You’re On Your Own
“Captain Price – we’re on our own, sir!” – Soap McTavish, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
No one is coming. You’re on your own.
This isn’t an absolute rule, but in general it’s applicable to your search for Serenity.
Conan creator Robert E. Howard wrote in one of his many letters about the cruelties of the world. That was back in the 1930s. I’d venture to say he’d be even more demoralized if he could see the atomized culture that exists today (it didn’t help he lived in Nowheresville Texas clinging to his mother).
Reflecting back on Firefly, Mal Reynolds knows he’s on his own. There’s the one episode where the ship is losing oxygen and the entire crew abandons it for life vessels – except him. It was his ship, and figuring out how to fix the oxygen problem was his responsibility.
Finding Serenity for you is your problem, and no one is figuring it out for you, especially strangers online. It’s not their problem, and fundamentally modern people are indifferent to the sufferings of others, even those close to them, unless it affects them directly. People simply don’t need each other anymore like they used to, and with a return to our baser instincts we revert to the harshness of the ancient world. If you were not needed by the tribe you didn’t last long. Or, you weren’t seen as a member of the tribe and not someone to whom they held mutual obligation.
There are no real identities anymore in the Current Regime that aren’t controlled, directly or indirectly, or simply LARPing for people who want to pretend they’re rebels rather than prisoners claiming to actually like their cell quarters.
Or, they’re controlled opposition run by FBI hacks.
Without identity you don’t have commonality, and without that it’s impossible to determine who is “we” and who is “they.” There is only the Regime approved “we” and “they,” and as I wrote previously the defining line between Regime rulers, citizens, and subjects is fluid and in constant flux.
The result: a lack of meaningful, effective loyalties. In Firefly, Reynolds is loyal to his crew, which is made easy by the fact that the definition is clear and he decides who meets it. Loyalties give meaning and purpose to our lives and gives us a sense of stability.
In the modern West there is little to no genuine loyalty to anything, and anyone who expresses it is preyed upon. The Regime doesn’t want you to care about things it’s slatted for destruction, and loyalty is caring.
Unless you’re in a unique position or truly blessed, your success or failure in finding Serenity is entirely on you.
The man struggling who still hopes for help that never comes will despair. Serenity is about giving up false hopes.
The man struggling who knows it’s on him, that no helping hand will arrive, that he must reach into the deepest recesses of his soul to find the strength to pick himself up…he may not succeed as some are destined to, but it won’t be due to a lack of will.
For some, letting “it” go is the reality that no help is coming.