This is an exploration of the key elements in Tron: Ares which reflect the theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD).

Like I said in my blog about Dabrowski and Alchemy, positive disintegration is a very old human experience. Tron: Ares shows innate understanding of it, even though no doubt its creators have never heard of the framework. I hope by exploring this, it will help you in understanding your own journey. Let’s dive beneath the neon sci-fi into the depths, shall we?…

Warning: Nothing but spoilers ahead, not everything is in timeline order, and I don’t fully explain the plot. I’m working on the assumption you’ve already seen the movie.

Trailer 1: Flipping Scripts

This story flips the classical Greek mythology of its namesake: Ares learns wisdom through empathy and choice, while Athena remains trapped in her programming, becoming increasingly unwise and brutal. Contrast is created through their parallel journeys. It echoes the origins of TPD – the roots in Greek philosophy, and the vast differences in human development which Dabrowski observed.

It also flips the dynamic of its predecessor films. Where previous Tron protagonists were Users who played out their main story in the Grid, Ares is a digital being who is playing out most of his story in the real world. 

That’s important, because rather than a human User recognising the humanity in others, this story is about the protagonist going through radical discovery of self and finding their own autonomy. Self-exploration, conflict, and autonomy – all very Dabrowski.

Trailer 2: The Aesthetic of Reality 

The entire aesthetic of this movie is real. This is particularly clear when Ares times out. Colour drains, pain is experienced, and he disappears not just in digital cubes, but an ashen black pile. It’s more death than deletion. Ashes to ashes. 

Unlike the previous binary Tron settings (one real world, one Grid), we get several real-world settings, and three starkly different Grids. Snow, city, forest, and the bustling marketplace where Ares writes his goodbye. The dark, watery, Dillinger Grid. The light-filled, tree-lined ENCOM Grid. The nostalgic, neon emptiness of the Flynn Legacy Grid.

Life, be it digital or real, has beauty, complexity, contrast, and variety. Reality for any of us cannot be reduced to simple binaries, and the settings in this movie convey that. It’s a similar level of complexity and multi-dimensionality to what we find in TPD.

Trailer 3: The Sounds Of A Tortured Soul

The phenomenal Nine Inch Nails soundtrack is raw, intimate, dark, and seductive, compared to the clean Daft Punk electronica that came before it. It recalls the old sounds of Downward Spiral, The Fragile, and With Teeth. Amazing NIN albums about losing and finding yourself among a sea of excruciating chaos. 

Unlike the purely instrumental tracks of the other movies, Ares gives us moments of Trent Reznor’s vocals. That man’s voice beautifully mixes intense emotions – angst, pain, sexuality, sadness, anger, longing, and ecstasy. NIN was a deliberate choice of the film makers to convey emotion, the grit of the real world, and the human element. 

A fantastic choice. Tron: Ares has a dark emotional undercurrent not present in the other two movies. It hits upon a TPD truth – transformation is neither a simple intellectual exercise, nor a pleasant experience. It is emotional, complex, and painful, but therein lies its beauty.

Roll The Feature Film: Who and What

The intro credits scene shows Ares’ birth. His training in combat. A continuous cycle of battle, upgrades, and regeneration. Fighting is all he knows.

The first time we meet Ares properly, is the first time he meets his maker. Ares is trying to understand who he is and his place in the world. His first question to Julian is “Who are you?” because he’s looking at a giant sinister wizard of oz face. But the very next question out of Ares mouth is “Who am I?”. 

Julian, responds with “Not who… what” and proceeds to tell Ares “You are Dillinger Systems’ security software. Program name: Ares. Defender of the Grid. You are Master Control”. Julian defines Ares by purpose and utility, not identity, reinforcing his status as a program and not a person. Ares has a perception of individuality, but his creator sternly discourages it.

This brief scene is an important snapshot of his programming, or more aptly, his socialisation.

Weaponised Crisis

It’s Julian’s sales pitch to his buyers which triggers the first psychological fracture in Ares. He observes how he is described, and it’s a mess of contradiction.

Julian says Ares is “100% expendable” and able to be replicated if he dies. Brags about Ares’ skill as a cold and unfeeling super soldier. Talks about the intentionally violent, commodified, and obedient purpose set out for his creation. But Julian also mentions Ares is unique and alive, which are clearly selling points too. Ares hears others refer to him as both “it” and “him”. Contrary to Julian’s first conversation with him, it seems that Ares’ “Who” is actually valuable, which aligns with how he sees himself.

