"Time Is A Flat Circle": Second of Three Ruminations Inspired by 'In the Dust of This Planet'

An Examination of the Philosophical Questions of True Detective

"The greatest weight. - What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!'

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?"

-Friederich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

 * * *

"You'll do this again. Time is a flat circle."

"What is that, Nietzsche? Shut the fuck up."

-Reggie LeDoux and Rust Cohle

* * *

1. Introduction

This is the second article of our three-part series inspired by 'In the Dust of This Planet' by Eugene Thacker. It turns out that this installment took me considerably longer to finish than I'd anticipated. Last time, we talked about the source material itself - this week, we're talking about the show partly inspired by the source material, Nic Pizzolatto's True Detective.

The untenable choice: belief or nihilism? It is a struggle that was central to the works of philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as well as the procession of existentialist writers who were soon to follow. In the Dust of This Planet examined how theology, folklore and cosmic horror - all branches of human expression outside of philosophy - explore the boundaries of our understanding of the world. Our various belief systems throughout history and across the globe are perspectives that imagine the world in human terms - from our theologies that view the world as constructed by a loving God, to theories of ethics that assert the existence of 'the good'. But from a 'cosmic perspective', we are just animals on a planet in an indifferent universe, and the nature of that indifferent universe inevitably leads to confrontation between these beliefs (of a world-for-us) and a reality that is sometimes hostile. Thacker's book explores the idea of the various demons and monsters of our stories (whether from medieval Catholic mythology like the story of Faustus or from horror movies like The Blob) as stand-ins for these negations at the edges of our understanding; the demon is our conceptualization of the moments when the world defies our sense of how 'things should be'.

Ultimately, one has a choice. In order to affirm that 'world-for-us', or to affirm that human life has meaning and purpose, or that there is such a thing as moral order, or that 'justice will be done in the end', one must assert belief in things that are immaterial or conceptual - that there is a 'way things should be', God, objective morality, and so on. Or, one can let go of these ideas entirely. Either the demons of negation have overwhelmed such a person, and they can no longer see the world as inherently good - or else, they have stepped back from a 'cosmic perspective' and can reckon the indifference of reality. In such a view, our moral perspectives are just biologically evolved 'programming'. There is a certain elegance to it - one no longer needs to imagine 'demons'. There is no moral order to challenge; the universe is indifferent and occasionally it deals with us violently, with no regard for our well-being. Occasionally men will steal from one another, attack one another, or murder one another.

To many, the second option is unthinkable. "Not everybody wants to sit alone in a empty room beating off to murder manuals," says Detective Martin Hart. "Some folks enjoy community, the common good."

"Yeah?" Rust Cohle counters. "Well, if the common good's got to make up fairy tales, then it's not good for anybody."

The thesis of this essay is that Rustin Cohle and Martin Hart of True Detective stand in contrast as 'the nihilist' and 'the believer'. While this may seem obvious to some at the outset, I would argue that the series explores the inevitable consequences of such beliefs on one's character, in some ways that might seem counter-intuitive at first. Rust Cohle describes himself "in philosophical terms" as "a pessimist." I would argue from the positions he goes on to assert that his pessimism includes a sort of 'fictionalist' or 'nominalist' attitude towards beliefs of the type we discussed above - objective meaning, purpose or morality aren't considered 'real' in such a view, at least not in the same way as physical things. The result is a character with a profoundly nihilist outlook.

Hart, on the other hand, doesn't spend much time in self-reflection or in examination of his core beliefs. Hart simply believes, and, accordingly, the boundary of Hart's comprehension of the world is challenged by 'the monsters' that arise in True Detective. Ultimately, in the course of a show that spans a lifetime of experience, each character slowly but steadily works through different stages of a Nietzschean transformation - Hart's beliefs are profoundly challenged by the horrific negations of his understanding of the world, whereas Cohle is somehow able to emerge from wallowing in nihilism.

And, mysteriously, a third option presents itself - the 'challenge itself' - an occult belief system whereby the solution to nihilism is the forging of nihilism itself into a belief system. From a relativist, or perspectivist approach, this solution cannot be said to be any more or less justified than any other assertion of belief; on the other hand, such a belief necessarily makes one an enemy of society and its values. I'm afraid we can no longer avoid citing that oft-over-quoted epigram of Nietzsche's: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . . . when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.” True Detective suggests a terrifying possibility - that, to some, becoming the monster is a solution.

Speaking of Nietzsche, central to this analysis will be the concept of 'eternal return', and how this existential crisis, in a sense, becomes the worst 'demon' of all - not only is it the Thackerian term for a conceptual negation, as discussed before, but Nietzsche also specifically uses a 'demon' to introduce the concept of eternal return. In the case of True Detective, the concept is introduced by LeDoux - a 'monster' at the end of a bad dream, as Cohle describes him - and it quickly becomes a 'great weight' on Cohle, who ruminates on it for almost twenty years. In the context of the show, it is 'the flat circle' of time, contrasted with the motif of the spiral (not-so-coincidentally discussed at length in In the Dust of This Planet).

Thus, the inevitable assertion of this article is that True Detective is a show about 'the oldest story', as Cohle puts it: the struggle of the light of belief against the encroaching darkness of nihilism. How can one reconcile the horrific with one's understanding of how the world must be? When one has looked into the abyss, how can one emerge again? How does one avoid becoming a monster, or is this the answer itself? Or supposing one still has the will to fight on, how does one fight with monsters?

2. Rust Cohle - The Nihilist

"I think human consciousness, is a tragic misstep in 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. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal." (Cohle)

Cohle invokes the 'cosmic perspective' almost immediately in the show. While Hart sees the Earth as a broader stage that happens to have ghettos (places of crime and poverty), Cohle describes the Earth as "all one ghetto, man; giant gutter in outer space." From our last article, one might recall Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot' monologue, but from a much bleaker worldview; or perhaps Dawkins' description of nature as rife with suffering, adjusted to address the suffering that man causes to his neighbor. Cohle sees the indifference of the universe, and views the acquisition of consciousness by one of nature's creatures within such a universe as 'tragic', since they will be able to comprehend the cruelty of their own existence. One recalls the 'agonized atheism' of Nietzsche here, too. He is oft-quoted for having declared God dead, but it is almost more important to remember how Nietzsche reacted to his own pronouncement, a few sentences later:

"What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

The cosmopolitan, modern-day townspeople whom the madman in Nietzsche's parable addresses do not agree with him in regard to the significance of God's death. They make fun of him, and dismiss him. To them, it is clear that God never even existed, and thus he cannot be dead, and such a statement is foolish. It is no accident that Nietzsche put the statement in the mouth of a 'madman' in his writings. As a quick aside, it is ironic that atheist writer Christopher Hitchens, in his book God is Not Great, disparages Nietzsche's famous pronouncement as 'histrionic' and ridiculous, having exactly the same reaction as those in Nietzsche's parable - rather, that God can't be dead because he never existed at all. The 'confident atheism' of its prominent advocates today has all but forgotten of the 'pained atheist' of yesterday - the likes of Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche. Today, the disciplines of politics, ethics and the natural sciences have worked vigorously to provide justifications for our codes of behavior, our political actions, and our place in the world - though few seem as aware of the real depth and nature of the metaphysical void that they are straining to fill. 

