Cadmium-II

JUSTICE: 

The Hologram known as Rimmer — 

Guilty, of Second-Degree Murder.

One thousand, one hundred and sixty-seven counts.

RIMMER: 

No...There's some mistake, surely...

JUSTICE: 

Each count carries a statuatory penalty of eight years penal servitude.  

In the light of your hologrammatic status, these sentences are to be seved consecutively, making a total sentence of nine thousand, three hundred and twenty-eight years.

RIMMER: 

I've never so much as returned a library book late!

Second-degree murder?  

A thousand people?  

I would have remembered.

JUSTICE: 

Your wilful negligence in failing to reseal a drive plate resulted in the deaths of the entire crew of the Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel the Red Dwarf.

RIMMER: (Pause.) 

Oh, that.

20.17


A red warning light failed to go on in the Drive Room,  beginning a chain of events which would lead, in a further twenty-three minutes, to the total annihilation of the entire crew of Red Dwarf.
 

20.18
Rimmer was released from the medical bay, and told to take twenty-four hours' sick leave. He was halfway along Corridor 5: delta 333, on his way back to his sleeping quarters, when he changed his mind and decided to spend the evening in a stasis booth.
 

The medical orderly had informed him of the Lister situation, and that just about capped a perfect day in the life of Arnold J. Rimmer. On top of everything, Lister was about to gain three years on him. By the time they got back to Earth, Lister would be exactly the same age, while he would he three years older. Even with his illicit stasis-boothing, Rimmer could only hope to snatch three months; four at best. So Lister would gain two-and-three-quarter whole years, and he was already younger than Rimmer to start with. It seemed totally unfair.
 

To cheer himself up, he decided to spend the evening in a state of non-being, and vowed to begin work in the morning on an appeal against Lister's sentence, so he could get him out of the stasis booth and make him start ageing again.
 

20.23
Navigation officer Henri DuBois knocked his black cona coffee with four sugars over his computer console keyboard. 

As he mopped up the coffee, he noticed three red warning blips on his monitor screen, which he wrongly assumed were the result of his spillage. 

20.24


Rimmer got out of the lift on the main stasis floor and made a decision which, in retrospect, he would regret forever.
He decided to comb his hair.



20.31

The Cadmium-II coolant system, located deep in the bowels of the engine corridors, stopped functioning.

20.36
Rimmer stood in the main wash-room on the stasis deck and combed his hair. He combed his hair in the usual way, then decided to see what it would look like if he parted it on the opposite side. It didn't look very good, so he combed it back again. He washed his hands and dried them on a paper towel. 

If he had left at this point and gone directly to a stasis booth, he wouldn't have died. But, instead, he was seized by one of his frequent superstition attacks.
 

He rolled the paper towel into a ball and decided if he could throw it directly into the disposal unit, he would eventually become an officer. He took careful aim, decided on an overarm shot, and tossed his paper ball.
 

It missed by eight feet.
 

He retrieved the paper and decided if he got it in the disposal unit three times on the run it would make up for the miss. 

The miss would then be struck from the superstition record, and not only would he become an officer, but within three weeks he would get to have sex with a beautiful woman.
 

Standing directly above the disposal unit, he dropped and retrieved the paper ball three times. Combing his hair one last time, he left the wash-room, idly wondering just who the beautiful girl might be, and headed for a stasis booth
 

20.40
The Cadmium-II core reached critical mass and unleashed the deadly power of a neutron bomb. 

The ship remained structurally undamaged, but in 0.08 seconds everyone on the Engineering Level was dead.
 

20.40 and 2.7 seconds.
Rimmer placed his hand on the wheel lock of stasis booth 1344. 

He heard what sounded like a nuclear wind roaring down the corridor towards him. 

It was, in fact, a nuclear wind roaring down the corridor towards him.

What now? he thought, rather irritably, and was suddenly hit full in the face by a nuclear explosion.
 

0.57 seconds before he expired, Rimmer released he was going to die. 

His life didn't flash before him. 

He didn't think of his parents, or his brothers or his home. 

He didn't think of the failed exams or the wasted time in the stasis booths. 

He didn't even think about his one, brief love affair with Yvonne McGruder, the ship's female boxing champion.
 

What he did, in fact, think of was a bowl of soup. 

A bowl of gazpacho soup.
 

Then he died.


Then everyone died.
 

TWENTY
Deep in the belly of Red Dwarf, safely sealed in the cargo hold, Frankenstein nibbled happily from a box of fish paste, while four tiny sightless kittens suckled noisily beneath her.
 

Part Two
 

Alone in a Godless universe, 

and out of Shake'n'Vac  

ONE  

The hatch to the stasis booth zuzz-zungged open, and a green 'Exit now' sign flashed on and off above Lister's head.
 

Holly's digitalised faced appeared on the eight-foot-square wall monitor.

'It is now safe for you to emerge from stasis.'


'I only just got in.'




Please proceed to the Drive Room for debriefing.' 

Holly's face melted into the smooth greyness of the blank screen.

‘But I only just got in,' insisted Lister. 

He walked down the empty corridor towards the Xpress lift. 

What was that smell? A musty smell. Like an old attic. He knew that smell. It was just like the smell of his grand- mother's cellar. He'd never noticed it before.
 

And what was that noise? A kind of hissing buzz. The air-conditioning? Why could he hear the air-conditioning? He'd never heard it before. He suddenly realized it wasn't what he was hearing that was odd, it was what he wasn't hearing. 

Apart from the white noise of the air-conditioning, there was no other sound. Just the lonely squeals of his rubber soles on the corridor floor. And there was dust everywhere. Curious mounds of white dust lying in random patterns.
 

'Where is everybody?'


Holly projected his face onto the floor in front of Lister. 

'They're dead, Dave,' he said, solemnly.

‘Who is?' asked Lister, absently.

 

Softly: 'Everybody, Dave.'

 

'What?' Lister smiled.

 

'Everybody's dead, Dave.'

 

'What? Everybody?'

 

'Yes. Everybody's dead, Dave.
'

'What? Petersen?'

 

'Yes. They're all dead. Everybody is dead, Dave.' 

'Burroughs?'
 

Holly sighed. 'Everybody is dead, Dave ' 

'Selby?'

 

'Yes.'

 

'Not Chen?'
 

'Gordon Bennet!' Holly snapped. 'Yes, Chen! Everybody. Everybody's dead, Dave.'
 

'Even the Captain?'


