I suppose we all have our standards about just what constitutes a bad person -a drug dealer, a gun runner, a thief, a murderer. We like to feel that we're doing pretty well in terms of morality and, in truth, there are probably few amongst you that would fall into the 'really, really bad' category. After all, there's been little need for you to break the law, the rules and the conventions of society.
Piaget observed that children under 5 understand that they have done something bad because of punishment. Breaking crockery, regardless of motive, must be wrong because getting caught breaking plates will result in undesirable punishment. In truth, children under 5 simply do not have the mental equipment or control to follow a coherent and established morality. They simply have to be told what is right or wrong. For many adults, however, the recognition of punishment still underlines their morality in the 'if no-one gets hurt then it's not wrong' line of thought.
Children gradually develop a less egocentric perspective of morality. They eventually establish morality as a system of moral codes in the same way they understand rules in a game like football; charity is good, selfishness is bad. In turn, children develop empathy as they become part of a social order and eventually have a vested interest in knowing the system that sets up rules about themselves and others.
There is another more advanced stage in which the individual sees that the rules of the system, no matter how compelling and coherent, may not always be universal. In this case the individual might chose not to obey some of the rules, not because he/she is naughty, but because the rules and the order may not be right. This, of course, is where great things are done, where the individual's role in society, in law and in conventional morality may create new thinking and codes of behaviour.
Breaking Bad, now in it's 4th Season, is a American series that deals with this issue. What is excellent about it is that the acting, script, production and characterization are excellent conveyors of the issues that surround the moral question of what would you do for your family: Dallas this is not. From the first moment we are drawn to Walter White, chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with lung cancer. The sometimes hilarious road to hell he starts down begins when his desire to secure financial care of his wife and family through the proceeds of making crystal meth and selling the product via one of his old students, Jesse Pinkerman. Being familiar with the method, but unfamiliar with the means of disposal, the hapless Walter and Jesse immediately get on the wrong side of the law. Murder and misery ensue and we are left in no uncertainty about the effects of this product on those less able to resist heightened levels of endorphins. The net result, indeed, is that the very thing he seeks to protect and care for is destroyed and Walter loses his family.
At the outset this might sound like a miserable thing to watch and there have been moments where I have felt troubled by the direction of this series. But, along with the immensely enjoyable acting and magic detailed moments, important questions are raised; can we really do anything to protect our family -can we kill, break the law, threaten others, lie, cheat and steal? The answers are neither immediately forthcoming nor easy. Leaving to one side the issues surrounding supplying drugs to a highly-structured and highly-individualistic society, as well as the moral minefield that rings legalization, the implication appears to be that public and private morality are not such very distinct and divorced things. Break either and you attain nothing more than unhappiness.
Many, of course, have broken conventions in order to reach higher goals. Religious founders, philosophers and freedom fighters have each been celebrated because they have done things the rest of us could not or would not have done because of our fears of punishment, rejection or death; Socrates chose to drink hemlock rather than submit himself to inferior moral subjugation by the law-makers of Athens in the belief that his act help establish true Justice, Jesus accepted death rather than compromise his moral teachings with his society's moral teachers -I'm certain you all have your favourite freedom fighter who chose not to run away and endured much in their quest for liberty. What is different in the case of Breaking Bad is that the higher cause (of caring for the family) is so quickly subsumed in the unbearable moral compromising that comes from making and selling Class A, Schedule II (Schedule I in HK) drugs.
We're half-way through Season 3. Season 5 is set to conclude this emotional roller-coaster ride -I'm looking forward to see more of what happens to poor old Walter White.
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