Cohle is an atheist, though it is not clear if he has always been without belief in God or if he lost belief when his daughter was killed. It is difficult to imagine him having ever believed in Christianity; perhaps his atheism, like many others, did not necessarily bring him to nihilism. But without some kind of belief such as to assure him of an ultimately positive outcome to life (in the form of an afterlife), or to assure him of cosmic justice or objective morality, belief in such things would be vulnerable. The tragic turn of events leading to Cohle's daughter's death was enough to destroy any belief in meaning or significance to human life, 'fulfillment', or any metaphysical claims about morality or justice. It is not just that Cohle doesn't believe in God and therefore sees no meaning to existence - it is that, in the absence of a God, when that meaning is challenged, there is nothing that will affirm that meaning no matter how profound the challenge. One only has values systems which are acknowledged as relative - really, could something like utilitarianism or secular humanism provide any real comfort when faced with the 'demons' of Cohle's past?

It is possible that Cohle's descent only began, but did not end, with his daughter's death. As he says, he executed a 'junkie' for trying to 'purify' his infant daughter by injecting her with hard drugs. Perhaps this was the true 'demon', or the confrontation at the boundaries of Cohle's comprehension of the world. This is a world that kills children - both in senseless accidents and by the wickedness of man himself. It is worth noting that it is only this event in the past in which Cohle seems to kill out of righteous anger, or horror - after abandoning belief, however, Cohle only ever kills out of self-defense or necessity. (The events of the final episode, aside, which we will discuss later).

Nevertheless, it's not as if Cohle is a robot. He has emotions - but he tells himself that these are just his 'programming', and therefore does not truly 'believe' in what his intuitions might tell him about what is good or just, despite his reaction to it. We might recall our discussion last time about the dangers of stepping out of one's perspective - once one sees their worldview as just one among many, neither of which is any more or less valid than the others, then it is difficult, if not impossible, to really believe it as one once did. 

"Look, as sentient meat, however illusory our identities are, we craft those identities by making value judgments: everybody judges, all the time. Now, you got a problem with that... You're livin' wrong."

As Cohle expresses in the final episode, he is keenly aware of what constitutes a belief system - value judgments, appraisals, and demands for a certain type of life. However, by intellectually understanding this, he compromises his ability to take a belief system seriously. He recognizes the value judgments that comprise any life that anyone must live, simply based on one's most basic emotions and physiological needs, for example; however, he cannot ever shape any of this into anything like a 'belief' in the way Marty believes. (While this conversation is late in the character's development, given other sentiments expressed I think it's fair to assess the view as part of the character's worldview at the outset).

While Rust offers at various points that he's a detective because he's good at it, it 'seems worthwhile', or for the opportunity to 'do some good', in the first episode he reveals that he doesn't even see a point to being alive. "I tell myself I bear witness," he says, "but the real answer is that it’s obviously my programming, and I lack the constitution for suicide." He works his cases, he buys drugs to get a good night's sleep, he's plagued by his past and acid flashbacks and occasionally gives into alcoholism; clearly Cohle's life is full of emotions and physiological sensations, but none of this represents real 'drive' towards anything. When Maggie Hart tries to convince him that it might be time for a change of lifestyle, he responds that he thinks he's 'better' than he was before. She rightly points out that his life is now easier, because he doesn't have to be afraid of loss. He has no value judgments for his life - in other words a vision that demands a certain state of affairs for life - therefore, he has nothing to fear, nor anything for which to hope.

At best, what may drive Cohle could be a sort of clinical fascination. One might be reminded of a Lovecraft protagonist or a Fox Mulder. While he seems detached when it comes to human relationships - by avoiding friendship with his co-workers and reluctant to engage in new romantic relationships - he will work meticulously on his cases, read prolifically on the subject of homicide, and even spend upwards of fourteen hours going through case files. The horror Cohle confronts almost doesn't even affect him; he is already hovering over the abyss of nihilism, and so the 'monsters' at the edges of the world-for-us cannot shake him from any belief system. He diligently sketches the corpse of Dora Lange, immediately defers to clinical language and terminology to describe his theories on her murder, and whose calm in regard to the case is in stark contrast to the rest of the police, including Hart and Major Quesada, who seem genuinely horrified and describe the incident as 'Halloween shit'. 

Cohle is the 'tax man' - a nickname that conjures the thought of someone who is strict, rigid and involved with their work. It's someone who you can't sway with emotions, and who no one particularly likes. Rust can feel sadness and even horror, but he believes it is all programming - he cannot shape his reaction into a desire for a 'world that ought to be'. He cannot aim for it with a moral outlook, since he sees such outlooks for what they are - society's mutual illusions. Cohle's position is ultimately one of honesty - of a sincere will to truth, or perhaps a shattered will to deceive himself about anything. When confronted with the reality that permits the most horrific things we can imagine, Cohle abandons the theologies that cannot permit such things, rather than hold on to a contradiction. "Rust knew exactly who he was," Maggie reflects, years later. "And there was no talking him out of it." And perhaps, in this way, he is admirable, for daring to fulfill the age-old philosophical dictum - "Know thyself."

3. Martin Hart - The Believer

"You know, Marty's single big problem was that he never really knew himself, so he never really knew what to want." (Maggie Hart)

The contrast couldn't be sharper between Maggie's assessment of the two characters, and it is perhaps in this way that they are definitively different. Detective Hart is the believer, and this is intimately tied to 'deception' about the world. He's a Christian, a position that Hart never justifies in the show and it underlies his worldview without much background. As Hart says, people where he's from tend to be 'religious in some kind of way', which is perhaps a coincidental explanation as to why Hart might specifically have adopted Christianity, but not terribly important as to why the character holds onto his beliefs. Hart seems to adopt the view that religion is necessary for mankind - although he does not approach this view in an intellectual, detached way that allows him to step outside of his own perspective, but rather with a more intuitive, or possibly instinctive approach.

"I mean, can you imagine if people didn't believe, what things they'd get up to?" (Hart)

"Exact same thing they do now. Just out in the open." (Cohle)

"Bullshit. It'd be a fucking freak show of murder and debauchery and you know it." (Hart)

This kind of argument is usually not taken very seriously by atheists today. But even leaving aside the alleged positive effects of religion as a reason for accepting the truth of religion, one would be hard-pressed to refute that, hypothetically, if there were found to be positive effects of religion, this would constitute a good reason to believe in the worth of religion. Nietzsche raises his head here, as elsewhere; I'm reminded of a passage from Beyond Good & Evil:

"It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance; it is even the worst proved assumption there is in the world. Let us at least admit this much: there would be no life at all if not on the basis of perspectivist assessments and appearances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and clumsiness of some philosophers, one wanted to abolish the "apparent world" altogether, well, supposing you could do that, then at least nothing would be left of your "truth" either!"

