BLS_Pro

Was there ever any indication that Eurus was behind Ajay escaping or putting him on the trail of Mary or The that hers?

You know - we've mentioned it here, and it registered some in the back of my brain. Eurus says, of Moriarty: "Did you know his brother was a station master? I think he was always jealous." I always focused on the first half, smiling at the little bit of canon cuteness there. I didn't really consciously make the connection about the second half of the statement. Apparently Moriarty was jealous of his brother, the same way Eurus was jealous of her brother (or she is projecting her own jealousy onto Moriarty).

I understood it to be the same scene as we hear again in the middle of the episode. Even Ariane's transcript indicates this: "(We cut to the first scene we saw in the episode.)"

As much as I am gobsmacked by the astronomical levels of integration in S4, I agree that Sherlock had a dearth of explained deductions like the one referenced above (love that video too). That is one of the missed opportunities of TFP. Sherlock didn't deduce any of the reveals. He didn't knock down his walls of repressed memories on his own (imagine what the director and editors could have done with sequences like that) etc. He is spoon-fed everything by -others-. He doesn't do any of the work -about- himself by himself. It is all done for him: Oh, btw you had a sister. Oh, btw you didn't have a dog Oh, btw you had a best friend Oh, btw your sister killed him Oh, btw you blocked all of this out Oh, btw ... etc Sigh.

Another way of understanding the existentialism at the heart of the show, and Eurus in particular, is to consider another recent existentialism-influenced film: Gravity. Eurus - and John in TLD, and Sherlock at the beginning of the series - are like Sandra Bullock. They have lost someone - and thus lost their entire world. It has no meaning to them any more. They are alone and detached from the rest of the world. This isolation thrusts them into a chaotic and horror filled world one is constantly, blindly scrambling to try to escape - to find some meaning in it all when there seems to be no meaning to it whatsoever - just random, mindless suffering. Their journey, like Bullock's, is back to people: to love and empathy and being with others. It is returning to earth. It is landing the plane.

More Existentialism References: According to existentialism, the single characteristic which separates "humans" from "things" is free will. A thing has a determined identity. "It is what it is". It is a "brute object". Humans, on the other hand, supposedly do not have a determined identity. Their identity is "ambiguous" - ie they can change it by an act of their will. Their identity is made rather than determined. So the only question is: will they make themselves - or will they allow themselves to be made? Will they be human and shape their own identity - or will they abandon their humanity and allow others to shape them instead, allow others to dictate and determine their shape. Will they be "human" or will they be a "thing"? "Opt-in ignorance" - what existentialism calls self-deception - is the attempt to be a thing. It is to blind one's self to the truth and thus let one's fate be determined by that which one seeks to evade. Essentially it is a reverse Pinocchio syndrome. It is the boy who wants to be a puppet. That is what we have in Sherlock. He has hidden from himself so many truths. He has deceived himself about so many things. And, in doing so, he has left himself at their mercy, to be formed and shaped by those "external forces" without his knowledge - without his will. As Mycroft indicates, Sherlock didn't know why, but his every action, and everything he became, was because of that which he had tried to evade. He did not make himself. He let himself be made. He wished himself to be a thing and became one. It is the same act as CAM and Smith and Moriarty - the destruction of treating people as things. But this destruction is self-inflicted. It is suicide rather than murder.

More Existential References: Lies - especially to one's self - are a person not being "authentic". Sartre's novels involve characters who base their actions, not on truth - not on their understanding of reality - but on "external pressures - the pressure to appear to be a certain kind of person, to ignore one's own moral and aesthetic objections" etc in order to have "a more comfortable existence." His novels also "include characters who do not understand their own reasons for acting, or who ignore crucial facts about their own lives in order to avoid uncomfortable truths". Sounds familiar, eh? ;) The existentialist view of authenticity is derived from the fact that humans are different from things. Things just "are what they are". They have no meaning. Humans -create- meaning. They give meaning to everything. And this act of creation is not an automatic process. It is an act of free will (which is why "things" can't do it - they have no will. They have no ability to "choose". They simple "are"). Creating is an act of freedom. To be of "bad faith" is to abandon that freedom. To kill it. To kill one's self. To be inauthentic is to treat one's self as a thing. It is to give up one's will. It is no different - and no less destructive - then when others make people into things. It is the same practice but done to one's self. It is self-immolation - self-destruction. One of the examples given in relation to Sartre's concept is a woman who thinks "just as a matter of fact" that she is a coward. With that statement, the woman is accepting a deterministic view of herself - that she has no choice. She is merely a thing - that she has no agency. Such a woman is excluding from her view the ability to transform her existence through changed ways of behaving. Such "bad faith" is a denial of "transcendence" ie a denial of the existence of her freedom to choose. The same can be said of Sherlock asserting himself to be a sociopath. It is him accepting determinism - the Appointment in Sumarra. He is fated to be what he is - he has no choice. But he is also questioning that fact - beginning to see he does not have to be the way he is. He can change his destination and go to Sumatra instead. This is what Satre identifies as a "self-recovery of being which has been previously corrupted" which "we shall call authenticity". That last sentence is the entirety of the plot of TFP. It is Sherlock's recovery of himself - from that which had been previously "corrupted" - a term the writers explicitly reference in TLD. Holy fricken cow! 'Deep waters' from the writers indeed. Their levels of integration are truly MINDBOGGLING.

