred. Initially from Jake (God), got away from Jake (God), and has made its way back to Jake (God) in a new and different package that Jake (God) might not have seen. It is at the very height of the levies at the societal level (social contract and all) that Dr Erik’s spirit is invoked which in turn (process, duration) affects the Mayor of Jake City. The Mayor is not to be taken lightly, arguably the Mayor of Jake City is the King. The Mayor, as far as Jake City is concerned (well-being), is representative of the highest political power (see Will to Power) that society can offer - this is why the group of minds was brought together in the first place. The Mayor now being possessed by the spirit that is in motion yells at the top of his lungs with his eyes closed, hands up, “Seize Him!” The Mayor has made his declaration and he has been heard. Make no mistake, while it appears to be the ‘same’ utterance of Dr Erik, the Mayor is not Dr Erik (“trust me, you’re no Jack Kennedy”); the Mayor’s utterance is something Different (Nietzsche Pure Difference). The Mayor = Force A, Dr Erik = Force B, the Will-to-Power is the relation we can speak of between Force A and Force B (also we can use the power of Genealogy to discover morality for its ‘true’ nature in noble/base). The Mayor has more power in this moment due to the nature of how the events have unfolded. Remember, the Mayor is who called Jake here in the first place! How absurd is this, unless this was a part of the Mayor’s plan the whole time?
After the Mayor’s utterance (Logos, spoken Order) real Will-to-Power potential is converted into kinetic palpable physical action, so to say. Jake (God, the shapeshifter) attempts to get away (from himself?) after the Mayor declares his imprisonment (like the gangsta Jake is, FK the police type spirit), Jake turns to this new decreed law and with His own force (Force C) declares a (seemingly) sensible phrase that could be uttered un-absurdly by a God - Jake says, “Uhh…peace!”. Jake has gotten out of many situations, he is the Deus-ex-machina of the show in many AND many (so many Finn episodes) AND many (his Deus-ex-machina drove the plot in non-Finn episodes) AND etc. and so forth ahem my Got. We’ve seen this before, our beloved hero, Jake, is in a situation where ‘mortals’ have presented themselves in a position of combat engaging Him in a fight-or-flight response, and like said before he usually gets out of this. That’s the needed context for this episode (in the old testament we find phrases such as, “let be unto Caesar as is Caesar’s”, but nowhere in that same text does it define who Caesar is, What Caesar does, What would be Caesar’s Providence as opposed to ‘Divine’ Providence - these details would be of course ‘be a given’ to the ancient reader of these texts, this is the art of hermeneutics or the art of interpretation [hermeneutics being derivative of Hermes {messenger, or translator at times}, Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, but inside this discipline is the study of literary interpretation {exegesis, St Augustine gives us the four basic interpretations of any biblical passage (literal, parable, metaphorical, mystical)}, but Hermeneutics is more than just exegesis]). Context is important for this: as a discongruity is to occur (Aristotle’s comedy theory, Bergson - where context is violated absurdly so to say and an affect occurs [from the effect?]), again the context being setup in this moment (event) is Jake is about to escape - then the unthinkable happens.
Jake, sees the developing situation (as objective data), weighs the developing situation (eternal possibilities) to select finite possibilities from the infinite so to say, and then makes a decision. His creative decision (Whitehead) here is He uses his power (Divine power) of growth. Now again, to be a Good Deleuze-Nietzschean we must clarify that for a second - power does not exist in a vacuum. Jake’s decision to utilize his growth power here (again Divine power) is not done in a vacuum, it is against something. Will-to-Power is a relation, the relation so to speak of here is Jake’s ‘ability’ to utilize his Will-to-Power in an ‘overcoming’ way to his opponent in this situation. But to speak of this more precisely Jake is against something in this moment unlike any battle He has ever fought before (our Lord and Savior serves his creations and in return his creations serve Him [Hanuman, Ram Dass]). Jake = Force A, and Force A needs a Force B to ‘enact’ its Will-to-Power relation onto - well what is this Force B to speak of? Two ‘things’ (Whitehead entities) come out from behind the ‘machines’ in the background (from out of sight, didn’t know these two entities existed at all), and these two ‘things’ grab Jake in the middle of Jake utilizing his growth power (come to find out it really was N+1 ‘things’ in such a way that as many ‘things’ or entities would come out as ‘necessary’ contingent on how much ‘Will-to-Power’ Jake was ‘willing’ to enact in this given day, place, act, scene, episode, season, context matters and it doesn’t at all, Context gets broken here - Jake (Naturing nature, active) grows bigger, two things grab him, somehow the very act of these two ‘things’ (Natured nature, passive) ‘causes’ Jake to ‘bounce’, so to say, where his growth power did a complete 180 degree turn and caused him to shrink back to the original size he was (before growth event started). The claim here would be no matter how much Jake would have enacted his powers here, he never would have enacted enough because of the passive force Jake had set up himself (how utterly absurd).
In the capture of Jake (God) process, it takes six of the aforementioned ‘things’ to finally bring Jake to a full prone position before the Mayor. Now the direct understanding is brought to us, the fourth wall audience, the Mayor is the Force B in the aforementioned Will-to-Power thought experiment. Jake = Force A, Mayor = Force B, but you see using Lacan/Freud we can get a better sense of the types of power a King of a Kingdom (Whitehead’s King is again the principle of Limitation but also simultaneously growth - the Real?) might possess. The King of a Kingdom at the very least phenomenologically possesses the powers thy can wield or leverage from the very social contract they ‘represent’. What defines a civilization? (Seemingly a checklist anthropologically, it’s not enough just to have religious temples [sorry Graham Hancock and Gobekli Tepe], we must have division of labor [Joseph Campbell’s says it starts with the ancient origin of Division of Labor {as we understand it}, specialization, from surplus of resources: Laborer (toiling), Merchant (trading), Governing (order), Priestly (spiritual) - Joseph Campbell claims that these come together in a Sacred-Symbolic way so to say that differs from say groupings of the peoples who made Gobekli Tepe (maybe someday this will be proven wrong, this is no problem the same thing will apply to that), but this Sacred-Symbolic act is a Occult-type ritual nonetheless. This Spirit’s central belief is that although we all have our specializations we all serve the same center - but this is not some belief that you get to wake up in the heart of America and say to yourself that if you don’t believe it it isn’t true (like gravity), you being in America contextualizes that ‘truth’ that like it or not, believe in it or not, fetishitically disavow it or not the belief (The Big Other persists even if we don’t believe). Again Lacan says the king is a fool to think he actually is the King (This is how a King can achieve legitimacy [Like in the English civil war perhaps? King Joffrey from GoT? Why do some ‘Kings’ illicit an absolute devotive following such as emperor of Japan in WW2 {the technology of the americans was not going to stop the Japanese (threat was not potent enough to shake their ‘social contract’), Oliver Stone argues against the Bill O’Reilly take that America saved WW2 by dropping a nuke - no Oliver Stone argues the greater fear was the Russians - regardless the Japanese people would not have ceased fighting if it weren’t for the decree of the God-emperor, what caused their emperor to cease fighting?} Some Kings therefore depending on certain conditions can have varying levels of power when necessary so to say but variably. If God is to play in the same processes we play due to the three-fold nature of Events, then this is exactly how Jake (God, active force) is being ‘arrested’ by himself (passive force, creation of God but is of him as well, simultaneously). He is being arrested by the Spirit of the Society. Whether you want to believe in that Spirit or not is really on you, (Did the Greeks believe in their Gods, Zizek asks do we really believe the Greeks thought you could walk up Mount Olympus located there in Greece and find Zeus playing with Aphrodite?).
To speak of the Spirit of Society I know no one else that wrote the book other than Hegel, but I do not feign to understand Hegel - I only know how to Whitehead Hegel - Whitehead leaves us a blueprint to ‘naturalize’ Hegel (similarly to how Marx ‘materializes’ Hegel through Hegel’s reflexive determination vs Marx’s determinate reflection [thanks again Julian, shoutout to J&J]) Whitehead gives us tools of what we can do with Hegel. Hegel gives us the historical epoch, a way to view history and Alienate it (just kidding) but really, go capture the spirit of a historical duration (Hegel) and naturalize that in the people (Whitehead). We went from Kantian Transcendental Idealism, to Hegelian Speculative Idealism (Evolutionary Idealism, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, there is no substance but processes: the dialectical self conscious unfolding through time [Absolute Spirit]), and here we take the Whitehead to invert this Hegel and use the Evolutionary concept from this Hegel (Evolutionary Idealism) but Whitehead inverts the Idealism part and in doing so naturalizes it (in the ancient Natural Philosopher sense, he utilizes Alexandrian Philosophers here [Middle Platonism development of the structure of Logos manifested in every being (Emanation) to stay within an ancient metaphysical tradition, specifically Alexandrians (Process Philosophy/Theology)].
