Heroic Endeavors—Part Three: Return

“I certainly think Star Trek is an example of a science-fiction franchise that at its heart really possesses a sense of optimism and faith in humanity and I think those are things that are never more relevant than they are today.” –Zachary Quinto

Here we are in the final stages of the heroic journey and the problem is that we have passed the new incarnation of James Kirk. No doubt there will be more stories in this new series, but for now I will have to get creative when it comes to providing you with examples. Luckily, there are many other stories about Kirk to draw from. I’m going to use the movie Star Trek Generations to help me. Being circa 1994, it may seem outdated and those of you who have seen it will have to dig deep into your memory banks, but it has the pieces I need. I’ll be as clear as possible. These are the trickiest steps, yet. Make sure you haven’t missed Part One and Part Two of this series.

Return – 1. Refusal of the Return

Once the heroic quest has been accomplished, what remains is for the hero to return to the real world with his prize. Whether he has attained enlightenment, or has rescued the princess, or found the Holy Grail, it is then up to him to bring his trophy back and share it with the world. As in the beginning, when the hero didn’t want to leave his childhood sphere of relationships and connections, he doesn’t always want to leave the bliss found in the presence of grace. It’s a nice place and it is difficult to leave by choice.

Example: In Star Trek Generations, Kirk finds himself in a place called The Nexus. Guinan describes the Nexus to Picard as:

“Like being inside joy, as if joy was something tangible and you could wrap yourself up in it like a blanket. And never in my entire life have I ever been as content… None of us wanted to go. And I would have done anything, anything, to get back there… If you go, you’re not going to care about anything, not this ship, not Soren, not me, nothing. All you’ll want is to stay in the Nexus; you’re not going to want to come back.”

It is a place where the mind has the power to grant any desire and command time. It is the bliss place and while Kirk is there, he does not want to leave. He sees the chance to live his life over again and do everything differently. When Captain Picard seeks out his help, Kirk refuses to return to the real world with him.

Return – 2. The Magic Flight

If the hero does decide to return to the world, there are two ways it can go. One, he has the blessing of the gods. They have specifically commissioned him to take their grace back to the world and share it with humanity. In that case, his return is supported by all the supernatural forces and goes swimmingly. Or, if the hero has stolen his prize or tricked it from the grasp of the gods, then the return can look like a great chase scene. The hero tosses obstacles behind him to delay his pursuers. His allies attempt to block the path and give him a greater lead. We’ve all seen this play out. But the truth of the monomyth is this: to fulfill its promise, not human failure or superhuman success but human success is what we have to be shown.

Example: Let’s go back to the new film for a moment and consider the red matter as the divine grace our hero steals. Kirk teams up with Spock to steal the ship with the red matter and destroy the Nerada’s drill that threatens Earth. Then Spock flies off, leading the enemy ship to the Enterprise, while Kirk is rescuing Captain Pike—they all beam to safety. The Enterprise destroys the missiles aimed at Spock, he crashes the ship into the Nerada and thus a black hole is created which destroys the “supernatural” enemy. A very magic flight.

Spock In Magical Flight

Return – 3. Rescue from Without

But what happens if the hero maintains the refusal of stage one? Someone has to go get him. The journey is not complete until the hero re-enters, with his boon, “the long-forgotten atmosphere where men who are fractions imagine themselves to be complete.” He has to confront society with his elixir of enlightenment; he has to take the blow of people’s questions and resentment and inability to understand. If he refuses to do so, then the supernatural forces that have been helping him all along, will come to rescue him and set him back on his path.

Example: We’re going back to the Kirk in The Nexus (I apologize for the back and forth—I trust you can keep up). Kirk is enjoying the power of fulfilling all his desires, fixing his mistakes, healing his regrets. He doesn’t want to go back to the world where his life is coming to an end, where his glory days are past. But Picard needs his help. Picard persuades him to come back and make a difference in the world again. He persuades him to put himself at risk again to make the world a better place and save millions of lives, 230 million lives.

