Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [67]
Hail to the Over Humans
All this changes with Hail to the Thief, which breaks sharply from this moral landscape. The characters here are no longer content to waste away in the passive nihilism of the Last Humans. Instead, they embrace the challenge of saying yes to life, standing on the edge, and take that next step as Over Humans. The pig in the cage, the paranoid android, and the reasonable man must act on the prerogative of the new Over Humans: to create a new and improved system of values. While the old “myth of God” system of moral values was a reaction against life, this new system of morality should be life-affirming and creative. The message is pointedly anti-authority and anarchistic: it is immoral for individuals (especially those who, “have not been paying attention”) to impinge on the freedom of action of others.
The various protagonists of Hail to the Thief strive to become Over Humans in a truly Nietzschean sense. They risk self-destruction in hopes of realizing transcendence by embracing the processes of life even when they are painful, lonely, messy, and harsh.7 Denying the ability of the “dreamers” who are not connected enough to the world to “put the world to rights”, the protagonist of “2 + 2 = 5” claims rights to that position, shouting “Don’t question my authority or put me in the box!” In “Sit Down, Stand Up,” Thom acknowledges the dangers of attempting to transcend conventional morality (“Walk into the jaws of hell”) while at the same time warning the nihilistic puppeteers and prison ship captains that the Over Humans “can wipe you out anytime.” “Backdrifts” is a rejoinder to the nihilistic autopilot of “No Surprises”: “We’re rotten fruit, we’re damaged goods / What the hell, we’ve got nothing more to lose.” This character is even closer to the point of schism than the protagonist in “Lucky”—he is not just standing on the edge, he is “hanging off a branch” and “teetering on a breaker.” The rallying cry in “Go to Sleep” of “We don’t really want the monster taking over . . . we don’t want the loonies taking over” sounds like an exchange between potential Over Humans on the topic of Last Humans. Although tackling passive nihilism sometimes feels like “walking out in a force ten gale” (described in the appropriately titled “Scatterbrain”), the message of Hail to the Thief is clear: in contrast to the previous three albums, there is now, as “The Gloaming” iterates, a “genie let out of the bottle.” This is truly the gloaming, the dusk, the twilight, the sun setting on the nihilistic life of the Last Humans.
Where the Over Humans Begin
For Nietzsche, the strong-willed, contradictory, plural-perspective-seeking individuals who are to become the Over Humans must protect themselves from becoming infected with the nihilistic sickness of society.47 This may require a physical or emotional separateness like the one described in “Where I End and You Begin” where there is a “gap in between where I end and you begin,” because “I am up in the clouds, and I can’t come down . . . I can watch and can’t take part.” Watching, but not taking part, provides the critical distance. From an external position, unaffected by nihilistic sickness, we are able to resolve the amoral conundrum: while truths may not be objective, this shouldn’t stop us from seeing that there are better and worse answers. So, the moral realization in “The Gloaming” of “murderers, you’re murderers” is legitimately based on the judgment that “we are not the same as you.” Similarly, this difference between the Last Humans and the Over Humans is emphasized in the decision in “I Will” and “Go to Sleep” to privilege the life of children over the life of their parents: “Lay me down in a bunker, I won’t let this happen to my chil-dren” and