u/Affectionate_Bat_363

Sponge Bob Squarepants is the ultimate fry cook. Not just skilled but *supernatural*. He is able to bring the citizens of Bikini Bottoms to tears and feed hundreds in minutes with is nigh omnipotent reality warping grilling.

Mister Krabs will never give Sponge Bob a raise no matter how amazing his skills as a fry cook. Partly this is because Mister Krab is a cartoon character with a one note personality but partly it is because, consciously or not, the creators of Sponge Bob Squarepants have something to say about capitalism.

Sponge Bob is what every boss wants. A worker who is enormously skilled in his "unskilled" position and simply overjoyed by the job itself. Thus the rise of "corporate culture" and the boss who doesn't want workers who are "only there for the money".

It feels like Sponge Bob can't win... but, Sponge Bob has won. If he is happy and his needs are being met he won. Sponge Bob isn't the problem. The problem comes when the rent on Sponge Bob's pineapple goes up and his wages don't cover his bills anymore. The problem comes when Mister Krabs decides that isn't his problem. That Sponge Bob should get a "better" job if he doesn't like it... because there *is* no better job for Sponge Bob.

Sponge Bob has invested a large part of his identity in being not just a fry cook but a Krusty Krab fry cook. At any other job Sponge Bob becomes Squidward. Unfulfilled and bitter about it. Just counting down the minutes till he can clock out and try to find some meager enjoyment in his real passions. Imagine him bending over a small plug in home griddle. He can afford his pineapple thanks to his new job as a data entry clerk but he cries as he makes something that isn't really even a Krabby Patty for no one but himself.

Corporate culture demands Sponge Bobs while producing Squidwards and treating that as our moral failing.

The smoke rose from the chimney stack.

"What a strange world I've just been born into" it said to itself looking down upon the train "and that must be me! Look im so long and powerful! I'm all covered in lights and whistles! I must be very important. Oh I'm so important someone has built a track across the whole world just for me!"

"Why the whole world must have been made just for me! I certainly am important and impressive. Look how I use my free will to choose to go along these tracks!"

The smoke dissipates. It was a full lifetime.

Lets talk about Calvin and Hobbes and the hierarchy of obduracy.

I'm actually talking about a philosophical read on a character who experiences layers of reality and for whom his imagination is sometimes more real than reality.

Lets discuss for a moment how obduracy operates according to the most popular concensus and then we can compare that to Calvin's hierarchy of obduracy. We will examine which, or indeed if either, is valid.

In general we have three layers of obduracy.

The first is physical obduracy. Hot stoves are hot no matter what your opinion about that is and no amount of denial will prevent the blisters if you touch the burner.

The second is the layer of opinion and personal preference.

You may think ham sandwiches are delicious and that Dave from accounting is the worst. This may feel less obderate than tier 1 viscerally. After all no one is making you spend time with Dave outside of work and love ham sandwiches or hate them you could still have a turkey club instead today.

Not only that but your opinion can change over time. You could get tired of ham sandwiches and decide that Dave from accounting isn't that bad once you understand when he is joking.

A moments reflecting however and the idea that these are choices in any meaningful sense collapses. Your tastes might change but you can't just decide to hate ham sandwiches. Just ask anyone who has ever tried to go on a diet.

So the reality is that while it is obdurate in a different way it is not actually less obderate.

Finally we come to the third layer. The imagination. This is where fictional characters and internal dialogs exist.

Imagine a pink cloud. Now imagine it turn purple. Now imagine it begins to separate and it is actually a flock of flying sheep.

It feels like there was no pushback at all didn't it? You imagined something and the image followed your imagination. But did you decide to imagine any of that? Or was it a response to my words?

Imagination is the most deceptive in its obduracy. You could in theory imagine anything whatever without limits... however you don't know what you are going to think until it has been thunk so to speak. Even if you have decided to dream up a cloud on your own unprompted by anyone where did the idea come from? Did you decide deliberately before you thought of a cloud to imagine that cloud? No, obviously not. It is impossible to think about having a thought before having that thought.

Thoughts just sort of happen to us.

I think it is important to understand that because other beings are a part of the tier 1 layer of obduracy tiers 2 and 3 keep intruding into tier 1.

There is no actual physical obduracy preventing you from going one hundred and nine on the highway but you could be pulled over and given a speeding ticket because of the shared intersubjective tier 2 opinion that this is an unexceptable speed. The ticket is like the hot stove. You can't simply refuse to believe you owe the money with no consequence.

Likewise you could imagine Superman has any attributes you want but in practice there is an agreed upon baseline of what constitutes superman as a concept. If you imagine Superman is an english boy who is being taught magic at a wizarding school. That he has a lightning shaied scar on his forehead. That he wears robes rather thsn a cape. Keep doing this long enough and eventually you must admit that you are thinking of Harry Potter and not Superman. And here is the rub. Even if you don't admit it others will recognize the disonence if you share your thoughts and possibly point it out with all the obduracy of a rock slide. "No dude, that's Harry Potter."

If we return to Calvin we can now see that the way his tier 3 reality bleeds into tier 1 and vice versa (Hobbes tackles are as unstoppable as hot stove blisters and as unpleasant as Dave from accounting/the alien that has captured space man Spiff is actually mom or miss wormwood and while the scenario is imaginary the capture is tier 1 real).

When we examine this in parallel with our examination of our own tiers of obduracy we see that Calvin does not so much deviate as illustrate our own epiphinominal relationship with these tiers of reality.

And whenever Suzy takes Hobbes and dresses him up for a tea party it is to be assumed that she too sees something more ontologically real than a stuffed animal but we do not have access to Suzie's experience in the same way as Calvin's. All we see is Calvin disgusted with Hobbes for playing with a girl. And from Calvin's perspective that is what is happening. Hobbes does not tackle Suzy. He is as ready a companion for her girly tea party as for Calvin's outlandish adventures.

Calvin is literally disgusted with Hobbes behavior. It is important to understand that Calvin's experience of Hobbes leaves only one possible conclusion. The fierce tiger, has not just submitted but participated in the tea party. He is generally still wearing a tiara and tutu when Calvin finds him. Hobbes isn't wearing his tea party outfit ironically either. He owns the look. The only explanation from Calvin's perspective is that Hobbes *wants* to wear dresses and go to tea parties sometimes. After all he, Calvin, cannot make Hobbes do anything the tiger doesn't want to do.

What this really means is that we must all start at tier 3 and work our way out but that tier 1, through obdurate pushback, is constantly and automatically working its way in. When a baby too young to talk touches a hot object and it burns them they cry *in reaction* to the tier 1 *intruding* into their purely tier 3 reality.