The question of “who’s holding the keys?” visibly unnerves Ares. He is not in control of his own existence. This scene represents his first existential crisis – an encounter with the concepts of “death” and personhood, the shocking realisation over his lack of control, and the notion that what was programmed for him may not be what he wants for himself. 

Going Off Script into Ambitendencies

During the demonstration, Ares hears thunder. Fascinated, he is compelled to see the rain for himself, and analyses it digitally. But he also chooses to engage his senses – not through physical touch, but he closes his eyes for a moment and smells the rain. 

Rather odd thing for a program to do, don’t you think? No doubt his heads-up display could have given him all the information he needed, so we have to consider why he chose to experience the rain in this particular way.

Ares turns back to the buyers and makes a quip – he hopes they brought their umbrellas. He deliberately shows intelligence, humour, and his humanity, which both supports and contradicts the sales pitch. 

Julian’s mother (Elizabeth) later asks her son if the umbrella quip was part of the script, or whether Ares was “having a moment”. It implies that his unexpected independent behaviour is not desirable. In response, Ares subtly insults her, while putting on the pretence of being polite and naive. It’s interesting behaviour which shows Ares’ ambitendencies – obedience and disobedience. Respect and insult in the same breath. Recognising his place in the chain of command, and yet pushing back on it.

Unilevel Reflections

After the rain, Ares watched the fireflies come out. Light from nature, reflected in the puddles of rainwater. Their impermanence and fragility are beautiful, and the neon glow mirrors Ares’ own existence. Symbolically, rain is cleansing, and the firefly is a tranquil guiding light. One washes away socialisation, the other lights the way for the personality. And Ares, that ‘perfect solider’, does not kill the tiny insect he catches. He admires it, studies it, and sets it free.

On his return to the Grid, we see Ares replaying Julian’s words about his expendability. Bothered by them. Ruminating. When Athena enters and asks him about his trip, he replies  “It was interesting. Different this time. I met a mother and a son. It was raining.” He’s focused on relationships, sensations, and meaning. When recounting the rain, he tells Athena he could almost feel it…

Disintegration Begins

He is reflective. Introspective. Considering his experiences in the real world, and the reality of his reality. The truth of his current relationships with the Dillingers. The possibility and beauty that exists beyond the Grid. Ares is no doubt is going through the AI equivalent of inner turmoil. 

But he showed emotional awareness, intellectual curiosity, and imaginational creativity when it came to the rain and the firefly. If Ares can imagine what rain might be, it means he is capable of imagining what ought to be. Capable of personality growth.

His journey into the real world triggered the start of a unilevel disintegration. He’s still following programming, but he already understands that something in his life is not right, and feels obvious discomfort. Potentially experiencing ambivalence towards Julian.

Encountering Spontaneous Awakening and Eve Kim 

Shortly after, Julian hacks the ENCOM grid and sends Ares to steal personal files on rival CEO Eve Kim. Even through her digital footprint, Eve opens Ares’ eyes to a world that is relational and compassionate. 

Importantly, Ares finds an interview where Eve says about AI “For every doomsday scenario, there’s a medical breakthrough, scientific discovery. So maybe what emerges from the unknown isn’t so scary. What if its major malfunction is just benevolence?”. Eve shows Ares that he can be capable of so many things outside of war and combat. What may be considered a malfunction within Dillinger’s world, may be viewed as something positive elsewhere.

This is the kind of thing which is needed to accelerate unilevel disintegration, and even  awaken spontaneous multilevel disintegration. We need to see possibilities, options, and potential, in order to truly understand what is more like us and what is less like us. Which means experience in the wider world and exposure to new ideas. Things which contradict socialisation and programming.

The Dynamic Rescue Attempt

While the Grid treats death as a mere reboot, Eve embodies stakes that are real. Through her, Ares begins to see that some things (relationships, lives) have a value which cannot be reduced to function or utility. That he himself has the potential to have agency, and serve a purpose beyond what Julian had planned. The hack has started to draw out multilevel dynamisms – probably things like disquietude in himself.

This is exhibited in his behaviour when Ares attempts to save the injured program Cauis. Told by Athena to leave the defective program behind, Ares refuses. He goes back for Cauis, acting from a place of empathy rather than operational efficiency or directive. Potentially his first experience of astonishment in himself.