Kirk and Picard in The Nexus

Return – 4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold

Ah, another one of those thresholds! I’ll let Joseph explain this one:

“The two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other—different as life and death, as day and night. Nevertheless—and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol—the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero. There must always remain, however, from the standpoint of normal waking consciousness, a certain baffling inconsistency between the wisdom brought forth from the deep, and the prudence usually found to be effective in the light world. The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the word. How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millenniums of mankind’s prudent folly? That is the hero’s ultimate difficult task. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world.”

I think the last few lines are the most important to understand. There have been heroes making this journey throughout time. We know of some and not of others. But they come back and try to tell us what is true about ourselves. They try to tell us that we are all capable of this journey, that we all have this potential within ourselves—and we close our ears and ignore them. Most of us cannot accept that as possible. We call it myth. We put it on a big screen and call it a movie. We put it in a book and call it fiction. And then we ignore it as irrelevant to our own lives. That is our mistake.

Example: In the film, there is an energy ribbon that travels through the universe that acts as a doorway to the Nexus. This is the threshold Picard and Kirk must cross to return to the world. The Nexus also allows them to choose which moment to return to, so they are both masters of crossing space and time.

Threshold

Return – 5. Master of the Two Worlds

The hero has been blessed with a new perspective. He has seen beyond the scope of normal human destiny and been granted an awareness of the essential nature of the cosmos. His personal fate is now only part of the fate of mankind, the fate of life, the solar system, the atom. All of this knowledge has opened to him. He transcends personal ambition and stops resisting whatever may come to pass. He accepts the truth that there is nothing to gain or fear because all things are one. If that’s hard to grasp, consider this metaphor: just as an actor is always a man, whether he puts on the costume of his role or lays it aside, so is the perfect knower of the Imperishable always the Imperishable, and nothing else. That is the hero, whether in the state of perfect enlightenment or not, he remains at one with the imperishable force. The truth is that we are all at one with that force, we just don’t know it.

Example: After successfully returning from the Nexus and saving part of the galaxy, Picard ruminates on time with his first officer.

Captain Picard: Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives, but I rather believe that time is a companion that goes with us on the journey, reminds us to cherish every moment, because they’ll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we’ve lived. After all, Number One, we’re only mortal.

Commander Riker: Speak for yourself, sir. I plan to live forever.

Return – 6. Freedom to Live

The goal of the myth is to reconcile the individual consciousness with the universal will (The Force). Once the hero has completed his journey, he is able to recognize his own relationship with the passing phenomena of time and the imperishable life that is within everything. As Joseph says:

“The Self cannot be cut nor burnt nor wetted nor withered. Eternal, all-pervading, unchanging, immovable, the Self is the same for ever. The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is.”

It is tricky to explain these last pieces. They are deeply spiritual states of being that I certainly have not achieved myself. I have not passed beyond my own attachments to this world of duality where life and death are different things. I perceive change everyday. But the hero is beyond thoughts of permanence or attachment. He does not fear change or loss. He knows that nothing retains its form forever. Nature, the great renewer, is always making up forms from forms. Nothing perishes, it simply varies and renews its form. That is the lesson.

In the broad sense, what does it mean that we have “rebooted” the series? Our vision of time and events is altered because the mythology continues to grow and change. What came before is intact for all who experienced it and it is there for anyone who wishes to experience it in the future. But the great thing about mythological heroes is that they vary and renew their forms to teach us yet again what has been taught a thousand times. We see Kirk die to this world twice in Generations. But he lives again! The lessons transcend time and space. The stories are meant to grow and change as we do. Long live Star Trek!

Our Hero

Spock: Ambassador For A Rational’s Utopia

“As a Vulcan I require no additional training to control my narcissism when making command decisions. They are and will always be invariably based on reason, logic and the facts as they exist in reality, not as we might wish them to be in order to conveniently fit some private notion of how the universe is supposed to operate.” –Spock

Make sure to file this under arrogance, not vanity. There is a difference. It is intensely gratifying to find heroic characters that are like me. It’s fun to read about people who react to things the way that I would, who think the way that I think, who say things that I would say. Honestly, it’s rare, very rare. Anaïs Nin and Ayn Rand are the only authors I’ve encountered that have come close to creating someone like me. It is similarly satisfying when I see a heroic character that I resemble in some significant way gain the love and respect of a wide audience.