It is of course worth noting that Nietzsche didn't think that a return to 'faithfulness' was an answer. He did respect those who wanted to resurrect the 'old God' even in his day, not because of where they wanted to go - 'back' to the traditional value outlooks - but rather because of where they wanted to get - 'away' from 'modern ideas' of progress, positivism and what he saw as a procession towards nihilism. On the other hand, Nietzsche harshly criticized Schopenhauer's praise of asceticism as a push towards nihilism as well. He denounced Christianity in particular as poisonous, a breeding ground of resentment, and a secret path to nothingness. While Nietzsche was as harsh an opponent of Christianity as one could be, it is important to remember that he was able to find aspects of it admirable, and that his entire philosophical outlook was based on avoiding narrow-minded dichotomies (such as between Christianity is 'good', or Christianity is 'bad') and rejecting idealistic perspectives on history. Talking of whether Christianity 'should have' spread and evolved as it did is immaterial since this is what happened. And besides, the Christian project led to a stunning revaluation of values in Europe, the likes of which have scarcely been matched, so clearly it was at least powerful in some way. And while Nietzsche hated Christianity, his primary enemy was nihilism, and thus his hatred of it was arguably based on Christianity's push towards nihilism.

While Hart cannot step outside of his own perspective to articulate such a position, it is safe to say that he has chosen an appearance of the world, and he's chosen to see it as constituted by a sort of moral order. While one may not find the Christian perspective tenable, for Hart, it this sense of moral certainty that seems to stave off nihilism in the face of horrors. However, he seems genuinely threatened by the challenges to his beliefs by the 'demons of negation' - he expresses horror to the major, his wife and his mistress over the Dora Lange killing, and on the first night of the case, he watches his daughters sleep with a worried expression on his face. In a way, he is facing the same threat that Cohle faced - the confrontation with a reality where the weak and innocent are threatened. Since Cohle has has already accepted that he lives in such a reality, he cannot accept the deception demanded by Hart's worldview, and openly ridicules Christianity in episode 3, 'The Locked Room'  - both in 2012 to Pampania & Gilbough and 1995 to Hart.

Later, when Hart is confronted with the true horror that LeDoux and DeWall have unleashed upon innocent children, he is immediately overcome with rage - perhaps a sort of righteous anger - and executes LeDoux. Cohle is able to think calmly and rationally about the situation, and immediately sets to work covering up their crime. It quickly becomes clear that Hart was so possessed with anger that he acted with no plan or forethought of the larger implications of such an act. The boundary of Hart's understanding of the world was reached upon realizing that remorseless torture and abuse had occurred against those weakest and most in need of protection; a person who could morally permit such an act, or even partake in it, becomes a 'demon' or a 'monster'. Thus LeDoux is personified as this 'moral negation' by Hart's rage and therefore he becomes a physical demon that can be slain, and this is all that matters to Hart in that moment. Moral order was completely out of balance in the cosmos, and Hart rushes to execute LeDoux so that it can be restored; bearing that reality one second longer simply wasn't thinkable to him. As we see later in the story, the 'true demons' are not so easily slain.

"You know I've seen all the different types. We all fit a certain category. The bully... The charmer... The... uh... surrogate dad... the man possessed by ungovernable rage... the brain... and any of those types can be a good detective and any of those types can be an incompetent shitheel." (Hart)

"Which type were you?" (Gilbough)

"Oh, just a regular type dude... with a big ass dick." (Hart)

Some have interpreted this hypothesis of Hart's ironically - that is, that he himself represents all of these 'types', virtually in the order he gives, throughout the series. He bullies Charlie Lange, the bartender at the strip club, and his mistress' new boyfriend - with whom he can be described as 'a charmer.' He takes Cohle under his wing, seeing Cohle's deficiencies in making friends and navigating the political world of the state police department, acting as 'the surrogate dad'. Oftentimes, as when he kills LeDoux, breaks into his mistress's apartment, or attacks Rust in the parking lot he becomes possessed by the 'ungovernable rage' he describes. The only stretch of the imagination required would be Marty Hart as 'the brain', though he even comes to this role, in a way, towards the end of the story - it is Hart who manages to find the clue that leads them to solve the case. However, Hart doesn't know himself, and doesn't engage in much self-reflection - he sees himself as simply 'regular' (unable to see his own idiosyncrasies and flaws), and responds to the question with crude humor.

Many have looked on Hart's many transgressions as evidence of Hart merely being a 'hypocrite', but I would argue that these deceptions towards others (and himself) are intrinsic to the mentality of 'the believer'. Hart waxes poetic in 2012 about the virtues of being a family man, and justifies his indiscretions as being for the sake of his family. When we see the events as they unfolded however, we see a man who is distant in his home life and who escapes into an affair; ironically, Charlie Lange looks to Marty when he says, "You know how it is. You want a wife, but only half the time." He eventually explains to his wife with some desperation that he's going through a mid-life crisis, but she doesn't quite believe that he's being totally honest. She gives him the opportunity to be honest with her, but he cannot let go of his deceptions, how much they pain him. It isn't just simple hypocricy at work here. As Maggie says herself, "I wonder if you even know you're lying."

Just as Martin Hart deceives himself about the ways of the world, he deceives himself about his own actions and the kind of person he is. "You wonder ever if you're a bad man?" he asks Rust, clearly wondering about himself, which Rust immediately realizes. "No I don't wonder Marty," he answers, honest as ever. "The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door." Just as Hart doesn't wish to comprehend the world as indifferent towards and thus permissive of 'bad deeds', he does not wish to reconcile the fact that he himself commits 'bad deeds' - and is one of those 'bad men'. He comes up with rationalizations for his behavior, defines them as permissible for one reason or another, and participates fully in 'society's mutual illusions' - religion, morality, and the 'chain of command' of which he and Cohle are a part.

"Shit, man, look, I've noticed you have a tendency toward myopia, tunnel vision... blows investigations... vision skews, twists evidence. You're... You're obsessive." (Hart)

"You're obsessive too, just not about the job." (Cohle)

"Not me, brother. I keep things... even. Separate. Like the way I can have just one beer without needing twenty." (Hart)

"People incapable of guilt usually do have a good time." (Cohle)

Cohle is equally flawed and seems to acknowledge this. His own flaws are his programming, and so Marty's must be too, so while he acknowledges also that 'everyone judges', he doesn't actively judge Hart. When pressed in the above exchange, however, he is brutally honest with his opinion. In contrast, Hart is almost comically dishonest here. The audience can hardly imagine that Hart would actually believe this about himself, but ultimately, in the context of Hart's character, whether or not he believes his own assessments of himself ('deep down') is not entirely clear. It is clear that he wants to conceive of the universe and his place in it as certain way - how successful he is at deceiving himself when that conception doesn't match reality is something we, as Maggie, can all wonder about.