'YES! EVERYBODY.'
 

Lister squeaked along the corridor. A tic in his left cheek pulled his face into staccato smiles. He wanted to laugh. 

Everybody was dead. Why did he want to laugh? No, they couldn't all be dead. Not everybody. Not literally everybody.
 

'What about Rimmer?' 

 
'HE'S DEAD, DAVE. EVERYBODY IS DEAD. EVERYBODY IS DEAD, DAVE. DAVE, EVERYBODY IS DEAD.' Holly tried all four words in every possible permutation, with every possible inflection, finishing with: 'DEAD, DAVE, EVERYBODY IS, EVERYBODY IS, DAVE, DEAD.'
 

Lister looked blankly in no particular direction, while his face struggled to find an appropriate expression.

'Wait,' he said, after a while. 'Are you telling me everybody's dead?'
 

Holly rolled his eyes, and nodded.
 

The enormous Drive Room echoed with silence. The banks of computers on autopilot whirred about their business. 

'Holly,' Lister's small voice resonated in the giant chamber, 'what are these piles of dust?'
 

The dust lay on the floors, on chairs, everywhere, all arranged in small, neat dunes. Lister dipped his finger in one and tasted it.
 

'That,' said Holly from his huge screen, 'is Console Executive Imran Sanchez.' 

Lister's tongue hung guiltily from his mouth, and he wiped the white particles which had once formed part of Console Executive Imran Sanchez onto his jacket cuff. 

'So, what happened?'
 

Holly told him about the Cadmium-II radiation leak; how the crew had been wiped out within seconds; how he'd headed the ship pell-mell out of the solar system, to avoid spreading nuclear contamination; and how he'd had to keep
Lister in stasis until the radiation had reached a safe background level.
 

'So . . . How long did you keep me in stasis?'



'Three million years,' said Holly, as casually as he could. 

Lister acted as if he hadn't heard. 

Three million years? It had no meaning. 

If it had been thirty years, he would have thought 'What a long time.' 

But three million years. 

Three million years was just . . . stupid.

THE NIGHTMARE

“Are you sure,' asked his companion, 'that this is the nineteen-eighties?'

The Doctor looked around. 'Which nineteen-eighties did you have in mind?'

Conversations that never happened.

“I began to dream absolutely unbearable dreams. 

My dream life, up to this point, had been relatively uneventful, as far as I can remember; furthermore, I have never had a particularly good visual imagination. Nonetheless, my dreams became so horrible and so emotionally gripping that I was often afraid to go to sleep. I dreamt dreams vivid as reality. I could not escape from them or ignore them. They centered, in general, around a single theme: that of nuclear war, and total devastation – around the worst evils that I, or something in me, could imagine:

My parents lived in a standard ranch style house, in a middle-class neighborhood, in a small town in northern Alberta. 

I was sitting in the darkened basement of this house, in the family room, watching TV, with my cousin Diane, who was in truth – in waking life – the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. A newscaster suddenly interrupted the program. The television picture and sound distorted, and static filled the screen. My cousin stood up and went behind the TV to check the electrical cord. She touched it, and started convulsing and frothing at the mouth, frozen upright by intense current.

A brilliant flash of light from a small window flooded the basement. I rushed upstairs. There was nothing left of the ground floor of the house. It had been completely and cleanly sheared away, leaving only the floor, which now served the basement as a roof. Red and orange flames filled the sky, from horizon to horizon. Nothing was left as far as I could see, except skeletal black ruins sticking up here and there: no houses, no trees, no signs of other human beings or of any life whatsoever. The entire town and everything that surrounded it on the flat prairie had been completely obliterated.

It started to rain mud, heavily. The mud blotted out everything, and left the earth brown, wet, flat and dull, and the sky leaden, even grey. A few distraught and shell-shocked people started to gather together. They were carrying unlabelled and dented cans of food, which contained nothing but mush and vegetables. They stood in the mud looking exhausted and disheveled. Some dogs emerged, out from under the basement stairs, where they had inexplicably taken residence. They were standing upright, on their hind legs. They were thin, like greyhounds, and had pointed noses. They looked like creatures of ritual – like Anubis, from the Egyptian tombs. They were carrying plates in front of them, which contained pieces of seared meat. They wanted to trade the meat for the cans. I took a plate. In the center of it was a circular slab of flesh four inches in diameter and one inch thick, foully cooked, oily, with a marrow bone in the center of it. Where did it come from?

I had a terrible thought. I rushed downstairs to my cousin. The dogs had butchered her, and were offering the meat to the survivors of the disaster. I woke up with my heart pounding.

I dreamed apocalyptic dreams of this intensity two or three times a week for a year or more, while I attended university classes and worked – as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on in my mind. 

Something I had no familiarity with was happening, however. I was being affected, simultaneously, by events on two “planes.” On the first plane were the normal, predictable, everyday occurrences that I shared with everybody else. On the second plane, however (unique to me, or so I thought) existed dreadful images and unbearably intense emotional states. This idiosyncratic, subjective world – which everyone normally treated as illusory – seemed to me at that time to lie somehow behind the world everyone knew and regarded as real. But what did real mean? The closer I looked, the less comprehensible things became. Where was The Real? What was at the bottom of it all? I did not feel I could live without knowing.

My interest in the cold war transformed itself into a true obsession. I thought about the suicidal and murderous preparation of that war every minute of every day, from the moment I woke up until the second I went to bed. How could such a state of affairs come about? Who was responsible?

I dreamed that I was running through a mall parking lot, trying to escape from something. I was running through the parked cars, opening one door, crawling across the front seat, opening the other, moving to the next. The doors on one car suddenly slammed shut. I was in the passenger seat. The car started to move by itself. A voice said harshly, “there is no way out of here.” I was on a journey, going somewhere I did not want to go. 

I was not The Driver.

I became very depressed and anxious. I had vaguely suicidal thoughts, but mostly wished that everything would just go away. I wanted to lay down on my couch, and sink into it, literally, until only my nose was showing – like the snorkel of a diver above the surface of the water. I found my awareness of things unbearable.

I came home late one night from a college drinking party, self-disgusted and angry. I took a canvas board and some paints. I sketched a harsh, crude picture of a crucified Christ – glaring and demonic – with a cobra wrapped around his naked waist, like a belt. 

