A Different Kind Of Future Shock

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It’s weird going back and reading old and neglected posts from ~7 years ago, including one where I bemoan my diminishing proliferation.

I think I went wrong somewhere along the way. See, I started to worry overly much about highly unlikely potential future consequences to things written in the now. The story I’ve been dreaming up since roughly about forever ago is one involving some form of time travel. Mix that with my paranoia that in-story events might somehow directly affect my non-in-story life, and the result has been me over-overthinking everything I write

The only thing I can think of to do about it is to characterize myself. What as? I don’t know. Maybe just in general. Why does it matter? Because in Elyen, a situation like this is somewhat interfere-with-able beyond the scope of the pages of story itself. And, I fear, writing about anything bad happening to any characters comes with the possibility of irl karma. But if I am as one such character, what then? Well, in that case, I could play out a needlessly fearful scenario where exactly that happens. Someone in story tries to influence the rewriting of it using time travel to go back to the inception point of an idea, perhaps of a series of events or what a character’s flaws turn out to be. Weird thing to be so pre-occupied with, right?

So, maybe no such thing is possible, let alone likely, to happen in my immediate writing experience, but it maybe can happen to some in-story avatar persona filling in.

Again, why does it matter? It matters because I need to worry less about this form of future shock, and get back to writing more regularly.

The form that time travel takes in Elyen is beyond me, which isn’t good since I’m the witness and teller of it, and including a correct explanation would be nice and helpful. There’s bendy time travel, and there’s quantum time travel, there’s linear time travel. and who know how many other kinds? Bendy time gives an observer some “play” room, a little forward or a little behind whatever passes for the local time consensus. Quantum time travel is travelling to discrete points in time. Linear is more like mechanical winding or unwinding of a clock. Maybe none of that is “correct” by a higher standard, but for coming half off the top of my head, it seems legit.

In theory, I could write many different versions of many series of events in Elyen, and I actually intend to experiment with some form of choose-your-own-ending story structure to at least partially accommodate just that, but in any one version, things might not go the way an in-story character might like. Time travel to them might be the natural way to hit “redo”. As I theorize it, doing so a) preserves the original timeline while b) creating a new one. Each new time travel event and each new resulting timeline should align with a story’s differentiations — that is, with a different, alternative ending choice.

Suffice it to say, in-story time travel is something I’ve thought a lot about, and I still can’t really get my head around a few things, like what happens if future information is attained, or if you undo the events that caused you to time travel in the first place. I mean, in our more familiar terrestrial experience of life, we know of prophets and soothsayers and the like. Call them frauds or praise their gifts, either way, it doesn’t break our reality to at least pretend that future information can be made available to us ahead of time. And if there are higher powers that can and do dispense information about future events well ahead of when they may take place, then we might not even be pretending at that point.

While reality is pretty insane for many of us at the moment, I don’t believe time travelling and time travellers currently are a part of the mix. But then again… I can’t really rule it out, either. I think if irl time travel were real, we might not even notice when it happens. It would somehow be seamless, fluid, maybe dream-like at times. It would be hard to tell apart from what one is and does actively experience with whatever passes for the “normal” form of time travel: Simply living within the moment, which perpetually flows into the future, leaving the past in its wake.

Anyways, let these paranoiae (sorry, “paranoias”, you know, ’cause that’s 100% a more intriguing word) come to rest while I still go on writing.

Creationivity

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I’ve been working away at this concept of a novel series, Elyen, for over a decade now, though it’s gone by a number of other names in its earlier forms. Maybe it should not be taking me as long to make the kind of progress that I have in that time (which I will deliberately not specify), but the fact is that the story has changed immensely from its original concept.

I think that, out of all of the changes, the most profound is that of my role as the story’s author. In fact, I seriously question if ‘author’ is even now the right word for it anymore. What I mean by that is this: When I first set out to work on what is now Elyen, I had no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I was the story’s author, it’s creator. It wasn’t even a question. There was no alternative way of looking at my relationship with that early body of work, no other function to it beyond that which you would expect to exist between an author and his story.