To go a little further on Whitehead, he criticizes Locke’s theory of perception by saying in Locke’s phenomenology of sense perception, ideas (cognitive content) come first instead of ‘causal efficacy’. This is the great fallacy of Locke for Whitehead, that of giving primacy to presentational immediacy (the ideas immediately presented to consciousness, the cognitive content). Whitehead says the first thing to come to mind phenomenologically is causal efficacy, that is the initial starting point (there is some effect that is felt) and Whitehead shows us how we can be misled by sense perception. Locke even misled Hume here - Hume fell prey to the Locke fallacy as well (ala spirit of Dr Erik to the Mayor). So what’s the big deal? Who cares if Locke fallacied? Whitehead says the consequences have been grave, waxing poetic, and we need process philosophy to rectify. First is causal efficacy (Spinozan Affect), then presentational immediacy (ala Locke) follows the causal efficacy (not the other way around). But Whitehead says, even at this mid-stage (first stage causal efficacy, second stage presentational immediacy being the mid-stage) you have no knowledge whether this presentational immediacy is true or not for it is simply a hypothetical idea that you have to turn around and put in the ‘work’ by referring it back to the cause of the stimulus. This whole wind up to get to this point - from this Whitehead says this idea though is not a representation of a copy, it’s a symbol (Bradley, critique of traditional empiricism, ideas are not copies they are symbols). These ‘symbols’ are used to reference, to referent, to give us indirect knowledge of the essence of an object - “the essence is what it is, the existence is that it is”. Whitehead (process philosophy) crucially proclaims:
Direct Awareness (Gnosis) = Spinozan Affect
Indirect awareness of what something is = Symbol
Again this Symbol is NOT a mere representation of a copy, it decries a Pure Difference (Deleuze-Nietzsche the Anti-Dialectic) into itself (Natured Nature [Symbol] vs Naturing Nature [Affect]). Whitehead’s three-fold nature of any AND all AND every event always contains three constituent elements: first objective data (givens) that affect the present state of consciousness (causal efficacy); second ‘hypothetical ideas’ develop through the process of presentational immediacy (eternal possibilities); then thirdly and lastly, a decision is made (the crucial Symbolic reference). Of course the ‘decision’ is made from the selection of ‘eternal’ range of possibilities provided by the stimulus (objective data). God equals nature, but nature is value-laden, this means for Whitehead that natural processes are LOADED with possibilities for good or bad (the symbol works or it doesn’t, noble/base, up/down, north/south). Here is the crucial Whitehead point, where he links his Process Philosophy and his Process Theology: What is the source of eternal possibilities? For Whitehead, God is the source (But God in the Alexandrian doctrine of the Logos sense) of eternal possibilities but also he did not create the world process - he is simply an orderer so to say as opposed to a creator. God not as a prime mover (teleology), not as a creator God, not ex nihilo, but an Orderer, the Providencer, the Logos’er (that which defines what Logos is, to the Alexandrians Logos is how to make the transcendent immanent, our divinely transcendent connection at the heart of all beings through the divine power of the stoic logos-spermatikoi [genealogy of Logos]). As well as the principle of Limitation, the principle of growth (concretion in concrescence), God is the highest emanation of creativity (indeed God is creativity par excellence) that is to say that Whitehead’s Ultimate Reality is this Creativity we speak of. This being the Bergson connection of Process Philosophy - Bergson’s Creative Evolution (elan vital). Bergson’s elan vital is what exists in the gaps (the Real) in between that which we can’t explain in Vitalism (Comedic theory as one example). Maybe we need this concept of vitalism to clarify and bring into picture exactly what exactly is the gap the ‘King’ fills in the Sacred/Profane uncanny valley, the indivisible remainder or what stands in place for (psychic-ly in the psychoanalytic sense) that way we can possibly understand what marks the symbolic difference between let’s say a Vital King and a not-so-vital King. A Vital King being defined as a King who knows the Big Other persists as an authority ‘just because he is’ - that is to say not question this sacred-symbolic hazy concept too much lest ye scare the Buddha away. The non-vital King thinks he actually is the king - therefore loses all his symbolic power (Cromwell versus Charles). The Big Other is always tautological, Lacan says there is no power in decrying illegitimacy of the Big Other’s authority - it’s that stubborn thing that persists even if we don’t believe (the inverse of the fetish, the symptom).
As the symbolic-powers-that-be descend and ‘defeat’ Jake (God) one must laugh at the absurdity again, of almost hitting yourself and pretending to ‘defeat’ yourself. This is the central Hindu play myth (the world as a great drama, we are all God pretending we are not, Panentheism though in the sense of the avatars of God can therefore interact with God in the sense to ‘serve’ God [Hanuman, Ram Dass or Servant of Ram, again Hanuman being the avatar of the servant of Rama]. To serve God is the highest Good one can do, that is what Hanuman says to do when faced with the illusion of ‘duality’ - Ram Dass interprets this as finding God in everything and to creatively deciding to serve Him in every moment. These ‘powers’ that descend upon Jake, this ‘Power’ that is involved with arresting Him or defeating him or overpowering him again at the command of the Mayor (King of Jake City Kingdom) are serving him so to say. This is how we are to help understand symbolically the question when Jake asks, “Why?” to the Mayor - thus to help properly situate it in its proper context. The Mayor does not laugh maniacally when he says, “Finish Him” as a decree of Mayor utterance - instead the Mayor had his hands up in right angles, a power stance, with a look of determination in his eye - a look of commitment to a cause that he truly, fully, absurdly, utterly, holistically, and spiritually believes in (Victor Frankl, with a why you can overcome any how - or was that Nietzsche?). The Mayor has become our Knight of Faith (infinite) in this moment, for he is serving God (Jake), this is where he taps into all of his so called power - that is to say in a way Jake is allowing this to happen, this whole Event is of his creation/doing (remembering the Naturing/Natured Spinozan distinction). The Mayor has a dharma to fulfill, that is what rings in his voice, that is his Affective Aura that he emits in the moment when he declares his final utterances that lead to the ultimate inflection point in the event where Jake (God) ends up in jail.
