Spoiler Alert:  If you plan on binge watching the final season of “Game of Thrones,”  do not proceed.  Or if you have never watched a single episode of the show, this post will probably make little or no sense.

Proficiency in the use of synchronicity as a tool of imagination requires us  to constantly ask two questions as we interact with our environment.

• What is this trying to tell me?
• How might it be relevant to something I hope to better understand or address?

Sometimes, it takes the intersection of what appears to be two totally unrelated events to bring clarity to the message.  Therefore, as I mentally processed last night’s airing of Season 8, Episode 5 of HBO’s  “Game of Thrones,”  especially the final scene in which Arya Stark surveys the remnants of Kings Landings, it had a ring of familiarity.  Where had I seen this before?  Actually, it was just six days ago.  Episode 1 of HBO’s mini-series, “Chernobyl.”  Everything was the same.  Fire.  Mass destruction. Disfigured bodies.  And the prospect of many more innocent victims who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  What was this trying to tell me?  Why was it important?

What if George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” was not about the rulers of the Seven Kingdoms and dragons, but the leaders of modern day “kingdoms” and nuclear weapons?  Bear with me.  When the dragons first appear, they are solely owned and controlled by Daenerys Targaryen, who believes she is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne from which she will rule the Seven Kingdoms.  Her dragons provide a tactical advantage in times of war and prestige in times of peace.  Sound familiar?  In 1945, the United States was the sole possessor of atomic weapons which it used to its advantage at the end of World War II.   In the same way Harry Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as demonstrations of allied military dominance, Daenerys occasionally employed her dragons to solidify her power and claim to the Iron Throne.

The United States retained the status of sole atomic power until August 1949 when the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear weapons test.  Since then, such armaments have not again been utilized on the battlefield, but have become a symbol of prestige.  Just ask Kim Jung Un.  Yet, as nations increased the destructive power of their nuclear arsenals, the potential for mutual mass destruction has kept a cold nuclear standoff from heating up.  But that strategy only works if those who control the power wield it from a position of sanity, respect and with an understanding of the consequences once the genie is out of the bottle.

And that is where Martin and HBO have taken us in Season 8.  When the White Walkers appropriate one of Daenerys’ dragons for their purpose of eradicating any memory of the past, we see what happens when unlimited capacity to inflict destruction and pain falls into the wrong hands.  Terrifying.  But not as terrifying as what we observed last night.  Daenerys, initially driven by good intentions to become a loved and compassionate ruler, when overcome with grief or a desire to seek revenge against her foes, loses her perspective.

As Daenerys overlooks Kings Landing from her perch on Drogon, the last surviving dragon, you can almost see her thought process.  “What good is a dragon if you can’t use him?”  And use him she did.  And for the second time in a week, HBO reminded us of what can happen when we take the status quo for granted.  No one had an accurate assessment of the damage to life and property of an explosion in a nuclear power plant until it happened at Chernobyl.  Perhaps Martin and HBO recognized there will be no documentarians left to make a similar mini-series about the devastating effects of nuclear warfare after it occurs.  So just maybe, they decided to make one while there was still time and called it, “Game of Thrones.”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP