Windows on the Will

“That we believe ourselves to be separate from each other, and separate from the apparent objects of our desire, was, for Schopenhauer, the root of our suffering. A better consciousness was possible, one that recognized our essence as “will” (expressed in us as will-to-live, and objectified, with varying degrees of consciousness, in our urges, desires, and actions), and that this essence was not individual but rather shared with all people (not just Lisa), all animals, all plants, all the phenomena of the world. What we can know intimately through our bodies has, for Schopenhauer, its equivalent in the keenness of the iron to fly to the magnet, in the determination of water to flow downward, in the force of gravity itself, and though such knowledge is not a synonym for “force” or “energy,” it contains both those terms.”

“The will lies behind all, contains all, is the “thing-in-itself…the innermost essence, the kernel, of every particular thing and also of the whole,” a somewhat loopy metaphysics that real academic philosophers, like Tamsin, must take with a large pinch of salt, though it has captivated artists for generations. Is it possible that the problem in Anomalisa is not that Michael thinks everybody is the same but that Michael thinks he is Michael?”

“Your individuality is not your essential and ultimate being, only a manifestation of it…. Your being in itself…knows neither time nor beginning nor end…. It exists in everyone everywhere.”

“The erroneous belief that one is an individual at all—what Schopenhauer called the principium individuationis—may be the deeper truth hiding behind Michael’s faceplates. (It would also help explain his fondness for Lakmé, an opera set among the transcendental Brahmin, for whom ultimate reality is likewise “All-One” and individual existence merely an emanation, made possible by the illusory veil of Maya.6) In the dream we are separate beings. In reality we are one. If only there were a way to reach out to the hinges of your individual faceplate and tear away all that stops you from knowing that! But Michael never reaches this awakened consciousness: like so many of us he remains stuck between those twin poles of want and boredom.”