The Beauty of The Inevitables: An Analysis of David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp Anonymous 12th Grade

But why must choice always lie along a linear spectrum, with two poles, instead of, say, among a sphere of possibilities? (Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp: Statues, 7)

As human beings, we spent our whole lives seeking, looking for the ultimate truth of our existence: Why are we here? In the grand scheme of the universe, our individual lives seem so unimportant, so insignificant. We seek comfort in the wise words of Descartes or Plato, find guidance in omnipotent beings through religious practices, and assign universal moral codes that instruct our every behavior. We fill in the voids of our unanswered questions by pursuing socially constructed ideals: money, fame, the one. However, as Nietzsche suggests, perhaps we have been misguided in the first place. “ [T]here are no such things as moral facts… Morality is only an interpretation of certain phenomena: or, more strictly speaking, a misinterpretation of them.” It is uncomfortable to admit that outside the realm of our own perception exists multiple truths to viewing an object and that our own systems of belief does not, and need not to, coincide with others. The downfall of human beings, thus, lies not in the fact that we have “wrong” moral codes, but rather in our failure to...