The picture disturbed me – struck me, despite my agnosticism, as sacrilegious. I did not know what it meant, however, or why I had painted it. Where in the world had it come from? I hadn’t paid any attention to religious ideas for years. I hid the painting under some old clothes in my closet and sat cross-legged on the floor. I put my head down. It became obvious to me at that moment that I had not developed any real understanding of myself or of others. 

Everything I had once believed about the nature of society and myself had proved false, the world had apparently gone insane, and something strange and frightening was happening in my head. James Joyce said, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” For me, history literally was a nightmare. I wanted above all else at that moment to wake up, and make my terrible dreams go away.

I have been trying ever since then to make sense of the human capacity, my capacity, for evil – particularly for those evils associated with belief. I started by trying to make sense of my dreams. I couldn’t ignore them, after all. Perhaps they were trying to tell me something? I had nothing to lose by admitting the possibility. I read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, and found it useful. Freud at least took the topic seriously – but I could not regard my nightmares as wish-fulfillments. Furthermore, they seemed more religious than sexual in nature. I knew, vaguely, that Jung had developed specialized knowledge of myth and religion, so I started through his writings. His thinking was granted little credence by the academics I knew – but they weren’t particularly concerned with dreams. I couldn’t help being concerned by mine.

They were so intense I thought they might derange me. (What was the alternative? To believe that the terrors and pains they caused me were not real? Nothing is more real than terror and pain.)

 

Much of the time I could not understand what Jung was getting at. He was making a point I could not grasp; speaking a language I did not comprehend. Now and then, however, his statements struck home. He offered this observation, for example:

“It must be admitted that the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious can often assume grotesque and horrible forms in dreams and fantasies, so that even the most hard-boiled rationalist is not immune from shattering nightmares and haunting fears.”

The second part of that statement certainly seemed applicable to me, although the first (‘the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious”) remained mysterious and obscure. Still, this was promising. Jung at least recognized that the things that were happening to me could happen. Furthermore, he offered some hints as to their cause. So I kept reading. I soon came across the following hypothesis. Here was a potential solution to the problems I was facing – or at least the description of a place to look for such a solution:

“The psychological elucidation of... [dream and fantasy] images, which cannot be passed over in silence or blindly ignored, leads logically into the depths of religious phenomenology. The history of religion in its widest sense (including therefore mythology, folklore, and primitive psychology) is a treasure-house of archetypal forms from which the doctor can draw helpful parallels and enlightening comparisons for the purpose of calming and clarifying a consciousness that is all at sea. It is absolutely necessary to supply these fantastic images that rise up so strange and threatening before the mind’s eye with some kind of context so as to make them more intelligible. Experience has shown that the best way to do this is by means of comparative mythological material.”

It has in fact been the study of “comparative mythological material” that made my horrible dreams disappear. The “cure” wrought by this study, however, was purchased at the price of complete and often painful transformation: what I believe about the world, now – and how I act, in consequence – is so much at variance with what I believed when I was younger that I might as well be a completely different person.

I discovered that beliefs make the world, in a very real way – that beliefs are the world, in a more than metaphysical sense. This “discovery” has not turned me into a moral relativist, however: quite the contrary. I have become convinced that the world-that-is-belief is orderly: that there are universal moral absolutes (although these are structured such that a diverse range of human opinion remains both possible and beneficial). I believe that individuals and societies who flout these absolutes – in ignorance or in willful opposition – are doomed to misery and eventual dissolution.

I learned that the meanings of the most profound substrata of belief systems can be rendered explicitly comprehensible, even to the skeptical rational thinker – and that, so rendered, can be experienced as fascinating, profound and necessary. I learned why people wage war – why the desire to maintain, protect and expand the domain of belief motivates even the most incomprehensible acts of group-fostered oppression and cruelty – and what might be done to ameliorate this tendency, despite its universality. I learned, finally, that the terrible aspect of life might actually be a necessary precondition for the existence of life – and that it is possible to regard that precondition, in consequence, as comprehensible and acceptable. I hope that I can bring those who read this book to the same conclusions, without demanding any unreasonable “suspension of critical judgment” – excepting that necessary to initially encounter and consider the arguments I present. These can be summarized as follows:

The world can be validly construed as a forum for action, as well as a place of things. We describe the world as a place of things, using the formal methods of science. The techniques of narrative, however – myth, literature, and drama – portray the world as a forum for action. The two forms of representation have been unnecessarily set at odds, because we have not yet formed a clear picture of their respective domains. The domain of the former is the “objective world” – what is, from the perspective of intersubjective perception. The domain of the latter is “the world of value” – what is and what should be, from the perspective of emotion and action.

The world as forum for action is “composed,” essentially, of three constituent elements, which tend to manifest themselves in typical patterns of metaphoric representation. First is unexplored territory – the Great Mother, nature, creative and destructive, source and final resting place of all determinate things. Second is explored territory – the Great Father, culture, protective and tyrannical, cumulative ancestral wisdom. Third is the process that mediates between unexplored and explored territory – the Divine Son, the archetypal individual, creative exploratory “Word” and vengeful adversary. We are adapted to this “world of divine characters,” much as the “objective world.” The fact of this adaptation implies that the environment is in “reality” a forum for action, as well as a place of things.

Unprotected exposure to unexplored territory produces fear. The individual is protected from such fear as a consequence of “ritual imitation of the Great Father” – as a consequence of the adoption of group identity, which restricts the meaning of things, and confers predictability on social interactions. When identification with the group is made absolute, however – when everything has to be controlled, when the unknown is no longer allowed to exist – the creative exploratory process that updates the group can no longer manifest itself. This “restriction of adaptive capacity” dramatically increases the probability of social aggression and chaos.

Rejection of the unknown is tantamount to “identification with the devil,” the mythological counterpart and eternal adversary of the world-creating exploratory hero. Such rejection and identification is a consequence of Luciferian pride, which states: all that I know is all that is necessary to know. This pride is totalitarian assumption of omniscience – is adoption of “God’s place” by “reason” – is something that inevitably generates a state of personal and social being indistinguishable from hell. This hell develops because creative exploration – impossible, without (humble) acknowledgment of the unknown – constitutes the process that constructs and maintains the protective adaptive structure that gives life much of its acceptable meaning.

“Identification with the devil” amplifies the dangers inherent in group identification, which tends of its own accord towards pathological stultification. Loyalty to personal interest – subjective meaning – can serve as an antidote to the overwhelming temptation constantly posed by the possibility of denying anomaly. Personal interest – subjective meaning – reveals itself at the juncture of explored and unexplored territory, and is indicative of participation in the process that ensures continued healthy individual and societal adaptation.

