“You’ve been feeling it too, haven’t you?… Our institutions are crumbling. Nobody trusts their neighbor anymore.” So says Alpha Waymond, a multiverse-traveling character in the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All At Once, directed by “The Daniels”.
The technologists Aza Raskin and Tristan Harris, hosts of the (excellent) Your Undivided Attention podcast, feel it too. They convincingly argue that the antidemocratic omnipotence of billionaires, the immorality of social media algorithms that profit from sociopolitical conflict, the adverse effects of humans on the ecosystem they steward, and the moral bankruptcy of our public servants all fuse into a single metacrisis. It is impossible to disentangle or solve just one aspect while ignoring the rest.
Everything Everywhere All At Once (EEAAO) is a special film because it does manage to depict the metacrisis with empathy, honesty, and hope. If you haven’t seen it, don’t Google it or keep reading this, just go watch it ASAP. But if you have experienced this crazy, awesome film, then chew your Chapstick, get out your hotdogs, and hang on.
Meaning-making and metacrisis
EEAAO is a hilariously absurd martial arts movie; it is a touching family drama split across a multiverse; it is also a meditation on the ways in which we interpret reality. It is the latter reading of the film that reveals it as a piece of wisdom literature, and so we start there, with meaning-making.
Traditionally, the two ways of making meaning in American were religion, and/or political liberalism (the project, not the party). Religion offered salvation to an elect at the cost of exclusion, and liberalism offered an inclusive vision but forsook any hope of salvation. As these institutions have eroded — as the second Gilded Age has exposed the lies of liberal economies, and as church attendance has dwindled — people are left with a cold reality, in which communities are fractured and we must exploit to survive. That is the lament of Alpha Waymond in EEAAO.
Alpha Waymond continues, “How can we get back? That is the Alphaverse’s mission: to take us back to how it’s supposed to be.” Sounds nice enough, but soon we see the cost of “making the multiverse great again”. Alpha Waymond is cruel to our Evelyn, saying “you’re the biggest failure of all the Evelyns I’ve met”; he is callous towards the destruction of universes, saying “this is a burner universe we only use to communicate”; and he solves problems with violence, almost enjoying the harm of other beings. As long as things return to normal, any means is justified for Alpha Waymond.
Your Undivided Attention guest Jamie Wheal gives a name to Alpha Waymond’s ideology: rapturous bypass. Rapture makes meaning by affirming a path to salvation, saying, “reality is broken, but we don’t have to go down with the ship if we do X.” This isn’t exclusive to one worldview, either. The American right often promises the usual version of Christian heaven, but it can also come in the form of an amoral MAGA brand of nationalism. The American left tends to envision a techno-rapture in which technology (blockchain, carbon-capture, the singularity, robots — take your pick) magick us away from eco-distaster. In any version, however, the 99% who weren’t pious enough for religion or rich enough for Bitcoin are damned.
EEAAO voices an alternative to rapture via Jobu Tupaki: “You can see how everything is just a random arrangement of particles in vibrating superpositions … how everything we do gets washed away in a sea of every other possibility…” Earlier, she says, “If nothing matters… all the pain and guilt you feel for making nothing of your life, it goes away.” Evelyn, at one point of the film, internalizes this message and responds, “Another year, hmm? Pretending we know what we’re doing, but really… we’re just doing laundry and taxes, laundry and taxes.”
This nihilism, Wheal argues, is the other response to a loss of meaning. It says, “we’re all in the sinking boat together and there’s no way out.” Nihilism manifests in the bald greed of Bezos and the despondency of doomscrolling.
It’s no coincidence that Jobu and the Alphaverse are locked in deadly and destructive physical conflict, with entire universes as their battlegrounds. The ways in which we construct meaning have real importance in our lives and others’. MAGA, techno-utopianism, nihilism, and more are desperate attempts to erase “the pain and guilt you feel for making nothing of your life,” but they only lead to more destruction and pain. EEAAO symbolizes this in the stylized violence inflicted by Alpha Waymond, Jobu Tupaki, and even Evelyn, which builds upon itself in fury and absurdity over the course of the first two acts of the film. But eventually the cycle collapses on itself, and in that collapse we find a third path.
A third path
Waymond Wang is not a typical male movie character. Pop Culture Dectective‘s media analysis of EEAAO summarizes that, in contrast to his Alpha version, Evelyn’s Waymond is a “beta male” (pun intended) who never experiences character growth, i.e. is never indoctrinated into a masculine dominance of others in order to become a “hero”. And yet, it is through Waymond’s perspective that Evelyn’s heroic journey comes to a climax.
When the physical violence of EEAAO reaches its peak, and when Evelyn is at her most nihilistic, Waymond interrupts with a speech. “The only thing I do know is we have to be kind! Especially when none of us know what’s going on!” This “kindness” initially sounds like milquetoast sentimentality, but Waymond’s alternate-universe CEO self clarifies, saying, “You think I’m kind because I’m naive… When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything.” Evelyn realizes that her “silly husband” is in fact living the Stockdale Paradox, choosing to believe the best and confront the worst.
Upon this realization, Evelyn’s third eye literally and symbolically opens as she places Waymond’s infamous googly eye on her forehead (in stark contrast to Jobu’s minions who have a nihilistic bagel over their third eyes). And she launches into action, running towards her daughter Jobu/Joy, through a gauntlet of enemies from her multiverse’s many lives.
But, unlike the prior hour of film, Evelyn does not strike at her enemies with violence or force. Instead, she offers what ethicist Miroslav Volf calls “embrace of the other”. In an unexpected and dangerous move, she connects with each person who opposes her, reaching through the multiverse to bring them absolution. For the man who misses his departed wife, Evelyn brings him her perfume; for the man who needs a friend, she gives a talking raccoon (yes, really); for her father who was cruel to her, she gives the honesty he needs to change. And for Jobu, who expects a fight and tries to fend off Evelyn with martial arts, Evelyn simply opens her arms for a hug.
This literal embrace is the act that distills Waymond’s (and now Evelyn’s) philosophy of active, generous kindness. Volf emphasizes the radical nature of embrace, saying it is “the will to give ourselves to others and welcome them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, prior to any judgment about others except that of identifying them in their humanity.” That is what Evelyn has done for her adversaries, and the act has dismantled the logic and means of violence. Her embrace is what enables her victory in EEAAO.
Volf goes on to say that “the embrace itself — full reconciliation — cannot happen until truth has been said and justice done.” And indeed, Jobu does not accept Evelyn’s hug until Evelyn readjusts her identity, repents for her homophobia, and listens to Joy speak her truth. This is a costly process, and a dangerous one, because it requires Evelyn to put to death her self-deception, to suspend any eschatological hope, and to reject the bliss of nihilism.
But on the other side of embrace lies community. For Evelyn, it was a renewed relationship with every member of her family. For the viewers of the film, we learn that embrace is a way to end cycles of violence and exclusion, to find community, and to make meaning with those we love.
Thanks to the kindness of Waymond and the embrace of Evelyn, Everything Everywhere All At Once viscerally exemplifies a manifesto for living well despite the metacrisis. It is an apologia for choosing love and community in an often-apathetic reality.
Plus, it’s absurdly funny. What’s not to like?