SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the “Love, Death + Robots” series on Netflix.

Last night, my friends and I discussed the concept of Zima Blue on an unconventional tangent. Zima Blue is Episode 14 from the Netflix Series “Love Death + Robots”. If you haven’t watched this series, I humbly request and strongly recommend you to consider watching this one. The episodes are all independent stories unrelated to each other, and each episode is roughly 15 minutes in length.

Here’s a fantastic trailer. You might want to reduce the volume by a couple units:



Every episode is unique and special; they are all a jarring escapade from routine life. Some or the other way, most episodes gave me atleast something to think about. However, Episode 14 (Zima Blue), left me in absolute turmoil and chaos. I remember tossing around in bed that night, my stomach sinking in multiple times from a mentally exhausting and haunting deliberation of the underlying meaning.

Skip this paragraph if you don’t want a revisit of the episode:
The world thinks that Zima, a famous and acclaimed artist, is a human who over time has undergone radical biological procedures which enabled him to tolerate extreme environments without the burden of a protective suit. His eyes could see in any known spectrum, and he no longer breathed oxygen. Zima is in search of his true purpose and has been pushing the boundaries of science and art to find it. Zima’s murals begin featuring a blue square in the middle of the canvas. With every new piece he creates, this blue square takes a larger portion of the paintings, until Zima unveils an entirely blue mural. Zima Blue. Zima explains that his search for truth was outward, into the cosmos and he soon realized that his focus should turn inward, looking for his origins. Zima reveals that he is actually not a human, but a robot, which was built to clean a swimming pool. That was the very first moment that it had enough intelligence to perceive its surroundings and extract some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done. For his last piece of art, Zima slowly disintegrates himself in a swimming pool, finally becomes a little robot, and starts cleaning it.

My Interpretation

To me, the blue square represents an unconventional means to a conventional end. The painting is a conventional end; the blue square is the unconventional means. The conventional perspective will find the blue square juxtaposed against the painting of the cosmos. It’s as if the blue square is destroying the conventional perspective. But, through a deeply personal and non-conventional perspective, Zima seems to find so much meaning in the presence of this shade of blue that he keeps drawing this square larger and larger.

To me, Zima committed suicide for his final piece. This suicide, is slightly nuanced though. It did not end his life, rather, it was the suicide of the external personality that Zima had become in the eyes of the audience. However, that’s not the crux of my sleepless nights; I’m more interested in chancing upon a Zima Blue moment.
Think of it this way: What conspired Zima to paint a blue square in the middle of the canvas? Why did he feel the need to do it?
What is more haunting is the fact that Zima had to commit suicide to finally find ‘meaning’, whatever sense he makes out of that word! What does this represent? You have to burn something down to build something back from the base? That you have to fall once to finally rise? That you have to un-make yourself to finally … make yourself?
I’ve consistently thought about how to find my own personal Zima-Blue moments - which are moments where one realises some deeply-personal, non-conventional element to their life. I hoped that after getting Zima-Blued, I too could extract some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done.

Getting Zima-Blued

Zima-Blue moments must come naturally. I have two reasons why getting Zima-Blued cannot be contrived or forced:

  1. I know most of the conventional(C)/non-conventional(NC) means to most ends. If I knew that taking a certain means will land me up in a certain end, I would have chosen the best option already. There can only be two sets in which my Zima-Blue moment lies - either (a) I’m taking the NC path where the C path had to be taken, or (b) vice versa. Our schooling/upbringing programs us to behave in certain C ways. It is only through our experiences that we scrutinise all of these C behaviours and choose whether to keep acting on them or choose an alternative NC path towards a selected end. So we are already taking care of (a). This means that the only paths we failed to take (b), are the ones where we were initially programmed to do C, and we chose to perform C even after scrutinising it personally. In other words, we didn’t even consider that we can ever take these NC paths, because we calculated that these simply don’t exist.
  2. If I can contrive getting Zima-Blued, I will be able to contend that all my non-conventional actions are in pursuit of finding my Zima-Blue moment. That’s a recipe for unbridled chaos. I can kick a dog and say that I wanted to do this because maybe I’ll find meaning in that. I’m not ready for either the philosphical pain or the moral weight that I will endure while trying to live this way.

When we are programmed with a C path, and through scrutiny we realise that we must perform C only, we create a bias. This is one solid reason why Zima-Blue moments cannot be contrived, because the Zima-Blue is on the NC path, but I’m consistently making a bias towards the C path. Worst thing about biases, we don’t get to know about it unless someone explicitly points it out.
So essentially, what we want to do is to increase the probability of choosing the NC path, given that in reality we would choose the C path.
In short:
Getting Zima-Blued = P(A|B)
A is “acted or chose NC”
B is “originally intending to choose C”

Under normal circumstances, this probability is really low because we have already calculated that the C path brings more returns, or guarantees lesser losses. But when people engage in experiences singificantly out of their usual life, they increase their chances of hitting this probability. For example, many people claim that travelling around the world changed their life. Or when people who are used to desk-jobs are thrown into the oceans with scuba-diving equipment, they feel a strange sense of insignificance and peace. Maybe they just came across a NC path.

Intoxication

I never thought I’d ever find a conclusive, logical reason to even consider intoxication/drugs as an activity I would endorse.
Since getting Zima-Blued implies acting differently than our biases, it is easy to conclude that while intoxicated, people think and perceive the world in unconventional ways. This means that even though they would always intend the C path, their thoughts and actions will become corrupted, leading to actualisation of the NC path. Choosing this NC path and not acting as per our biases, is a gentle un-making, a mini-suicide of our personal self, something Zima Blue so deeply signified. So, (the responsible use of) drugs could actually provide a neat little method to increase our chances of getting Zima-Blued.
One needs to loosen up just enough to steer away from the conventional routes. However, it is also absolutely important to have a trustworthy friend/guide on the side to help us not steer off a cliff.

May your trip be good, for you shall loosen up the mood. Your friendly guide won’t bellow, so Zima-Blue doth flow.
– Ancient Indian proverb