4. Masks, Disguises & Illusions

"You were as blind to him as your footprints in the ashes but he saw you. In every disguise, every gesture false or true, in every silent resentment, he saw you in those dark corners. He heard you. Oh, my brothers, he heard those thoughts. Now, I'm here today to talk to you about reality. I'm here to tell you about what you already know. This, all this, is not real. It is merely the limitation of our senses which are meager devices. Your angers and your griefs and your separations are a fevered hallucination, one suffered by us all we prisoners of light and matter."

-Reverend Joel Theriot 

Considering the importance of belief as constituted by 'self-deceptions' or 'mutual illusions', the motif of masks seems to be a riddle that is more easily readable now that we come to it. At the same religious revival meeting whereupon Rust Cohle is ruthless in his attack on religion as fairytales that 'aren't good for anyone', the pastor gives a sermon that is at times steeped in evangelic Christian 'mysticism' and at times almost Nietzschean in its rousing of the crowd to say to all of life "Yes, yes, yes, yes!" Some of the exultations and diction used are almost reminiscent of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Theriot is such a prophet, but he is an advocate for the religion of resentment that Nietzsche so hated. That being said, Pizzolatto seems to have included some insights about the nature of belief in his sermon; and who better to give those insights that the strongest advocate for belief that we meet in the series?

"You are a stranger to yourself and yet he knows you," he says. "The face you wear is not your own." The construction of the religious worldview as one constituted by appearance cast upon reality and not a cold, honest reading of reality itself comes to mind here. Theriot is appealing to a supernatural claim of a soul (the true self) within a body (a face not your own), whom the arbiter of truth, God, knows better than the 'face' itself. Theriot seems to lament of some of Cohle's very woes at the beginning, bordering on the philosophical with his attack on the veracity of the senses. However, with God in the picture, one need not lament of their mortal limitations when it comes to discerning the truth of reality - reality is the lie, and the religion is the truth in Theriot's construction. 

Thus the ultimate horror of reality (in the form of a self that is merely programmed, on a planet that is cosmically insignificant, not to mention the horror of eternal return yet to be encountered by Cohle) is averted by averting a belief in reality, as it is. Reality is just a mere appearance after all, and Theriot is leading his congregation to an underlying truth of their choosing.

Cohle is not very impressed with this. 

 "Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It's catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he's effective at proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain. Dulls critical thinking."

While his objections have little effect on Marty, the irony of Cohle's statement is that Theriot is later revealed to have been a struggling believer, or possibly a non-believer. While he wanted more than anything to be closer to God, in his own words, all he ever got was silence from his creator. He ran into the age-old problem of not being able to force himself to believe, no matter how badly he tried, and thus not even the epitome of the religious man is allowed to escape from the nihilistic abyss. His fate seems to be alcoholism and depression, having abandoned the ministry. It is unclear to what degree he had begun to question his faith in 1995, but it seems at least plausible that he was wearing a 'mask' then too; thus, while he may have been projecting certainty, it is unclear if he himself was even certain of his own words. Nietzsche put his words into Zarathustra's mouth because he was the first one to assert the dichotomy of good vs. evil, and thus should be the first to recognize his mistake. Now the 'prophet' Theriot, who is a secret doubter, gives the sermon calling on his believers to reject their physical bodies as mere 'masks', whilst wearing a mask of his own.

There are perhaps a hundred works of fiction or cultural concepts we could relate to the idea of 'masks', so we will limit it to a small handful, but I think it is important to point out that the idea of an outward face that one shows society and a true self beneath the surface is a concept existing in many cultures, ancient and modern. One might remember the two-faced god Janus, who was very important to the Ancient Romans. Or, in Japan, the concepts of honne and tatamae, words that do not cleanly translate. Honne refers to the perception of reality that is commonly expressed; even if it is not believed by all, it is at least accurate to some extent as a representation of the truth of society on a 'surface level'. Tatamae refers to that which goes on 'beneath the surface', which is not widely talked about or acknowledged, even if it is known by all. 

In True Detective, while a detective like Gerici might suspect something sinister, by ignoring it and following the chain of command, he is rewarded. Theriot and the other ministers in training hear rumors of abuse of children, but give them no credence. The Tuttle family and its many branches seem to have their fingers in everything in the state, and manage to keep their occult activities hidden from the public eye, with the implied complicity of many. Cohle is eventually removed as a threat after investigating them too aggressively. In a meeting with Major Salter, he obliquely makes reference to the alligators swimming all around them in the bayous - people just disappear in the swamps, the hurricanes wipe out records and allow for people to go missing without too much ado. The setting of the show is a society with a sinister, occulted world underlying it. Most aren't aware of its existence, and the few who are aware of it cannot reveal it to the world.

5. Circles & Spirals

"Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa."

"You're in Carcosa now," LeDoux tells Cohle. "With me."

The statement is unnerving, because it is spoken with an eerie sort of 'knowingness' to it. It is stated as a fact, and the degree to which we are to understand it as 'metaphor' is not entirely clear at the outset. Given LeDoux's subsequent comments about the flat circle of time, however, it becomes apparent that he believes that all points in time are 'now'. We can dismiss LeDoux as being mentally unhinged, probably under the influence of methamphetamines or other drugs, and simply rambling about the occult belief system that he ascribes to. But it can't be avoided that Cohle does eventually end up in Carcosa, and Childress makes mention of LeDoux and DeWall's deaths at Cohle's hands. It is in moments like these that the series hints vaguely at cosmic horror. Is LeDoux merely discussing concepts such as the flat circle of time and idly making reference to his occult beliefs about Carcosa? Or does he know, somehow, that Carcosa is where Rust ends up one day? Can he somehow feel himself there, with Rust, across time and space?

Cohle is already familiar with eternal return (sometimes called eternal recurrence, but we'll stick to eternal return here). He is quick to dismiss LeDoux, as we might be. It is true that he was says stinks of pseudo-philosophical rambling when he first says it, perhaps a poor attempt to get under Cohle's skin during a tense situation. But Cohle remembers what LeDoux tells him for some reason, and over time begins to take it very seriously.

“You know, someone once told me time is a flat circle. Everything we’ve ever done or will do, we’re gonna do over and over and over again. And that little boy and that little girl, they're gonna be in that room again, and again, and again. Forever."

