The End of History and Neon Genesis Evangelion
1. Life's a Beach and You're Here Dude
I believe we're living in the End of History.
Though it's difficult, and maybe even impossible, to pin down when it exactly happened—it could still be happening, it might always be happening—much like the idea of Christ to Christianity, the idea of the End to the End of History is important because of the idea itself, and not, in my opinion and ironically so, not because of any single event or body of historical evidence one can point to, or even the original pieces of text it comes from, or the commentaries made on it. It is the idea itself and alone which is important.
I think this End is when "modernity" truly started, and it is the source of many of our greatest anxieties. It's also the source of what could be a truly defining moment for us. Not just as a species, but as individuals, searching for meaning.
This isn't a new phenomena to observe or discuss—Hegel started the conversation two hundred seventeen years ago, the likes of Nietzsche and other 19th Century philosophers followed suit, and many commentaries have been made in the two centuries since Georg decided to tell us all something very very important.
There's someone else who I feel gets left out of this conversation, however. Someone whose work of art I believe has fully illustrated in living, breathing, metaphor not just a portrait of life at the End of History, but a simple, sympathetic coming-of-age snapshot which, I am convinced, will go down as one of the greatest contributions to popular art in this modern period between our End, and what may be our New Beginning.
I'm talking of course about Hideaki Anno, and a little show called Neon Genesis Evangelion.
2. What is the End of History?
Before we go on, it's necessary for the discussion to break down what the End of History is. I'm going to do this as succinctly and colloquially as I can.
If you're interested, I wrote a separate piece focusing on the End of History, but I wanted to create a localized breakdown for this post.
Basically, an old German philosopher named Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote a book in 1807 called The Phenomenology of Spirit. You may have heard the term "zeitgeist", meaning "the spirit of the time". This book is where that phrase comes from.
The man
There's a lot of intricate historical, philosophical, and spiritual architecture behind this book, but the essence of Hegel's idea—drastically simplified—is this:
For thousands of years, human beings lived in history. We played out the same stories, patterns, and narratives, again and again and again.
At one point [Hegel cites the American and French Revolutions, as well as Napoleon's reign] we advanced so far that we basically stepped outside of any previous historical narrative pattern. Once you step out of that pattern, you can't go back in—sort of a historical take on the Biblical Fall. Just as apocalyptic—meaning revelatory —though not necessarily a doomsday event.
This event is what he called "...the End of History", and it's huge. HUGE. As close as we could get to a truly mythic event in the modern world.
But, what we have to remember is the End of History is first and foremost an idea. It happens first in the realm of thought and idea, and then slowly makes itself known in the realm of matter, the physical world.
So, our thoughts will be affected by it from Day One, but it will take a loooooong time before we actually recognize it in the world. Whenever we choose to recognize it is up to us, though it will gradually become more apparent as time goes on.
Until we choose to recognize it, we will continue to repeat old historical patterns. But we will find ourselves growing increasingly dissatisfied with them, though we won't know why until we finally recognize the End of History and what that means. We already know we're out of it, but we have yet to really admit what that means.
That is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a wildly simplified version of this idea—trying to simplify the End of History is like trying to simplify the atom bomb. As a note, I've also combined some ideas from the essay based on Hegel's philosophy, written by the American author and cultural critic Francis Fukuyama.
If you want to read it, it's titled, "The End of History?". It's pretty short, like fifteen pages, and be warned, there's a lot in there which is dated, of-it's-time political speak, but it's still interesting purely because of the idea of the End of History Fukuyama presents.
Okay, so, what? So what? So an old German guy who heard about America and France's little teenage angst moments and had a boner for Napoleon decided to say that he discovered history was over, and then a bunch of people, including some American dork from the 1980s, wrote a bunch of stuff because they had boners for him, and... what? That's it?
For one, yeah, that's basically it. You've traced an example genealogy of both how an idea comes into the world, as well as sketched a crude but accurate depiction of the entirety of academic discourse. Trust me, you're smarter than you think.
