The entire TV series is challenging our social norm and identity, using an extreme environment to stimulate our discussion of the Cold War, religion, beauty, death, reason, reality, illusion, and so on. But it is also this breaking of conventions that makes our audience inexplicably fearful.
Routine is the lubricant on which we live: we rely on it to deal with strangers, to cooperate with colleagues, to fall in love, and even to order meals in restaurants. . . . It is the routine that binds us together, makes it easy to solve the originally complicated social trivial matters, makes this seemingly chaotic society rich in regulations, and gives us a sense of belonging and security in the center of the society. In other words, regularity is a kind of rule. Following it, disorder becomes orderly.
However, when the routine is distorted and the rules are no longer there, a feeling of creepy appears. In order to return to that balance, people will do all kinds of irrational and ridiculous things: the most common are self-deception and hysteria. People will give up the painful truth and chase the pleasant falsehood, and even subconsciously create all kinds of true reasons for the falsehood. The "ridiculous" behavior in this is common and is of our essence. It is an unthinking physiological mechanism. It is the conditioned reflex (or the result of evolution) left to us by human civilization for thousands of years. Like religion, it is for self-protection and social order.
I'm not criticizing conventions, just a little melancholy at the powerlessness and imprisonment of people in society.
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