Loyalty to personal interest is equivalent to identification with the archetypal hero – the “savior” – who upholds his association with the creative “Word” in the face of death, and in spite of group pressure to conform. Identification with the hero serves to decrease the unbearable motivational valence of the unknown; furthermore, provides the individual with a standpoint that simultaneously transcends and maintains the group.

All Humour is a POWER STRUGGLE

The Queen : 

Have you seen how the hens in

the yard peck at each other?

Each choosing the one just weaker.

Why do the ladies peck at you?

Ophelia :

I'm not noble, My Lady.

The Queen :

Did you know I was not raised at court?

My sister and I were sent as girls to a convent in France.

But even there, there were hens,

and they pecked.

Ophelia : Even the nuns?

The Queen : But I had my sister to defend me.

I have been Denounced by Jeremy Corbyn over a Joke

FROM POWER STRUGGLE TO REVENGE 

YOUTH: 

Okay, all this talk about teleology and such is pure sophistry, and trauma definitely does exist. And people cannot break free from the past. 

Surely you realise that? We cannot go back to the past in a time machine. As long as the past exists as the past, we live within contexts from the past. 

If one were to treat the past as something that does not exist, that would be the same as negating the entire life one has led. Are you suggesting I choose such an irresponsible life? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

It is true that one cannot use a time machine or turn back the hands of time. But what kind of meaning does one attribute to past events? This is the task that is given to ‘you now’. 

YOUTH: 

All right, so let’s talk about ‘now’. Last time, you said that people fabricate the emotion of anger, right? And that that is the standpoint of teleology. I still cannot accept that statement. For example, how would you explain instances of anger toward society, or anger toward government? Would you say that these, too, are emotions fabricated in order to push one’s opinions? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

Certainly, there are times when I feel indignation with regard to social problems. But I would say that rather than a sudden burst of emotion, it is indignation based on logic. There is a difference between personal anger (personal grudge) and indignation with regard to society’s contradictions and injustices (righteous indignation). Personal anger soon cools. Righteous indignation, on the other hand, lasts for a long time. Anger as an expression of a personal grudge is nothing but a tool for making others submit to you. 

YOUTH: You say that personal grudges and righteous indignation are different? 

PHILOSOPHER: They are completely different. Because righteous indignation goes beyond one’s own interests. 

YOUTH: Then, I’ll ask about personal grudges. Surely even you get angry sometimes—for instance, if someone hurls abuse at you for no particular reason—don’t you? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

No, I do not. 

YOUTH: Come on, be honest. 

PHILOSOPHER: If someone were to abuse me to my face, I would think about the person’s hidden goal. Even if you are not directly abusive, when you feel genuinely angry due to another person’s words or behaviour, please consider that the person is challenging you to a power struggle. 

YOUTH: A power struggle? 

PHILOSOPHER: For instance, a child will tease an adult with various pranks and misbehaviours. 

In many cases, this is something done with the goal of getting attention, and will cease just before the adult gets genuinely angry. 

However, if the child does not stop before the adult gets genuinely angry, then his goal is actually to get in a fight. 

YOUTH: 

Why would he want to get in a fight? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

He wants to win. He wants to prove his power by winning. 

YOUTH: I don’t really get that. Could you give me some concrete examples? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

Let’s say you and a friend have been discussing the current political situation. 

Before long, it turns into a heated argument, and neither of you is willing to accept any differences of opinion until finally it reaches the point where he starts engaging in personal attacks—that you’re stupid, and it’s because of people like you that this country doesn’t change; that sort of thing. 

YOUTH: 

But if someone said that to me, 

I wouldn’t be able to put up with it. 

PHILOSOPHER: 

In this case, what is the other person’s goal? 

Is it only that he wants to discuss politics? 

No, it isn’t. It’s that he finds you unbearable, and he wants to criticise and provoke you, and make you submit through a power struggle. If you get angry at this point, the moment he has been anticipating will arrive, and the relationship will suddenly turn into a power struggle. No matter what the provocation, you must not get taken in. 

YOUTH: No, there’s no need to run away from it. If someone wants to start a fight, it’s fine to accept it. Because it’s the other guy who’s at fault, anyway. You can bash his nose in, the stupid fool. With words, that is. PHILOSOPHER: Now, let’s say you take control of the quarrel. And then the other man, who was seeking to defeat you, withdraws in a sportsmanlike manner. The thing is, the power struggle doesn’t end there. Having lost the dispute, he rushes onto the next stage. YOUTH: The next stage? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. It’s the revenge stage. Though he has withdrawn for the time being, he will be scheming some revenge in another place and another form, and will reappear with an act of retaliation. YOUTH: Like what, for instance? PHILOSOPHER: The child oppressed by his parents will turn to delinquency. He’ll stop going to school. He’ll cut his wrists or engage in other acts of self-harm. In Freudian aetiology, this is regarded as simple cause and effect: the parents raised the child in this way, and that is why the child grew up to be like this. It’s just like pointing out that a plant wasn’t watered, so it withered. It’s an interpretation that is certainly easy to understand. But Adlerian teleology does not turn a blind eye to the goal that the child is hiding. That is to say, the goal of revenge on the parents. If he becomes a delinquent, stops going to school, cuts his wrists or things like that, the parents will be upset. They’ll panic and worry themselves sick over him. It is in the knowledge that this will happen that the child engages in problem behaviour. So that the current goal (revenge on the parents) can be realised, not because he is motivated by past causes (home environment). YOUTH: He engages in problem behaviour in order to upset his parents? PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. There are probably a lot of people who feel mystified by seeing a child who cuts his wrists, and think, Why would he do such a thing? But try to think how the people around the child—the parents, for instance—will feel as a result of the behaviour of wrist-cutting. If you do, the goal behind the behaviour should come into view of its own accord. YOUTH: The goal being revenge? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. And once the interpersonal relationship reaches the revenge stage, it is almost impossible for either party to find a solution. To prevent this from happening, when one is challenged to a power struggle, one must never allow oneself to be taken in. 