Now, I see myself as being more of a reporter, if anything. The story might as well be its own living thing, and I am merely studying it. The universe (/multiverse/metaverse) that is Elyen, and the world of Drendast in particular, have become their own sovereign domains, into which I am now little more than a privileged guest, granted the freedom to write about anything I see.

I am become Marco…

Anyways, I’m sure you can imagine how perplexing it is to arrive at a conclusion like that and then pair it with the notion that I likewise exist as some unknown element within that same story as well.

So now I question whether I have ever created anything now encompassed within the body of work that is now, and will yet be, Elyen. This threw my head for a little spin when I really started thinking about it last night. My conclusion, however, is that I have created (and now maintain) the means by which I observe and report the goings on in Drendast. And that’s still a very vital part in the grand scheme of things, though not as dictatorial (why can’t we just shorten that down to just ‘dictorial’??) as what I believed my role was when I first began.

I now believe that the events which unfold in Elyen do so largely independently of how I might wish for them to, and that the characters have every bit as much free will as I believe that I, myself, have. I am unaware of what influence or impact I may or may not still have, if I ever had any to begin with. In either case, when I record something and it goes into the body of work known as Elyen, I understand that such things could just as easily have gone any other way. More accurately, given the multiversal nature of Elyen, it should be stated that anything I record is simply only one way (out of countless other ways all taking place simultaneously and in parallel) that things are going.

And if there’s one thing I wish to convey through the writing of Elyen, it’s that anything and everything that can happen, is happening. The question is not “what happens in Elyen?“, but rather, “which version of events am I seeing unfolding in Elyen?“

…Polo.

Viria: Mamissamus

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In Elyen, or at least on Drendast (or rather in Drendast, given how most Drendains reckon their orientation to the planet that birthed them, even though, like us, they live on its surface), there are those of the synthetic variety who keep viruses as pets for themselves. You might think that that would be a bad idea.

Sometimes, you’d be right.

Mostly, however, the worst thing that ever happens is that the viruses, or viria as they are known as here, get misplaced. Sometimes, that can cause a great deal of harm, other times, a great deal of hilarity. In one case, there was one Synthetic Intelligent entity (SI for short) that had a pet virus called Mamissamus, and… well… It got lost somewhere in a physical domain populated with animal kind. If memory serves me correctly, I believe that even the ancestors of your human kind were among the affected. 

For what it’s worth, this is approximately what Mamissamus looks like when rendered into a physical manifestation:

            Don’t let the classy act fool you, Ma’am is one cunning strain, and not
                                        to mention totally into cross-dressing.

For the life of me, I still don’t know what the big draw was, but apparently Mamissamus (or, as you may have gathered already, Ma’am for short) had a particular penchant for mammalia DNA specifically. Without getting into too much detail, it wound its way right up there into the ancestral roots of warm-blooded, sexual vertebrates and latched on. Though mostly harmless, Mamissamus’s occupation within the mammalian lineage triggered a biological response that ultimately resulted in what is known today as “menstruation” — a rather messy business, from what I understand.

I should be honest with you, when I say “was” and “had” and otherwise treat this little anecdote as though it all took place a long, long time ago in the distant passed, the fact is that Lynic, the SI alluded to in the above, has been in a real tiff for the passed few days, which is about how much time has passed since he realized Ma’am was missing. How did a virus that only went AWOL a few days ago come to be responsible for eons worth of bleeding and serious discomfort, you ask? Well, being of Drendain origin, it has the ability to time travel. Obviously.

So anyways, it’s fallen to me to try to locate and retrieve the poor, lost virus. With any luck, Lynic and Ma’am will be re-united before long (and you warm-blooded folk will hopefully go back to not bleeding in strange places periodically). But please, whatever you do, don’t get your hopes up. Honestly, I really do have better things to do, and if I can’t track it down within the next day or two, I’m writing it off as being gone for good. If it comes down to that, you’re just gonna have to keep putting up with the after effects of Ma’am’s tampering until you figure out a way to adapt all on your own, mkay?