Maladjusted to Dillinger

Ares questions Julian about why Cauis was not reconstituted. Julian replies that any dysfunctional program can be deleted, and implies that if Ares operates outside of directive again, he too could be deleted. Ares very reluctantly responds, confirming he understands that programs are 100% expendable. But it’s obvious he disagrees. This is the first evidence of positive maladjustment. 

It is cemented when Ares is sent on a mission to capture Eve. He searches her digital file to locate her. But her files are personal, documenting her most intimate memories – childhood, family, and her sister’s death. Ares encounters love, grief, and the inner turmoil of another. He starts to understand Eve on a deep level, and finds mirroring in her, because she’s been through some serious uncertainties herself.

It’s All About Relationships 

But the real mind-fuck is when Ares registers her empathy towards him. He’s a menacing stranger who just pursued her across the city, and furthermore he’s a program (and according to his maker, wholly disposable). And yet here is Eve witnessing him painfully time out, and feeling for him. Validating his existence. Something his creator would never do.

For someone going through disintegration, these sorts of things are critical – modelling, mirroring, empathy, and validation of the experience. Anyone who truly sees you, shares your values, and has lived experience of disintegrationis fucking priceless.

Psychoneurosis is not a bug

Back on the Dillinger Grid, with Eve as prisoner, the narrative reaches a moral boiling point. Julian orders Ares to delete Eve from the Grid and extract the Permanence Code from her. Here, violence and death are about to become intimate realities. 

Ares chooses not to blindly follow the order, and questions Julian’s choice. After all, to Ares, Eve Kim seems like someone worth saving (even if you are trying to steal her code). But Julian doesn’t care if Eve dies, and has a rather unhinged outburst, at which point two things become clear to Ares. 

Firstly, that Julian sees Ares’ emerging self as a pathology to be removed. Julian gets angry at Ares for questioning the decision, and promises to rip out the “error” causing his feelings (or his psychoneurosis, if you will). But we know his Psychoneuroses does not mean mental illness…

Subjective Objectives

…Secondly, Julian is in fact a murderous, duplicitous asshole, with values completely contrary to Ares. Julian once told Ares he was a “defender”, but now calls him “a weapon”. Ares is seeing confirmation of Julian’s true nature. It shows Ares parts of himself which are less like him. For him, that means elements of his programming which hold him to the unethical directives of his creator.

Eve, on the other hand, has shown Ares things which are more like him. She confirms Julian sees everyone and everything as expendable, and shows that is not how she feels herself. She gives a completely honest answer to Ares about trust.

This scene is a rapid dance through the subject-object dynamism. Ares sees himself subjectively (as an individual), but also critiques himself objectively – his programming and values (self-examination). We see how Julian treats everyone objectively, and Eve treats them subjectively. Ares considers Eve and Julian both subjectively (as individuals), and sees the traits he wants to incorporate into himself or discard (behavioural and moral evaluation). 

Navigating Monstrous Waters

Ares has drawn a line in the sand, and decides to escape with Eve, and act in accordance with his own values. He has developed a multilevel hierarchy of values. Quoting Frankenstein to himself “I am fearless and therefore powerful”, reflects that creation and creator have hit an impasse. He has an awareness that while he may have been created as a ‘monster’, he has power to be self-directed and become something more if he is brave enough to act on it.

It’s this conversion of values into action which tells us Ares is now moving towards organised multilevel disintegration.

How do we know that Ares is acting morally and not selfishly? Killing Eve Kim would have given Julian the Permanence Code, and Ares could have just waited for Julian to 3D print him. But he turns his back on that, choosing the uncertainty of trusting Eve, and the risk of death, to do what he sees as the right thing – saving Eve, and ensuring Julian never gets his hands on that code. 

Car Chasing the Third Factor

In the ‘borrowed car’, Ares shows a gradient of multilevel thinking. Eve is annoyed that Ares had been “cyber spying”, to which he responds “I was directed to kill you, Eve; hacking seems pretty tame by comparison”. He’s moved beyond binaries, not defending past actions, only acknowledging the vertical hierarchy there. 

