Biff Loman as the Übermensch

In defense of the biggest loser in the history of American literature

[Ever-so-slightly inspired by Scott Alexander’s “Matt Yglesias Considered as the Nietzschean Superman”]

1.

Much of the final year of IB Literature is dedicated to dramatic works.

We’ve read The Importance of Being Earnest (great and hilarious), Waiting for Godot (annoying but also hilarious), and Death of a Salesman (just annoying).

Death of a Salesman is usually considered a pretty effective and sympathetic critique of capitalism, though I think it falls a little flat. In any case, conventional analyses like to compare Willy Loman—the titular salesman—with his son Biff.

Willy is supposed to be a sort of victimized-hero: a hardworking man with outlandish dreams that he’ll never achieve—but, of course, that’s not his fault! The American Dream is a lie he was told over and over again, so it makes sense that he’d be crushed when reality fails to live up to it. Poor Willy, industrialization and progress killed him.

Biff, on the other hand, is just a sad loser. He’s got no marketable skills, so the country’s moved on without him. He can’t hold down a minimum-wage job, much less achieve the American Dream. And he’s a bit too mopey to deserve our sympathy. Good riddance, we ought to say. What a loser.

Even Seinfeld got in on the Biff-bashing, on repeated occasion. Noted loser George Costanza would say something horrendously insecure, or report on a terribly unsuccessful job interview, and Jerry would deliver a condescending “Biff…”

The least appealing woman George dates on the show (he does it to keep collecting unemployment checks without looking for a job) dumps him over his Biffiness: “You got no job, you got no prospects,” she says, “You’re like Biff Loman!”

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2.

This reading of Death of a Salesman makes me particularly upset. Because it leaves out the most important moral: Biff’s redemption!

By the end of the play, we’ve been treated to an absolute circus of dishonesty, deception, and malfeasance on the part of really all of the Lomans.

[WARNING: pretty big spoilers from this point forward]

Willy’s the worst offender: he would boast constantly about his success to his kids, when in fact he was barely able to keep their heads above water. He also cheated on his wife, Linda, for years on end, during sales trips to Boston. Biff even caught him in the act once—certainly a traumatizing event for the young man, but also an extremely unfortunately timed one. Biff lost his scholarship as a near-direct result, and his life pretty much unraveled from there.

Of course, Biff himself has never been quite the picture of good morals. He began stealing as a kid, which Willy just laughed off, and the habit became more obsessive with time. He’s been fired repeatedly on account of his kleptomania.

Biff also misremembers his relationship with an old boss, Henry Oliver, whom he approaches requesting a large investment. When Oliver seems not to recognize him, Biff panics and steals Oliver’s fancy fountain pen, then lies to his father about the meeting’s success.

He’s encouraged to do so by his brother, Happy. Hap is nearly as bad as Willy—he exaggerates his career’s success, consistently tells Biff to do the same, and will readily lie to his parents, brother, or anyone else, just to get out of an awkward situation. In a particularly painful moment, he refuses to identify Willy (who’s having a bit of a breakdown) as his father, in order to get laid.

In the play’s final scenes, this all comes to a head. Willy’s mostly gone mad at this point, convinced that Biff’s many failures have been intentional—an attempt to “spite” him, presumably for his infidelity. Happy is still trying to convince Biff to tell Willy sweet, comforting lies about his success in the hopes that Willy’s problems will just go away. And Biff finally breaks:

(to Happy): The man don’t know who we are! The man is gonna know! (To Willy) We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house!

…

You know why I had no address for three months? I stole a suit in Kansas City and I was in jail. (To Linda, who is sobbing.) Stop crying. I’m through with it. (Linda turns away from them, her hands covering her face.)

He clears the air with a bit more radical honesty, and then Biff gets to the point. He hasn’t failed out of spite, or even for lack of trying. No, he just doesn’t have it. And he’s finally coming to terms with that, after years of denial by his father and himself:

I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them! I’m one dollar an hour, Willy I tried seven states and couldn’t raise it. A buck an hour! Do you gather my meaning? I’m not bringing home any prizes any more, and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them home!

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3.

Here’s the issue with the American Dream: it’s not quite what it says on the tin.