Have you tried, I don’t know, not letting yourselves be on biological autopilot? Really, going through the reproductive motions only when you actually want to reproduce is the way of the future. Just saying. Anyways, good luck with that!

 

As it Turns Out

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The other night, I was visiting some new friends, one of whom practices witchcraft. It happened to be the night of the super moon, and I had just seen a shooting star. It was settled: spells were to be crafted and cast! At (or around) midnight, a candle was lit, and some other things happened that ultimately lead to the first participant naming that which he desired to see (more of) happen in their life. In this case, they just wanted to be/remain happy. Apparently, there was no stipulation about keeping one’s wish to themselves or anything like that.

This looks way more evocative than what we actually had to work with. Punked from http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130717123049/glee/images/7/72/Hands-cupping-candle.jpg

This looks way more evocative than what we actually had to work with.
Punked from http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130717123049/glee/images/7/72/Hands-cupping-candle.jpg

Next thing I knew, it was my turn. I was to understand that there was nothing I could want that I should feel guilty about asking for even in the slightest, and that the only rule was that, whatever I asked for that was intended to be directed at others, positive or negative, would come back on me three fold. After much deliberation, I said that I couldn’t go through with it because I had no idea what I wanted.

There were a lot of things I could have said, owing to the fact that there are a lot of things that I want, but I had no idea what I would have went with if I could only specify one thing. Maybe I didn’t have to narrow it down. Maybe I could have stated more than one desire. Maybe I could have said something that’s closer to number 7 on my list of 10 things I desire most in life (not that I really have such a list, but still, bare with me) and it still not ruin my chances of ever attaining items number 1, 2, 3 or 4, etc. in the future.

Maybe, it would have been okay to simply say, “I don’t know what I want” as the official utterance bound to the workings of the spell. Who knows?

Anyways, time has passed, and having given it further thought, I feel more confident about what I would have liked to have said instead. I am relatively content with my place in life. I get by on little money, I have great friends, and all of my basic needs are pretty much met in a relatively stress-free manner. I don’t require anything to increase my own personal happiness and well-being (though improvements would not be turned away). Instead, I want my life to have a positive influence/impact on the lives of others I come in contact with. Basically, I don’t really want anything for myself if it doesn’t come alongside of improvements (whatever form they may take) in the lives of others.

I’m not sure if I believe in witchcraft, or, even if there is something to it, if I particularly care one way or another, but I will state my wish here and now without concern for super moons, shooting stars, candles, or other trappings that I feel the universe ultimately sees through in discerning the desires of a person’s heart:

I want other people’s happiness to increase.

I feel that I would be satisfied in knowing that some of that increase in happiness comes from my place in their lives, subtle or otherwise, but more than that, however, I want this to apply to all people as a whole, regardless of whether I have any direct or contact with them or not. The fact is that there is a lot of strife in the world. A lot of that which depresses me comes from reading the news, hearing about the state that other places in the world are in (and more than a few that are much closer to home), and feeling helpless to do anything about it. So, if I could expand on that, my wish would be the same as that good old cliche line many of us hear over the holidays:

I wish for peace and goodwill for all.

If I can help facilitate the manifestation of that wish into the actual, help make that desire a reality for others, then like my friend Emily at seventeenbutterflymug, I would be happy to do so 🙂

Flora: Alluem Numana

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Care and effort are hard to exhibit in the face of apathy and laziness. Such is the struggle I deal with when it comes to describing some of the finer details of Drendast. In this case, I have a very, very pretty picture in my head, but when I try to find the words to describe what it looks like, I lose interest. The struggle continues, such that I am determined to press on despite the lack of enthusiasm for doing so. Perhaps, that is a quality that sets me apart as a truly awful writer.

Perhaps, I am okay with that.

With that said, I have always loved trees. I know almost jack shit about them as they are in the present day natural world, but maybe that is for the best. I have more blissfully ignorant wiggle room to work with when when trying to describe the kinds of vegetation that exists in my mind’s world. In this case, I wanted to share some thoughts concerning a species of tree known as Alluem Numana.