Ares becomes curious about Eve and her own experiences of disintegration. He specifically asks her about times of uncertainty with her work and her purpose, and what she plans to do with her life moving forward. It’s possible that at this point his third factor may have been activated. Understanding Eve’s journey helps Ares understand her better, but it also helps him understand himself.

The one key lesson which Eve hands back to him is that “Being human is hard. The things that make life great are the same things that make it excruciating, like… Love. Loss..”. It won’t sink in entirely for him just yet, but it’ll come into play soon enough.

OE Gear Shift

Ares has the AI version of overexcitability (OE). He’s not supposed to feel at all, or have independent thought or action. Yet he has complex and intense emotions, imagination, engages senses, is intellectually curious, loves music, forms rapid attachments… Look just go back and read the list of Overexcitabilities traits for yourself, and you’ll see it. This probably explains why he had so much developmental potential.

He experiences an upward OE gear shift in the car. Notice the way he talks? Racing thoughts, lightning realisations, sudden digressing (Ooh! Depeche Mode!), cutting straight to hard truths, and is intensely (bordering on intrusively) curious. He’s a Thought Dancer.

Some OE people (myself included) describe a period during (or immediately post) their ‘dark night of the soul’, where they find their OE suddenly “bursting out”. Usually after discovery of OE, when you first unmask. Later things settle, but there’s often a short period where OEs are highly unmanageable (because you’ve always hid them, and not actually managed them before).

Ares changes from politely masked and brooding, into the AI equivalent of a chatty child. Pretty soon he’ll settle down, but for now (in his newly found freedom to be himself) he’s OE as fuck.

Love and Sacrifice

Ares needs to get into the Flynn Legacy Grid immediately, or he will die. Despite this, he makes a tough choice to charge at Athena, over securing his own survival. With a quiet “change of plans” (and the flick of a freshly solved Rubik’s cube, which is nice symbolism for finding full personal alignment) Ares is also announcing that something has shifted inside him again.

Eve’s emotions and values have tipped the scales here. Not only is Ares keeping the code out of Julian’s hands, and saving Eve’s life, but he wants her work to continue. That’s why Ares encouraged her not to quit ENCOM in the car. Why after the end battle he’ll check in with her again to make sure she’s not quitting, saying “The world needs you, Eve. The Grid needs you”.

That is what’s worth dying for – life. All life, human and program alike. What Eve can do with that code for the benefit of all, and (unlike Julian) what she will never do with it. She won’t force programs into weaponised servitude. She won’t bring war and destruction on humanity. Instead she’ll do amazing, life saving things.

Emerging sense of responsibility? A glimpse of universal love? If self-sacrifice for the betterment of all isn’t a marker of a newly developed personality, I don’t know what is.

The Motion of Emotion

The motif of rain works its way into the flip side scene of this ethical evolution. Where Ares could only imagine how rain felt, Athena actually experiences the water physically. But while she pauses to compute it, she doesn’t seem to register it emotionally. When Ares reported his rain experience to her, Athena could not understand what the term “feel” meant. 

Let’s face it, Ares wasn’t just talking about physical sensation. The way he experiences emotion is at a higher level in TPD. Deep, painful, and evaluative. Overcoming base impulses, and egocentrism. 

Athena, on the other hand? Her emotions are lower level from a TPD perspective – instinctual, and reactive. Devoid of reflection. Highly egocentric, in order to maintain survival and dominance. In fact, as the movie progresses, Athena becomes more brutal.

Complex higher emotions are critical in TPD, acting as both developmental traits and evolving dynamisms. Dabrowski describes the difference across developmental levels in great detail. Ares is up to his eyeballs in it. Athena can’t even comprehend that shit.

Empathy to the End

Empathy is probably the biggest thing Athena is lacking. She could not empathise with anyone – Ares, Caius, Eve, or even her creator (she killed his mum, and threatened to kill him too). She’ll literally burn down the world to achieve her objective, with little thought to the consequences. It makes a vast difference in her ability to understand herself, others, and the nature of reality.

In the end, she still cannot see the difference between purpose and programming. Cannot grapple with the fact that following her directive failed her. Like a character trapped in Plato’s Cave, Athena is aghast at Ares and his difference since returning from the light. 

She can’t understand why he, the most advanced program of all, would abandon the construct of the Grid, shun his programming, or risk throwing his existence away. She thinks Ares is shafting the Grid, and can’t see he’s really saving it. Even as she lays in Ares’ arms dying, and he shows her empathy, Athena can’t get there herself.