Rust's justification for this wavers between the scientific and what sounds like the occult. On the one hand he invokes 'brane theory', which concerns a new series of hypotheses about the nature of our universe. Brane theory posits the existence of many more dimensions that the three of space and one of time that our reality inhabits  (up to eleven, I believe). From a perspective 'above' our existence as beings moving forward in linear time, one would recognize all the events occurring in the time and space in our universe as one 'block' - or as Rust describes it, a circle. This term both connotes the implication of repetition (time as cyclical, circular, looping around eternally, always hitting the exact same points, over and over again), and places us in the context of a two dimensional shape (a 'flat circle', not a sphere), which we are 'above' and of which we can thus have a transcendent sort of comprehension. One is reminded of the short story Flatland, which takes place in a world with just two dimensions, where beings that are constituted by various shapes move from one side to the other, the only type of movement possible. When a humble square is visited one day by a three dimensional cube, his worldview is shattered, though the story ends with him shrewdly inquiring to the cube about the possibility of a tesseract - a four dimensional shape - which the cube dismisses as ridiculous.

On the other hand, the way Cohle concludes his assessment by obliquely claiming that "Death created time to grow the things that it would kill." This attributes some kind of intentionality to death, and in this sense borderlines on the mystical or the occult. It is a bit odd coming from Cohle's mouth, but we later learn that he has been rigorously studying the various occult beliefs of which the cult is constituted. While the cult's mystical perspective may be rubbing off on Cohle, perhaps this merely speaks to the attractiveness of such a position in contrast with total nihilism. 

The scientific explanation given makes more sense as the basis of Cohle's outlook on the 'flat circle', which seems fitting for his character - his nihilism seems to have been based on a 'cosmic pessimism' about the world, a deterministic view of our biology, and now finally solidified by 'the horror of theoretical physics'. Is it not bad enough that human consciousness evolved in a tragic, indifferent, brutal reality? Is it not bad enough that, despite our 'fairy tales' and illusions, we are predestined by our biology for a certain chain of events that will determine our fate, no matter how horrible? Now, we must learn that death is not even the end? The scenario of 'brothers and sisters marching towards extinction' of which Cohle spoke of so 'hopefully' in the first episode is now not even something to hope for - there is no chance for extinction, or final death of any kind, for you will simply be reborn, again and again.

It is worth noting that others have attempted to 'refute' the theory of eternal return in the past, but this is not particularly important to the one who raised the issue, Nietzsche. The demon in the night informing you of the reality of eternal return is, first and foremost, a thought experiment. Whether or not it is 'the truth' is irrelevant - Nietzsche is calling on his readers to imagine that eternal return is the case, and then to consider how it would make them feel about their lives. If you can be happy living the same life, over and over again, and in fact even coming to love this fate, then your life would be great by your own making and perspective. Even if you only lived it once, this outlook would be the best possible outcome. 

However, the quandary True Detective poses is the brutal fact that the 'release of death' is no longer possible for those whose lives have been less than satisfactory. Then, when one considers more severe cases, such as the children that LeDoux and DeWall tortured, one realizes that they will endure this fate forever, and the implication becomes clear. Some souls, if eternal return is to be taken seriously, are effectively condemned to a kind of 'hell'. For what is hell, but eternal suffering? Thus, by contemplating eternal return and taking it as seriously as Rust has, he comes to the conclusion that innocents like children have been 'condemned to hell', in the atheistic reality he inhabits, and this idea torments him. "God is refuted, but the devil is not." Worse still, he is cursed to bear the torment of that knowledge for all eternity himself.

Paradoxically, it is this revelation, his descent into a deeper nihilism, that implies that suicide seems more acceptable to Cohle. "My life's been a circle of violence and degradation long as I can remember," he says. "I'm ready to tie it off." Nic Pizzolatto has said that he intended this, to some extent, to mirror Rust Cohle's existence as a fictional character. Cohle's entire life is laid out in front of us, the story correlating at different points across time and 'set in stone', cursed to be relived exactly as it was written, over and over again, never to change. From the perspective of the audience, as we look into the universe of True Detective, the children are in that room forever. The series begins with murder of Dora Lange, and goes on to cover events taking place twenty years later, but to Rust Cohle, she will be murdered and put on display for all eternity. 

Lange is marked with a spiral on her back, which is the second of the two most important symbols in the series. The spiral appears in some ways similar to a circle, but is fundamentally a different shape. Unlike the circle, in which one would return to every point ad infinitum if they were to start at any point and move along its shape, a spiral has a definite beginning and end. It may twist and coil around itself, but if one begins from the center, and moves along the shape of the spiral, eventually they will 'exit the spiral'.

Thus, while the spiral outwardly mimics the circle in some ways, it symbolizes a 'way out' of the nightmare of eternal return. The spiral is primarily seen in relation to the cult of The Yellow King, but its worth noting that it seems to mark the cult and its adherents, not its victims. This may not be immediately clear when one considers that Lange is the first seen to be marked with the spiral, however she was not simply an abducted victim or random stranger taken by the cult; she is both victim of their crime and adherent to their beliefs. Her personal diary reveals this much - she is probably being drugged, as Cohle suggests, so her beliefs may not be entirely motivated by her own free will and clear, rational thought. Nonetheless, she writes of closing her eyes and seeing 'The Yellow King' leading his children through the forest. She tells her ex husband Charlie that she intends to 'become a nun'. While her friends say that she had been going to church and we later learn of her attendance to a Christian congregation, this is not the order to which she would've become a nun (considering the congregation appears to be protestant). Childress, the tall man with scars, is seen talking to her - establishing that they knew each other and that he did not simply chase her through the woods and abduct her as he would have done to Marie Fontanot.

Childress himself and LeDoux also bore the spiral markings, as did one of their previous victims who was established as a personal friend of LeDoux. Just as nuns are the brides of Christ, Childress tells Cohle in Carcosa to go "down the bride's path". It seems that we are to understand that the Yellow King cult arranges for women, probably heavily under the influence of drugs, to accept vows as his 'brides' - nuns, in other words - and then sacrifices them. "She seems sad, Marty," Cohle says, as he begins to piece together Lange's life. While at the lowest point in her life, Childress and the cult of the Yellow King seem to have offered her 'a way out'.

The other appearances of the spiral of note would be the hallucination that Rust sees in Carcosa, or outside of the burned church. Many surmised that this spiral represented the 'belly of the whale' - the deepest part of Carcosa where the cult's sacrifices were performed, and thus the hallucination becomes a sort of ultimate visualization of cosmic horror. However, Rust was usually not as affected by a sense of 'cosmic horror' throughout the series, rather indifferently greeting it with a sort of cynical calm; personally, I think this interpretation is lacking. The spiral can also be seen as the shape in which Childress is mowing the lawn when he gives direction to Gilbough and Pampania in episode 7.