More Existential References: In the back of my mind, I wondered why the writers chose "Faith" as the name of Smith's daughter. Now I know. In my post to Inge in a different thread, I made reference to a liar. And that triggered a memory for me: One of the things the existentialist Sartre is famous for is an analysis of "self-deception" or "bad faith" ie false faith. That is certainly what Eurus plays in TLD. But more importantly, existentially "bad faith" is a reference to people being of "two minds" (the definition meaning "double mindedness or double heartedness") in contradiction with one another, but both existing within the same person. That certainly describes Eurus the adult and Eurus the little girl trapped on a plane. They are the same person, with the little girl knowing/feeling the truth of existential reality (she knows she needs Sherlock love), while the adult has deceived herself into believing it is not the truth (she thinks she doesn't need anyone's love). In this way, she is a mirror of Sherlock throughout the series. He had deceived himself into believing he didn't want or need love, but realized (thru John, and the rediscovery of Eurus) that he truly does want and need it.

The reference to exclamation points was to those included in the comments you made to me, not elsewhere. But that's immaterial now, for we have what we need to continue the discussion: Thank you for answering my question. To recap, so no one has to search back through all the posts to find the Q&A: The question (which was repeated in #455) is in bold below: *Rises hand* This! It's not selfish. Sometimes it's a matter of self-preservation. I'm not talking about psychology books, I'm talking about me and my own experience. Obviously you disagree. I'll note, however, you haven't identified why you claim the above supposedly is not selfish ie how the "self-preservation" you identify above is "selfless". The standard is himself. He doesn't want to feel "so much pain". You don't even reference anyone else in the above example. So how is that specific example about others and not himself? And the answer you posted was: First, I would disagree with your characterization of Sherlock's motives in HLV. But for the sake of the argument, I'll accept it without dispute. It doesn't make a difference, one way or the other, to my point. Second, I agree that Sherlock's actions in TLD are no longer ego driven. In fact, my argument is that the conclusion of T6T is what causes Sherlock to finally change his standard from ego to empathy - and that TLD is the concretization of this change (and his 'soldiering' in TFP is the evidence that it is a permanent change). Third, I would again disagree with your characterization of Sherlock as he supposedly 'waits' to be struck by the bullet. But, since that disagreement doesn't affect my argument, I will again not dispute it. To points A and C I'll simply note - as I noted to others who answered in a similar fashion - that these, different, examples do not address the question about how bedelia's specific example is not one of "selfishness" but one of selflessness. That was my question - and to this date it remains unanswered by anyone. As I also previously noted, the question is not whether Sherlock can act on ego or empathy. There is no dispute there. We agree. He can and does both (though there is certainly not even close to parity between the number of instances of one compared to the other). No. The question is: which is Sherlock's standard? And before TLD, his standard was ego. Just as a liar occasionally telling the truth doesn't make him any less a liar - doesn't make him an honest man, because honesty is not his standard - so, too, an egotist occasionally being altruistic doesn't make him any less an egotist. It doesn't make him an altruist, because others are not his standard. Finally, as I have noted on multiple occasions, Sherlock is not suffering from a mental 'condition'. Sociopath is what he chooses to be (which is why we call it a "standard"). It is not something beyond his control (not some illness - ie not some "disorder"). Sociopath is his moral choice. Upholding it as his standard is what made him a "monster" - a "bad man" as Moffit put it. Making a different moral choice - choosing empathy - love - others - as his standard (after T6T) - is what completed his moral journey. It is why Lastrade declares him to be a "good man" at the end of TFP. I hope that serves to explain my position now.

And of course, there is essentially the entirety of TLD (in regard to Mary's "case" for Sherlock), right down to its title.

Those are good ones.

LOL! Well, that's the writers. I mean the characters. :D

"Inert: having no inherent power of action, motion or resistance (as opposed to active)" ie it doesn't do anything. An "answer" which doesn't identify the question to which it is supposedly responding doesn't do anything. It isn't right. It isn't wrong. It isn't informative. It isn't....etc. In other words, it doesn't serve its intended function. Absent the connection, it isn't recognized as an answer. It is inert. That is why I asked if it was a stand alone statement or was supposedly a rebuttal to some other post. If the latter, which one? And that is a question you still have yet to answer. As such, the "arguments" remain inert. Again, which "straightforward question" were you supposedly answering? I asked multiple questions and made multiple statements. I still don't know which one you are referencing because - as I originally said and have repeated since - your statement doesn't identify one. That is why I asked the question. I find it truly fascinating that so many here have projected such passion and pathos (along with so many accusations) onto a simple and straightforward question and the explanation of why it was asked. Inge - you didn't quote me. You didn't direct the comment to anyone - let alone to me specifically. Given the subject matter of your post I suspected, but could not begin to tell by your post (since others had spoken on the topic as well, not just myself), that you were somehow responding to something I had said. That suspicion is why I posted to you at all - so as not to ignore your entreaty, if indeed that was the post's intended purpose. But since your statements didn't contradict any argument I had presented nor seem to answer any of the questions I had actually asked, I ultimately had no way of knowing if you were responding to me, to someone else, or to no one at all. Thus my question. Now, you seem to indicate your post was directed at me, that you were trying to engage me in a discussion about something I supposedly 'asked', and that you had offered an answer to it. If that was your intent, then I just need the answer to the simple question I asked and we can proceed to fulfill your intention - without all the "drama" and exclamation points.

Besides Redbeard, what other instances in the entire series are there of people corrupting/deleting memories (intentionally or not) ie trying to create "better stories" to replace the truth? Obviously there is Smith at the beginning of TLD. There is the rewriting (at the beginning of T6T) of what happened to CAM. There is Sherlock, in TGG, 'deleting' from his mind 'unimportant' facts like the Earth revolving around the Sun. There is the direct analogy to Redbeard in Hound, misremembering a man as a dog. There is Mary lying about her past as an "assassin" (thru S3). And there is Moriarty's attempt to remake Sherlock's achievements as fraud in TRF. Any others?

Understood. PM it is. Thank you.