“The last conversation of the series talked of darkness like Eastern philosophy and the Existentialists (through to Lacan) addressed Nothingness, generative and welcome. So Land’s right to dismiss a glib reading of Cohle’s last statement; our protagonist remained ambivalently Schopenhauerian. Although I’m unsure I would credit Nic Pizzolatto with surpassing Wagner’s depths.

Marty and Cohle play that archetypal role of Job wonderfully and the allusions and concerns evoke the Mesopotamian wisdom literature on comprehending evils. Indeed, even the banality of their antagonist feeds into this reading. Illness, pettiness and the iniquities of neighbourly gossip have always been the background noise for aporetic theodicies. That it unashamedly plays to a pop genre is, I suspect, because Pizzolatto is more democratic about his audience than most of his influences, not to mention Cohle or Land.

Besides, it’s so stylistically apt. Take the parallels between the Southern Gothic aesthetic and the Japanese Wabi Sabi: impermanence, suffering and a conception of self not too estranged from Stirner’s creative nothing—along your interpretation of Stirner. This is perhaps what appealed to me most about the series and why I continue to think Hannibal holds up under the erudite competition. Clever references are great—I like to know a TV writer has read some Cioran. But a style that carries it forward is more impressive.

From Cormac McCarthy’s oeuvre to Park Chan-wook’s Stoker, it’s good the U.S. is rediscovering its best tradition of storytelling.”

All serious religions have a serious dark streak.

To be sure. The question is, is one expected to stand or kneel before the darkness?

I just had a pleasant time discussing some things with a group of Mormon women, towards the end I briefly explained conquest’s second law (using gays as an example) which they seemed to agree with and then asked them about their opinion on the 19th amendment which they all cheerily endorsed. The Mormon church is just as fucked as the Catholic church. Just thought I’d rub that in.

I feel that this is the crux of the whole show – the entanglement and struggle between meaning (idealized, metaphysical, purposeful) and matter (empty, meaningless, purposeless); between pure meaningful concept and base meaningless matter. My question is: how can we navigate this dichotomy without resorting to dialectics? If consciousness is the realization of hell, isn’t it also the persistence of the residual lure of transcendence?

– I like that, damnation, hell and I would add – war, become relief against the irrational order of society and civilization.