Despite the spiral marking the people (and places) of the cult, it is not immediately clear by what mechanism their transcendence is intended to occur. While the exact occult beliefs concerning this transcendence remain mysterious and unsubstantiated, their very belief system represents a sort of transfiguration - from nihilism into belief, and thus the granting of purpose, direction and a 'moral' (or immoral) order at which to aim. In a way, perhaps this is the 'philosophical alchemy' which the spiral represents - the ability to transform one's nihilism into belief and therefore escape nihilism's futility, its paralysis, its path to torment and nothingness, whilst seizing control of its realism, its cynicism, and its indifference to the moralities of the world and turning these aspects to one's advantage.

 6. Places

Places are very important in True Detective. Partially, I would argue that this is merely a good storytelling technique in the film medium - by giving a place an ominous presence, one is able to instantly create a sense of horror 'all around you' that can't be as easily defined or understood as a 'thing' and therefore is all the more horrific. However, there is some importance to the concept of 'places' in True Detective that goes beyond the cinematic project of 'setting atmosphere'.

There are small bits of symbolism concerning places scattered throughout; Rust hallucinates (or possibly 'mainlines the secret truth of the universe') and witnesses a spiral that 'marks the spot' of the desecrated church, claiming it for The Yellow King. He waxes poetic about towns that seem like fading memories. He can 'smell the psychosphere' and pick up on the scent - aluminum and ash - of the cult's horrific acts. All of these strange associations with places have naturalistic explanations and need not rely on the supernatural, but the strange 'dark presences' of the places in True Detective need not be explained supernaturally either. If time is a flat circle, then every place that we have ever inhabited shall remain inhabited by us, always and forever. Every event that will ever occur at a specific place has already occurred, and is occurring. Thus the ominous shot of LeDoux's meth lab is foreboding and fills us with dread even before we even see 'the monster' LeDoux (mimicking the Sasquatch as he walks). The place is the site of evil events before we have reached the point in the narrative whereupon those events occur. 

It is here that we must address the 'devil nets'. The preacher tells us in the first episode that his mother, who dabbled in Santeria (the same underlying belief system of the Yellow King's cult) told him that the 'devil nets' were designed to catch the devil before he got too close. I can't help but wonder if the cult is hoping to catch, or perhaps 'cultivate' the evil that they have instilled in the places they mark with the nets. The first nets discovered are small, but the more important the place to the cult, the larger the nets seem to be, culminating in Carcosa, in which there is a veritable forest of man-sized devil nets. The dark forces that the cult worships could only be the greatest there, where most of their terrible acts and sacrifices have been performed; whether the personification of evil is called the devil or the Yellow King is of no consequence, and while the Santeria practitioners were snaring the evil to cast it out, the cult wishes to harvest it.

In fact, perhaps the most eerie scene for me involved the way the series treats 'places'. It was one of the last sequences, but preceding the 'epilogue' of the series. As the camera pans across Louisiana, we see the 'ghettos' spoken of by the characters in the first episode - backwater towns at the edges of modern society and at the border of the wilderness. These are the places that Rust Cohle spoke of - where the Santeria and voodoun all blends together. An unsettling soundtrack sets the mood as we visit, one by one, all of the sites of the series' many horrors: the Childress house, the 'back house' containing the altar, the meth lab, Dora Lange's tree. You still feel a sense of unease at these places - "something evil has happened here" was the inescapable phrase that came to my mind.

Of course, the most important place in the series is Carcosa, which is a place that we do not see until the end of the series, but which is heavily referenced. When Childress announces to Cohle, "This is Carcosa," his words echo with a sort of terribleness as we realize that Cohle is in a place we've only heard whispers of, and weren't even sure was real. The place imposes on us before we even arrive there, both as a horror and challenge to the world as we'd like to understand it, and yet still cloaked in mystery at the boundary of our knowledge. And when we do arrive (as with Hart when he beholds the piles of children's clothing), we realize that the place was more terrible than we even conceived of.

 7. The King In Yellow

The shaping of one's nihilism into a belief system - how could this be done? The King in Yellow and his cult seek to do just that. In a mystical sense, the cult has re-imagined the various demons of negation and cosmic horror into entities and theological forces. The flat circle of time is literally eaten by the 'beast' they worship. Whether or not the cult is Satanic is a point of some debate, but I find it to be largely irrelevant. The police refer to the cult's symbols as Satanic, their artifacts are referred to as 'devil nets', and Charlie Lange says that LeDoux called their practices 'devil-worship'. However, it is clear that the focus of their worship is, in fact, The Yellow King. While the Yellow King is clearly not analogous to the Christian devil, if 'the devil' is simply seen as a personification of ultimate 'evil', then the Yellow King is a fine synonym for that concept. Also a matter of dispute is whether or not Childress is the Yellow King, or if the Yellow King is more like a deity that is worshipped; I agree with the latter interpretation, especially when one considers that Childress is an illegitimate child and most of the cult were implied to be rich, influential men. Childress being referred to as a 'king' by the powerful Tuttles seems unlikely. The significance of Childress' profession as groundskeeper comes into play here - as the last of an order which was once of many, he alone now tends the grounds as custodian of Carcosa.

Perhaps here we should mention the literary significance of The Yellow King. By now this has made its rounds all over the internet and I cannot offer much that is new in this regard; except that perhaps the reason why The Yellow King was chosen as the object of the cult's worship involves the proto-Lovecraftian nature of the eponymous play in Chalmer's story. Anyone who reads too deeply into the play (into the second act, that is), will go hopelessly and profoundly insane. The mechanism by which this occurs is never really explored and is not important, but I would argue that the 'cosmic horror' element is key here. Lovecraft's fictional deities and concepts simply can't be chosen to be incorporated into anything new anymore - his works and names are too recognizable to be taken seriously as something mysterious and unknown. In his case, the cosmic horror of Cthulhu has been adopted by popular culture and will not longer do. However, the play entitled 'The Yellow King' in Chalmers story works perfectly, since it touches on that which is horrific in a way that is inexplicable, undefinable, ineffable - in many of the ways that interest Thacker in 'In the Dust of This Planet'.

The audience can see lines from the story written all over the walls in the house containing Childress' father's corpse. On the outside walls, an antlered figure, key to the cult's iconography, is depicted; one might wonder if this is the king himself, leading his children through the forest. Strangely, the color yellow is hardly associated with the cult; the only yellow I noticed was the stained, sickly yellow of the cloth hanging from the 'throne' in the deepest pit of Carcosa. Yellow, is, in fact, rarely seen at all in the show as a predominant color temperature. I was looking for any yellow at all in Carcosa, so when I noticed it even slightly, it was the very slightness of it that was most effective; this presentation makes the color itself into something mystical and receding behind our perception, only visible at the deepest part of Carcosa where the Yellow King's evil is the strongest.

Evil here is a sort of revelry in the very negations that are so problematic to human existence. If reality is constituted as a cruel, brutal, indifferent, senseless existence, then the only way to assuage the terror and grief one would experience upon this revelation would be to shift one's valuations towards the desire for such a reality. If one cannot have a world that is good, then one shall have to adjust their preferences such that an evil world will do. In order to embrace this reality for all its horrors, in this view, one must then commit horrors, become the horrors and thus make horror one of their values.