The latest Star Trek film hit theaters last Friday. But even before then, the film, and Spock in particular, were getting serious media attention. As Spock has always been the quintessential rational, I have been exceedingly pleased by the praise heaped upon him. Of course, I give credit to the writers, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, as well as Zachary Quinto (yet again). Zachary was able to imbue the character with the appropriate intense stoicism that reflects Spock’s thoughtful and purposeful nature, while Kurtzman and Orci gave him the requisite material to work with. And while this incarnation is certainly more volatile and emotionally vulnerable than the Spock we have known in the past, he is still dedicated to logic. He is a hero to anyone who experiences their own nature as intensely rational. (Note that spoilers do follow—continue reading with caution if you intend to see the movie and have not done so.)

According to David Keirsey, in his book Please Understand Me II¸ in which he details the character traits of his four major personality types (Artisans, Guardians, Idealists and Rationals–in addition to the sixteen specific types), he estimates that only 5-6% of the population fall into the category of Rationals, the NTs, or intuitive-thinking types. So it’s not surprising that we don’t show up very often in film or fiction. Perhaps that’s why we stand out when we do show up.

Why is that we seem like such enigmatic creatures to the other personality types? Keirsey says we are “often criticized for being unfeeling and cold… what is taken for indifference is not indifference at all, but the thoughtful, absorbed concentration of the contemplative investigator.” He also says:

“Concerned as they are with logical investigation, they seem detached and distant from others, who conclude that this type has no interest in social reality. This conclusion is correct in the sense that when Rationals are concentrating on some complex problem they do detach themselves from their social context and remain distant until they solve the problem. At that moment they are not interested in others, but that does not mean they do not care about others. They are just as caring as any other type when they are focused on those they care about.”

I found this idea eloquently illustrated in the moment when Uhura goes to Spock to offer sympathy after the loss of his mother. When she asks what he needs, he responds with: “I need everyone to continue performing admirably.” His own pain in that moment is not sufficient reason for crucial work to halt. As a Rational, he would find comfort in an efficiently running system. Another amusing moment that illustrates the idea is when Spock says to the ship’s doctor: “I intend to assist in the effort to reestablish communication with Starfleet, however, if crew morale is better served by my roaming the halls weeping, I will gladly defer to your medical expertise.” Brilliant.

Vulcans attempt to live by reason and logic with no interference from emotion. Keirsey’s Rational category, being specifically meant to designate a human personality type, does not attempt to insinuate that we do not feel emotions. On the contrary, he goes out of his way to explain us to the other personality types and elaborates on the depth of our feelings and the reasons why we keep them under tight control. When he is a child, Sarek, Spock’s father, explains to him that “emotions run deep within our race, in many ways more deeply than in humans. Logic offers a serenity humans seldom experience, a control of feelings so that they do not control you.” This is a Rational’s philosophy.

Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock, liked the character’s logical nature, observing that the character struggles “to maintain a Vulcan attitude, a Vulcan philosophical posture and a Vulcan logic, opposing what was fighting him internally, which was human emotion.” A Rational often finds himself fighting this kind of battle. Our emotions run as deep as anyone’s, but as they tend to get in the way of getting things done, we do our best to keep them in check. When we cannot, we step aside and separate ourselves.

Spock: “I am no longer fit for duty. I hereby relinquish my command based on the fact that I have been emotionally compromised.”

I think compromised is an apt description of how it feels for a Rational when emotions get the better of us. This is in direct opposition to how feeling types perceive their emotions. Kirk = Feeling Type. How does Spock respond to Kirk-the-Feeing-Type? “I will not allow you to lecture me on the merits of emotion.” Ha! And yet, while Spock will, when necessary, put Kirk in his place—“You advocate a methodology based on assumption and emotion, not familiarity and knowledge”—he will not hesitate to acknowledge when Kirk is thinking rationally—“The cadet’s logic is sound.” Rationals will listen to anybody who has something useful to offer regarding their choice of ways and means, but they will also disregard anyone who does not. Ideas must stand on their own merits. We are compelled by our very nature to point out errors in argument. Keirsey says:

“In conversation Rationals try to avoid the irrelevant, the trivial, and the redundant. They will not waste words, and while they understand that some redundancy is necessary they still are reluctant to state the obvious, or to repeat themselves on a point, limiting their explanations and definitions because they assume that what is obvious to them is obvious to others.”