ADMITTING FAULT IS NOT DEFEAT 

YOUTH: All right, then what should you do when you’re subjected to personal attacks right to your face? Do you just grin and bear it? PHILOSOPHER: No, the idea that you are ‘bearing it’ is proof that you are still stuck in the power struggle. When you are challenged to a fight, and you sense that it is a power struggle, step down from the conflict as soon as possible. Do not answer his action with a reaction. That is the only thing we can do. YOUTH: But is it really that easy to not respond to provocation? In the first place, how would you say I should control my anger? PHILOSOPHER: When you control your anger, you’re ‘bearing it’, right? Instead, let’s learn a way to settle things without using the emotion of anger. Because after all, anger is a tool. A means for achieving a goal. YOUTH: That’s a tough one. PHILOSOPHER: The first thing that I want you to understand here is the fact that anger is a form of communication, and that communication is nevertheless possible without using anger. We can convey our thoughts and intentions and be accepted without any need for anger. If you learn to understand this experientially, the anger emotion will stop appearing, all on its own. YOUTH: But what if they come at you with mistaken accusations, or make insulting comments? I shouldn’t get angry even then? PHILOSOPHER: You don’t seem to understand yet. It’s not that you mustn’t get angry, but that there is no need to rely on the tool of anger. Irascible people do not have short tempers—it is only that they do not know that there are effective communication tools other than anger. That is why people end up saying things like ‘I just snapped’ or ‘he flew into a rage’. We end up relying on anger to communicate. YOUTH: Effective communication tools other than anger … PHILOSOPHER: We have language. We can communicate through language. Believe in the power of language, and the language of logic. YOUTH: Certainly, if I did not believe in that, we wouldn’t be having this dialogue. PHILOSOPHER: One more thing about power struggles. In every instance, no matter how much you might think you are right, try not to criticise the other party on that basis. This is an interpersonal relationship trap that many people fall into. YOUTH: Why’s that? PHILOSOPHER: The moment one is convinced that ‘I am right’ in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle. YOUTH: Just because you think you’re right? No way, that’s just blowing things all out of proportion. PHILOSOPHER: I am right. That is to say, the other party is wrong. At that point, the focus of the discussion shifts from ‘the rightness of the assertions’ to ‘the state of the interpersonal relationship’. In other words, the conviction that ‘I am right’ leads to the assumption that ‘this person is wrong’, and finally it becomes a contest and you are thinking, I have to win. It’s a power struggle through and through. YOUTH: Hmm. PHILOSOPHER: In the first place, the rightness of one’s assertions has nothing to do with winning or losing. If you think you are right, regardless of what other people’s opinions might be, the matter should be closed then and there. However, many people will rush into a power struggle, and try to make others submit to them. And that is why they think of ‘admitting a mistake’ as ‘admitting defeat’. YOUTH: Yes, there definitely is that aspect. PHILOSOPHER: Because of one’s mindset of not wanting to lose, one is unable to admit one’s mistake, the result being that one ends up choosing the wrong path. Admitting mistakes, conveying words of apology, and stepping down from power struggles—none of these things is defeat. The pursuit of superiority is not something that is carried out through competition with other people. YOUTH: So, when you’re hung up on winning and losing, you lose the ability to make the right choices? 

PHILOSOPHER: Yes. It clouds your judgement, and all you can see is imminent victory or defeat. Then you turn down the wrong path. It’s only when we take away the lenses of competition and winning and losing that we can begin to correct and change ourselves.

EQUALITY

Equality

"Equality" is reprinted from The Spectator, vol. CLXXI (27 August 1943), p. 192

I am a democrat (1) because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. Whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

This introduces a view of equality rather different from that in which we have been trained. I do not think that equality is one of those things (like wisdom or happiness) which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes. I think it is in the same class as medicine, which is good because we are ill, or clothes which are good because we are no longer innocent. I don't think the old authority in kings, priests, husbands, or fathers, and the old obedience in subjects, laymen, wives, and sons, was in itself a degrading or evil thing at all. I think it was intrinsically as good and beautiful as the nakedness of Adam and Eve. It was rightly taken away because men became bad and abused it. To attempt to restore it now would be the same error as that of the Nudists. Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

But medicine is not good. There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. That is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values -- offers food to some need which we have starved.

When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget, but as an ideal, we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. 

That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies. It will kill us all if it grows unchecked. 

The man who cannot conceive a joyful and loyal obedience on the one hand, nor an unembarrassed and noble acceptance of that obedience on the other - the man who has never even wanted to kneel or to bow - is a prosaic barbarian. 

But it would be wicked folly to restore these old inequalities on the legal or external plane. Their proper place is elsewhere.

We must wear clothes since the Fall. Yes, but inside, under what Milton called "these troublesome disguises" (2). We want the naked body, that is, the real body, to be alive. We want it, on proper occasions, to appear -- in the marriage-chamber, in the public privacy of a men's bathing-place, and (of course) when any medical or other emergency demands. In the same way, under the necessary outer covering of legal equality, the whole hierarchical dance and harmony of our deep and joyously accepted spiritual inequalities should be alive. It is there, of course, in our life as Christians -- there, as laymen, we can obey – all the more because the priest has no authority over us on the political level. It is there in our relation to parents and teachers – all the more because it is now a willed and wholly spiritual reverence. It should be there also in marriage.

This last point needs a little plain speaking. Men have so horribly abused their power over women in the past that to wives, of all people, equality is in danger of appearing as an ideal. 

But Mrs. Naomi Mitchison has laid her finger on the real point. 

Have as much equality as you please – the more the better – in our marriage laws, but at some level consent to inequality, nay, delight in inequality, is an erotic necessity. 

Mrs. Mitchison speaks of women so fostered on a defiant idea of equality that the mere sensation of the male embrace rouses an undercurrent of resentment. Marriages are thus shipwrecked (3). This is the tragi-comedy of the modem woman -- taught by Freud to consider the act of love the most important thing in life, and then inhibited by feminism from that internal surrender which alone can make it a complete emotional success. Merely for the sake of her own erotic pleasure, to go no further, some degree of obedience and humility seems to be (normally) necessary on the woman's part.

The error here has been to assimilate all forms of affection to that special form we call friendship. It indeed does imply equality. But it is quite different from the various loves within the same household. Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up – painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other -- that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.

We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut -- whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead -- even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served -- deny it food and it will gobble poison.

That is why this whole question is of practical importance. Every intrusion of the spirit that says, "I'm as good as you" into our personal and spiritual life is to be resisted just as jealously as every intrusion of bureaucracy or privilege into our politics. Hierarchy within can alone preserve egalitarianism without. Romantic attacks on democracy will come again. We shall never be safe unless we already understand in our hearts all that the anti-democrats can say, and have provided for it better than they. Human nature will not permanently endure flat equality if it is extended from its proper political field into the more real, more concrete fields within. Let us wear equality; but let us undress every night.