Accordingly, Childress, speaks of the experience of transcending reality in mystical terms. "My ascension frees me from the loop of the disc," he says, reminding us of the 'circle'. "I'm nearing the final stage. Some mornings, I can see the infernal plane." Presumably this plane is outside of time and the infinite loop of eternal return. Through the cult's practices, Childress actually experiences a freeing ascension. By becoming the monster that tortures and murders children, he can escape the horror of a reality with monsters that do such things to children (as was done to him, when he was a child). It seems that the flat circle of time is just as much of a 'boogeyman' to the cultists themselves, or at least it was before the acceptance of the cult's practices. Childress even refers to Cohle's killing of LeDoux and DeWall as 'blessings' - perhaps believing that he freed them from 'the loop'. The horrific acts forbidden by society in which they engage are probably a way for the cultists to feel themselves transcend the moral order of society, its beliefs, practices and laws; accordingly, they perceive a mystical transcendence.

Sacrifices, in a historical and religious context, are significant also because they represent a 'putting off' of an undesired aura - such as a curse, a sin, or a transgression of some kind - onto another creature which is then offered up and killed. Thus, perhaps the sacrifices of children or the 'brides' allow the cultists to deflect their own place within the horror of existence onto their victims and experience themselves escaping that existence in return. The victim is killed, just one of many souls that time grew so that death could mow them down; the cultist does the work of death itself, 'becomes the monster', and transcends.

And then there is their contrasting relationship to the concept of masks. When Cohle first meets with DeWall, DeWall claims he can see into his soul, at the corners of his eyes. While this line is similar to LeDoux's murmurings about Carcosa shortly thereafter, in that, as the audience, we cannot be clear about how seriously we are to take the character, it is worth noting that if one's face is a 'mask', then that mask would end at one's eyes. This coupled with Childress' incitation to Cohle to 'take off his mask' may indicate the cult's opposition to masks and illusion in contradiction to how we've generally understood belief systems to be constituted up until this point. The cult is not concerned with crafting illusion to escape the plight of reality; the only illusions they craft, in fact, are almost untenable themselves.

There is something repulsive about the cult that reaches down to one's very core. Even Cohle, a man who has looked into the abyss as deeply as any, never wavers in his quest to bring them to justice. Certainly, he has doubts cast upon him by Pampania and Gilbough, and perhaps the audience is even to suspect that Cohle may be such a 'monster' himself. Perhaps it is his clinical, scientific interest in the face of horror that makes us suspicious. And yet, Cohle works tirelessly against the cult until he is fired, at which point he retires into obscurity for many years before, almost inexorably being drawn back to his investigation. He works diligently as ever, and even breaks into Rev. Tuttle's homes. It is implied that, in fact, his investigation is the only thing keeping him alive.

It would be almost foolish to explore why most people reject such a worldview; it seems obvious that, while most would appeal to morality or religion, even if you took these things away most would find the torture and murder of children disgusting. But in the case of someone like Cohle, who has abandoned all morality or religion, any concept of human significance or purpose in life, the mere emotional reaction to such a cult would be seen as simply 'programming'. If the cult could offer a way out, why not take it? But while Cohle is teased as a potential suspect, he is in fact the only one who understands the cult, is opposed to the cult, and is willing to fight them. The embrace of horror that the Yellow King offers, and the price of his transcendence is not attractive to Cohle. From what we see of Cohle, it's never even seriously considered.

8. Revaluations

A revaluation is the 'goal' of any Nietzschean transformation; on the other hand it is just another step towards an ever-distant horizon on an ever-continuing journey. A sort of 'meta-ethics' takes place whereby one's values are dissected, examined and assessed. One's values are the very perspective estimates which appraise that which is to be seen as desirable or undesirable; to step outside of one's own values and assess the 'values of values' is perhaps the quickest summation of a revaluation. To fully complete this process, one must forge ahead, either by piecing together a new values system from those already in existence, or by creating values anew. Probably some combination of both. And, most importantly, one must actually embrace these values - earnestly come to believe them, follow them, and work to promote them. This is the problematic stage we've discussed earlier, since the very process described undercuts one's ability to take these values seriously.

At the point of the show's final confrontation, the two detectives have been pulled back into the depths of cosmic horror, after both have attempted to escape. Hart witnessed the aftermath of baby who was microwaved (again: 'this is a world that kills children') and decided that he never wanted to see anything of that nature again. That which Hart valued more than anything, his family, has been taken from him as the result of his repeated mistakes; falling victim to the 'detective's curse', he has failed to recognize the course to which his actions would push him. He now works in the private sector and nearly every aspect of his life is a diminished shadow of what it once was. He has told Pampania and Gilbough that family is the most important thing, that 'beyond a certain age' a man without a family is a 'bad thing', and that a former cop must stay busy after retirement to avoid an early grave. Yet, he himself is without a family, works cases which can't possibly be of the same importance or significance as he once did as a police officer, and has fallen into listlessness and avoidance of real human relationships in favor of TV dinners and dating websites. When confronted with the truth that Cohle shows him, in the form of the dreaded tape, Hart cannot avoid not helping Cohle.

One might compare the tape to the fictitious play 'The Yellow King' in that it instantly fills anyone viewing it with a sort of horror that cannot be avoided (even if they do not go totally insane); paradoxically, Hart no longer wanted to see the kind of unthinkable tragedy beyond the boundaries of civil society, but the revelation of the tape is so horrific that it can't be avoided. Even if his life has changed dramatically, in a sense, the price exacted on Hart by his beliefs has been a constant. His actions have always set him on the course towards his position in life circa 2012 - he has, for the duration of the series until that point, espoused a view of reality that is in stark contrast to the truth of reality that Hart himself must recognize. Now, no longer able to avoid the terribleness of reality, his only answer is to take up the fight and journey deeper.

Cohle, meanwhile, has wallowed in nihilism, for all that we know. The truth has always nagged at him, but he has had all the tools to continue the fight taken from him. Eventually, unable to bear it, he must resort to criminality. Whereas Hart did not fully believe or understand the nature of what the two detectives had been dealing with during their investigations into the cult, he still knew of the 'world-without-us' at the boundaries of our knowledge and moral understanding of the universe. Hart's primary transition during episode 7 is the acquisition of Cohle's comprehension of the true depths of the evil they had faced, and its continued existence, hidden from the eye of society. Cohle intuitively possessed this knowledge; the proof is only his confirmation and mandate to continue, against all odds and legal ramifications. Despite all his 'immoralizing', something deep within him drives him to struggle against the nihilistic abyss and obtain that mandate in the form of the tape. Not only was the 'transcendence' offered by the cult never anything Cohle could consider, he never lost his opposition to them, despite his inability to find anything positive. Cohle knows that which he can say 'No' to: the cult of the Yellow King, the foolish adherence to the 'chain of command', the religious superstitions of his peers. However, both before and during the events of the series, he has had everything he once said 'Yes' to stripped away. His only mission now is to destroy the cult, after which he has 'something else to tie off', implying that the only thing stopping him from ending his life at this point is this mission.

