True Detective: Night Country

I just finished the mini-series last night. Well worth the investment. In this interview with the showrunner a significant theme is addressed. The research scientists in the arctic station make a discovery that will benefit humankind, yet that beneficent goal is distorted by the power and prestige of such an endeavor. It's a stark warning of the dark side to all of us who sincerely work to make the world a better place with our models.

"Yes, it’s the obsession with a microorganism that gets them absolutely mad. This corrupts the ambition of finding something for good, that will change human life, and that will achieve beautiful things, and it makes it into an absolute ego-obsessive trip for fame and glory. To find that answer is not about science or helping humanity anymore. It’s about becoming the ones bringing this to the world."

 

As the title of the interview explains, there are multiple ways of interpreting the events, different stories. These include the European rational and the native mythological. Multiple perspectives. And yet as we discovered in this discussion of The Dawn of Everything there is the tendency in our developmental community to reduce the native perspective as lower level that must be transcended. Which is indicative of another aspect to our dark side in the night country.