(1) C.S. Lewis lived and wrote in England. Hence, his reference to "being a Democrat" had nothing to do with our (USA) "Democratic Party". 

(2) John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), Book IV, line 740. 18 

(3) Naomi Mitchison, The Home and a Changing Civilization (London, 1934), Chapter I, pp. 49-50.

All Humour is a POWER STRUGGLE

Donkey! 

Hey, Tom.

Where's your sexier half? 

She had to work.

On a Saturday? 

Careful, Donkey, you sure she isn't getting a leg over?!

[ Of course, it later turns out that this is precisely what she is doing at this point.... ] 

This is Andy, Errol's Uncle.

Oh, Errol? My condolences.

Joking! Good to meet you, Andy.

I'm Tom, Alfie's Dad.

Andy is a musician.

Oh, yeah? Andy the musician.

I've heard of you.

Really? Yeah, aren't you in that band? What is it? 

No Direction! 

Come on, that was a good one, Donkey. I'm only joking.

What kind of music do you play? 

Well, it's, sort of, a combination of  —

Hold that thought.

I need to spend a penny.

Here you go.

And don't drink any, I've got my eye on you, Donkey.

Why does that prick keep calling you Donkey? 

Is it because of your, erm 

No. He thinks I look like the donkey from Shrek.

Does he mean Eddie Murphy or the actual donkey? 

I don't know.

I never asked.

I mean you're not just going to let him get away with calling you that are you? 

It's fine.

It's just a nickname

I have been Denounced by Jeremy Corbyn over a Joke

FROM POWER STRUGGLE TO REVENGE 

YOUTH: 

Okay, all this talk about teleology and such is pure sophistry, and trauma definitely does exist. And people cannot break free from the past. 

Surely you realise that? We cannot go back to the past in a time machine. As long as the past exists as the past, we live within contexts from the past. 

If one were to treat the past as something that does not exist, that would be the same as negating the entire life one has led. Are you suggesting I choose such an irresponsible life? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

It is true that one cannot use a time machine or turn back the hands of time. But what kind of meaning does one attribute to past events? This is the task that is given to ‘you now’. 

YOUTH: 

All right, so let’s talk about ‘now’. Last time, you said that people fabricate the emotion of anger, right? And that that is the standpoint of teleology. I still cannot accept that statement. For example, how would you explain instances of anger toward society, or anger toward government? Would you say that these, too, are emotions fabricated in order to push one’s opinions? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

Certainly, there are times when I feel indignation with regard to social problems. But I would say that rather than a sudden burst of emotion, it is indignation based on logic. There is a difference between personal anger (personal grudge) and indignation with regard to society’s contradictions and injustices (righteous indignation). Personal anger soon cools. Righteous indignation, on the other hand, lasts for a long time. Anger as an expression of a personal grudge is nothing but a tool for making others submit to you. 

YOUTH: You say that personal grudges and righteous indignation are different? 

PHILOSOPHER: They are completely different. Because righteous indignation goes beyond one’s own interests. 

YOUTH: Then, I’ll ask about personal grudges. Surely even you get angry sometimes—for instance, if someone hurls abuse at you for no particular reason—don’t you? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

No, I do not. 

YOUTH: Come on, be honest. 

PHILOSOPHER: If someone were to abuse me to my face, I would think about the person’s hidden goal. Even if you are not directly abusive, when you feel genuinely angry due to another person’s words or behaviour, please consider that the person is challenging you to a power struggle. 

YOUTH: A power struggle? 

PHILOSOPHER: For instance, a child will tease an adult with various pranks and misbehaviours. 

In many cases, this is something done with the goal of getting attention, and will cease just before the adult gets genuinely angry. 

However, if the child does not stop before the adult gets genuinely angry, then his goal is actually to get in a fight. 

YOUTH: 

Why would he want to get in a fight? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

He wants to win. He wants to prove his power by winning. 

YOUTH: I don’t really get that. Could you give me some concrete examples? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

Let’s say you and a friend have been discussing the current political situation. 

Before long, it turns into a heated argument, and neither of you is willing to accept any differences of opinion until finally it reaches the point where he starts engaging in personal attacks—that you’re stupid, and it’s because of people like you that this country doesn’t change; that sort of thing. 

YOUTH: 

But if someone said that to me, 

I wouldn’t be able to put up with it. 

PHILOSOPHER: 

In this case, what is the other person’s goal? 

Is it only that he wants to discuss politics? 

No, it isn’t. It’s that he finds you unbearable, and he wants to criticise and provoke you, and make you submit through a power struggle. If you get angry at this point, the moment he has been anticipating will arrive, and the relationship will suddenly turn into a power struggle. No matter what the provocation, you must not get taken in. 

YOUTH: No, there’s no need to run away from it. If someone wants to start a fight, it’s fine to accept it. Because it’s the other guy who’s at fault, anyway. You can bash his nose in, the stupid fool. With words, that is. PHILOSOPHER: Now, let’s say you take control of the quarrel. And then the other man, who was seeking to defeat you, withdraws in a sportsmanlike manner. The thing is, the power struggle doesn’t end there. Having lost the dispute, he rushes onto the next stage. YOUTH: The next stage? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. It’s the revenge stage. Though he has withdrawn for the time being, he will be scheming some revenge in another place and another form, and will reappear with an act of retaliation. YOUTH: Like what, for instance? PHILOSOPHER: The child oppressed by his parents will turn to delinquency. He’ll stop going to school. He’ll cut his wrists or engage in other acts of self-harm. In Freudian aetiology, this is regarded as simple cause and effect: the parents raised the child in this way, and that is why the child grew up to be like this. It’s just like pointing out that a plant wasn’t watered, so it withered. It’s an interpretation that is certainly easy to understand. But Adlerian teleology does not turn a blind eye to the goal that the child is hiding. That is to say, the goal of revenge on the parents. If he becomes a delinquent, stops going to school, cuts his wrists or things like that, the parents will be upset. They’ll panic and worry themselves sick over him. It is in the knowledge that this will happen that the child engages in problem behaviour. So that the current goal (revenge on the parents) can be realised, not because he is motivated by past causes (home environment). YOUTH: He engages in problem behaviour in order to upset his parents? PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. There are probably a lot of people who feel mystified by seeing a child who cuts his wrists, and think, Why would he do such a thing? But try to think how the people around the child—the parents, for instance—will feel as a result of the behaviour of wrist-cutting. If you do, the goal behind the behaviour should come into view of its own accord. YOUTH: The goal being revenge? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. And once the interpersonal relationship reaches the revenge stage, it is almost impossible for either party to find a solution. To prevent this from happening, when one is challenged to a power struggle, one must never allow oneself to be taken in. 