Now Jake is locked up in jail (literally in his own mind). The jail is small (the first appearance being no room for Jake to move as two guards stand outside ‘watching’ [who watches the watchmen?]) this first appearance reminding of some of the jails spoken about in Albert Camus’s, ‘The Fall’ where the prisoner barely had enough room to stand up only to be able to stand for maybe the first part of the day only to collapse under his own ‘will-to-freedom’ or expression of his agency in a very particular way. Again with Victor Frankl and his beautiful text of ‘Man’s search for meaning’ where he, a psychiatrist, was in Auschwitz and while in there it helped develop his method of existential psychology (Logotherapy) - somewhere deep down in every process there is a creative decision that can be made, and that’s not to say right/wrong, down/up, north/south, and maybe that is to say God died in Auschwitz - regardless the result seems to be the same to the Absurdist/Existentialist (One must imagine sisyphus happy). The power of psychic energy is there for us to grasp whether we acknowledge its existence or not (this seems to be a pattern with consciousness, ala William Blake). The second appearance we get of Jake is his jail cell was not as small as in the first appearance but (same jail-cell allegedly) this one allows him to lie down fully on his back - that is to fully commit to the ripe suffering of hunger now without Goose’s distractions to utilize to fetishistically disavow the symptoms.
In this lying down position in the jail cell (of his own mind), Jake thinks about a bagel - which of course causes ANOTHER Jake Quake. And like a good process philosopher, this time we see a new group ‘interpreting’ the Jake Quake. At the head of this group is none only than Dr Erik, he is appealing to an audience now that seems more like a mob of Jake rather than group of happy-go-loving supporters of Jake - still this group is still well aware of the existential threat that is Jake and the consequence of being so close to Jake (God, the totem, the sacred, not allowed to touch the profane, don’t get too close to the King for you may spoil what makes him the King). Jake being so close to the very society that he is the critical element (defining symbolic reference characteristic), causes the Lacanian theory of Anxiety rather than Freud’s. Again Freud’s theory of anxiety is really simple, anxiety stems from fear of loss. Lacan gets a little more involved but in a fruitful way for our efforts here - for Lacan anxiety is getting too close to the thing; this attachment to the thing being the root cause of the very thing that ‘is’ lost (be careful Process Philosophers). This attachment or perceived psychological loss is a feeling of anxiety - anxiety that is felt in the moment we lose that ‘psychological distance’. To Lacan, the fetish is always the thing that appears Hermeneutically sealed to us, the fetish is the inverse of the symptom. This is the fetishistic disavow, the rage against the symptom (you either confront the symptom or disavow it) why must you face either of these two options in the world process? Because of the emergence of the Gap, the great uncanny gap between:
Knowing the thing is not real
Continuing to treat the thing as if it is real (with the knowledge of the thing ‘not being real’)
Lacan says the fetish papers over this gap, again the symptom forcing you to either confront or disavow this deadlock (the ‘forcing’ of the confrontal/disavow decision of the deadlock existing only because of the existence of the symptom [this could be marxist symptoms, etc.]). Zizek says the fetishistic disavow is already symptomatic - the fetishistic attachment is already a form of disavow (this is the important Marxist point) therefore giving us the decision to change the nature of the fetish (this enlying psychic untapped power). Let’s revisit Freud here because through him we can clarify this perspective a tad more - especially the concept of Libido.
A Libido is a mental energy (psychic and emotional) associated with instinctual biological drives - it is quantifiable and can be attached to or withdrawn from objects. This mechanism by which this ‘exchange’ process occurs in this Libido event (that being the process of attaching Libido to or withdrawing Libido from an object) well the process in this event is called ‘Cathexis’. Cathexis meaning ‘to occupy’, it is a process where a quantity of psychical/emotional energy becomes attached to an object or idea - that is to say if an object is ‘Libidinally Cathected’ it would refer to that object being charged with Libido energy (mental energy being psychic or emotional). Lacan locates this Libido in the imaginary register - only relocating in after 1964 into the Real. Freud speaks of sublimation being the process of a drive finding a means to secure satisfaction (Whitehead Aesthetic satisfaction from the ‘ending’ of a process) in the face of aim-inhibition. In Whitehead’s three-fold nature of events we can think of the final stage or decision making stage as a sort of stage where subjective-aim is taken up by the process (first through objective data or physical prehension [Leibniz], then through eternal possibilities or conceptual prehension, ending with an Aesthetic satisfactory ‘breath out’ decision making phase where you either reached the subjective aim through the creative decision or you didn’t - that is to say only you have the direct understanding if the goal was met or not through the sensation of the ‘drive securing satisfaction in the face of aim-inhibition’. Freud would say through the process of sublimation you can redirect the psychical/emotional energies that emerge from all over the place to from ego-desire to cultural aims (such as work, art, politics). Lacan differs here a little, he differs the ‘subjective aim’ of a drive from the goal of a drive. The subjective-aim is always inhibited to Lacan, but the goal is always reached - this is because the goal just likes the movement of the subjective aim so to say. Zizek uses this same logic to differentiate desire from drive: desire is never satisfied whereas drive feeds off of this dissatisfaction of desire (where desire is frustrated, drive is gratified to Zizek). This gives us a vampiric archetype of drive living off of the life blood vitality of the desire - so to say.
