WARNiNG: Spoilers and some very dark thinking ahead!!! If you haven't watched this show, please DO NOT READ this post! Watch first and then come here - it will be worth it.

The State Of The Psychosphere

We live in strange times. The world seems enmeshed in a sort of mass delusion, a collective initiation into dark times and bondage. Covid-19, The Great Reset, woke ideology...things seem like they are more toxic than they have ever been.

Our psychosphere, that sea of consciousness, thought and vibration that we swim in ever day, it reminds me more and more of Rust Cohle.

For my first post via the @metafilm account, I wanted to do a deep dive into a TV show that I very much enjoyed, and one that I feel carries with it some deeper meaning and significance.

True Detective (SEASON 1 ONLY)

The first time I watched True Detective, I turned it off after some twenty minutes, after what I thought was the most pretentious use of philosophical gobbledygook I had ever seen on a television show.

I had made up my mind about the show even before I saw it. All those ads on Youtube promoting the show, and I already disliked Game Of Thrones and thought Breaking Bad was just too depressing, so I decided, I guess, that True Detective would suck too. When I saw the 9+ rating on IMDB, that sealed it. I’m a reverse elitist that way:)

For some reason, I didn’t give up on the show and I really wanted to see Matthew M. and Woody H. do their thing. On the second viewing, a few months after, I came into it with a slightly more upbeat and calmer disposition.

After devouring those eight hours of television, I came to the conclusion that I had binge watched the single best season of television EVER!

Eight years later, I still feel that to be true.

In my mind, the show makes perfect sense, nothing needs to be added or subtracted and everything is in its right place. The show brings the truth, big time.

First season of True Detective is a nuanced, complex portrayal of some very dark subject matter. And also of some fundamental life truths.

What I have come to realize is that most people who watched the show, even some die hard fans, missed the point it was trying to make.

If you haven’t seen this beautiful piece of television, I recommend you stop reading right now and go illegally download this show. If you have, let me, without giving the summary or the synopsis, proceed straight to the point.

It’s All About The PSYCHOSPHERE

That is the key to understanding this show and the causality it depicts. This one thing sealed the deal for me.

Rust Is Taken Over By The Evil That He Fights

In 1995, when they caught the murder case that would make them stars in the state police, Rust was a lost man. He was a father who lost his child, a man who couldn’t keep his marriage and, by his own admission, a pessimist who saw human consciousness “as a tragic misstep in evolution.”

As a coping mechanism for his grief, he embraced a philosophy that saw no value in life, no purpose or meaning.

He was lost and in the dark.

The only part of him that still lived was the detective. It is in this role that Rust lived, moved forward in life and found some meaning.

When the Dora Lang murder happened, he was already familiar with the gruesome reality of ritual murders, sex crimes and abuse. He was well-read, and the murder case seemed perfectly suited for him.

As they were driving to the crime scene, he said this to Marty:

I get a bad taste in my mouth out here... aluminum... ash... like you can smell the psychosphere.

17 years later, he tells his version of events to investigators and, breaking the rules, drinks cans of beer (aluminum) and smokes cigarettes (ash). He has fully integrated into himself that which he found foul and disgusting when they started.

This is what he saw in 1995, at house of Dora Lang’s mother:

This is an image from the video of the abuse and murder of Marie Fontenot:

And here is what Rust is doing with his beer cans in 2012:

Rust hasn’t become evil, and he isn’t about to start killing people left and right, but because of his exposure to this sick psychosphere, he has become a part of it. He has become a bad man, chasing other bad men.

Marty Infects His Family With Evil He Brings From His Job

A lot of people have developed all sorts of theories about the evolution of Audrey, Marty’s oldest daughter. Some claim she was abused by her grandfather, even by her mother. How else to explain the signs of trauma and abuse?

The answer is simple: she was infected through the psychosphere, by her father.

She did not have to suffer actual physical abuse to be touched and impacted by the horror of True Detective’s subject matter.

Marty brings it home with him every night.

This is what he sees in his daughters’ bedroom:

They are unconsciously picking up on the details and emotional content of their father’s work.

He is literally infecting his family with this evil that he is pursuing.

Audrey draws sexual pictures of men with masked faces, wears a tiara reminiscent of the “crown” of antlers worn by Dora Lang, the murdered woman, and she ends up on medication for her psychological issues.

Her father, despite of his intentions and his own evaluation of his behavior and flaws, is the one that “inspires” his daughter’s troubles. And he does this, not through his absence, but with his very presence.

He transmits, through the psychosphere, the bad things he fights against every day.

They Didn’t Get To The Source Of The Problem

A lot of people were disappointed by the ending of True Detective because they either expected a twist, a supernatural explanation or the exposing of the larger network of abusers.

All they got was a redneck with a scarred face.

I found this to be a brilliant ending to the show, as well as an ending that rang true to how things actually get "resolved" in the real world. It brings Mark Twain’s quote to mind. Fiction has to make sense.

Rust Cohle: We didn't get 'em all.
Marty Hart: Yeah, and we ain't gonna get 'em all. That ain't what kind of world it is. But we got ours.

They caught the aberration, the man who was abused by his own family and was beyond their control. But the network of these people still remains in power, in the shadows.

A cover-up and then business as usual.

This is what True Detective is all about. It’s about culture, about the psychosphere. They caught one killer and a hundred more will spring up because the psychosphere of aluminum and ash is still there.

There will always be a Tuttle behind a Childress.

That’s how the psychosphere is set up.

True Detective doesn't offer any real solutions to the problem of a sick psychosphere and what we can do about it. For that, we have to look elsewhere.

If you have enjoyed this post, I think you'll enjoy the more hopeful next installment.

Thanks for reading,

@eudaimon