True Detective: Existential Crime Drama? The McConnaisance continues.....

As it progressed,  the Matthew McConaughey/Woody Harrelson show “True Detective” posed a horrifying question that has danced lightly across my subconscious before, albeit briefly…..

McConaughey posited the theory that during evolution we, as homo sapiens, became accidentally self-aware, and saw ourselves as more important than we are…..

Yes, his character saw us humans as unintentionally programmed beyond mere survival instinct,  yet no more necessary than “the animals” we feed in pet dishes or consume at fast food joints.  Just painfully and with futility nursing the frustrating impression that we are, umm...

"playing out the string" as George Carlin depressingly put it in the prologue to his first book.

Is life like they taught us in Sunday School?  

Is there a loving god looking down on us throwing us waves of warming light and reinforcing love, keeping us safe and guiding us toward a path of true enlightenment & happiness, where we’ll find that soulmate that is also wandering the Earth seeking the same things as we are?   Inevitably children will follow, career goals may be met, then retirement, then Florida?

Is life Hello Kitty, the Everly Brothers, and the Care Bears?

Or are emotions simply secreted brain chemicals? Is love merely Dopamine, anger adrenaline, and lust a combination of them both?  Are Earth and our species simply a winning lottery ticket in a universe large enough to host the odds, and can easily be flippantly wiped out with a random passing comet?

 Or is there an even worse case scenario that can be tossed upon us with no malice or ambivalence from anyone?  Could our planet be damaged irreparably, reducing us to the apocalyptic survival monsters in Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” through the folly of man’s warfare or by a volcanic eruption that’s decided the credit on our borrowed time account has come past due?  No supreme being stopping this with his love, or creating it with his wrath? Is it all merely random happenstance in an outer space too large for me to fathom?

Could the universe be ignoring our little terrarium by the Sun flashing out in a microscopic apocalypse because 99.9% of it wasn’t even aware it was happening?

The former is nicer.  The former is what I can cope with.  The latter is something I thank whoever may be out there that I’m glad I’m not quite smart enough to wrap my head around.

And yes, Matthew McConaughey got me thinking like that.

 

Before you think McConaughey's character is necessarily preaching to the converted, I submit this: