The day before yesterday I watched a film and yesterday I started the series on it. It’s about a drug, a small, glassy tablet that completely accesses the brain power for twelve hours. What would a brain on 100% use probably achieve?

Of course, the idea of life must be that we should evaluate ourselves, that we could do more, that we could be better than we are, that we should strive for something higher than we are, that we are deficient. If all this were not accepted, we would already be high, high on life. But that’s not the world we live in.

So this drug is very tempting. Maybe then there would be no more sickness, because all physical and mental problems could be solved immediately. No injustice, because everything would be dealt with more intelligently, by everyone, globally. No resentment, because the brain would then perhaps no longer know any boundaries and could recognize that only the common happiness grants single happiness.

In both the film and the series, the main protagonist is a man around thirty who has failed in life. One is a writer, the other one a musician. It’s clear for both of them: they don’t want to live their lives like that. They would rather swallow an unknown pill that promises everything but perhaps only contains the opposite.

In film and series it quickly turns out that this pill works, the brain power is simply top notch. What becomes of the two humans? One piles up money on the stock exchange and wants to become president. The other helps as a detective for the FBI. How can it be a logical conclusion for writers of these stories that both of them don’t want to have anything to do with art anymore?

Movies are dangerous. We believe the actors. They show us how we should live; what is right, and then we even believe we want it that way. Artists are lost existences. Brokers and agents are people who make something of their lives.

We simply have to realize again and again that all this doesn’t need be true. But that many, many believe it.