This is what real intelligence looks like
Here's the thing—if we take part of the idea seriously, and say that the End of History reveals itself through the unconscious, from the realm of thought and idea to the physical world, gradually over time, like a new volcanic continent, inching its way up year by year from the seafloor to breach the light of day.... Well, that could mean, using Internet armchair psychology, people may have accidentally made stuff about it without anyone, including them, really realizing it.
Tenuous as it may seem, I believe this is 100% true. I believe Hideaki Anno is one of those people, and Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of those somethings. In fact, I believe it to be one of the greatest one of those somethings. Or at least, one of the greatest one of those somethings our generation has the unique gift of being given.
3. The New Century Gospel
Do you know what the name "Neon Genesis Evangelion" means?
It might sound like the goofy name for an anime from the mid-90s about kids who pilot giant robots fighting aliens from outer space at the end of the world. And you'd be right, because in large part that's exactly what it is.
It's also a series of Greek words.
"Neon" = "New"
"Genesis = "Beginning"
"Evangelion" = "Gospel" or "Good Word"
So, some alternate titles for the show could be:
"The New Century Gospel"
"The Gospel of the New Beginning"
"The Good Word of a New Beginning"
These are rough approximations, but close enough to hit home for the original words. I find them fitting for a show dealing with the themes Evangelion tackles from its very first episode. Also, with television being the dominant medium of the 20th Century, it is the perfect medium in which to unspool a New Century Gospel.
One of Evangelion's most famous elements is its use of symbolism from ancient Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic texts, mystic traditions, and mythologies. The end of the world as depicted in Neon Genesis Evangelion is a biblical one, and a mix of parts from all three, combined with modern elements of psychology and science fiction.
I'm aware that the show's principal creator, Hideaki Anno, or at least some of his staff, like director Kazuya Tsurumaki, have been quoted along the lines of saying the iconography was included in the show simply because "...it looked cool." There's a part of me that can accept this is partially true.
It still doesn't erase the fact that the show's name is what it is, and is written in words taken from one of the original languages one of the foundational versions of the Bible was written in. I think we can chalk some elements of Neon Genesis Evangelion up to an artist's purely aesthetic sensibilities taking reign over logical construction and conscious dedication to form, but I don't think that tracks for the whole show. Some parts of Evangelion's art and its themes are clearly congruent and influence each other. The name of the show acts as a signpost for this, opening up the entire piece to multiple points of reflection.
Ex.: Pillars of salt / in a land cursed by God for disobedience
What's more, if we're working from the original point of the End of History, we could say Anno's aesthetic choices, or anyone's who worked on Evangelion, though they may have seemed nothing but whims at the time, were actually unconscious expressions of not only their own psychology, but expressions of a greater understanding looking outwards and upwards to the revelation of the End of History. If their efforts were conscious through and through, then these people are legitimate geniuses, or they may not have realized the full scope of their work at the time.
I don't think the End of History is some great psychological prime mover. It's not that everything ever since it has been in some way subconsciously directed by it. I reject the notion, and find that belief reductive and totalizing in equal amounts, and unhelpful to boot. In these types of conversations, the ideas we can't talk about, the ideas we can't know, could never know, but still exist, at least as much as the unknown can be said to exist, are just as important to the big picture as the ones we do know, can know, and also do exist, at least as much as the known can be said to exist.
What's funny to me is Evangelion deals with multiple kinds of Ends—the End of the World, the End of Humankind as we know it, as well as the end of a number of interpersonal relationships we follow throughout the show.
The most important End, however, in my opinion, is the end of childhood that comes with being a teenager.
4. I'm Just A Teenage Dirtbag, Baby
You may be well beyond your teenage years; but I don't think you'll ever really forget them.
Being a teenager is kind of like being in an apocalypse (I'm going to keep using that word, but remember the original form is the Greek apokálupsis, meaning "revelation"). You've crossed from a place of innocence—childhood—into a bloody and chaotic transitional period. You're told this is directed towards an ultimate End, adulthood, but that doesn't really offer a lot of comfort. In fact, the prospect of having to pass through such a vibrant and violent period of life whose sole purpose, you're told by superiors, is to act as a bridge from one place to another, almost meant to be taken lightly and forgotten, tends to cast a ridiculous sheen onto any kind of order or structure you're encouraged to follow during this period. Hence, teenage angst.