ADMITTING FAULT IS NOT DEFEAT 

YOUTH: All right, then what should you do when you’re subjected to personal attacks right to your face? Do you just grin and bear it? PHILOSOPHER: No, the idea that you are ‘bearing it’ is proof that you are still stuck in the power struggle. When you are challenged to a fight, and you sense that it is a power struggle, step down from the conflict as soon as possible. Do not answer his action with a reaction. That is the only thing we can do. YOUTH: But is it really that easy to not respond to provocation? In the first place, how would you say I should control my anger? PHILOSOPHER: When you control your anger, you’re ‘bearing it’, right? Instead, let’s learn a way to settle things without using the emotion of anger. Because after all, anger is a tool. A means for achieving a goal. YOUTH: That’s a tough one. PHILOSOPHER: The first thing that I want you to understand here is the fact that anger is a form of communication, and that communication is nevertheless possible without using anger. We can convey our thoughts and intentions and be accepted without any need for anger. If you learn to understand this experientially, the anger emotion will stop appearing, all on its own. YOUTH: But what if they come at you with mistaken accusations, or make insulting comments? I shouldn’t get angry even then? PHILOSOPHER: You don’t seem to understand yet. It’s not that you mustn’t get angry, but that there is no need to rely on the tool of anger. Irascible people do not have short tempers—it is only that they do not know that there are effective communication tools other than anger. That is why people end up saying things like ‘I just snapped’ or ‘he flew into a rage’. We end up relying on anger to communicate. YOUTH: Effective communication tools other than anger … PHILOSOPHER: We have language. We can communicate through language. Believe in the power of language, and the language of logic. YOUTH: Certainly, if I did not believe in that, we wouldn’t be having this dialogue. PHILOSOPHER: One more thing about power struggles. In every instance, no matter how much you might think you are right, try not to criticise the other party on that basis. This is an interpersonal relationship trap that many people fall into. YOUTH: Why’s that? PHILOSOPHER: The moment one is convinced that ‘I am right’ in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle. YOUTH: Just because you think you’re right? No way, that’s just blowing things all out of proportion. PHILOSOPHER: I am right. That is to say, the other party is wrong. At that point, the focus of the discussion shifts from ‘the rightness of the assertions’ to ‘the state of the interpersonal relationship’. In other words, the conviction that ‘I am right’ leads to the assumption that ‘this person is wrong’, and finally it becomes a contest and you are thinking, I have to win. It’s a power struggle through and through. YOUTH: Hmm. PHILOSOPHER: In the first place, the rightness of one’s assertions has nothing to do with winning or losing. If you think you are right, regardless of what other people’s opinions might be, the matter should be closed then and there. However, many people will rush into a power struggle, and try to make others submit to them. And that is why they think of ‘admitting a mistake’ as ‘admitting defeat’. YOUTH: Yes, there definitely is that aspect. PHILOSOPHER: Because of one’s mindset of not wanting to lose, one is unable to admit one’s mistake, the result being that one ends up choosing the wrong path. Admitting mistakes, conveying words of apology, and stepping down from power struggles—none of these things is defeat. The pursuit of superiority is not something that is carried out through competition with other people. YOUTH: So, when you’re hung up on winning and losing, you lose the ability to make the right choices? 

PHILOSOPHER: Yes. It clouds your judgement, and all you can see is imminent victory or defeat. Then you turn down the wrong path. It’s only when we take away the lenses of competition and winning and losing that we can begin to correct and change ourselves.

LONELINESS

Mortal : 

If You were gonna DO something, 
you shoulda done it when we NEEDED You! 

Where were you THEN? 
 Huh?

God :

I Was Dead.

Mortal : 

Yeah, well... 

Maybe so... 

But you still shoulda DONE somethin’!

Tony, 

I'm glad you're back at the compound. 

I don't like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself. 

We all need Family. 

The Avengers are yours. 

Maybe more so than mine. 

I've been on my own since I was 18. 

I never really fit in anywhere, even in the army. 

My faith's in People, I guess. Individuals. 

And I'm happy to say that, for the most part, they haven't let me down. 

Which is why I can't let them down either. 

Locks can be replaced, but maybe they shouldn't. 

I know I hurt you, Tony. 

I guess I thought by not telling you about your parents I was sparing you, but I can see now that I was really sparing myself, and I'm sorry. 

Hopefully one day you can understand. 

I wish we agreed on the Accords, I really do. 

I know you're doing what you believe in, and that's all any of us can do. 

That's all any of us should. 

So no matter what, I promise you, if you need us…

If you need me…

I'll be There.

ALL PROBLEMS ARE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS

YOUTH: Wait a minute! I’m supposed to just let that one slip by? 

‘To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone?’ 

What do you mean by that? If you lived all alone, wouldn’t you be horribly lonely? 

PHILOSOPHER:  
Oh, but being alone isn’t what makes you feel lonely.

Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, 
and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. 

To feel lonely, 
we need other people. 

That is to say, it is only in social contexts that a person becomes an ‘individual’. 

YOUTH: If you were really alone, that is, if you existed completely alone in the universe, you wouldn’t be an individual and you wouldn’t feel lonely, either? 

PHILOSOPHER: I suppose the very concept of loneliness wouldn’t even come up. 

You wouldn’t need language, and there’d be no use for logic or commonsense, either. 

But such a thing is impossible. 

Even if you lived on an uninhabited island, you would think about someone far across the ocean. Even if you spend your nights alone, you strain your ears to hear the sound of someone’s breath. 

As long as there is someone out there somewhere, you will be haunted by loneliness. 

YOUTH: But then, you could just rephrase that as ‘if one could live in the universe all alone, one’s problems would go away’, couldn’t you? 

PHILOSOPHER: In theory, yes. As Adler goes so far as to assert, ‘All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.’ 

YOUTH: Can you say that again? 

PHILOSOPHER: We can repeat it as many times as you like: all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. This is a concept that runs to the very root of Adlerian psychology. 