This crowd that has gathered before Dr Erik has placed their Libidinal faith (through Cathexis) into Dr Erik and all he symbolically stands for in that moment. After the Jake Quake from when the prisoner was in jail (how else does society try to combat existential threats) - the immediacy of the existential threat has grown in distance from the focal point of the crowd’s interaction with Dr Erik. Jake isn’t there to defend himself anymore (although isn’t he through the crowd + Dr Erik?), and we see this through the crowd’s insistence on the Sacred symbolicness embodied in Dr Erik (through the absence of Jake/God). Both Dr Erik and the Mayor form this symbiotic symbolic inseparable relationship at this point in the event (this episode of Adventure Time) in which the spirit they have started in the process of growing and is still growing (hopefully it doesn’t grow outside of the bounds Dr Erik and the Mayor can control - they have literally took fate into their own hands and ‘outside’ of the hands of Jake [Jesus take the wheel], this process they started has grown into a life of its own. This process that Whitehead would say emerged from a series of processes in which in every interaction Jake (God) was present - but to speak of it this way is to speak of the relationship of God’s three-fold nature and the three-fold nature of the Event. This is where Whitehead (the mathematician philosopher, Calculus is all about the study of the relations of movement as opposed to movement in itself, relations are much easier to talk about) keeps us focused on mechanisms at the core of the Event and how they are equally as important (as much as the parts of the whole are important to the whole and vice versa). This crowd feels anxiety from the Jake Quake whilst Jake is in Jail in Jake City, they instantly (intuitively) now turn to Dr Erik (strategically located so that he can be the focal point of the crowd, context is important). This crowd turns to Dr Erik to somehow sublimate their energy (for they can’t by themselves dispel [confront the symptom] the chain effect causes that these Jake Quakes cause to the individual Self’s [all the individual cogitos that make up Jake City] this is why crowd in this new process needs Dr Erik as the Great Sublimater).
Dr Erik now at the front of the crowd whisks the crowd's attention back from the symptom (Jake’s Hunger) to the focus on him (sublimating the psychic energy through use of the symbolic). He confidently faces the crowd and without faltering, declares his dharma and what he (the hero to this crowd) will need to do to solve this existential crisis (embark on the Campbellian hero’s journey). Dr Erik addresses the crowd, “Don’t worry, everybody. I will turn to Jake’s Glob world (remember Dr Erik is the fringe conspiracy theorist) which legend would have us believe lies beyond the great sky hole, and bring back food of the Globs to appease Jake’s appetite, thus saving everybody.” Says Don Quixote to a crowd of his adoring fans (as opposed to his condescending squire who simply finitely resignates to Don Quixote) - this crowd are perfect Knights of infinite resignation. But we can use Mark Fisher here and his Spinozan-Burroughs understanding, Burroughs characters in his novels are always faced with existential threats (external forces that cause Whiteheadian entities to self sabotage due to the existential nature of the threat). Burroughs Addict for instance is bonded or enslaved to exogenous forces (all Reason is not necessarily suspended in the addict [Kierkegaardian Knights of infinite resignation] though, for Reason is still necessary in the quest to ‘regain control’ for Burrough’s addict. The painful reality Burroughs puts every last one of his addict characters through is the painful psychoanalytical process of Reason never being sufficient in perfectly and finally satisfying that itch that the addict is enslaved by. The Junk the Junky takes is his God so to say, it’s his in the moment escape from external existential forces that might threaten the Junky’s (Burrough’s Addict) world view - his escape from Samsara. But you see the Junk, it’s only temporary (Ram Dass figured this out with psychedelics after a certain point - they don’t seem to ever stick permanently, always needing refueled). This is the central problem of Burrough’s addict: their Reason is existent, but only existent enough to allow them to chase their desires - Reason is not enough to ultimately stop this pursuit for this pursuit will never be satiated (this is the psychoanalytic mechanism of the drive vampirically living and surviving off of the life blood of desire). The Junky can forever live in this alternate reality so to say of infinite chasing of the desire, never satiating it, but maybe identifying with the desire itself (living completely in the moment, memento mori, all there is is now so we must love now so absurdly much damn everything that is now). This is the Knight of Faith, the three stages of Kierkegaard (Aesthetic, Ethical, Religious) culminating in three basic characters:
The Squire: Aesthetic slave, abandons the object of desire for any pale substitute
The Knight of Infinite Resignation: ethical stage of the knight in which the decision is made to infinitely resign to the fact that the object of desire will never be obtainable (death by a thousand paper cuts)
Knight of Faith: religious stage of the knight (Leap of faith), this knight doesn’t give up on the object of desire and would fully believe that in this world/life the object of desire can be achieved (read satiated, happy ever after type telos ending, initiate by libidinal energy).
