Breaking Bad and the Limits of Story

This summer, I became addicted to Breaking Bad. I didn't see this coming. Up until recently, my impression of the show was entirely negative. I had never watched an episode, but I knew it was about a high school chemistry teacher who gets involved in the meth business. I was disinterested for several reasons. One, because I thought the show was entirely amoral. I don't think all stories need to have unrealistically clear-cut distinctions between good and evil characters, but Breaking Bad seemed, at least from my distant viewpoint, to be a show where the good guys were really the bad guys, and I didn't like that. It seemed an irresponsible glorification of drugs and violence and further evidence of our declining culture. Secondly, I had the vague impression that it was "one of those crime shows" that's less about actual characters and more about the clever things people do to get what they want. I hate shows (and movies) like that. One, because I'm much more interested in human relationships then I am in people doing clever things to acquire wealth, and two, because I can never follow what's going on in those kinds of stories. Lastly, I knew that Breaking Bad was very critically acclaimed and that it had robbed LOST of several emmys in the categories where both of the shows had been nominated. I loved LOST (and still do), so I was always disappointed when Breaking Bad won anything that LOST didn't. I'd hear about Breaking Bad winning an award that I thought LOST deserved and I'd think to myself, "Well, there you go. The subversive show about drug dealing just won over the brilliant, character-driven dramatization of the search for answers to the most profound questions raised by our human experience. Whatever."

Out of the Silent Planet

Just finished the first book in C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet. I enjoyed it, especially Ransom's interactions with the hrossa and his conversation with Augray the sorn.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Malancandra is Lewis' vision of an unfallen, Edenic planet Mars where several races of rational creatures exist in harmony under the rule of an angelic being called Oyarsa. Weston and Devine are humans bent on using Malacandra for their own purposes, and Ransom - the protagonist - is taken to the planet against his will to help them achieve their ends.

Devine's interest in Malacandra is simply profit (it's loaded with gold), but Weston is driven by loftier ideals. Knowing that Earth can only sustain humanity for a limited period of time, Weston sees Malacandra as an opportunity to extend the human genetic line indefinitely. This is his summum bonum, and he is committed to it even if it means the devastation and eventual extinction of the Malacandrians.

A - gnosticism = "Without Knowledge"

“It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” 

                                             - William Kingdon Clifford

When the issue of God's existence is on the table someone usually says something like this. The atheist is confident that God does not exist. The theist is confident that God does exist. But the agnostic simply says, “the evidence is insufficient, so I will not make a judgment.”

What the agnostic often fails to realize, however, is that the judgment not to make a judgment is in itself a judgment—and it is a judgment that stems from a deep, moral sense. The agnostic, whether or not he states the fact explicitly, believes that it is wrong to make a judgment without sufficient evidence.

It. Is. Wrong.