Tag: Anthology

Love, Death and Robots is undoubtedly the most valuable gems of Netflix. This is an anthology series which consists of short animated stories and is intended as “animation series for adults”. Netflix proves its purpose of existence by supporting creation of series like Love, Death and Robots because such freedom of expression has yielded some unforgettable creations in the history of storytelling. There are many great and thought-provoking ideas expressed in Love, Death and Robots which will surely tingle your mind, one of them is called as Zima Blue and my #1 favorite. I will be discussing Zima Blue in detail so spoilers ahead.

The story of Zima Blue

Zima Blue is a story of an artist on the quest of creating the ultimate masterpiece of his life. He has invited a reporter – Claire to explain what his next demonstration will be. Through the narration of reporter, we understand that Zima was an ordinary portrait artist who in the search of greater meaning moved from portrait painting to large murals. The murals were filled with some great depictions of the universe and as the murals went on developing, they gradually had a geometric center piece of blue shaded shape which went on getting bigger and bigger with each iteration and finally occupied the whole canvas of the art. This blue was later identified as Zima blue by the people. Further on, the Zima Blue crossed the bounds of canvas to cover the whole sky; after that the Zima Blue creation became so big that it cast its blue shadow on the planet. The whole “planet painted blue” became Zima’s biggest creation which influenced even the people who were not interested in the art.

In order find the real meaning of life and to create such extraordinary masterpieces Claire tells us that Zima went through extreme physical transformations as in “cybernetic transformations”. Zima modified his eyes to see in any known spectrum, he got the polymeric skin to physically experience any worst environment in the universe, now he no longer needed oxygen to breath. Now that people were eager to see Zima’s next creation, he had invited Claire as a medium to the people for explaining what Zima did and the backstory of his ultimate masterpiece.

For the final reveal, Zima Jumps into a swimming pool and gradually disintegrates every part of his body finally revealing to the audience that he was nothing but just a ceramic tile cleaning robot designed by a lady. And audience are in awe. What they were thinking as a human responsible for creation of such thought-provoking arts pieces was actually a self-aware robot evolved from a “ceramic tile-cleaning robot for a swimming pool”.

Before demonstrating this ultimate masterpiece, Zima explains his life journey to Claire. Zima was actually a robot created for simple tile cleaning job in a swimming pool by a smart robot loving lady. After being unsatisfied by its performance, the lady upgraded this robot with the color vision and a brain to define the cleaning strategies for the swimming pool. After the death of lady and being handed over to different owners and thereby its up-gradation, the robot became self-aware and more human-like so that it became impossible for even him to differentiate between him as a robot or human. His evolution in his awareness finally directed him in the search of the meaning of life thereby leading to the creation of such masterpieces.

The “Zima blue” what people had famously identified as his characteristic shade was the first color the robot had sensed which was simply the name given to that shade of ceramic tile in the swimming pool by its manufacturer. When we are looking at the disintegration of Zima into its most fundamental and primitive robotic form, we hear his final words:

“I will immerse myself. And as I do, I will slowly shut down my higher brain functions… unmaking myself… leaving just enough to appreciate my surroundings… to extract some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done. My search for truth is finished at last. I am going home.”

The unfolding of Zima Blue story explained above is important as a personal experience for everyone. Somethings in Zima Blue cannot be experienced in the words. It is what makes the Zima Blue and its writer Alastair Reynolds so great.

Zima Blue points out the most important fact of any conscious being and that is- they are aware of their experiences. Even though nature has some of the physically strongest, fierce creatures already available, we humans are the most powerful beings in the world only because of our consciousness. We humans have relatively the largest footprint of our activities on the world only because we have become aware of what we do and experience and act accordingly.

But what Zima Blue story shows us is that, once the machines or any non-human entity will gain the consciousness, self-awareness, the awareness of the experiences it is having- it will eventually have the urge to search for the reason behind the actions it is doing.

Many people call it as “finding the purpose of life?” as in finding “why we are doing anything?”. We can also categorize similar questions as follows in the same group:

 “Is there any greater outcome from what we are doing right now?”

“Why am I doing this?”

“Am I going to get out of this?” or “When will this end?” (Especially, when the outcomes are not in our favor)

The very nature of we as a human being is that, we are never satisfied with what we have and hence are in constant search for what will bring more pleasure into our life. This search for pleasure has no end hence we remain unsatisfied every time.

Existentialism and Absurdism

The above discussion can be perfectly fitted into the idea of Existentialism. What Zima Blue does excellently is to close the gap between humans and robots through building a bridge of consciousness of existence. Anything that is aware of what it can do, feel and experience is going to think rather question about the ultimate purpose, meaning and value of the acts it is performing.