"I believe nevertheless that I shall get her, in virtue, that is, of the absurd, in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible." [Fear and Trembling]
The Knight of Faith can, by virtue of the absurd, get what he desires completely (through a divinely leap of faith means of course). This is how we are to take Dr Eriks claim of how he will ‘save everybody’ from the external threat that is at Jake’s ‘Jake City’, of course Jake being the existential threat. To accomplish this, our Knight of Faith Dr Erik, will need to embark on the Hero’s journey - that is Dr Erik will go into “Jake’s Glob World” (the unknown) using legend to navigate him (Absolute Spirit) to stumble about blindly in the darkness and find the solution (food for Jake) to their societies external threat (Jake’s hunger) (antidote for the external threat found of course externally to Jake City, by claim of Dr Erik our Knight of Faith). This is all to appease Jake’s appetite, for they have already tried reasoning with Jake directly and Jake can’t seem to solve this problem in the confines of the Jake City rules. This is why Jake is in jail and in his place the society has substituted Dr Erik (sublimationally, libidinally, Dr Erik is heavily libidinally charged with cathected Vitalism).
Thus the Knight of Faith’s Hero’s Journey starts for Dr Erik as he poetically turns around and starts his journey (down the hill) his Dad emerges from the crowd to give him a hug (show his affection for the hero, the becoming-Sacred and become-Sacred). Dr Erik’s Father weeps and says he wants to go with Dr Erik, Dr Erik looks back with happiness understanding that this is the way his father shows his love for him, this is symbolic of what crowd would ultimately wish to do as well in a sense - show their own love for our dearly beloved hero (for his great sacrifice and his great mission he will save us all). Dr Erik tells his dad that he can not come along on the Hero’s Journey - for then it would transform the journey no doubt. Dr Erik needs to do this one alone, without his Dad, without the crowd, without Jake (sort of). So in response to his Dad he tells him, “Your mind is unprepared” to show the Pure Difference that exists between the two entities in the process that are Dr Erik and his Father. This unpreparedness of the mind can be found in many Hero’s Journeys for the Hero only embarks on the journey precisely when the mind is ready (Dr strange only got into the temple once his mind was ready), Dr Erik’s mind is ready, his dad’s clearly isn’t (for he would be in Dr Eriks position, not the father role of the Hero). The proof is in the pudding so to say, and undeterred our beloved hero continues on with his journey, the interaction with his dad (the clashing of two processes) leaving him un-affected in the sense that he is still on with his goal.
We come to the next scene with Dr Erik laboring to climb what seems to be a very tall mountain - he appears to be following the great legend he spoke of in his monologue because after the tall mountain he starts to climb the wall of the fabric of space-time itself (to break the fourth wall as film can) in a Truman Show-esque way. This is the Hero’s climb up Mount Olympus to meet the Gods - to accomplish the feat, certain myths tend to codify this way. To Dr Erik’s luck (Deus ex machina), a balloon from nowhere appears which allows him to jump on it and more quickly and less laboriously ascend up to the Legendary “Sky Hole” (through the help of God, the Writer God you could say by ascending the very fabric of the writers space-time). When our Knight of Faith lays eyes on the mythical “Sky Hole” his journey is affirmed, this is what the legend spoke of, he does not falter for he knows exactly what to do. All the way leading up to the very moment our dear Hero passes through the transition point, before he transitions though it must be noted that he had absolute and utter faith (Knight of Faith par excellence) to the very end - a complete personal sacrifice on his part so to say to the cause (dharma).
The moment has come for Dr Erik, the moment he has been waiting for. He’s performed the correct heroic rituals, greased the correct palms, inspired the correct conditions of mind and here he - through the rabbit hole. He arrives on the other side still completely absurdly faithful to the cause, nothing can shake his dharma. From this state of mind he proceeds: he first spots shadows on the wall (a projector displaying a bear and rabbit hugging) and engages with the world-process. He harkens with these shadows on the wall in a way that treats the shadows as he calls them, “Jake Globs” and “beseeches their aid”. From this utterance and demand (for Lacan, Desire = Demand - Need, every demand is a demand for love, what is desired when a demand is met or asked for is not only the demand but love itself.) Dr Erik makes a demand to the Jake Globs, for them to give him what he covets (the Sacred bagels that will cure Jake’s hunger). The Jake Globs respond in silence to his plea, providing him with new objective data, new eternal possibilities and a new decision where he declares these shadows on the wall to be “too ugly Jake Globs” - that is until he sees Finn in the flesh, face to face, Finn gigantic in relation to Dr Erik (feeling of sublime, Dr Erik is small compared to the grandiosity tallness of Finn, to be fetishisized if so desired, to be cathected upon if so desired).