The name “Alluem” just sounded cool to me, and “Numama” hints at a source of magic(k), and otherwise paints a more enchanted picture in one’s imagination. At least, that’s the hope.

I wish I had a great deal of plant taxonomical details to relay, but instead, all I’ve got are the gists: Alluem Numana are very much like oaks in that they are very large, green and broad-leafed, deciduous hard woods. Being as they are native to Drendast (and Drendast is nothing if not Earth enlarged in many respects), they typically reach the heights we see more commonly seen among Coastal Redwoods: that is to say, tall as fuck — and yet, like oaks on Earth, they’re far from being the biggest trees on Drendast.

Apart from their height, however, there’s also the fact that they glow at night to take into consideration. I could be wrong but, in my mind, the idea of trees that light up and give off an aethereal, enchanted aura of one sort or another after twilight has set in seems to be a fairly well established fantasy trope at this point in the history of fictional literature (and other media). I can’t trace where I first got the idea from, but I know it was before the release of Avatar. In either case, it can hardly be avoided in a place like Elyen, given that nightfall only takes place once every three years (or months, depending on your reckoning). Well, months or years all the same, the point is that there are long periods of darkness for one third of the time at any given point on the surface of Drendast on a consistent basis. Therefore, it should not be so strange that the ecology reflects that fact in unique ways (in this case, with vegetation that lights up when the suns finally take their leave).

Other than that, it should be mentioned that they belong to a family of temperate rain forest trees.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_rainforest

Like so, only with, you know… actual oaks… and glowy bits at night…

So, giant-ass oaks that glow at night. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Alluem Numana of Drendast. I will have a little more to divulge about them in a second entry I will link to from here in the future.

Master Network

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Once upon a time, there was this guy named, well… We’ll call him Mr. T for now. Anyways, this Mr. T was a downright pitiful fool. He wanted to make the world a better place, so he build and designed many wonderful things. Many of those wonderful things shaped the world in which we still presently live today. Some of those changes, however, have been used and abused in ways and for purposes that Mr. T did not fully intend.

However, Mr. T, the pitiful fool that he was, made an investment in the future of humanity. Though he spent the end of his natural life penniless, alone, and afflicted with inner torments that only the insanely ingenuous of us will ever know, he had but one resounding prophecy:

“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.”

You may know who I am referring to at this point.

Anyways, one of his goals was to build a global energy transmitter, a device that could provide completely safe power to any point around the globe without wires. And also without meters. Which therefore meant without cost.

Free energy. The mother fucking holy grail of human civilization next to a functioning warp drive.

And yes, it would be free. The ionosphere and the ground state of the globe can form some sort of a natural dipole and can be turned into a circuit or some such impressive, sciency-sounding nonsense, which can be safely tapped without fear of exhausting anything. Now, I don’t know if that’s an ignorant attitude (much like how we thought we could never pollute the ocean ’cause there was just so damn much of it compared to what a small handful of itty bitty little factories’ effluence could possibly do to it – failing to consider the exponential growth in the manufacturing sector that came about thereafter), but even if so, then for fuck sakes, let’s be a little more careful, hmm? Just because we’ve repeated history a number of times in the past doesn’t mean we’re doomed to do so again and again every god damn time indefinitely.

With that said, this global energy transmitter project of Tesla’s — Er, I mean… Ahh, fuck it, too late now — is supposed to provide enough power all around the globe for, well, everything we use electricity for today. Essentially, it would have ushered in the the information age nearly a full century ahead of time. If built now, it would still prove to be a major, major upgrade to our existing infrastructure. Only problem is that no one with a vested interest in the modern day power grid would ever fund it, given the complete and utter lack of financial gain to be made in doing so. In fact, my inner conspiracy theorist knows that such an effort would have one hell of a target for corporate espionage on it’s back at all stages of it’s development. So, even 100 years later, it would still be damn near impossible to build.

