What does ‘Time mean is a flat circle’?

Few programs, if any, reach the level of season 1 of “true detective”. As trite as this television season has become one of the best ever made, the fact that the writer Nic Pizzolatto, director Cary Joji Fukunaga and the stars Matthew McConatey and Woody Harrelson created something really special with those eight television episodes. Leaving aside the incredible depth contained in the writing of the program, its historical and literary influences, and the most prominent actions, one of the most durable contributions of season 1 to pop culture remains the phrase “time is a flat circle.” But what really does this mean?

At this point, the phrase has been Memed to the point that it has lost most of its meaning. You are likely to see some version of the words used every time a cultural event occurs that vaguely reminds of a past event. But there was much more meaning behind this in season 1 of “true detective”, which contained a remarkable physical representation of the phrase in the generalized spiral symbol. The cryptic reason is seen for the first time tattooed in the back of the murder victim, Dora Lange, in the pilot episode of season 1. But also arose during that initial season, before returning in “True Detective: Night Country”, in which the spiral apparently was given an origin when the boss of the Allanina’s trova of Allanina de Alcient troo of Kali. More importantly, for our purposes, Rust witness of the spiral motive in numerous visions of addictions after the drug during season 1, experiencing an amazing manifestation of his now famous appointment.

With all this talk of the cults of death and the visions of eternity of feeling, it is possible that this business of “time is a flat circle” is not so optimistic, but it really depends on how it perceives the underlying ideas. Here is everything you need to know about what the phrase “Time is a flat circle” really means.

Nic Pizzolatto brought out an exhaustive list of sources by creating “true detective”, from the writings of the author of Terror Thomas Ligotti to the collection of stories of 1895 by Robert W. Chambers “The King in Yellow”. He also took from philosophy, especially when it was Matthew McConaughey detective, Rustin Cohle. During season 1, the character delivered several philosophical monologues that revealed an apparent nihilism, one that is undermined in the final moments of the program when Cohle pronounces an optimistic final line, which was then tested in “True Detective: Night Country”.

It is during one of these monologues that we obtain the line “Time is a flat circle”. At least, this is where most spectators will remember that the phrase comes. In fact, he is spoken for the first time by Reggie Ledoux (Charles Halford), the methamphetamine trafficker and the abuser of children who kill Marty Hart by Woody Harrelson during a flashback in episode 5, “The secret destiny of a lifetime.” After being caught, Reggie, who is killed in one of the most brutal bullet scenes on television, says: “I know what happens next. You will do this again. Time is a flat circle,” to which Rust responds “What is that, Nietzsche?” In fact, this is a reference to the concept of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche of eternal recurrence, which appears throughout his work, but perhaps it was more directly explained in the “joyful science/gay” of 1882 in a section entitled “Aphorism 341,” the greatest weight “:”:

“What, if one day or night, a demon steal you with your lonely loneliness and tell you: ‘This life is now live it and you have lived it, you will have to live once again and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and everything that is not small or excellent in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and slowly, The lunar, and this lunar, and this lunar to the moon?

In this passage, the concept of eternal recurrence of Nietzsche is presented as a kind of mental experiment, and its interpretation of it dictates whether it is reassuring or annoying.

If you knew that you were forced to repeat your life exactly as I had experienced it, with all the pain that came with her, “would you curse the demon who spoke like this” or claim to have “never heard anything more divine?” Does such an idea excite or annoy you? The question is designed to promote reflection on life and its meaning. In “True Detective”, we see two different points of view.

Reggie Ledoux is delighted with the perspective of eternal recurrence because it means that their bad actions will be literally repeated regardless of whether Rust and Marty will catch it or not. The oxide, meanwhile, is disturbed by the idea that within this concept of eternal recurrence, it can never save the children that Ledoux is in captivity. As the detective says later in the season, “this is a world where nothing is resolved. Someone once told me that” time is a flat circle. “Everything we have done, or we will do, we are going to do again and again. It is not exactly the most edifying version of the idea of Nietzsche. Here, there is no real advantage. The antagonist is delighted because he will carry out his horrible acts forever That same fact.

At the end of season 1 “True Detective” (which began his life as a novel and a play), Rust looks at a sky full of stars and says: “Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light is winning.” At this time, the detective tired of McConaughey seems to adopt a more positive vision of existence. Eternal recurrence not only means that pain is repeated. It means that the things you love will always be there forever, like a brilliant star in the night sky.

In “True Detective”, “Time is a flat circle” is not just a reference to a philosophical thought experiment. Rust Cohle gives us the most direct explanation of his point of view at the end of the season, during a famous scene where he plans a can of beer to make his point (although he does not really say that the phrase “time is a flat circle” during this scene). “In this universe we process the time linearly, forward,” he says, continuing:

“But outside our space-time, from what would be a fourth dimension perspective, time would not exist, and from that advantage, we could reach it, we would see our flattened spatial appearance, as a single sculpture, with the matter in a superposition. Every place that always occupied. Our sensation only in cycling like the carts like the carts on a track. Look, all outside of our dimension, that is eternity.

Here, Rust is literally speaking that time is a flat circle when seen from an eternal perspective. This is where quantum mechanics enter. Without going too far in the theory of atomic and subatomic particles, this idea of an “overlap” is important, since Rust’s thought explains. In quantum theory, an overlap refers to a state in which a given particle is theoretically in multiple states at the same time. It is possible that he has heard of the same concept in relation to quantum computing, in which a little can be a 1 and 0 at the same time. In Rust’s conception, the time seen from a 4 -dimensional perspective is effectively in one of these overlaps, because everything is presented to you in a circle of literal and non -linear time. In this non -linear view, there is no beginning or end; Time is there to be seen in an overlap. Why is that concept included in the program? Well, Nic Pizolatto talked about this during a discussion to Image forum. After explaining the quantum aspect of “Time is a flat circle,” said the creator of the program, “why he entered this program, was in the same way that almost anything is in this program: because it was correct that the character thought that.”

In addition to presenting several Easter eggs “flat circle” and, in general, working the issue of eternal recurrence in its iconography, season 1 “True Detective” is, in itself, a demonstration of the concept of flat circle. It is the moment of the four -dimensional perspective of which the oxide spoke. It is not a coincidence that season 1 jumps between three times separated in the life of the characters: 1995, 2002 and 2012. These characters experienced those times linearly, one after another. But we, as spectators, not only witness them non -linear in the direction of the show, the short show from one side to another between them, but we can return and reproduce the season when we want, although many times we want.

In that sense, Pizolatto crushed the time in a television season, and when Rust says: “Everything we have done, or we will do, we are going to do again and again,” not just paraphrasing a philosophical theory, it really is right in a goal. We will see the season 1 of “true detective” several times, and everything he and his personal classmates will do again. As Pizzolatto himself put him during his Image forum talk:

“Isn’t it also a character complaining about being a character in a television program? Live when someone looks at his story, and there is nothing to do to change it. And we stay out of dimension, and it seems flattened.”

In this way, season 1 of “true detective” is the best explanation of the concept that time is a flat circle. He is always there, waiting for our next Rewatch. There is no beginning or end, it simply exists in its entirety. As such, “do we curse the demon who spoke like this?” Well, if you have spent too much time online listening to fans of season 1 complain about “Night Country”, then you will probably do it. However, for most of us, to visit this modern classic is a blessing and, in that sense, the mere fact that “true detective” exists Answer the question posed by the demon aphorism 341 of Nietzsche with a flatly positive perspective.