I stumbled upon Aaron Swartz because someone mentioned him to me, as an example of a young person who had good insights into how utterly flawed the schooling system, and more broadly speaking the society it is embedded within, is. Swartz seems like an interesting person for sure, and it's sad that we lost him at only 26.
For some reason the most recent post in his blog is an analysis of the Dark Knight, which feels kind of random but I'm glad I stumbled upon it because it shined new light onto a trilogy which I liked but I never really watched with a critical eye.
The main thesis is that the first movie, Batman begins, highlights the failures of liberal laws which allow crimes to go so rampant that the city becomes ruled by criminals, while the third movie, The Dark Knight Rises, highlights the failures of conservative laws which try to eradicate crime altogether, but end up creating an undercurrent which sweeps away the order. The second movie then shows us the transition between the two, with a focus on the utterly nihilistic Joker, though the trilogy as a whole Swartz argues is incredibly nihilistic, because Batman creates the very problems he pretends to be fighting, a cycle which persists at the end as Batman fakes his own death and Robin takes on the mantle, repeating the whole thing.
It certainly makes the trilogy a lot less impressive, because in an important sense, no important question has really been answered. We see all the major problems with our system through the lens of the villains that Batman fights, we see the corruption and perpetual greed that he and commissioner Gordon try to fight, and yet what exactly did they do? They acted like the heroes when they had to, which is good of course, but as soon as they weren't needed, such as in the beginning of the third movie, we see Bruce Wayne drifting in utter meaninglessness as he has no enemies to fight, and at the end of the whole trilogy we know that the problems of the system will happen again, needing another vigilante to save the day. 1
I think the essays that Swartz writes on each movie are short and easy enough to read that I'd rather not summarize them, in fear of distorting anything he says, so if you haven't read them yet, please read his analysis on Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises, which is the third movie but a mirror of the first, so for the sake of analysis it's easier to read in that order, and finally, The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight is perhaps the most interesting of the trilogy, because if the explicit conclusion is that the good guys end up becoming the bad guys, such as Harvey Dent becoming a criminal, and Batman taking the blame for it and being chased by the police, then what is not so explicitly admitted is that the Joker would be ... the good guy of the story? I am not merely saying this out of a need for symmetry, I mean that the Joker was largely responsible for the downfall of the other gangsters, that he didn't use the money for selfish purposes, that he only killed a few innocent people all things considered, and that his actions led to the crime-eradicating laws present in the third movie, which is a total win from the point of view of the system, though not so much for the empoverished of course.
The Joker is the embodiment of "not having any rules", which he does far better than Dent and Batman. The latter can ultimately not break his one rule, which is of course killing another person, even if it's supposedly the right thing, and Dent thought he could bend the system to uphold justice, like how the Romans suspended democracy to protect their city, but just like the case of the Romans, it didn't work out. Unlike Batman, he has responsibilities to uphold, which is why he cannot simply do as he wishes, the system he works in has its own demands, and ultimately his plans got flipped on their head by the Joker.
And even though Batman doesn't have any responsibilities per se, people still see what he does and try to imitate him, which doesn't work of course because the man is a billionaire who had the time and privilege to work with expert martial artists—so much for "anyone can be a hero".
There are some elements in Swartz's analysis I didn't focus on, for instance it's kind of interesting, but in the way that a puzzle is interesting but then makes you think "so what?" that the Joker highlights many aspects of game theory: the pirate game in the beginning where the underlings get killed by the Joker, making yourself seem irrational so that your opponent expects you to never do the rational thing, the game of chicken where Batman's rule prevents him from killing the Joker, the opportunity cost of saving Dent or Rachel, the switcharoo of outcomes, the trolley problem between saving Reese or the hospital, and of course the prisoner's dilemma at the end with the two boats.
Those form an interesting whole, but also, do they say anything important about life or society? I don't think so, I think it's just a neat detail, but not something I would find profound.
The main point of the 3 essays is that the Dark Knight trilogy is utterly nihilistic and doesn't answer any fundamental questions, and I think that analysis is completely on point. We are supposed to feel inspired because Batman beats up villains, trains hard, recovers from terrible situations and because of the superb background music, but realistically, not only is Batman the least relatable character ever, because of the combination of his wealth, training and intelligence, which really undermines the message that "anyone can be a hero", he really didn't accomplish anything fundamental did he?
It's good to be the savior of a fucked up system, but better than that would be to have a system which didn't get fucked up in the first place. Personally, I think the system is on its decline no matter what, I think that Spengler, or alternatively Toynbee, Joseph Tainter or John Michael Greer, who circle around the same insight as Spengler, is fundamentally right, civilizations don't merely go up forever, both economically, but also physically in the skies. Eventually, there is a down-period, the brilliance and order of the past lead to stagnation, complacency, bureaucracy and a desire for chaos. I don't view this as nihilistic personally, I think it's better to embrace the limits to growth and what we can accomplish as a collective, it would certainly lead to a much smoother transition to the Winter of our civilization.
Of course the majority of people would say that those limits don't really exist, because our problems are human-made which means that we humans can figure out how to do things better. It's not like we are running into fundamental limitations like the speed of light, or the time direction of entropy (although kind of for the latter). I can see some value in that worldview, but I think it's really deluded. The main factor for material prosperity in the West has been the abundance of cheap and concentrated energy, in the form of fossil fuels, and the fact that we could exploit, I mean nicely ask, second and third world countries to do our labor for cheap. These times are gone for the West, and while the rest of the world will decline later than us, they too will eventually meet our fate.
Instead of trying to figure out how to "solve" these problems, I would rather focus on what I can actually influence. In fact, I don't view our society as facing problems, which could be figured out and solved, but rather as predicaments which we can adapt to, or not. Call that defeatist if you want, I'm not interested in convincing people. You could say that I'm such a doomer that I don't even believe that being anxious and screaming at the top of my lungs to people how fucked up we are has any effects. Doomers still have enough hope that they cling onto their anxiety and despair, whereas I don't view those as effective at all.
The only thing which can meaningfully change is what my conscious self can affect, which is first of all how I relate to my body, thoughts, feelings and environment. Large scale collectives keep creating imbalances in the world because they are fundamentally unconscious, they react instead of consciously change. There is a longer discussion to justify why I believe that is the case, but for now I think it's better to focus on observations: activism and its energetic coercion fundamentally don't work, neither does charity which is dependent on the very same system it pretends to fight, neither does environmentalism, and neither does religion and its dogma.
The only thing which ends up making its way to a large number of people is the lowest common denominator, which is why religions are so dogmatic, why most positions can be filled by mediocre people, and why mass-media, of which the Dark Knight definitely is a part of, is fundamentally so empty. It's not the movie we need, but it's the movie we certainly deserve as an unconscious collective, unable to face the Truth and change ourselves.
1 From one of the comments in the Dark Knight Rises comment section: "The predictable result, not shown in the movie, is capital flight from a city which embraced law and order by any and all means, and instead got anarchy and ruin. The billionaire vigilante himself flees the city, having secured his fortune with offshore banking accounts."
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Media Nihilism Collapse Society Metadoomerism
2025-10-20