True Detective is the first philosophical detective series in history, and its highlights are the melancholy performance of Matthew McConaughey and the negativity of the hero Rust. This is how he explained his outlook on life to his partner.
I'd consider myself a realist, all right? But in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist... I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law... We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, that accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody... I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction; one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.
Here Rust also touches on the problem of each of us being a robot. Actually this is because Rust is a man who practices meditation (his house has nothing but a bed and a cross, just like Jobs was when he was young), and the main purpose of meditation is to first become aware of his subconscious and then try to use the practice Meditate to hollow yourself out and become free. But in addition to this problem, Rust also mentions this illusion that we all feel unique, and that this illusion is also part of our programs. His negativity lies in his lack of confidence in our subconscious human beings' ability to conquer ourselves, and he feels that the only way to do this is to allow ourselves to perish. (This statement seems negative, but it is actually very romantic, and it is easy to invade the subconscious of the audience and make everyone fall in love with the male protagonist.)
Here, I would like to discuss with you where our unique subconscious mind comes from.
The reason we are more advanced than robots is that our subconscious mind is emotional, not cold programming. Human instinct comes down to two big emotions: greed and fear. And the combined command of these two emotions is "fear of losing". We humans are actually controlled by this one mind. In order for human beings to have the emotion of "fear of losing", human beings must understand the concept of value. So self-awareness is the natural developmental result of the emotion of "fear of losing": because we have more brains than the average animal, we will subconsciously find reasons for our "fear of losing" instinct, and these reasons are nothing more than the value of life , we create a lot of so-called meaning to strengthen our value and make our instinct stronger and stronger.
"Westworld" addresses a very important issue: the basis of our self-awareness is painful memory. Without pain, a robot would not be self-aware. So why can't happy memories be the basis of self-consciousness instead of painful memories? Why are we so obsessed and controlled by the pain of the past, while the joy of the past is so easy to forget? This is because the root of all our suffering is related to "losing", and all our happiness is related to "not losing, but gaining". So happiness is not the lowest emotion. "Fear of losing" is the most basic emotion of our human beings.
So the biggest lesson in our life is to learn how to face loss. The more we have, the more we fear losing, and the more we are under the control of our subconscious mind. And death is our last homework. When Rust studied murder and death, he learned a lot about life: we value our lives so much only because of our own subconscious "fear of losing". But at the last moment of life, we finally realize that life is just a dream, and we are just a biological doll.
I have seen the finale of thousands of lives, man. Young, old, each one so sure of their realness. You know that their sensory experience constituted a unique individual with purpose and meaning. So certain that they were more than biological puppet. The truth wills out, and everybody sees. Once the strings are cut, all fall down.
Fourteen straight hours of staring at dead bodies, these are the things ya think of. You ever done that? You look in their eyes, even in a picture, doesn't matter if they're dead or alive, you can still read ' em. You know what you see? They welcomed it... Not at first, but... right there in the last instant. It's an unmistakable relief. See, cause they were afraid, and now they saw for the very first time how easy it was to just... let go. Yeah, they saw, in that last nanosecond, they saw... what they were. You, yourself, this whole big drama, it was never more than a jerry-rig of presumption and dumb will, and you could just let go. To finally know that you didn't have to hold on so tight. To realize that all your life - you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memories, all your pain - it was all the same thing.It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person.
But if life is just a dream, what should we do? We can use this awareness to face what we've lost without having illusions about how the world is changing outside: it's not that we move to a new place, meet new people, and get a new president, and our lives will change There is an improvement.
You see, we all got what I call a life trap - a gene deep certainty that things will be different... that you'll move to another city and meet the people that'll be the friends for the rest of your life. .. that you'll fall in love and be fulfilled... fucking fulfillment... and closure, whatever the fuck those two fuckin' empty jars to hold this shit storm. Nothing's ever fulfilled, not until the very end. And closure - nothing is ever over.
Rust is also very scornful of religion. In fact, religion is the natural development result of our subconscious "fear of loss", and it is also a psychological comfort for "loss". Although the facts tell us that everyone dies, and human life is actually worthless. But since our brains are enslaved by our subconscious, we find many reasons to justify our worth: our souls are eternal, we are all children of God, and God loves us so much that he sacrificed his only son to save our sins. In this way, each of our lives has eternal value, and even better, we are not afraid to lose this life. why? Because as long as we believe in God, we can have eternal life. So religion seems to be the perfect solution to our problems of worthlessness and fear of losing our lives. But it makes us lose more freedom of thought and life.
Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It's catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he's effective at proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain. Dulls critical thinking.
We can use self-deception to achieve our goals, but we need to be very aware that we are deceiving ourselves. In fact, this is no longer a belief, but a determination. As long as we are determined, we are not afraid of any difficulties, even God will even help you. But we can't help but know that we're deceiving ourselves, and then life is completely out of control.
No one can save us, only ourselves. If the world has no hope, we are the real hope.
Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light's winning.
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