My favorite part of the Rationals chapter could be when Keirsey writes: “They will heed the demons if their ideas are fruitful, and ignore the saints if theirs are not.” Oh, so true.

Much as I might sound boastful, NTs are easily the most self-critical of the personality types. We have trouble measuring up to our own standards and are frequently haunted by a sense of teetering on the edge of failure. It is perhaps this vulnerability in particular that I feel Zachary Quinto brought so vividly to life on screen. After relinquishing his command, exposed as compromised, Spock confesses to his father that he is failing to control his anger towards the one who took his mother’s life. He feels that he should be able to control that emotion, to keep the pain in check. That he fails to do so is a source of disappointment and shame.

We prefer to appear unemotional when we communicate. We try to minimize body-language, facial expression and other non-verbals as much as possible to express ourselves in a carefully crafted manner. Sound familiar? Our intention is to be accurate, to get things straight, sort things out, so that we can avoid errors in reasoning. Logic tells us how to avoid such errors. For our own self-image, we gain self-esteem by being ingenious, self-respect by being autonomous and self-confidence by being resolute. We value being calm, trusting reason, yearning for achievement and seeking knowledge. We have an insatiable curiosity about how nature works; complexity itself intrigues us. We are also: abstract, adaptable, analytical, competent, complex, curious, efficient, exacting, experimental, farseeing, flexible, impersonal, intellectual, independent, inventive, logical, open-minded, purposeful, scientific, skeptical, theoretical, systematic, and more.

If this is you, you are not alone. If this is not you, but sounds like someone you know, let this shed some light on their inner workings. There are few who know me that would call me cold, a bit brutal at times, but not cold. To an outsider, however, I can see how I might appear so. I’ll leave you with one last classic line from Spock: “If you eliminate the impossible whatever remains however improbable must be the truth.”

In conclusion, Vulcan is a Rational’s utopia.

Zachary Quinto as Spock

*Quotation at the top taken from Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of the film Star Trek. All other Spock quotations taken directly from film, screenplay by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.

From Gabriel to Sylar: How to Create a Killer

“We’re all at war with ourselves—that’s what it means to be human.” –Sylar, It’s Coming

One great thing about being a writer is the imperative to create worlds to dwell in. We create characters to play with, talk to, fall in love with. The escapes that our audiences retreat to we get to experience twice; we are our own audiences first. I want to write stories about people that I think would be great to know because in the process, the characters become real parts of my life. Then I get to introduce them to the world.

Just recently, I became a fan of the NBC show Heroes. I quickly devoured all three seasons (more than once actually) and while Peter Petrelli is my favorite hero, I give Sylar the award for best part of the show. Watching that incredibly dark villain take shape was so much fun that I just kept thinking: I want one. I want to create a character who is that kind of wrong. I think playing with a character like that will be extremely fun, especially pitting them against my protagonist. There might be a sadist hidden in me somewhere.

So what does it take to create a character as dark and deeply disturbed as Sylar? We begin with Gabriel Gray, a shy, unassuming man whose apartment is filled with books. This speaks to a rich inner life, but perhaps a sense of isolation from the world. He has a talent for intuitively understanding how things work, which initially manifests itself as an ability to fix watches. In I Am Become Death, Gabriel explains: “If you can understand the complexities of a watch you can understand anything, everything, cause, effect, action, reaction.” But more than that, his “ability is not just understanding how things work, there’s a hunger that comes with it to know more, to have more. [He] couldn’t control it and it turned [him] into a killer, a monster.” The understanding alone was not enough of a power. In Six Months Ago, Gabriel tells Chandra Suresh that a part of him always wanted to be special:

“When I was a kid, I used to wish some stranger would come and tell me my family wasn’t really my family. They weren’t bad people, they were just insignificant, and I wanted to be different, special. I wanted to change, a new name, a new life. The watchmaker’s son became a watchmaker. It is so futile and I wanted to be important.”

