Morality & the Walking Dead -- Euthanasia, Suicide, Abortion

      Abortion, euthanasia, and suicide are three inextricably interwoven moral controversies that present themselves in seasons one and two of The Walking Dead. Jim is left to die on the side of the highway by his own request on the group’s journey to the CDC. At the CDC Jenner and Jackie opt out of the apocalyptic nightmare by committing suffer-less suicide. Later on Hershel’s farm, Lori discovers she is pregnant and initially attempts to abort it.

      We, as a society, have yet come to any solid consensus on the moral statuses of these issues. We generally speak of them, though, with a sour taste in our mouths. For if our biological purpose is to live and procreate, the act of ending our life and/or the lives of our friends and family is the most biologically counterintuitive act we could possibly commit. Yet, death is chosen over life on a daily basis.

Morality & The Walking Dead -- Theft

“Why not take it?”

“There’s a cop staring at me… Would it be considered looting?”

“I don’t think those rules apply anymore. Do you?”

-        The exchange between Rick and Andrea in an Atlanta department store

I realize The Walking Dead deals with much more critical issues than theft. That being said, however, I think it is a good place to start our discourse on morality. Even by today’s standards people are wishy-washy about whether or not the act of stealing is immoral. Hopefully, by analyzing this act in the realm of our beloved-apocalyptic-zombie-world, we can gain further insight into why this is.
Surely, taking a necklace from an unmanaged department store in a city overrun with zombies without paying is not immoral. What we must ask ourselves is why not?

Before the collapse of society, it was Rick Grimes’s duty as a police officer to arrest people who took things without paying. Once again – why? Because in the privileged circumstances of a functional society there exists this phenomenon called property. Resources, physical and intellectual, are owned by individuals, governments, and companies and to take one’s property without some sort of payment is called stealing. And within this functional society, stealing is thought of as immoral. Again – why?  Stealing is an immoral act because it violates the social contract. It threatens the integrity of the society as a whole by defying the agreed upon code of ethics in place. In order for the society to remain relatively stable, such acts must be discouraged. So perhaps a revered leader of the society brings a couple of tablets down from a mountain and declares stealing to be immoral. 

But Rick isn’t all that concerned with Andrea taking a necklace from the Atlanta department store without paying. He is no longer concerned with the rules of the past because they bare little to no relevance to the present. With humanity limping along like a severely wounded gazelle, the code of ethics that had once been in place to ensure stability is now susceptible to amendment. Stealing from a department store is no longer an immoral act. It’s no longer even stealing; it’s procuring.

What just happened? The act of taking something without giving payment shifted from being morally impermissible to morally permissible in the blink of an eye. The act itself never changed; the circumstances, however, did. We inevitably arrive at this conclusion: An alteration in circumstance can cause the moral status of an act to change.

“Taking that necklace from the department store was not stealing because she did not take it from anybody.”

“Touché!”

“So it was actually a different act.”

“No. The act remained the same. The circumstances changed. In fact, it was The Circumstance that changed.”

“Yeah? What’s The Circumstance?”

“Personhood. Think about it. We typically don’t give a shit about anything until we can relate. If you were dead broke and jonesing for a bottle of booze, where would you steal it from – the local ma & pa shop or Safeway?”

“Safeway, I suppose.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Less personhood. You may know the owner of the ma & pa shop. If not, you’re aware that one of your fellow community members relies on selling the stock in their store to make a living. They’re … uh … more human than the mysterious Safeway CEO whose salary is being affected by your thievery. To you, that is.”

 “Yeah, but personhood is still involved in stealing from Safeway. You’re still aware that someone’s salary is being affected. In the Atlanta department store, there is nobody.”

“Right, that’s why I said less personhood. It’s still present, but it’s kinda behind a veil. You can clearly see the face of the person you pickpocket. You can see pretty clearly the ma & pa shop owner. The CEO of Safeway, though, nah. He’s just some rich, well-off, white guy someplace that’s not here. Less human. More like a … uh … fictional character. The question at hand here is – is stealing $50 from your neighbor’s piggybank a different act from stealing $50 from the cash register at Safeway?”

“Well … sorta. I mean, one’s a piggybank and one’s a cash regis—”

“Oh, fuck off. You know what I mean. And if they are the same act with slightly different circumstances, is stumbling upon a fifty-dollar bill on the street, and pocketing it also the same act? ”

“Well, that just seems absurd to call accidently finding fifty dollars the same act as actively taking it from a person.”

“Yeah … almost as absurd as the concept of property.”

Morality & The Walking Dead -- Introduction

           The Walking Dead is not a television series about zombies; it is a television series about human morality. It is a cinematic rollercoaster audaciously and unrelentingly posing a question that many would rather not be confronted with – Is morality simply dictated by circumstance? By painting the circumstances of reality in such extreme hues, ridden with zombies and nearly bereft of hope, this AMC hit show has their viewers turning to each other at the end of each episode asking one another, “Well, what would you do?” 

While a philosophical essay by John Stuart Mill is a sufficient means of raising the question of whether one human life can have more value than another, it is not the most accessible. John is a nineteenth century British philosopher … and he writes like one. Most people won’t delve into philosophical literature because they know that their energy will be exhausted simply by attempting to make sense of the manner in which the author has constructed his paragraph-long sentence before they ever even get to philosophize.  (hah!) And this is where The Walking Dead barges in. The Walking Dead confronts its audiences with all the profoundly ambivalent conundrums that come attached with this strange human concept of morality without all the rubbish that typically stagnates the conversation.

By tackling this task through the medium of film, all the silly red-heron analogies that bog philosophy down fly out the window. There is no wriggle room for drawing extreme comparisons when the issue at hand is as extreme as it gets. The viewer’s pure mathematical logic is mucked up as they become emotionally invested in the hypothetical characters of the hypothetical situation. One does not simply watch The Walking Dead; they experience it.

Over the next few months, I am going to write a series of essays exposing and analyzing the moral controversies this show challenges its viewers to deliberate. They will all revolve around the question of whether or not morality is simply circumstantial. If you have not seen the show and are planning on watching it – don’t read this series. I am going to use specific incidents in the show to illustrate my points. If you have seen the show and are as engulfed in it as I am – hold onto your butts! We’re goin’ for a ride!

-        Josh. Out.