‘Dark Matter’ and Hollywood Myths About Work

If you’re a sci-fi fan like me, you know that tomorrow is the season finale of ‘Dark Matter’ on Apple TV. Based on the Blake Crouch book, ‘Dark Matter’ is a thriller about a physicist who is transported into a parallel universe and battles to return to his original world and reunite with his family.

First, let me say, I’m a Blake Crouch fan. I’ve read ‘Upgrade,’ ‘Recursion,’ ‘Dark Matter,’ ‘Abandon,’ and the Wayward Pines trilogy. But while there are exciting scenes and interesting questions posed in this book/show, beneath the surface of this sweeping sci-fi epic are some concerning messages about work.

It’s just a story, right? But what we believe about work is critical. It impacts how we make decisions about our careers, families, time, and values. And for business leaders, it shapes the cultures of the companies that we build and the way we treat employees and customers.

Here are four thematic messages that I feel ‘Dark Matter’ gets wrong:

1. You must make a moral choice between work or family.

In ‘Dark Matter,’ the hero discovers that a single decision in his past caused massive changes in the way his life turned out. In one universe, he chose to ignore relationships and dedicate himself to his work, becoming a famous but lonely scientist. In another universe, he dedicated himself to his family, working a 'meaningless' job so he could have loving relationships. The story goes to great lengths to demonstrate that the work path was the ‘bad’ choice and the ‘family’ path was the ‘good’ life.

Are there hard choices that have to be made related to work and family? Absolutely. But God designed us to work, to transform our world and better our communities through creativity, effort, and collaboration. Work is not the enemy and can be positive for your family. It provides safety and care. And a major part of parenting is teaching your kids about the value of work, solving problems, and using their talents to make an impact.

Yes, our time is limited, so you can't give everything to both, but this is not a moral binary choice. Love your family and pursue meaningful work.

2. You can’t be truly successful in your career if you prioritize your family.

3. True success involves a massive world-changing accomplishment.

These two points play out together in ‘Dark Matter.’ The hero only achieves fame and success in the universe where he spends 24-7 in his lab, sleeping on the floor and working all the time. In contrast, when he prioritizes family, he becomes a low-level professor at a community college where the students ignore his lectures and his work is portrayed as futile.

If work can be positive for your family, the corresponding truth is that family is beneficial to performing valuable work! Human beings cannot work 24-7 effectively. And worthwhile work impacts people’s lives, so you will be better at it when you have great relationships, downtime and rest, and a variety of life experiences that help you understand others.

Additionally, our work does not need to be famous to be important. Success in work is not measured by scale or whether your business reaches ‘unicorn’ status, but rather how you impact people. If you own a small-town bakery and it never franchises or goes public, but you know your customers by name, bake cakes for their weddings, and deeply touch lives … you have done seriously significant work.

4. Your career and your family hinge on a few major choices.

In ‘Dark Matter,’ the entire plot is based on the hero getting back to the universe with the ‘one right choice’ that changed his whole life.

That kind of mindset is a recipe for decision lock. Are there choices in life that are larger than others? Where you go to college, whether you get married? Yes. But while big decisions matter, it is the small daily choices that shape who you are. The choices you make about how you study in college or how you invest in your marriage often have a bigger impact over time than your initial choice.

In addition, past choices don’t doom you and new choices are always possible. I don’t want to be glib about this, as there are certainly some choices with life-altering consequences and I recognize not all of us have the same amount of agency to make choices. But as a Christian, I believe that God works through even the hard things in our life and graciously offers to bring beauty and redemption in every new day. Focus on making the next choice.

I love sci-fi because it brings important themes to light. ‘Dark Matter’ is a super fun show to watch, and it spawns lots of great discussion. But watch it with a critical eye. Because the work you do is important, and our world needs you to think rightly about it.