One key moment is when Chandra responds by telling him that he is important. This is everything he wants to hear. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be special or significant. It’s a natural human desire that most of us share. We want to be important and to make a difference in the world. For so long, Gabriel found himself powerless to break out of his mundane life spent fixing watches. Then he learns that there are people in the world with amazing abilities and his talent for understanding also gives him the power to take those abilities from them. Unfortunately, he has to kill them, fairly gruesomely, in order to do so. (I am intentionally refraining from going in to the exceptions to that rule.) In an interesting turn, the first person Gabriel meets with a special ability doesn’t want it and asks him if he can make it go away. Granted, I’m sure he would have preferred to live, but I digress. Gabriel thinks the man is “broken” for wanting the power to go away. He “fixes” it for him. This is also the first time he calls himself Sylar.

Later, when he goes to Chandra to show off his new ability—telekinesis—he says: “I’m different now. I feel I’ve been given a chance to start over—new life, new identity, new purpose.” These are all the things he said he wanted. Even so, he does not immediately become a relentless killer of people with abilities. In the episode Villains, we see that he feels intense guilt and remorse for what he’s done and attempts to take his own life. He explains, “I’ve done something unforgivable…  A man had something that I wanted, but I took it at a terrible price.” That his suicide attempt fails initially looks like providence and a second chance for him to be a good person. It’s important to recognize that his vision of himself at this point is as a victim. He says, “I have a kind of problem. I guess you could say I’m like addict. I have this overwhelming hunger; I covet the abilities of others.” That Sylar sees himself as weak, as someone with an uncontrollable power, leaves him vulnerable to the malign forces that are plotting against him. They place the prey he covets within his grasp, and he falls, unable to resist the temptation. Sadly, he repeatedly finds himself at the mercy of people who want to manipulate him and is thus unable to find any lasting redemption.

It is the victim mentality that fuels the desire for power. He can never have enough power to feel complete because all of his worth is determined by others. He exists in a state of perpetual powerlessness. An incredible neurosis for someone so supernaturally powerful. But he is never fully in control of his own destiny. All of his attempts at redemption fail because they rely on approval from an outside source. So the best he can do is to feed his homicidal urges willingly because that gives him the illusion of control and fighting against them doesn’t work. I think that makes it easier for us to pity him when he says things like “I want to be a good person.”

Chronologically, all that I’ve outlined happens before the show starts. For the first half of the first season all we see and hear of Sylar are the stories of the carnage he is leaving in his wake. He is a bogeyman, killing and disappearing into the shadows. All we know is that his modus operandi is to slice off the top of people’s heads. We are led to see him as a vicious psychopath. That’s not far off either. He’s killed almost 50 people that we know about by the end of season three. And yet, the first time we get a good look at him is in a flashback. He is sitting at his desk in his shop with his special watchmaker glasses on, looking young and innocent, charming and endearing. (It’s no accident that he’s played by the extremely attractive Zachary Quinto; we do like our bad guys sexy.) The first thing he does is fix Chandra’s watch and then refuse compensation: an act of generosity. So, despite the terror he is causing in the present, we cannot simply write him off as a monster. Zachary said of the character: “He’s definitely somebody that has been overcome by a hunger and overcome by a pursuit for power and for importance that did start a little more innocuously than it evolved into.” He has also said:

“The sad part is he’s well-intentioned. He wants to improve his life. He wants to make a difference. He wants to matter. Through the process of realizing how to do that, he gets blinded and loses himself in the pursuit of it and goes a little crazy—a ‘little’ being an understatement.”

Again, in The Hard Part, he comes to a crossroads. Sylar has a vision of the future and believes he is going to destroy half of New York City. He reaches out for help. He says, “I understood it before: the killing. I had a reason: take what others didn’t deserve. It was natural selection.” But facing an apocalypse that kills half the city in an instant, he cannot grasp a motive. “They mean nothing, they’re innocent, there’s no gain, so why would I do it? What possible reason could I have for killing so many?” His conscience is still active and he sees innocence in the world. So how monstrous is he really? Can an entirely evil character conceive of innocence? Recognize it?

