Tag: coping mechanisms

On Coping Mechanisms Before the Unknown.

I like shows like The Leftovers and Outer Range because they explore the different coping mechanisms humans adopt when faced with the unknown.

Anomalies in life represent cracks in our worldview, and this may only suggest our worldview is incomplete. On the other hand, it may suggest that, while our worldview may serve as a useful map or model, it has its limitations — or it may even suggest our fundamental assumptions are entirely incorrect.

When such weird shit happens, some people are quick to bury it. They don’t want to know the truth behind it — hell, it terrifies them just thinking about it. So they ignore that UFO sighting, that out-of-body experience, that telepathic experience, that past life memory, that apparition they saw, that precognitive dream.

Maybe they hyperfocus on mundane matters in their life, distract themselves with sex or drugs. They might take refuge in religious interpretations or attempt to dismiss it all by echoing the ridicule such subjects often recieve from popular scientists. In any case, they all appear to value comfort more than they value understanding, and for them comfort requires maintaining the status quo.

Then there are those that love the mystery, but not because they want to solve it, not because they have a burning desire to put the puzzle pieces together, but because they feel they need to maintain that mystery, that magic in life.

Fuck all that bullshit.

Others, they keep looking. They research, investigate, contemplate, and experiment when opportunities arise, determined to achieve greater understanding. They play with models, oscillating between belief and doubt, trying to distinguish between facts and bullshit, changing their views in accordance with subsequent data. They value understanding over comfort.

I truly wish this last reaction was more common.

Digesting The Leftovers.

A friend of mine once told me that he didn’t like the TV series The Leftovers, particularly its ending. While I don’t share that opinion, I think I understand its underpinnings.

If you into it gripped by the mystery and continue watching it for the sole purpose of getting answers, you will be bitterly disappointed. The show was never about getting answers, though, and it isn’t as if they were unclear on that point, either — after all, for the final two seasons, the opening sequence featured a song that served as a reminder at the opening for every episode: “let the mystery be.”

I think placing emphasis on this aspect of the show is the result of the efforts made by Damon Lindelof, who formerly worked on the television series, Lost — a good show that didn’t provide enough answers and many felt had an unsatisfying ending. The show certainly made promises left unfulfilled and it seems apparent that Lindelof decided he didn’t want a repeat of that experience, so he made no such promises, but quite to the contrary.

If you proceed to watch the show with the understanding that it is an exploration of how humans deal with anomalous and sometimes tragic experiences, however, you’ll far more likely come to appreciate it.

The central mystery was The Sudden Departure, when 140 million people mysteriously vanished in a cataclysmic moment all over the world. As this anomalous experience was global in scale, it effected all who remained, giving the show the opportunity to explore a plethora of coping mechanisms and how those that adopt them come to interact with one another.

The coping mechanisms include striving to come to some sort of understanding regarding what happened through science, or striving to find some meaning in it through the context of preexisting religion, or through development of cults inspired by the event. Other coping mechanisms include drugs, denial, psychosis, and relationships.

I identified most strongly with Kevin, who continued to experience a wide range of anomalies seemingly triggered by the Departure. He experienced vivid dreams, some of which seemed to have telepathic or precognative aspects, false awakenings, sleepwalking and an alternate personality, encounters with the dead in the form of spirit obsession (“she’s not in you,” said the guy who also played Mr. X on The X Files, explaining to Kevin the distinction between spirit possession and spirit obsession, “she’s on you”), visits through transient death into a kind of shamanic underworld or alternate reality, and apparent resurrection after being killed multiple times. Alongside these experiences he also had experienced that seemed genuinely psychotic, as when he “saw” Evie but it ended up being a total stranger.

There were also synchronicities throughout the show that the show never addressed through awareness of any of the characters, mostly dealing with Kevin and his adopted son, who ran off to join a cult (the mailbox, their mutually hurt hands, and so on).

Life is full of strange experiences, though some of us have stranger experiences than most, and even have them with disturbing frequency. The Leftovers does a good job of exploring how we attempt to deal with them and integrate them into our lives — even if clear answers regarding those experiences are never found.

Truth, whatever it is, is complicated, and the show best articulated that through Kevin’s experiences, in my opinion.

Having said that, I still hope to find some answers regarding the persistent anomalies in my own life.