What’s really interesting about Mario Puzo’s The Godfather is the different ways in which Puzo garners sympathy for the mobsters. He paints the Corleones as a cohesive family with members who fight, live, and die for one another. With the exposure of a policeman’s dabbling in drug trades, Puzo also posits that perhaps the mobsters are the moralists, as the even law-enforcers of the city are seriously lacking in ethical restraints. This creates a frightening picture in which it is impossible to cipher just who the bad guy is. All of our usual paradigms fail – the mobsters have emotion, depth, and some integrity. They also have babies. Everyone loves babies.

To what extent, then, do our influences cash in over our actions in determining whether we’re good or bad people? I mean, its clear that our situations have a lot to do with our person. But the proactive tendencies of society tell us that our actions really define us. Harry Potter’s Dumbledore even commented that choice is the defining factor of an individual. But really, factors in the world will always limit choice, and the prime factor is necessarily our milieu.

But even after choices and volition, there’s still the concept that “morals” are molded from all of this activity. That this will measure just how good or bad we are.

The most shattering question is – does the moral compass even exist? We simply seem to assume that there exists a universal right or wrong in the world. That there’s a definitive line between safety and danger. William Golding nullifies this concept entirely in his allegorical novel Lord of the Flies. In sum, a group of young schoolboys gets stranded on an island during wartime and goes savage – something most people don’t need abandonment as an excuse to become. In the end, a boat finally comes in to salvage what’s left of the original crew. The ultimate irony is that the boat is a warship, and that even the adults steering the children are heading into dangerous waters. So, there’s no definiteness, no real delineation. No ensured safety. And after that, war is war, meaning that it is impossible to attribute a superior value to certain human lives. This implies that we can’t even tell who’s right.

So, ultimately, we wind up in a whirlwind of actions and reactions and no real ability to weigh amongst them. Which is what prompts that tempting need to invent or create a division or criteria. This is what fosters philosophy and religion.

But even this is arbitrary. How do we choose between divergent schools of thought? How do we argue on the bases of things that are based on faith, something irrational, and therefore difficult to drag into the arena of discourse?

Really, the only conclusion here is that there are no conclusions. Conclusions are made for fun or to ameliorate a situation. Like nervous laughter bouncing off the walls.

Mmm…that doesn’t leave me very satisfied. I mean, isn’t the world full of pretty ideas so that I can pout and squeal and take my pick? And these ideas don’t matter and lack comfort if they have vacuous conclusions.

So, continue humanity.