"Breaking Bad" and its Philosophical Context - Part 1

tl;dr: "Breaking Bad is not a situation in which the characters' morality is static or contradictory or colored by the time frame; instead, it suggests that morality is continually a personal choice. When the show began, that didn't seem to be the case: It seemed like this was going to be the story of a man (Walter White, portrayed by Bryan Cranston) forced to become a criminal because he was dying of cancer. That's the elevator pitch. But that's completely unrelated to what the show has become. The central question on Breaking Bad is this: What makes a man "bad" - his actions, his motives, or his conscious decision to be a bad person? Judging from the trajectory of its first three seasons, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan believes the answer is option No. 3. So what we see in Breaking Bad is a person who started as one type of human and decides to become something different. And because this is television - because we were introduced to this man in a way that made him impossible to dislike, and because we experience TV through whichever character we understand the most - the audience is placed in the curious position of continuing to root for an individual who's no longer good."

I've only seen the first few episodes, but am hoping to find some time to go through it now. I get plenty of morality from shows like "Mad Men" and "The Wire" in which we feel conflicted because the characters we love are doing bad things (in fact you could say that this is the main theme of serious, dramatic TV shows now), but I think the appeal of "Breaking Bad" is watching a desperate man make the conscious decision to become "evil."

First question people ask is, is it ok for Walter White to cook meth for earning what he already deserves? It's the easy part of the question of Breaking Bad.

Walter White started cooking by blackmailing Jessie, one of his old students. (remember another student of him who disrespected and made fun about Walter when he was cleaning a car) From the first episode to the end of 4th season, Walter White has fucked Jessie's life up. He made many manipulations in Jessie's life to have Jessie work for him.

Hard part of the question starts here, is it ok for a teacher suffering from cancer to destroy one of his student's life for earning money?

To me, the answer is absolutely no. But I see that many people who enjoy how Walter White became a tough guy, think Jessie already lives what he deserves as a young punk.

From the consequentialist perspective, Walt's pretty clearly a bad guy: meth is a brutal drug with very little social upside. Sure he's able to bring about good for his family, but I'm sure there's a whole network of people who's lives are worse off because of his work. Overall he's probably created more bad than good in the world. Because meth tends to tear you down in the long run, I don't think it's fair to say he's responsible for the goodness of the high that his customers feel, as in the end it's a destructive addiction and not a recreation.

A fair response to this is that if Walt didn't cook the meth, someone else would, so there's the same amount of "bad" whether he does it or not, so why not take the money and run? I think the simple answer is that something doesn't magically become not-bad if someone else is willing to do it. Walt can still cook meth, but it's hard to say it's ethical from this first point of view.

From the deontological point of view, it's a bit murky. If you boil this down the view to its core, it's a moral test that's summarized as: "I can only do this if I'm ok with other people doing it too."

So, has Walt acted in ways that he (or we) would be alright with people doing broadly? Here's a couple spins on what he's doing:

1. "A man should be able to do whatever he needs to to provide for his family." While I might feel like I should be able to do whatever I need to to feed my wife and kids (provided they existed), I clearly wouldn't want someone else exploiting my family to feed theirs. So this fails the test and is immoral.

2. "I can profit off of goods that are addictive and destructive." This one is tricky, unless you're a libertarian and think that everyone is free to make their own good or bad decisions and that they own the consequences. I'm sure people will advocate this (and I assume the linked article will too, given the line "rational decision to provide a product to people whom have voluntarily decided to consume it") but I think it lacks nuance and legitimacy. Nonetheless, what Walt is doing would at least be internally consistent so long as he's okay with other people selling equally bad goods, and making them available to, for instance, his son. The argument here is the generic one about why stuff should be illegal or not.

So where does this leave us? I don't think there's a strong case to be made that Walt is a moral guy. No matter which of the two lenses we use, his actions look pretty bad. But I think that's what makes the character and the show so compelling: Our morals are an abstraction that we've placed upon the world to make it easier to navigate, and he's moved into a darker world where these rules don't matter, and what's more is that he's thriving.

I think that's the hook, that somehow this meek and mild guy who played by the rules his entire life was able to shed them entirely and find himself completely at home--and the audience is along for the ride, assuring themselves that they could thrive in a world without rules just as Walt has.