Nominally, the American Dream promises a house, white-picket fence, and loving family. But that’s not what Willy wants—he’s after respect, or even notoriety. He doesn’t just want to be comfortable, he wants to be elite.

Of course, every society through all of human history has had some elite class.

In most, entry to that class was determined by blood. You could be an aristocrat if your father was an aristocrat—otherwise, hope you enjoy peasanthood.

The US changed all that.

Meritocracy really once was a new idea. The right to pursue success and happiness no matter your background was a new invention from the New World.¹ This country promised that if you really were capable and deserving, anyone could become an elite.

But opportunity can be a double-edged sword. Even though anyone can rise to elitehood, not everyone can. So who’s being left out?

In America, it’s (supposed to be) the incapable and the undeserving.

At least European feudal peasants could save face. They could lament the unfairness of the system, and claim that they really would be deserving of elitehood, if only they had a fair shot.

But Willy Loman has no excuse. If he can’t become an elite, there must be something wrong with him. And Biff spells it out: he’s “not a leader of men.”

Willy just can’t handle that. He can’t handle not being a leader of men, so he goes into the garage, he runs the car’s engine, and he kills himself.²

Biff makes a different choice.

He’s “one dollar an hour,” and he can be ok with that. He won’t change the world, but he’ll survive nonetheless.

That’s the interesting thing about economics—even someone who really sucks at everything is still somewhat valuable, somewhat productive. Biff probably can’t even work at McDonald’s as well as a Harvard PhD could—but the PhD has better things to be doing with his time, so Biff can still find a job scooping french fries.

And it seems like he has the mental fortitude to live that life happily! I’ve worked at McDonald’s, and can say—that’s no small feat. If Biff can truly be content there, he really is some sort of hero.

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4.

Superintelligent AI seems to be very close at hand. Metaculus puts a 95% chance on “human-machine intelligence parity before 2040.”

And AGI shouldn’t be far behind. Metaculus’ central estimate has the arrival of general AI in early 2030 (right around the presumptive time of my entry into the job market).

If we can get alignment right (and that’s a big if), we may soon live in a world where there are tons of more productive and smarter workers out there. Millions or billions of superintelligent agents—PhDs to our Biff Lomans—that will take over the future planning of our society. Will take over all of the cutting-edge science, the creative fields, anything that takes a lot of brains. These machines will be the only “leaders of men.”

So what’ll the rest of us do?

Well, there’s a good chance that, at least for a little while, we’ll be “one dollar an hour.” Work-a-day stiffs, taking over all the busywork that the AGI doesn’t want to spend its resources on.

And we can try to deal with that like Willy or like Biff. We can give up, or we can stumble our way to some sort of acceptance.

Nietzsche’s übermensch had some specific traits—exceptionally capable, inspirational, morally evolved. None of these describe Biff. But the übermensch’s purpose is to guide humanity. To be a model for our future.

Nietzsche couldn’t have anticipated machine intelligence or singularity. But we can. And if the future makes us all into losers, I only hope we can follow Biff’s stoic example.

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Lukethoughts

(The column that I regret giving him more with each edition. Luke’s got four strange thoughts today.)

• “I have images of Ari’s kneecaps; I plan on selling them to the highest bidder so contact me.” (Ed. note: I sure hope this isn’t true, please don’t contact him.)

• “He is trying to replace me with Lana and Ellie… he doesn’t know what he wants.” (Ed. note: Lukethoughts isn’t going anywhere! But, other people in my life: if you have good thoughts, I’m happy to also put them here and be snarky about them.)

• “Valentine’s Day was a hit! My mother ended up with over 100 flowers from me and my dad.” (Ed. note: Who gives flowers to their mother on Valentine’s Day? I may come off as a dick here, but, like, weird, dude.)

• “I fucking hate cats. I will forever be a dog person.” (Ed. note: Hear, hear.)

1. Excluding slaves and women and so on, for a while. But people like Willy Loman have pretty much always been theoretically able to rise to elite status in America.

2. I don’t really see why we’d think this is capitalism’s fault! It seems like Willy’s just a narcissist, and a pretty unstable one at that. (See here for a little more on why I think suicide is a shitty philosophical device—it’s a symptom of mental illness, not existential angst or capitalist oppression or anything like that.)