I am currently re-watching the first season of True Detective... for the third time. Matthew and Woody were AMAZING in this series. Well directed, cast, produced. Best TV ever.
The writing is what I'd like to talk about, though. Especially this conversation, from a scene about 15 minutes into the first episode, where they are driving through rural Louisiana. Mobile homes, junk everywhere, everything's run-down and cheap. They had just visited the scene of a horrific crime, and they both had a sense of foreboding, as if they knew this case was going to test them, and take from them more than they would be willing to give.
Rust (Matthew McConaughey): People out here... it's like they don't even know the world outside exists. Might as well be living on the fucking moon.
Marty (Woody Harrelson): There's all kinds of ghettos in the world.
Rust: It's all one ghetto, man. A giant gutter in outer space.
Marty: Today, that scene, that is the most fucked up thing I ever caught. Can I ask you something? You're a Christian, yeah?
Rust: No.
Marty: Well, then what do you got the cross for, in your apartment?
Rust: That's a form of meditation.
Marty: How's that?
Rust: I contemplate the moment in the garden, the idea of allowing your own crucifixion.
Marty: But you're not a Christian... so what do you believe?
Rust: I believe that people shouldn't talk about this type of shit at work.
Marty: Hold on, hold on... 3 months we been together, I get nothing from you. Today, with what we're into now, do me a courtesy, ok? I'm not trying to convert you.
Rust: Look, I consider myself a Realist, all right? But in philosophical terms, I'm what's called a Pessimist.
Marty: Ummm, ok? What's that mean?
Rust: It means I'm bad at parties.
Marty: Let me tell you, you ain't great outside of parties either!
Rust (hesitatingly): I think human consciousness was a tragic mis-step 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.
Marty: Huh? That sounds god-fucking awful, Rust.
Rust: We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self... this accretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody when in fact, everybody's nobody.
Marty: I wouldn't go around spouting that shit, if I was you. People around here don't think that way. I don't think that way.
Rust: I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop re-producing, walk hand-in-hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.
Marty: So, what's the point of getting out of bed in the morning?
Rust: I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that it's obviously my programming, and I lack the constitution for suicide.
Marty: My luck, I picked today to get to know you. For three months I don't hear a word from you, and..
Rust: You asked.
Marty: ...Yeah. And now I'm BEGGING you to shut the fuck up!
Driving in silence for a moment... then:
Rust: I get a bad taste in my mouth out here. Aluminum. Ash. Like you can smell the psychosphere.
Marty: I got an idea: Let's make the car a place of silent reflection from now on, okay?
Rust silently acquiesces.
And so, the series goes on, with all the unspeakable horror, deprivation, and corruption they uncover, ending with this beautiful scene almost 20 years later where Marty takes Rust for a walk outside the hospital where he is recovering. And after a brief exchange where Rust re-counts his near-death experience, and possibly an encounter with something that expresses a meaning to life, something greater than individual existence... pure love, a light in the eternal darkness, warmth in the abysmal cold, the season ends with this:
Rust: I'll tell you, Marty, I've been up in that room, looking out those windows every night here. Just thinking... it's just one story. The oldest.
Marty: What's that?
Rust: Light versus dark.
Marty: Well, I know we ain't in Alaska, but it appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory.
Rust: Yeah. You're right about that.
And a few minutes later, after they decide to leave the hospital, Rust says:
Rust: You know, you're looking at it wrong, at the sky.
Marty: How's that?
Rust: Well, once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light's winning.
And Marty just chuckles.
My whole life I have been operating in sympathy with this philosophy. It is basic Judeo-Christian philosophy. It has been my default assumption. And it still is. But there has always been an undercurrent of what he laid out in the beginning. I have often thought that we shouldn't pro-create. It is the only way to end suffering and poverty. I have often thought that we got a raw deal in being assigned to this time-space continuum, without our approval, in a body that is slowly breaking down, and dying from the day we are born, on a planet that is trying to kill us, and our loved ones, every time we let our guard down. I have often thought it would be smarter to just say "No thanks." Maybe it is better to be wherever we were before we were here? Even though it is entirely unknown, and therefore "dark" to us.
I'm sure we all vacillate between competing, possibly diametrically opposed thoughts, conclusions, or viewpoints. I go between standard Catholic Christian beliefs and the idea that if there is a god, he is an asshole and should be the subject of a class-action lawsuit with 7 billion people as the plaintiffs. And I entertain a lot of territory in between. It is hard for me, most times, to think that someone is "blessed" because they won a wrestling match when, elsewhere on Gods green Earth, someone else is born with a horrible malady and must live their entire life in pain, emotional as well as physical. It doesn't square with the idea of an all-seeing, all-loving God. Either he doesn't care, or is asleep at the wheel, or an incredible SADIST. And then my daughter sends me a video of her dancing and I suddenly find myself thanking God for his graciousness in sending her to me. I guess never mind the other kid.
There are people who, in simplicity and humility, just take what they are given because it just makes sense to them. It is not a course of action taken in ignorance or blind subservience to ancestral philosophical hand-me-downs, but really just takes into account the short time we will be here, on this plane of existence, and a conservation and respect for the archetypical lessons we received from our fore-fathers. And Mothers. It is the very basis of Morality, and gives us a plan-of-action that best ensures a happy, productive life for us and our children while we are here.
The Truth is that we will never know how we got here, how we were made, or when, or where, or even why we are here. The Judeo-Christian game plan is as good as any other, better, even, by our track record. There are millions of people all over the world that don't spend their time thinking about other options. They'd rather spend what little they have of it loving their children, and each other, building and creating, and pursuing their happiness in the here-and-now, with the promise of eternity at the end of the path. And anything that threatens that is anathema, and well ought to be.
Never mind that Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity have put smartphones in every pocket. It's great, and a miracle of science, but it pales at the sight of the dedication and devotion of a parent in raising their children and seeing the love in their eyes. Never mind that Astrophysicists have given us images and evidence of the vastness of the cosmos and the revelation that our Sun is but one of many, maybe an infinite number, of worlds. Never mind the discoveries of the microscopic world, DNA, and never mind the probability of some form of evolution. That is all beautiful, and wonderous, but it doesn't change anything. We are still here, hungry, naked and afraid, and in pain, with no instruction manual except what our parents have learned before we were even born; what we learn from history. And whether it is a raw deal or not, seeing the love in your childs' eye is the only thing better than sex we have found. There is a reason that one leads to the other. And that is why the wheel keeps turning. And why the light is winning.
Anyways, kudos to Nic Pizzolatto for the creation of such thought-provoking and philosophical challenging series!