Yet here’s our chance to do so anyways:

Let’s Build a Planetary Energy Transmitter

Let’s give the greatest inventor and father of the modern age a second chance to do the good he wanted to see done while he was still alive to do so.

Drendast, Part 2: The Unknown

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Image

What Earthporn ain’t good for, I’ll never know. Thanks to redditor Snahans for sharing this image here.

I can imagine a lot of similarities between Earth and Drendast. Forests, deserts, mountains, oceans, islands, and various other non-polar terrains. But when it comes to imagining (to say nothing of describing) what sets Drendast apart from Earth, I come up with as many misses as I do hits.

As mentioned in Drendast, Part 1: The Big Picture, Drendast is a mega planet, nearly 100 times the diameter of the sun. It is so massive that it has three (3) suns orbiting around it, not the other way around. Prior to the fall of one of those suns, called Tropreus, into the planet, there was perpetual daylight. Life evolved in a manner which capitalized on that bountiful, endless supply of energy, easily able to meet all basic needs in peace. This meant no predation, no struggle to survive. Life was a free gift.

Additionally, the surface of the planet is more than 90% ocean, save for what looks like 12 little islands spread out evenly around its surface. Those islands, called Subworlds, are actually massive, Pangaea-sized super continents, connected to one another via a naturally occurring intra-planetary network of Conduits.

I could go on about other known features about Drendast, similar or different from what we might expect to find on Earth, but the point of this entry is to emphasize the fact that there’s still tonnes of details which are unknown or not clearly understood about the planetary super system. For example:

How is it that the gravity isn’t too crushing for complexity and, eventually, self-replicating proto-life forms to emerge? Does the presence of ether mitigate some of gravity’s more intense effects at that magnitude?

How are days marked with three suns in the sky, if at all?

Wouldn’t there be solar tides? How would they effect the planet’s surface?

In what ways is the climate on Drendast unlike that found on Earth?

Does Drendast have a determinable spin/rotation?

Does the Drendain stellar system orbit around anything else out in deeper space? Like how our solar system orbits around the super massive black hole in our galaxy’s center?

Are there other, more distant stars and celestial bodies? If so, are Drendains aware of this fact prior to the fall of Tropreus, given that it should be impossible to see stars in the night sky if there’s never any night?

Is there tectonic activity on Drendast prior to the Fall? If so, how does it manifest itself? Would it at least partly be caused by the orbits of the suns?

What is the present day role of the formative primordial ether at the planet and suns’ cores, if any? I mean, right now, it’s the ambiguous, cosmic, vaguely-spiritual, ultra caveat any sci-fi writer might like to have on hand to magically conjure up an otherwise impossible explanation for how and why things are the way they are, and I’m happy to use it to explain the cosmic origins of Drendast, but beyond that..?

If Drendast has no spin of it’s own, does it have a magnetic field? If so, how? Is it anything at all like that found on Earth? If not, again, how so? — I’m thinking the suns each contribute equally to what might be described as a dynamic, ‘Triune’ (or ‘three-in-one’) magnetic field around and resonating with Drendast.

Are there monsters on Drendast, despite ideal evolutionary conditions?

Drendast and the three suns may be deified by the Drendain peoples, but will they actually play a role as personified entities throughout the course of Drendain history, literally and directly intervening here and there, or no?

These and many more questions plague me somewhat, leaving what might otherwise be a fully immersive setting bereft with holes. Sure, there is supposed to be a given amount of perpetual uncertainty in the world of Drendast owing to the fact that it’s just so bloody huge that no amount of exploratory effort could ever observe everything there is to see under the suns even after thousands of lifetimes, but there are other mysteries, such as the ones listed above, which are only mysteries because I, as a writer, come up short for answers which I feel I rightfully should understand better.

So, I might as well just put it out there for any interested thinkers and dreamers to muse over. If you can imagine a sensible enough sounding state of things on Drendast which sufficiently answers one or more of these questions for me, and I go as far as to officially adopt it as cannon for what is known and true of Drendast, I will be more than glad to credit it back to you!

Any takers?