If all interpersonal relationships were gone from this world, which is to say if one were alone in the universe and all other people were gone, all manner of problems would disappear. 

YOUTH: That’s a lie! It’s nothing more than academic sophistry. 

PHILOSOPHER: Of course, we cannot do without interpersonal relationships. 

A human being’s existence, in its very essence, assumes the existence of other human beings. 

Living completely separate from others is, in principle, impossible. As you are indicating, the premise ‘if one could live all alone in the universe’ is unsound. 

YOUTH: That’s not the issue I am talking about. 

Sure, interpersonal relationships are probably a big problem. That much I acknowledge. 

But to say that everything comes down to interpersonal relationship problems, now that’s really an extreme position. 

What about the worry of being cut off from interpersonal relationships, the kind of problems that an individual agonises over as an individual; problems directed to oneself. 

Do you deny all that? 

PHILOSOPHER: There is no such thing as worry that is completely defined by the individual; so-called internal worry does not exist. 

Whatever the worry that may arise, the shadows of other people are always present. 

YOUTH: But still, you’re a philosopher. Human beings have loftier, greater problems than things like interpersonal relationships. 

What is happiness, what is freedom? 

And what is the meaning of life? 

Aren’t these the themes that philosophers have been investigating ever since the ancient Greeks? 

And you’re saying, so what? 

Interpersonal relationships are everything? 

It seems kind of pedestrian to me. 

It’s hard to believe that a philosopher would say such things. 

PHILOSOPHER: Well, then, it seems there’s a need to explain things a bit more concretely. 

YOUTH: Yes, please do! If you’re going to tell me that you’re a philosopher, then you’ve got to really explain things, or else this makes no sense. 

PHILOSOPHER: You were so afraid of interpersonal relationships that you came to dislike yourself. 

You’ve avoided interpersonal relationships by disliking yourself. 

These assertions shook the youth to his very core. 

The words had an undeniable truth that seemed to pierce his heart. 

Even so, he had to find a clear rebuttal to the statement that all the problems that people experience are interpersonal relationship problems. Adler was trivialising people’s issues.  
The problems I’m suffering from aren’t so mundane! 

LEIA: 

Luke. 

LUKE: 

Leia. 

REY: 

I'd rather not do this now. 

KYLO REN: 

Yeah, me too. 

REY: 

Why did you hate your father? 

Do you have something, 
a cowl or something you can put on? 

Why did you hate Your Father? 

Give me an honest answer. 

You had a father who loved you, 
he gave a damn about you. 

KYLO REN : 

I didn't hate him. 

REY : 

Then why? 

KYLO REN : 

Why, what? 

Why, what? 

Say it. 

REY : 

Why did you... 

Why did you kill him? 

 I don't understand. 

KYLO REN: 

No? Your parents threw you away like garbage. 

REY: 

They didn't! 

KYLO REN: 

They Did. 

But you can't stop needing them. 

It's your Greatest Weakness. 

Looking for them everywhere.... 
In Han Solo.... now in Skywalker. 

Did he tell you what happened that night? 

REY: 

Yes. 

KYLO REN: 

No. 

He had sensed my power, 

as he senses yours. 

And he feared it.

REY:

Liar. 

KYLO REN: 

Let The Past Die. 

Kill it, if You Have to. 

That's the only way to become 

What You Were Meant to Be. 

REY: 

No! No! 

FEMALE VOICE: 

Rey? 

REY: 

I should have felt trapped or panicked. 

But I didn't. 

This didn't go on forever, 
I knew it was leading somewhere. 

And that, at The End, 
it would show me what I came to see. 

FEMALE VOICE: 

Rey. 

REY: 

Let me see them. 

My parents... please. 

I thought I'd find answers here. 

I was wrong. 

I've never felt so alone 

KYLO REN: 
You're not alone. 

REY: 
Neither are you. 

LUKE: 
Rey? 

REY: 
It isn't too late. 

LUKE: 
Stop! 

REY: 
It is True? 
Did you try to murder him? 

LUKE: 
Leave this island now! 

REY: 
Stop. Stop! 
Did you do it? 
Did you create Kylo Ren? 

Tell Me The Truth. 

LUKE: 

I saw darkness. 
I'd sensed it building in him. 
I'd see it at moments during his training. 

But then I looked inside... 
And it was beyond what I ever imagined. 
Snoke had already turned his heart. 

He would bring destruction, and pain, and death... and The End of Everything I Love 
because of What He Will Become. 

And for the briefest moment of pure instinct... 
I thought I could stop it. 

It passed like a fleeting shadow. 
And I was left with shame... 
and with consequence. 

And the last thing I saw
were the eyes of a frightened boy,
whose Master had failed him. 

Ben, no! 

REY: 
You failed him by thinking his choice was made - 
It wasn't. 

There is still conflict in him. If he turned from the dark side, that could shift the tide. 

This could be how we win. 

LUKE: 

This is not going to go the way you think. 

REY: 
It is. Just now, when we touched hands... I saw his future. 
As solid as I'm seeing you. 
If I go to him, Ben Solo will turn. 

LUKE: 

Rey... don't do this. 

REY: 
Then he is our last hope.

LUKE: 

Master Yoda. 

YODA: 
Young Skywalker. 

LUKE: 
I'm ending all of this. 
The tree, the text, the Jedi. 
I'm going to burn it down. 

YODA: 

Hmm. (laughs) 
Ah, Skywalker, missed you, have I. 

LUKE: 
So it is time for the Jedi Order to end. 

YODA: 
Time it is. 
For you to look at a pile of old books, hmmm? 

LUKE: 
The Sacred Jedi texts! 

YODA: 
Oh. Read them, have you? 

LUKE: 
Well, I... 

YODA: 
Page-turners they were not. 
Yes, yes, yes. 
Wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess. 

Skywalker, still looking to the horizon. 

Never here, now, hmmm? 

(pokes Luke with his walking stick) 

The need in front of your nose. Hmmm? 

LUKE: 

I was weak. Unwise. 

YODA: 

Lost Ben Solo, you did. 

Lose Rey, we must not. 

LUKE: 

I can't be what she needs me to be. 

YODA: 

Heeded my words not, did you? 

Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery. 

But weakness, folly, failure, also. 

Yes, failure most of all. 

The Greatest Teacher, Failure is. 

Luke, we are what they grow beyond. 

That is the true burden of all masters.