Here Dr Erik finds himself on his hero’s journey, face to face with Finn the seemingly giant. What does our hero do? He breaks down sobbing, bemoaning that he thought Finn would be more beautiful than how he appears. The aesthetic value of Finn to Dr Erik apparently being that of great worth to our dear Hero - our dear Hero being so ever consumed by this apparent fact that he starts to repeatedly proclaim Finn to be, “Hideous, hideous!!”. The be-moanings of our Knight of Faith, he is in peril, but a peril unlike any he has ever felt or perceived or dealt with before. He deemed his mind worthy for whatever was to popup on this hero journey and he would have to face this head on (confront) but this ends up being Dr Eriks demise. Through this final process of Dr Erik, that one and only process that Dr Erik had outside of Jake - still attached to Jake (God) but seeing that which goes beyond the boundaries of Jake (God). From this forbidden wisdom, this forbidden appearance of Finn, the betrayal of the Aesthetic of our Knight of Faith (the transformation or unbecoming of the Knight of Faith) when experienced by Dr Erik it sends him to such an emotional breakdown (the short circuit of the gap that the fetish papers over and that which allows you to disavow the symptom or the real, the gap between knowing the thing is not real but to treat as if it were real regardless although having that knowledge (to fetishize the commodity). This short circuiting of this gap, causes a sudden satori - an instant enlightenment so to say (and this isn’t to romanticize this process at all, this can be an extremely profound yet extremely painful process in that same way:
Aeschylus, “pain falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom - through the awful Grace of God”.
This short circuiting of the gap and sudden satori is a psychoanalytic emotional breakdown predicated on the internal limit of the fetishistic attachment (disavow). All of these fetishizations (philosophical reifications of that which is alienated [Hegel]), have internal limits for they are all ways to repress grief or a symptom or the Real - you can’t expect to do this without giving a pound of flesh (Indiana Jones switches out the treasure for a bag of sand, the energy is the same he just ‘tricks’ the mechanism). This short circuiting of the gap or emotional breakdown is the undoing of our dearly beloved Hero-Knight of Faith Dr Erik. And with that goes our hope of his plans of saving Jake City. He was the only proverbial hope, the best totality of that society came up with to solve this existential problem (now it comes into clear that this problem might not be as simple as Jake’s hunger). Our Hero, blessed be his name, melts back into Jake, back into God, that which emanates from God (Natured Nature from Naturing Nature) eventually spatio-temporally has to return back to God for that is only natural for the process (world-process, event). As is typical of Finn, who is a hero into himself with his own context, his own reality, his own Hero’s journey - Finn appears to hear a slight peep (think Horton hears a Who) but this is simply a fleeting sound in the phenomenological perspective of Finn, he doesn’t have the correct decoder mechanism to decode what that sound actually meant (it was Hermeneutically sealed for Finn but decodable and interpretable [therefore have a life of its own in a way] for us the viewer of the show). The dying sounds being the final utterances of that which was Dr Erik, and his role in the world-process - his 15 minutes in the limelight. His contributions will not be forgotten in us, but are easily forgotten to Finn, who hears this sound but that only prompts him to tell B.M.O. to pause the movie (causing the shadows on the wall that Dr Erik was initially mesmerized with). After the sound didn’t continue (Finn didn’t ‘properly’ interpret the event [the dying sound of Dr Erik] like we did, thus he continued on with his life (plurality) that of watching a movie with B.M.O. (something that sounds extremely relaxing) Finn is able to be completely ignorant to the entire life and struggle of our beloved Knight of Faith Dr Erik - afforded that luxury.
We come back to Jake in the Prison cell in Jake City. His stomach is rumbling again due to a recent thought of Spaghetti (object of desire) causing yet another Jake Quake in Jake city - only this time there is no Dr Erik to libidinally, sublimate the societies psychic/emotional Affects that they feel due to the external existential threat that is Jake Quakes. Dr Erik, their hero, was supposed to save them and stop this existential threat for good. Isn’t everyone involved in this fiasco ready to call it an end and go back to their normal lives (that of Jake City society without being so close and aware of Jake therefore losing the attachment they have to some external object of desire [attachment]) undoing the problem for Good. Well now that Dr Erik is gone, him serving as the main Spirit that was punishing Jake and putting him in jail - this gives Jake’s old buddy Goose a chance to do some tricks on the prison guards in hopes of busting his old buddy out (classic Goose, Clint Eastwood never left a man behind). Goose breaks into the prison with a strength that Jake didn’t seem to have (or seem to desire to emit to bust out of the jail). In this we see a part of Jake’s inhibitions for leaving the jail (revealing more and more that this jail is more a psychological mind trap rather than an actual physical jail [again this is all in Jake’s head]). What is keeping Jake in that proverbial symbolic jail then if it might not be the physicality of the conundrum? We understand this existentially in his question he asks to Goose as Goose breaks into the jail to bust Jake, his buddy, out (because that’s what best friends do, i don’t care about your Affects of the matter - discongruity). Jake asks Goose, “but what if Dr Erik is right? What if you and all the Jake peeps disappear and I can't bring you back?” We find the spirit of Dr Erik is alive and well in Jake (has been all along?) - the doubt of Dr Erik the passive force (the natured nature) has made its way all the way back to the active force and caused doubt in the mind of God (Jake). This is what keeps Jake in the shackles of his mind, the clinging or attachment he has to his Jake peeps (his newfound object of desire through the unfolding of becoming). We find that God has become attached to his very creations and that’s what is fuel for the drama or myth to keep going. Until that is resolved the play can not end, this trap in Jake’s mind is holding up the crowd from going home - they are caught in the theater and there is no exit until Jake figures this conundrum out. You see, Jake (God) has gotten in his own way, he can not see the clear path that we can see because he is blinded by his own ideology or model of the world (he needs to accommodate, he’s trapped in assimilation).
