The Dude Testament

8. Nihilism is exhausting.

Of course, the Big Lebowski angrily refuses to reimburse the Dude for the soiled rug, calling him a “bum.”[12] But rather than waste his energy fighting about it, the Dude says, “Fuck it,” and leaves. Despite the tongue–lashing, he’s in a good mood. He takes a rug from the house anyway and proceeds to flirt with a sexy young woman in a bikini sunbathing by the swimming pool.

But this, in fact, turns out to be Bunny, Lebowski’s wife, the one who started all the trouble in the first place by owing money to Jackie Treehorn! Not only is she salaciously flirty with the Dude, but she also nonchalantly points out her boyfriend, passed out drunk in the pool. He’s a nihilist, she explains: “He doesn’t care about anything.” “Oh, that must be exhausting,” the Dude replies, joking about his unconscious state. But there’s more to it than that—though the Dude stands in stark contrast to the big over-arching ideoloskies of the 20th century, he also stands apart from their annihilating opposite, nihilism: the belief that nothing means anything.

After 20th-century science finally shot out the tires of religion, and then two world wars slid down the shorts of science, the notion that life was utterly pointless took hold among some of the more sensitive members of Western society. Nevertheless, the notion that “nothing means anything” runs so counter to everyday human experience that only German philosophers, mystical gurus, and teenage Goths have ever been able to convincingly pull it off.

Unlike those who, like the ubercapitalist Lebowski, adhere to static philosophies etched in stone, or their counterparts—like Uli Kunkel—who embrace a nihilistic postmodernism that threatens to liquidate all structure and human accomplishment, the Dude merely says, “Fuck it,” and excuses himself from the argument. To the Dudeist way of thinking, life is a liquid being passed from temporary container to temporary container. It’s a distinctly pragmatic approach to making sense of this strange movie that we’ve all walked into the middle of. What’s your drink, Dude? Naturally, it’s mostly half-and-half.