Evangelion is rife with teenage angst. From how boys and girls deal with each other, to the petty jealousies of the heart that live on even in our adult years, to the extended metaphor of literally having to get used to piloting a body you inherited from your parents, being thrust into a world full of battles you didn't choose to be in, but must fight—more like Teenage Genesis Evangstelion amirite.
Being a teenager isn't all angst, driven by the teleological end promise of adulthood, though; there is newfound freedom in it, too. It's the first opportunity you get to test-drive what it's like to be a real, conscious individual.
It's also the last time you really get to be a kid.
NGE goes out of its way to highlight this fact. For about the first sixteen episodes of the original twenty-six episode run, the kids are shown doing a bunch of kid-related stuff. They go to school and have crushes on teachers. They have fieldtrips. They go to their favorite restaurants because they win bets against their friends. They end up having crushes on their friends. They play games, and read books, and get bullied, and dance, and get freaked out by each other's dirty rooms.
Da homies
This sincere kind of purity is set against the backdrop of an empty world at total existential war. Remember, all of the teenagers in Evangelion were born after the Second Impact, a devastating global event which wiped out over half of Earth's population, and is the whole reason the world is ending in the first place.
We get many scenes of kids wandering through a world that feels quiet and empty. Decimated in so many ways they'll never be able to know, by events far beyond their control that took place before they may have even been conceived.
I find this an incredibly vital and potent metaphor for the generations growing up today, especially for those born between the mid-90s and early 2000s.
Consider what could be called, what have been called, in our time, unprecedented historic events: the worst terrorist attacks on American soil in recorded memory; the bleakest crash, not just in the stock market of a single country, but in the history of the global capitalist system (a sequel no doubt coming soon to a bank near you); a global pandemic which collapsed whole systems of government and absolutely sunk public morale in nearly every institution.
I realize these events often have a single country or global region as their focus, but I believe, with the framework we're working within, they stand for something much greater than their geographical or demographic ties.
These events, in my opinion, are the thrashings of a world bound by echoes of a history that no longer applies to them. Maybe Fukuyama was right, and the End of the Cold War was the final point of us transitioning from history, to post-history; maybe Hegel had it all totally right when he cited the American and French Revolutions and Napoleon as the Point of No Return. Maybe history, like we've said before, has always been ending, and this kind of language is being used to pinpoint an existential phenomena which may or may not be the root of not just modern, but generally human, anxieties.
Regardless, I believe the combination of the End of History, coupled with the recent events of the past thirty years, has turned us all into teenagers of a kind. People who, no matter what they know, are caught in some moment of transition which they have no control over, and whose origins and Ends are non-definite. It makes everyone on Earth in this present moment part of a teenage generation.
Hang in there!
I say these things not out of an ideological ego, but merely to point to why I think Evangelion is a perfect, perfect show for this cohort currently on Earth. No other show tackles the apocalypse coming of age in a way that is mirrored both at the most intimate levels of character psychology and in the actual overarching world events taking place over the course of the story. At one point, the world, and the people, literally fall apart, and that's just one of the most obvious examples of the thematic synthesis present within the show.
Much like the group of teenagers who are growing up at the End of the World in Evangelion, this group of people coming of age nowadays has had to learn how to pilot vast technological systems, deal with truly, truly apocalyptic events, and still go to school and, "Remember to vote!" and clean their rooms and work jobs at McDonald's and in warehouses and in offices knowing how fragile and close to total end the whole deal really is. Laboring under systems built, artificially controlled, and steered by groups whose ideology promises salvation, but in reality seems entirely directed towards global suicide.
Many—especially those who are actually teenagers in this time—do and live all this while still having to go through the average teenage dirtbag experience of just growing up.
I'm late for school, all of existence as I know it is coming undone, AND THE PROM'S TOMORROWW!!!