The drama of Jake is resolved in the answer Goose gives him (the solution for Jake [God], naturing nature, the active force is found in the natured nature or the passive for Jake [God] created, par excellence - his best friend. Hanuman serves Rama by doing what Rama couldn’t do, Hanuman (Goose) releases Jake (Rama) from the prison by not only physically busting him out of jail but also busting him out of the conceptual jail or the conceptually prehend trap that Jake had gotten himself into by clinging to attachment in the first place. Goose releases him from this by uttering in response to Jake’s anxieties of losing all his friends, “Then you won’t have to pay me back that 5 bucks”, that Jake owed Goose allegedly for some cheeseburger cheesecake Jake bought with Goose's libidinal availability. Once Goose releases Jake from this alleged obligation this is symbolic as this would be only one attachment of many that involves Jake losing all of his perceived new friends in Jake City. Goose preps Jake with the knowledge of “You will have to let go of this attachment” prompts him with a simple exercise of it, “You don’t owe me money anymore, let it and me go” proverbially and symbolically then slaps Jake. Goose gives him a wisdom lesson to release his psychic energy (let go Jake), and physically slaps him (like the Buddhist monk does in the temple, whack with the wooden stick to slap sense into the meditator if he may fall asleep or ask a ‘bad’ question). From this initial utterance of persuasion and slaps from Goose, Goose then tells Jake to go eat - throughout this little duration (micro duration of the macro duration of the entirety of the event) Jake goes through a mini emotional breakdown himself but unlike Dr Erik he does not melt and transform back into emanation. His emotional breakdown comes across a type of transformation of consciousness - Jake’s body is still there (unlike Dr Erik) but his Mind is changed in this transformative process. Jake takes in what his best friend Goose says, takes a deep breath, and begins his ascent back upwards to his world - as Goose waves him goodbye. As Jake rises further up back into his world, Jake City as we have come to know and love it sinks back down from whence it came (for it was grown and not made, like a flower grows outward, Jake City is going in reverse direction of that - seemingly growing back inward an unbecoming of sorts). This is another phase of Jake’s transformation as the higher he ascends the louder his screams become, the wider his pupils dilate, at the precipice all of these things as large and grand magnitude as possible set by limits - even Jake’s mouth as wide open as possible. Jake is in a liminal stage, transitory, on the way from entity A (Old Jake, Jake City), to entity B (New Jake, the Jake outside of Jake City). The culmination of this liminal process, transitory stage Jake makes it out of Jake City for Good.
We come to the final scene of the episode, Finn (Nietzschean sweet summer ignorant child he is) comes in on Jake in the kitchen. Finn comes in with a smile and a happy aura, completely unaware of the entirety hero journeys that just went on in Jake, that Jake went through, that the relationship of the hero journeys inside of Jake had on his own Hero’s journey - so many rhizomatic connections of command and feedback, input output gone haywire. The result of this entire event culminates with Jake finally in the kitchen eating beans out of a can to solve what now seems like the easiest problem to solve in the world (solvable by a simple can of beans). Similar to the feeling you get with the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks, where when he gets ‘back to society’ so to say, and sees how easy access to water is, and access to food - all luxuries he took for granted before he knew that which was taboo to society (Cast Away on an island). Jake was cast away on an island of sorts, just this island was not external physically and he wasn’t shipwrecked there. But instead of an external journey, Jake went on an internal journey (Twilight Zone-esque) which we see in the feelings experienced by Jake in the kitchen’s final scene feels as real as if it had been a real physical external journey (that brain is Affected either way to various degrees). Finn walks in on Jake and asks Jake if he is okay, if he is feeling alright - but the new problem emerges, how does Jake communicate this hero’s journey, spiritual experience (ala William James almost) to Finn? Does he even want to? We don’t even see Jake attempt it for the episode ends with Jake forming tears in his eyes in response to Finn’s question. Jake responds like Leonardo Di Caprio responds in Shutter Island (you can either die a hero or live a villain, this is a choice) - in response to Finn, Jake painfully grimaces, as if to re-experience the whole journey again if only for a second and says to Finn, “Just getting a snack, Goose. Just getting a snack.”