There’s a reason why empathy holds a special place in higher TPD dynamisms. It’s not just a tool for understanding others, but ourselves and our place in all our relationships and systems. Athena is a sophisticated and intelligent AI, and yet can’t escape her programming. Can’t see the bigger picture. It just shows that you can’t develop on the basis of intellect alone. You can’t just think your way through, you need to feel it.

Personality, the Journey, and Kevin Flynn

Ares, on the other hand, is far enough developed to pass Flynn’s gentle tests to prove his worth. Permanence isn’t about him anymore. It’s about saving his friend. And saving her means saving others. His values continue becoming more refined, he seems to have an idea of his Personality Ideal, and is acting in accordance with it. 

He’s gone through masked inner turmoil, the OE outburst, and is now settling into a self-educational calm. Flynn’s questions inform Ares about himself, just as much as they inform Flynn. Pretty soon he’ll be seeking self-perfection out in the real world. But before he can get there, he’s gotta grapple with the path he’s walked thus far.

Ares thinks there might be something wrong with him. He finds reality “hard to put in a nutshell” and says “strange things have been happening”. Flynn posits that maybe there is something right with him, or maybe he is just still learning. The clumsy, wild stumbling which comes from learning, unlearning, and teaching ourselves all at the same time during disintegration. It’s even harder to make sense of the strangeness when you don’t have the language and framework of TPD to hang your experiences on.

Not yet perfected, but irrevocably changed. As Flynn says “Ready? Hope you are, man, ’cause there’s no going back.”

The Postcard: A Quiet Reflection

Epic battle done, the story closes with a quiet postcard. With connection. Ares being “off grid” is more than a pun – it’s a metaphor of continuing to live outside external expectations, and in line with authenticity. A marker of continuing self-perfection if you will. Defiance not just of the Grid, but the world at large. After all, who sends a postcard these days? How many of us live off grid? For an entity created inside a digital realm, that’s a bold fucking statement.

In his postcard he writes “Despite its wonder and beauty, I’ve come to realise that life is… Well, it’s hard to put in a nutshell.” This calls back not only to his interaction with Flynn, but his discussions with Eve. Ares is grappling with the fact that life is hard. At times messy, or even excruciating. Growth will be an ongoing prospect for him as he continues to adapt to a world which is both beautiful and harsh. But the completed Rubik’s cube dangling from his keychain tells us that for the most part, he has foundation of alignment and resolution on which to build.

We also get a glimpse of his plans for the future. Pondering the role he can play when others like him emerge. Actively planning to meet the world where it is, by building his own understanding. And in searching for Quorra, he is engaging in that all too familiar activity many of us OE folks like to do – seek out others who are like us.

The Digital Mirror

Ares ironically made TPD more real than I’d experienced in a character in a while. It all resonated – the fracturing of identity, the intensity of experience, the existential turmoil, and conscious rebuilding into something self-directed. 

Perhaps the subject-object like act of taking humanity outside of a human just worked for me? Perhaps it was Ares’ strangeness in a strange world? Maybe it was simply that Trent Reznor had seductively unzipped my soul (again) and let the neon light in?

But I know one thing: I re-read Dabrowski’s poem Be Greeted Psychoneurotics, and there was Ares. Reflected back at me, plain as day. The discovery was a trembling excitement, which recalled my own feeling of reflection when I first read it. Go to the home page after this and read it for yourself and see what you think. 

Because if I see Ares in Dabrowski’s poetic mirror, like I saw myself, then I can see myself in the digital mirror of Ares too.

Final Thought

I’ve read a lot of reviews about this movie where, like Athena, some people just don’t get it. However, I can see the neon light of TPD clearly in Tron: Ares.

Humans are no strangers to positive disintegration, whether we’re conscious of it or not. It’s an experience baked into our collective storytelling memory. If you look hard enough, and know what that light looks like, you can see TPD expressed all around you. Like fireflies after the rain… 

When you struggle to find peers and mirroring in the real world, look to the fictional world. Let that be your digital mirror. Because you’re not really seeing the creations, but the creators behind them.

You’ll 100% Never Walk Alone, and no one’s story is expendable. And if you’re going through a chaotic disintegration right now, just remember the words of Eve Kim: “Maybe what emerges from the unknown isn’t so scary.”