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Thursday, October 03, 2013

Harsh Realm


Harsh Realm was a short-lived series by Chris Carter. In my opinion, it was terribly underrated. I don't know why the show didn't catch on. Here's a snatch of dialogue between two characters in the Leviathan episode:

HOBBES: What is wrong with you? 
PINOCCHIO: It doesn't matter, Hobbes. Can you get that through your head? She's vc, a virtual character. These people got no reason to help you, no moral compunction.  They programmed the game, they forgot one thing: you die here, you disappear. These people know no Christian virtues. They know no God.   Judgement day in Harsh Realm is when somebody points a gun at you. Ask Johnny, he'll tell you.  
PINOCCHIO: Get erased here, it's over.  These people got no notion of an afterlife, it's not even a concept. 
HOBBES: What about the real world? Don't they believe in that? 
PINOCCHIO: What good would it do them? The only world they know is Santiago's.

Harsh Realm is an excellent allegory of the atheistic worldview. No God. No hope. No soul. No cosmic justice. No afterlife. No morality. Just physical determinism and impending oblivion. 

By the same token, that's an excellent allegory for the unregenerate. Like the virtual characters in Harsh Realm, the unregenerate have no conscious awareness of a larger, greater, better reality beyond the range of their five senses. They sense nothing on the other side. For them, the simulation is all there is. That makes them ruthless, desperate, and despairing. 

To my knowledge, Carter is not a Christian, although he had a religious background of some sort. So it's striking that he'd create such an accurate, unsparing allegory of godless existence. 

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