Now, every generation has lived at the End of the World. Every generation, even before the "End of History", has lived at the End of History. If we can accept that, if we really believe that to be true, then maybe this generation's great achievement, among our possible many, could be to finally recognize this as reality, and do something about it.
It may be said, in response to this, that if every generation has endured this state of apocalypse during its lifetime, hasn't it already been recognized if it's been lived? Hasn't something already been done about it? What can we do?
I don't disagree. Theory and idea have nothing over lived experience, especially if they're only kept in the realm of theory and idea.
That doesn't change the fact that, throughout our history as a species, we've found it necessary to declare obvious truths, of gods, of laws, of freedoms.
Why not declare for ourselves an End? Why not, in the same breath, declare for ourselves a Beginning?
In the opening paragraph of the Federalist Papers, which were written by several of the Founding Fathers after the Revolutionary War to defend and explain the principles of the fledgling Constitution to the general public, Alexander Hamilton writes:
If this whole world really amounts to nothing more than teenagers of all kinds playing fort, then change is as simple, and as difficult, and as radical, and as natural, as choice.
Just kids being kids
What's funny about the whole situation is, according to the Hegelian understanding of history which precipitates this entire discussion, this choice is as much an inevitability as it is potentially impossible. It's as much dependent on the known and the conscious as it is on the unknown and the unconscious.
We see this demonstrated by the teenagers in Evangelion. They don't really know why they're doing what they're doing, and in fact they often have huge questions as to why any of it is necessary, or if any of what they're doing is even remotely right. They are self-aware enough to be conscious, but free enough to let go when the moment calls for it. They're both within and without. There's a good argument to be made they, and anyone like them, are the only people truly living at the End of the World.
No wonder they're the only ones who might be able to save the world—they just might be the only real human beings left.
5. The End
Let's pretend all of this is true—we've been talking about the End of the World and a 90s anime for fourteen pages now, so let's pretend a little longer any of this is real.
What if, a couple hundred years ago, a set group of historical patterns—or at least a specific relationship we had with them—ended, forever. We've been living in the echoes of this End, replaying history over and over, but growing more dissatisfied with each loop.
Now we, as a teenage generation, were born into a world shaped by events we didn't control. We labor underneath outdated ideological systems, bound by a dependency on fading historical echo loops, which are possibly wheeling us towards some existential decisions which might just kill everyone. As all this is going on, we're not exactly in the most fit state of mind, as we're trying to figure out what it really means to be human beings, but at the same time that confused and unknowing state may actually put us all in the best position to realize—as in both recognize and put into action—fundamental change at what could be a literally historic crossroads.
There also just so happens to be a 90s animated show from Japan which almost perfectly, by some accident of fate or God or something in between or both or something else entirely, quite literally illustrates this position we find ourselves in at this End, at this crossroads. But it's so vague, and it's also a television show, so whether or not it has any answers, whether or not there is an answer to any of this, is completely up in the air.
So. What do we do.
?
From this point on, this post is going to leave whatever ties it had to "grounded thought" behind, and become pure speculation. If it wasn't that always and already.
The first step to facing anything is admitting its existence. So, some kind of recognition, a lasting one, in keeping with tradition most likely a written one, should probably be made.
Here:
This is a first draft and can be amended later.
So—great. That gets us half a step from nowhere, but we're still in nowhere. What now?
For one last time, our old friend T.V. might actually, after decades of commercial oblivion, have finally provided us one real answer.
The End of Evangelion, the film which acts as an official/secondary explanatory ending to the original run of the television show, has a famous/infamous final scene.
Shinji, the main character, is left on a beach after a new apocalypse has wiped out everyone on the planet, as far as he's aware—everyone except Asuka, a fellow EVA pilot, and a girl who has consistently been an object of both torment and early teenage eroticism for him. Love and hate, sex and death. Yin and yang.
Upon realizing where he is and who he's with, Shinji quietly positions himself over her and attempts to strangle her. Unconscious, she wakes up, and watches him do this.
