Luther and Denial

The BBC has a TV series called Luther. Luther is a psychological crime drama television series starring Idris Elba (from The Wire) as the title character, Detective Chief Inspector John Luther, working for the Serious Crime Unit. Luther is "dazzling, obsessive, possessed - and sometimes dangerous in the violence of his fixations - and he has paid a heavy price for his dedication; he has never been able to prevent himself from being consumed by the darkness of the crimes he deals with". The show has some almost poetry dialogue like this observation about DENIAL from the last episode of series one:

"It turns out people lie to themselves about three things; they view themselves in implausibly positive ways, they think they have far more control over their lives than they actually do and they believe the future will be better than the evidence from the present can possibly justify. But, you're way beyond that now. You are in front of the stand up mirror and lying to yourself isn't going to help anymore. So, please, tell me again, why are you here?"

That could be something we all need to hear at one time or another because the paradox of lying to ourselves is that we do not even know we are doing it. It starts with a simple enough observation "you are way beyond that now" (seeing and starting from where things are) and concludes not with an answer but with a big, important question - why are you here? (not "what can I do to help" but "what do you want to do to help yourself?") Ye gads, maybe I am reading too much into it or maybe it is just me, but that really seems like some smart stuff for a cop show on TV.

Here is a cool video tribute to Season 1 (with a great song used on the show). (Season two begins on September 28.)