This question to find the meaning initially generates the confusion, anxiety, restlessness leading to conclude that maybe life is meaningless- that it has no meaning also known as “the existential angst”. There is one interesting concept in existentialism called “Absurdism” highlighting that the life is meaningless and it will get the meaning by the way we define what is the meaning of our life. It’s like saying that “we will be fulfilled with our existence only when we find or define what fulfills us and act on it?” (This may sound confusing as the definition of absurdism is made of paradox itself)

Absurdism says that life is “unfair” anyways (bad things may happen with good people too, rather there is no such thing as good happening or bad happening- whatever will happen will happen) and you just have to find what unfairness you are going to handle throughout your life which can be found out by what you really want to achieve in your life. This goal of achieving something will give you the purpose to go through that unfairness in your life.

There is also one interesting concept in Existentialism called “Authenticity” and a concept called “Existence precedes essence” which somewhat go hand in hand. In existentialism, authenticity is the extent to which a person’s actions align with his ideas, values then whatever may be his surroundings – adverse or supportive. The acts performed by the man define him thereby giving him the essence (defining his nature, explaining why he is so). “How he exists gives the meaning to his existence, how he acts defines who he is” can be the loose explanation of “Existence precedes essence”.

Existence precedes essence

There is a moment in Kung Fu Panda 2 where Po is defeated by Lord Shen and is completely in confusion, fear and anxiety that it was Lord Shen who killed Po’s parents thus he is more powerful than anyone in the world. Po as a Panda cannot defeat Lord Shen as Lord Shen has wiped entire population of Pandas ruthlessly in history. He, at this moment is far away from getting the inner peace.

And in contrast it is the same moment when Po finds inner peace as he learns that it is not the labels assigned to him already that define him so that he can’t defeat Lord Shen rather it is the course of actions he is going to take ahead which will define him. The essence of his being is in the actions he is going to take ahead indicating his ways of existence. He defines himself as fulfilled when he is in the present moment.

“Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but that doesn’t make you who you are. It is the rest of your story. Who you chose to be!”

Soothsayer to Kung Fu Panda

This moment in Kung Fu Panda really gives meaning to the statement “Existence precedes essence” which is the core of existentialism.

In the infinitely infinite expanse of the universe where there are so many things to be done one may get overwhelmed and find themselves useless hence, leading to that restlessness of not achieving something. But, once you find that one thing to live for, once you find that one thing to achieve however small, absurd, funny or useless it may seem to others- you can fulfill your purpose in the life. Probably, this thing will not be that much great for others but your actions to achieve that thing will give it greatness it deserves.

Hence, you will finally find the Zima dismantling into the only thing it was at its start- a simple blue ceramic tile cleaning robot in a swimming pool.        

“I will immerse myself. And as I do, I will slowly shut down my higher brain functions… unmaking myself… leaving just enough to appreciate my surroundings… to extract some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done. My search for truth is finished at last. I am going home.”

Zima in Zima Blue from Love, Death and Robots (Netflix)

Søren Kierkegaard a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author is considered as the first existentialist philosopher, has following beautiful quote which also aligns with why Zima decides to go to its original form while entering into his ultimate moments of his life.

There is a good TED talk by Shaolin Kung Fu Master Shi Heng Yi, who despite of having many great academic and personal achievements chose the way of life of a Shaolin Monk. This talk mostly focuses on how to achieve the purpose of your life and highlights the uniqueness of everyone’s purpose in the expanse of universe.   

Another good TED talk to explore is “How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes?” by Adam Leipzig. In short it is asking yourself these five questions:

 5 Question to Ask Yourself:

1. Who are you?
2. What do you love to do?
3. Who do you do it for?
4. What do those people want or need?
5. How do they change as a result?

He says a good thing in his talk:

The whole premise of the story Zima Blue is greatly aligned with finding the purpose of life, finding the meaning of life which are greatly the interests of the Existentialism. Existentialism also explains why many great people in the history of the humanity are not associated with greatness as an executioner of bunch of great things; Rather almost all of the great personalities in the human history are the people who did one thing in a great way as they found their purpose, their meaning of life in that one thing. The purpose they found in that thing made them to endure anything in their life and this might the way in which we can find our meaning, our purpose in this chaos.

Further links and references:

1. Pictures of Zima Blue from Love Death + Robots episode (season 1, episode 14)
2. Søren Kierkegaard – Image credit –La Biblioteca Real de Dinamarca
3. Master Shi Heng Yi – 5 hindrances to self-mastery | Shi Heng YI | TEDxVitosha
4. Adam Leipzig – Image credit – Julia de Boer
5. How to know your life purpose in 5 minutes | Adam Leipzig | TEDxMalibu
6. Existentialism- Wikipedia
7. Love Death + Robots by Netflix