Drendast, Part 1: The Big Picture

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My best attempt to track down the original creator of this image came up inconclusive, but there’s a strong chance that credit for this picture goes out to BBC. Or Mother Nature. Or a space agency of one sort or another. Or an artist, you know, like the kind who render images like these for fun. Either way.

I’ve been sitting on a lot of ideas pertaining to the story I’ve been working on called Elyen for a long time now, but in all this time, I’ve hardly shared any of the details publicly. This is my first major disclosure of some of the bits and pieces I’ve got going on so far, starting first with the setting.

Much of Elyen toys with the idea of parallel universes/multiverses. In fact, Elyen is the name of a particular(ly large) multiverse, within which the characters will end up doing a great deal of sight-seeing. At the heart of Elyen is the planet Drendast, serving as a the primary hub between universes.

Drendast is a mega water-planet forged in the ether eons ago. It is absolutely massive. It originally sported no less than 12 super-continent sized landmasses called Subworlds spread evenly across its surface and separated by unfathomable distances of sheer ocean. It is so huge that rather than orbiting around a star, it had three of its very own sun-sized stars orbiting around it, ensuring a perpetual state of day light . 

Had, was the operative word. Around ten thousand years ago or so (according to the few surviving historical records), one of the suns orbiting around Drendast came crashing down, causing massive devastation in its wake. But rather than destroy the planet outright, Drendast happened to be SO huge that it absorbed the worst of the impact without crumbling apart or evaporating away. Many myths abound to this day attempting to explain the cause of the judgement that reigned down from the heavens that fateful day.

Originally, the three suns were Tropreus, Neora and Selah. Now, only Selah and Neora remain.

Originally, Drendast had 12 thriving Subworlds. Now, a full third of them have either been rendered uninhabitable, or were vaporized completely.

Much of the action in the early stages of the story will take place on one of the remaining Subworlds called Sarenalis (Ser`n`AY`liss). Before the Fall of Tropreus, there was never (or very, very seldom?) any night fall. Like on most Subworlds, many of the creatures which evolved there had the benefit of being photovorus (light-eating).

There was certainly enough sunlight to power all of creation indefinitely when all three stars circled the world. However, since the Fall, all life became a struggle. Sarenalis was one of the Subworlds least affected by the Fall since it was located on the complete opposite side of the planet from where the impact took place. Still, great suffering occurred there as much as anywhere else where the night touched.

Once great and peaceful creatures took to predation and killing all in order to survive in the face of scarcity and chaos. Civilization fell into disproportionate states of disarray. Many advances in medicine and technology were lost. Most importantly, the Subworlds, which were once connected to one another by a series of ethereal channels (often mistaken for wormholes by outsiders) called Conduits, were now completely isolated. The oceans between Subworlds were simply too vast to ever cross using most surviving conventional methods of transportation of the day.

Geographic separation began to take its course. At the height of Drendain evolution in the day was a humanoid race known as the Sævanii. Ever since the Fall, the separation between Subworlds forced the original Sævian line to branch out and become distinctly new entities.

Now, nearly ten thousand years following the calamity that Tropreus brought down, the Conduits have slowly begun to repair, re-establishing the links between the remaining Subworlds, but more than that, re-establishing the links between Drendast and the now-wild external multiverse at large. Mighty airships have also begun to make an appearance, slowly replacing reliance on the Conduits as the only way to get around the planet.

Many creatures have begun to adapt to the new nightfall conditions, even making sense of the star-and-constallation-filled night skies for the first time in all recorded Drendain history. New ecological niches have begun to mature. Balance and vitality were slowly being restored to the planet.

However, a new element began to materialize in the natural world still very much under-repair: Ambition. Can the devastated people of Drendast survive this strange new drive emerging from among them to carve out a competitive way of life for themselves so soon after their world was nearly destroyed?

I Saw A Movie Once

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In all honesty, I was just in a weird mood when I decided I wanted to write this entry the other night. Then, I got sitting on it, distracted by other things. Now, it’s so far removed from the original motivation that I’m not sure what to say here. I owe it to myself to say something regardless. I need to keep the writing practice up, after all.