Without saying anything, she puts a hand on his cheek. He falters, relaxes his grip, and begins to sob uncontrollably. To which she mutters, "Disgusting." The movie ends.
Evangelion has a running theme—brought out most obviously in its episode titled "The Hedgehog's Dilemma"—of purity versus individuality. We touched on these ideas briefly in the previous section, mentioning how the duality of being a teenager could be framed as the duality between the cusping individuality of adulthood, and the lingering purity of childhood.
An anecdote about "The Hedgehog's Dilemma" is told to demonstrate this early on in Evangelion, and it quickly becomes a central theme of the show.
Hedgehogs live in cold climates, and must often huddle together for warmth. However, they also have spikes, which means if they're not careful, they risk poking each other, even hurting each other, in the attempt to become warm. For this reason, they must be careful, and find the way they best fit together so they can survive the cold.
Now, the solution some characters in Evangelion—or our own world—might have to this dilemma is simple: just get rid of the hedgehog's spikes. Let's make an effort to return to a previously unspoiled state, before we grew these spikes that hurt ourselves and each other. Problem solved. This would be the "purity" solution.
But you could make the case that a hedgehog without its spikes is no longer a hedgehog. A human being without their spikier qualities is no longer human.
Other characters in Evangelion would say that the hedgehogs just need to find a way to solve the problem themselves. Better to die in the cold a hedgehog than to sacrifice what it means to be what you are in the first place. Who you are has precedence over all else, and that's the end of it. This would be the "individuality" solution.
The end of The End of Evangelion makes a compelling argument: there is no choice. Or, rather, you could see it as being a third choice.
Being human is being both. Shinji may have tried to choke, even kill, Asuka at the End of the World because, as a running theme of the show goes, it's better to be alone so you don't hurt anyone, even if that means killing everyone else to be alone so you don't hurt them. OR he could have been getting rid of her because her personality was too close to his own, a source of warmth which came with a great many spikes he couldn't find a way to fit with.
Likewise, Asuka shows Shinji a small but profound affection by touching his cheek in the middle of such a violent, painful action. However, this could have been her simply knowing what would "relax" Shinji's spikes, and her mutter of, "Disgusting." could be a comment on the predictability of such a simple creature. Shinji's just a boy, a man, who is a slave to his impulses. His convictions, even at their worst, mean nothing.
Or, it could have been directed at herself, for taking pity on him. Or it could be a statement on them both, and their inability to love or kill one another, or their overwhelming desire to do both to each other, which meets with impotent and immature teenage anxiety and confusion.
Their actions represent both sides of the Hedgehog's Dilemma simultaneously, as typified in the associated themes of purity and individualism. Both of them want to be good, or even the best, but they also want to be themselves. By doing so, both of them represent the sides of the eternal teenager: the innocent kid and the conscious adult. In this scene on the beach, these two teenagers stand for everyone. In this New Century Gospel, they become a new beginning.
At this point, it's necessary to say: this is just a show. I know it's just a show. Most people who are not familiar with Evangelion are going to feel this kind of emotion very powerfully. Even the most diehard fans must acknowledge this fact: it's just a show. It will be profound if you choose to look at it through a whole array of kaleidoscopic philosophical lenses. At the end of the day, though, it is ultimately just a show.
And this is where the End of History leaves all of us. On some desolate beach at the end of the world, strangling and petting each other in a kind of infinitely looping battle for intimacy or supremacy. Knowing it's all just a show. It is what it is. Life.
One has to wonder, though—maybe that realization is just a moment in time. A simple moment, a special moment. One whose nature is so singular, one whose true revelation integrates at such a deep level, that from our mere fleeting experience of it, change cascades from its entry into our lives, irrevocable and forever.
When it passes, as moments do.... what then?
There's an old Eastern saying that goes, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."
I find this to pair well with an old Western story about a son who leaves his father's home, and goes on a grand adventure which ultimately lands him, right back home, changed. Having lived.
Maybe we start there.
Home.
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I'd also like to thank https://lostlove.neocities.org/ for helping me find pixelsafari in the first place. Thank you so much!!!
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