Time is a flat circle !?

It's been getting cold out in Rabat the city in which i live in , which meant no more partying no more social events ... So to keep my mind occupied ,i remember stumbling across the first season of True detective , a tv show that i had heard about but never watched . So i'd gave it a shot.At first, i should notice that it's very rare where i found tv shows that shows me asepects of myself that i might be oblivious to and when i do i'm always amazed by the depth of the show and the way it's written .Not only that i keep posters of them to remind myself of the lessons i learned from them . Here are some of them

As a result of being mezmerized by the show and some of it's correlations with Nietszche's philosophy if you were like me more often than not you end up looking up and searching for something online. So If you made it here, odds are you are a fan of the TV show “True Detective.” or a fan of Nietszche's philosophy .

Meet Rust Cohle

In its first season, the protagonist Rust Cohle, played brilliantly by the prolific Matthew McConaughey, says that “time is a flat circle,” a statement that might have thrown many of you for a loop. I know it left me preplexed for a while , so i decided to look it up and see what it means .

So What is the meaning of “time is a flat circle”?

The phrase “time is a flat circle” is a reference to the idea of the eternal return, a concept that was first introduced by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The idea of the eternal return is that the universe is cyclical, and that everything that has happened will happen again. Imagine that the idea of me writing this article an infinite number of times before, and you have read it just as many times. In Rust's terms, People are essentially doomed to repeat the same cycles again and again without ever really changing. At first glance the idea of eternal return might seem like a pessimistic concept, but it can also be liberating like how we see rust embracing it in the show .

The Absurdity of life and The Eternal return

the idea of the eternal return is a very old thought experiment that has been around for centuries. It was first introduced by the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea, who was a student of Parmenides. Zeno's paradoxes are a series of thought experiments that are designed to show that the universe is inherently contradictory. The paradoxes are designed to show that the universe is inherently contradictory, and that it is impossible to prove that anything is true. The paradoxes are designed to show that the universe is inherently contradictory, and that it is impossible to prove that anything is true. In contrast to that we see Rust saying stuff like " I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human 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."

The Highlights of Rust's Cohle character is that he is a a pessimist to the extreme.Every time he expressed his mind , you feel an existential crisis is about to fall down on Woody harrelson as if it was thunder . I remember cracking some dark pessimistic jokes with some friends that would make them look at me with concern for my sanity and that's how Rust was viewed by others . Rust Cohle was a single man he had no partner unlike his coworker Marty Hart who was married and had a kids and yet he would go into bed with other women . Which shows in contrast how rust had no will to satisfy his desires and he was just going through the motions of life maybe seen by others as missing out or pessimistic but at least he wasn't slave for his desires unlike his coworker alchoolic , sex addict ... One philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in particular talked about will and desire , he believed at the heart of reality existed the Will, a drive inside each and every one of us to live and to satisfy our desires.

The problem is that the Will is never satiated , making it always on the move and transforming its goal into a moving target. After all, any time we achieve one of our goals, it doesn’t take long for us to get bored quickly and to start looking for a new mountain to climb just like Sisyphus.

Now, according to Schopenhauer, all living things bear this same primal force within them yet are never able to satisfy it.

Therefore, our sense of identity is an illusion of the purposeless Will as it tries to give meaning to life. And , here comes the suffering and pessimistic take Schopenhauer and Rust had . After all, the Will has to face obstacles to achieve its goals, and it is this confrontation that is at the heart of strife.

And, since the Will always hungers for more no matter how much we achieve, we are always destined for misery and strife. This is the absurdity that lies at the heart of reality.

The only way the Will ceases its pursuit is through death.

So, how can we meet this absurdity?

Schopenhauer believes that the solution is to deny the Will, to refuse to pursue any goals whatsoever, even that of reproduction.

Rather than perpetuating the absurdity of life, we should deny our desires.

This is the Perfect Reality Rust was talking about when he was talking to his partner about how to deal with the absurdity of life and that we should one day gather up and walk hand in hand into the ocean, opting out of a raw deal In other world embrase the absurdity of life and accept it as it is .

According to Nietzsche,he believed in the absurdity of life and that reality was driven by a Will .However, he didn't see it as necessarily a bad thing. In his book “The Gay Science,” Nietzsche performs a simple thought experiment to determine a meaningful life.

He asks what if a demon were to appear in front of you right now and were to tell you that you were going to repeat your life as it is, that you were going to relive everything you’ve ever been through, and that you would relive it infinite times more.

And, there will nothing new in every iteration. It will be exactly the same.

Would you rejoice at the thought, or would it scare you stiff?

The idea of coming back over and over again is Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence, and to the above question, he offers an interesting response.

Only a person who has led a life worth living, a meaningful life, would be happy at the demon’s assertion. This concept is even further explored in Nietzsche’s later book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.”

Rust ,“time is a flat circle”?

it is also worth pointing out the other scene where Rust Cohle was arresting this guy who gave him the same line, “Time is a flat circle.” If you’ll remember, Rust Cohle responded to him, “Listen, Nietzsche, shut the F*** up.”

As for Cohle, he meant it in a pessimistic fashion. He was talking about the futility of it all, about how we live in a deterministic world where things are out of our control.

So, when Rust Cohle says that “time is a flat circle,” he really is saying that no one learns from their mistakes, that we really have no power to change the world around us, and that we are all puppets on strings being pushed and pulled on the stage of life.