TRUE DETECTIVE AND THE NIHILISTIC IMPULSE

The best nihilism-antidote is in work that carries personal meaning: providing for our loved ones. Being a wonderful colleague. Maybe even tracking down a serial killer.

TRUE DETECTIVE was one of the most woefully bitter and bleak TV shows to emerge in recent years. Despite its somber tone and themes of loss, yearning and mortality it connected with a massive audience. The plot—a pair of detectives’ relentless hunt for a serial killer—was a hackneyed one. So what was at the heart of its enormous appeal?

Maybe the show was a mirror, reflecting the vacuum at the heart of our culture and our yearning for meaning in a world that can seem entirely superficial and achingly numb. Or was it actually a uniquely riveting exploration of nihilism we could experience vicariously through the journeys of the two lead characters?

On the surface they were truly polar opposites:

Marty Hart is a ‘family man’, staunch believer in the American Dream, upholder of society’s values and institutions and a solid team player who gets on well with his work colleagues.

Rustin Cohle is a brooding, intellectual misanthrope and loner at odds with both his workmates and the world at large and given to lengthy philosophical discourses that would make Nietzsche seem like Fred Rogers:

‘Human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We are creatures that should not by natural law exist, each of us programmed to think we are somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. The only honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming and walk hand in hand into extinction’.

These musings— delivered during lengthy car rides through desolate Ozark hinterlands-- drive Marty to distraction but it’s not just Rustin who possesses a dangerous nihilism; Marty secretly harbors his own self-destructive black hole deep in his heart and both men are on paths that will eventually lead to heart-breaking decay and loss in their lives.

While the main plot boils, a subplot explores this personal despair as it eats away at both men from the inside and their personal lives unravel; only the solving of the case can have any hope of redeeming them both.

And work proves to be their ultimate salvation and the solving of the case leads to a catharsis for both men: they become reconciled to their pasts, find comfort in the present and even form a tentative hope for the future. But the nihilism and despair at the heart of the story is what lingers.

It’s OK to identify with these journeys but would we want to experience them for real? The bone-deep feelings of despair and hopelessness? The utter lack of faith in anything, even oneself?

Many of us go through a kind of faux ‘pop-nihilism’ in our teens as evidenced by punk, Goth and death metal at al. This is nihilism as trope, meme and image rather than the real thing which often emerges later in life and the consequences of which are way more deleterious than black lipstick and a cider hangover.

So how do we avoid nihilism casting a shadow over our lives? Nietzsche countered it with the idea of self-knowledge, with the notion of self-creation, the drive to take control and mould nature in the way you want, and find meaningful. So whatever the factors that make you lose hope ------ death, despair, sickness, love, failure-- the essence of the human spirit is to be able to take control and react, and thus find meaning in at least the effort, if not in its success.

The stoic and platonic philosophers offer another perspective: use the mind to understand the world around you, including yourself, and find meaning through this process. Another approach is offered by philosophers like Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, which involves accepting nihilism as a given, and psychologically adapting to it in some way. Or, like the two anti-heroes in True Detective we can find meaning in work.

There is dignity in all labor but the best nihilism-antidote is in work that carries personal meaning: providing for our loved ones. Exercising our creativity. Being a wonderful colleague. Helping to grow an enterprise one can be proud of. Maybe even tracking down a serial killer. Ultimately, it's useless and counterproductive to focus on all the bad and evil of the world, all the cruel vagaries of fate. It's when we turn our attention to the mysterious, inexplicable existence of good in the world that we truly learn whatever there is in life that is worth knowing.