In a truly heartbreaking scene, Gabriel goes to his mother looking for answers and a way out. He expresses a desire to stop himself. Here are the two lines of dialogue that mark the moment when you think everything could have changed:

Gabriel to his mother: Maybe I don’t have to be special—that’s ok to just be a normal watchmaker. Can’t you just tell me that’s enough?

Gabriel’s Mother: Why would I tell you that when I know you can be so much more? If you wanted, you could be president.

(This is like that moment in Revenge of the Sith when Yoda tells Anakin to “let go of all that he fears to lose.” Less than helpful.)

As an audience member, you wish his mother could have told him what he needed to hear. It is clear to us that the life of a watchmaker would have been preferable to the other path laid before him. His mother had the chance to save him and instead put a condition on her love, planting in his mind the belief that he has to be special to be worthy. And not just special, her mention of being president is significant. Not only is it a position of global power, but one attained by winning a popular majority. The country must judge you worthy of that position, declare you valuable. External validation is necessary. So even if he could get to the point where he considered himself special, it would not be enough. That becomes clearer as the scene continues and he tries to show his mother that he is special and that he can do extraordinary things. At first, she is enchanted, but fear quickly takes over and she runs away from him. In the episode I Am Sylar, he tells how he felt in that moment: “I wanted you to die. The way you looked at me, like I was some kind of monster. I felt so small.”

So these are our keys. My philosophy for creating a character like this is take a whole person and start hacking away at them, sort of like Gabriel fracturing himself by creating the alternate persona, Sylar. How does a person respond when they don’t get unconditional love from their parents? How does a person respond when all their attempts at achievement gain them nothing? How does a person respond to feeling powerless? Or powerful? In a world that champions celebrity, people of significance and power, how does an unremarkable person leave a mark? If a person perceives himself as a victim, how will he take his revenge upon the world? How many times will a man attempt to redeem himself when every effort fails? If you strip away everything that someone cares about, how quickly will they fall to the dark side? What is it that keeps some people in check? What happens if you take those limits away? Where is the point of no return?

Let’s also use another one of Zachary’s insights into the character: “I would say we both have a desire to be valued. My desire to be valued is manifested in cultivating relationships with my friends and family. Sylar’s desire to be valued manifests itself… well, in a murderous rampage.”

That’s an amusing statement, but I think what’s most interesting is that it reveals how closely we can brush that dark side within ourselves. How far away is it at the beginning, at that moment when the choice is made? We all have the potential for good and for bad. What happens when we find ourselves incapable of forming relationships with people that will value us? How long can a person endure that kind of isolation? That the desire has the same root is what makes it possible for us to conceive of acting out the darker aspects of ourselves, even if it is only through fiction. Perhaps, hopefully only through fiction.

We all crave love and acceptance. It is easy to believe that the only way to get those things is by being important, special, setting oneself apart, by being different. Then, in the race for power and glory we forget what we were after in the first place. If a child is brought up to believe that the world is a dangerous place, a place to be feared, that everyone is out to get them, and that they will have to fight others to get what they want, that child will become an antagonist for the world. They will see the world as an enemy, an obstacle. Not hard to imagine them judging the world as wrong and themselves as righteous. Think of an arrogance based on contempt versus self-respect.

By exposing the inner workings of Sylar, I have given myself some building blocks to work with for my own character. I think what’s important to remember is that there are many moments in the series that compel you to feel deeply for Sylar. He is conflicted and lost, clearly deeply damaged. But it’s his inner conflict that gives him his humanity. And while he has moments of vicious cruelty and almost unspeakable evil, they are tempered by these moments of attempts at redemption. I think one of the most compelling things about this character is that he is not wholly evil. He is not just a monster. And perhaps what makes him truly scary is that he is recognizable as a man.

Sylar and His Mother

*If you have stayed with me this long, I thank you. Brevity is a skill I have not yet mastered.