So the two descend into the depths of the Carcosa once they have ascertained the location of Errol Childress, the last adherent of the cult. Cohle's synesthesia somehow crops up again; he can smell the same scents that he associated with the other places marked by the Yellow King's evil. Hart is visibly shaken to the core by the revelation of so much wanton cruelty and death at the site of Carcosa. His emotional reaction, in the form of rage directed at Childress' sister, is a familiar reaction for the character. All over the property are repugnant affronts to all of society's beliefs and practices, from the filthy Childress house in which his inbred descendents live and continue to engage in incest, to the decaying corpse of Childress' father, left out on display.

Interestingly, as Cohle approaches what appears to be an altar or 'throne room' for the Yellow King, Childress calls him 'little priest'. Perhaps he is calling attention to Cohle's crusade against him which he is now personally leading, or referencing the fact that Cohle 'blessed' his 'acolytes' DeWall and Reggie LeDoux by killing them. Or, perhaps, owing to the timeless nature of 'places' in True Detective, he is prophesying Cohle's eventual transformation. Much has been made of the hallucination of the spiral which Cohle sees upon entering the throne room. Some have argued that the spiral, as a symbol used by the cult, is a negative omen, a symbol marking the place as the deepest well of the Yellow King's power. I would agree with the detractors of this theory, who argue that the spiral is, in fact, a positive omen and a revelation to Cohle that there is a transcendence possible that is not through the evil of the cult. The spiral is made of light, set against a backdrop of blackness. If we consider the spiral as a symbol as escape from the flat circle of time, there is no reason to assume that it is necessarily associated with the cult as their symbol and theirs alone. It is a hopeful revelation, but this revelation alone is not enough for Cohle's revaluation.

First, after navigating the labyrinthine corridors of Carcosa, the 'minotaur' himself appears and attacks (the reference to the minotaur being in keeping with the theme of evil men as being associated with various monsters, such as LeDoux aping the sasquatch in his first appearance). "Take off your mask," Childress says; if we think of Theriot's sermon, Childress is asking Cohle to leave his mortal coil. If masks and illusions (the appearance of reality) is all that constitutes 'life' and what gives our lives meaning, then removing one's mask may be an analogy for abandoning the last vestiges of drive that Cohle possessed and go into nothingness. However, perhaps because of the profundity of his vision, Cohle summons the energy to battle Childress. As their heroes, Pampania and Gilbough arrive, a white star rises above Carcosa (in the form of the flare), inverting the oft-quoted verse. In the weeks that follow, the horrific truth underneath Carcosa is uncovered. The darkness occulted underneath is literally revealed and brought to the surface. Of course, the evil merely recedes further beyond the horizon of our knowledge, and the rest of those part of the Yellow King's cult remain hidden.

But most interestingly, in the aftermath of the battle, both characters begin to actually move forward in ways that they had failed to for most of their lives. Hart struggles to continue his self-deception when confronted with his family, but ultimately, he begins to break down. Hart has been shaken before, but he has always retreated to the comforts of his family, his moral certainty and the knowledge that his job involved ending injustice. Now, most of this has been obliterated and he may be freed of his old values and all their contradictions and deceptions; the way is now paved for him to forge ahead, though it is uncertain how he will proceed. It seems doubtful that he would descend as deeply into nihilism as Cohle; on the other hand, he echoes the pessimism one would have seen of Cohle at the outset of the series when he observes that "It looks like the dark's got a lot more territory."

Cohle, meanwhile, stares off into nothingness, almost as if he 'sees beyond'. Perhaps the revelation of the white spiral gave him the strength to fight on while in the depths of the Carcosan abyss; however, once he finds himself slipping into the darkness of his own end, he welcomes it. Just as his daughter went into a coma and then into a sort of 'deeper darkness' beneath it, so too Cohle feels himself heading for that same blackness, which he understands to be death. However, once there, he feels the love of his daughter and father, and they only ever increase as he slides deeper and deeper. While this may seem to be a surface-level near-death experience, perhaps there is something more profound here. Just as all the atrocities of the world will repeat on and on forever, and are eternally continuing in all their terribleness, so too would Cohle's love for his daughter and her love for him continue forever. Perhaps this is the understanding that Cohle gained - even though he only had two years with his daughter, if everything that has ever happened is ever-occurring within the flat circle, then he will be with her forever. Thus, the transcendence he gains is not of the variety of actually 'escaping' from the flat circle of time (which may not be possible), but of looking the demon of eternal return in the face and saying "Yes!" to all that he just revealed. The very purpose of the eternal return thought experiment is to look on everything 'bad' that has ever happened as a necessary truth, and rather than dwelling upon it, pushing forward and living the best possible life (as it is the only life one will ever know for all eternity).

Thus, the little specks of light in the sea of dark represent a victory now to Cohle. Whereas once the horrors at the bounds of our human understanding of reality were unthinkable because of their permanence, now all the triumphs that affirm human life become cause for celebration due to their permanence. Every act of evil and good, no matter how big or small, is eternal; as they are made equal in their imposition, the choice as to where to direct our focus is entirely up to us. The fact that there is any light at all to focus on is a miracle, in view of everything that has happened to both the characters. The final image of the two wounded warriors emerging from their battle - Hart with the evil that challenged his beliefs, and Cohle with nihilism - is solidified by the two leaning on each other as they walk. While Hart may now question all he considered true and good, and has lost most of what he cared most for in the world, perhaps friendship will see him through to a better place. While Cohle may not have anything concrete to believe in, perhaps love is enough.

* * *

There are probably dozens of other things to talk about when it comes to this series - mainly the numerous references to literature (both within Chalmers' story and without) or religion and scripture. There are also so many small examples of foreshadowing, and little images or lines of dialogue that reinforce many of these ideas in regard to these characters. This exegesis was not intended to be comprehensive, just as comprehensive as was necessary in order to argue for the theory of Cohle and Hart as exemplifying a kind of Nietzschean 'revaluation of all values', as well as the exploration of belief vs. nihilism. Many others have put forward other interpretations and noticed more subtle hints than I.
 

Our third and final rumination is primarily inspired by the first 'Disputatio' in 'In the Dust of This Planet', which concerns black metal and its underlying philosophies. Next time we will discuss one that Thacker missed: Anti-Cosmic Satanism, which bears a striking resemblance to the beliefs of the cult of the Yellow King. That will be a particularly dark chapter to end on, given the hopefulness of True Detective; however, Thacker's book itself is fairly dark, and this is a series about horror after all. Thoughts? Feelings? Opinions? Think I'm completely and utterly wrong? Let us know in the comments!