LAST EDITED ON Jun-17-13 AT 02:23 PM (EDT)
 
This biggest problem I have with most "character driven" drama pap is that you cannot fail to notice the hand of the manipulator on the strings. Every time something Goes Horribly Wrong and the world is thrown on it's ear(again), it's always apparent that the writers are just fucking with things to keep the audience glued to the screen.

Don't get me wrong, I love horrible shit happening to people! I read GRRM's books ferchrissakes! The difference, to me at least, is the former feels contrived and manufactured, where the latter, which can get even darker and more gruesome feels more organic. There is absolutely no difference in the method of genesis, both are calculated, weighed and measured by the hand of the authors. But as the Chief just said, Entropy is a motherfucker; it crushes all dreams, smashes all hopes of a brighter tomorrow, and all but guarantees no chance for any kind of a lasting legacy. WE. ARE. DOOMED.

BUT! We yet fight. We don our lab coats and coveralls, mail our fists in nitrile or leather gloves, and we fight it. Our bodies are failing! Heal them, cure them, engineer ways to repair them. We need more energy! Continue the search for alternatives. Improve our overall energy efficiency. Our world sucks! It's tethered to a star that will eventually eat it! Search the stars, find worlds that meet physical criteria alike to ours. Discover and exploit the boundaries of our universe to get there.

This is the history(and legend) of humanity, and it is what informs our greatest works of art and fiction; to see the world terrible; fraught with hazards and maladies, and to gird our loins, grit our teeth and push on. It hasn't all been in vain, as we all know. These successes, small and infrequent, keep us stoked, and reinforce themselves by yielding more successes.

To get to the point, there's saccharine hope, and then there's the real shit, the kind of pragmatic, yet optimistic determination that, knowing we face the eventual, unavoidable heat-death of the universe, that our own lives will be short and fraught with miseries of all sorts, drives us to continue to, as the poem goes, "rage against the dying of the light". One rings a little false, while the other blares with a truth that aches at times.

That's why I come here, actually. Even when I was young and angry and ignorant, I detected that something that resonated like a sonorous bell in both my head and my heart. I hope for a better tomorrow; it is the whip that spurs me onward to meet it.

My two centi-creds, of course. Your mileage may vary.
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Now Playing:
Two Steps From Hell -- To Glory(Invincible, 2010)

...this may be the longest post I've made here. I'm gonna go now!

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