I suppose I can still reflect on what started this: the movie Detachment. If you’ve never seen it, I don’t recommend it if you’re easily depressed. For anyone who’s seen and/or perhaps maybe even enjoy the movie Requiem for a Dream, this might just be right up your alley. Either way, it’s a slow and dreary showcase of what I take to be the failing of the modern public education system in certain parts of the States.

At least, that’s the backdrop.

The more significant message I got out of it was how different degrees of emotional investment result in differing levels of emotional burning out in a place where the overall surrounding culture fails to support itself (sucks and drains rather than contributes). The main character became the favourite teacher of many students who otherwise couldn’t give an ounce of respect for the other teachers. But he was only a sub. He wasn’t a permanent fixture.

I can relate to certain aspects portrayed by the main character (who’s name I can’t remember. Huh… Well, it’s not like this is a right proper review anyways), but I’m not sure they’re really the best traits to relate to. Detachment, as far as I was able to tell, was mostly about exactly what it says.

‘Detachment’, from the root word ‘detached’: “impartial or objective; disinterested; unbiased: a detached judgment.”

Words that freely associate with ‘detachment’ in my mind include ‘stoic’, ‘indifference’, ‘apathetic’, ‘controlled’, ‘sociopathic’ (minus the criminal/dangerous elements), and even ‘ataraxia’.

I like ‘ataraxia’ in particular: “a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety; tranquillity.” Not that the movie Detachment really showcases much of any of that, but still…

Actually, come to think of it, it exhibits a whole lot of the exact opposite of ataraxia in that sense. Even the main character, the good teacher who breaks down the walls preventing his students from learning some hard-hitting truths about life is constantly shown reflecting back on an earlier childhood trauma. He is not free of his own demons and torments, but still, somehow, more so than almost everyone else, he seems to be able to keep it together.

How? Why?

How is it that he can be just as messed up as everyone else but still make a massive, positive difference while even still never investing himself 110% into what he’s doing?

It’s almost like the world’s inability to hurt him any more is what gives him strength. His mind may not be one filled with bliss and happiness, but he knows how to separate his problems from what he’s prepared to give to, share with and do for others. Most of the time, he’s just doing the bare minimum of what’s expected of him. Not in a laziness sense, but it’s clear that he doesn’t volunteer at soup kitchens or community centres or charities, etc. which one might expect from a more heroic ‘real person’ protagonist. He mostly just does what’s expected and little else.

But, for what it’s worth, he does it well.

Then, situations come along, ones where there’s an opportunity to help in some way that goes just that little bit above and beyond. Those same situations are also ones where he has every right in the world to simply do nothing, turn around and walk away. And sometimes, he does. But if this movie had any redeeming quality, it was that as awful as many of the other circumstances going on around him and the other students and teachers were, and as much as he may have been entitled to shelter himself from that kind of harshness that reality can serve up all too often, he doesn’t always.

His efforts for standing up, sticking his head out and trying to do the right thing in those few crucial situations are rewarded in mixed ways. Some efforts wind up biting him very hard in the ass. Others create meaningful situations which bring an immensely greater good out of the darkness that existed before. That, to me, is a realistic portrayal of life.

It also tells me that, for the ways in which I feel I can relate, I’m not beyond hope. I can still make a positive difference, even if I can’t engage with every situation that requires someone to care. I’d go mad if I tried to fill the needs of as many others out there as there appears to be on my limited reserves of practical, hands-on compassion. I’m more suited to be an enabler for those with greater compassion than I have. Still, I have much learning and growing to do.

Either way, it’s true that if enough people come together and contribute whatever little bits they can towards a greater good, miracles can happen. However, sometimes, it’s just really, really nice to see a life completely transformed for the better by more personal and individual acts of kindness as well. Sometimes, those of us who want to make a positive mark on this world need to see, with our own eyes, the fruits of our efforts. It helps keep a fire of hope alive that this world really can be made into an even better place for all of us.