Natural Selection, freewill, fate, and justice

[takadi]

There's this whole theme being played about "being special" and being meant to do something. There's the whole good vs evil aspect and then there's Sylar's view of survival of the fittest and the natural order of evolution. I think the creators are tending to slack off on those themes, but I'd like to encourage some discussion here.

So all of this time travel, predicting the future, special genes...is it all part of a master plan? Will good triumph over evil? Or is it even about good or evil? Is good and evil just an illusion of the mind? Will triumph only depend on the rules of natural selection? People are struggling against the past, the future, the present, but is there really much that can be changed? What is the real force at hand?

Sometimes I think, who is really the evil one in this scheme? Everyone points to Sylar, but that's just human nature. Evil in one's mind is good in another's mind. People will only imply evil when they are being put at a disadvantage. So in that respect, Sylar could be the good guy in God's quest to become the perfect entity, and everyone else is evil in his scheme of things. Linderman and his buddies could all be the good guys in their master plan to heal the world. Even the hero Peter Petrelli or Hiro could be evil doers because they trying to prevent nature from taking it's natural course. After all, murder is natural right?

The series points alot of fate...Sylar had nothing meaningful in his life until Suresh came along and told him about genetic mutations and powers. It is his destiny to do what he does. So is he really evil for living out a life of meaning and for following his dreams? Perhaps his true motive isn't to actually brutally murder or torture people, but to fulfill his role in evolution, in God's plan. After all, isn't he just one of many trying to do that with his life? People say murder is wrong, but murder happens everyday...war, money, revenge. Sylar is only doing it to further the progress of the species. Mohinder tried to do it for petty revenge...Jessica did it to protect her son. Who is really evil in this? My answer is no one, and everyone at the same time.

As for Hiro trying to change the past and stop things from happening in the future: is it truly possible? Isaac, no matter how hard he tried, couldn't stop the inevitable future from occurring and is killed by Sylar. Hiro however, was able to prevent Claire from being killed at Homecoming. Now that Sylar has Isaac's powers, will he be able to stop himself from being killed in the near future now that he knows what's going to happen?


I'd like Heroes to get more into its philosophical aspect. Feel free to input any ideas. This is an open ended question.

[el rojo]

Your entire premise is completely off-base. Murder is the willful act of taking another's life when your own survival is not threatened. Murder is the decision to kill in order to gain something...murder is not part of evolution, and it certainly isn't part of "God's plan"...if there is such a thing at all. Evolution is a process by which genetic mutation creates an organism which has a new survival advantage over its predecessor...it therefore lives to reproduce more prolifically and spreads the mutation to future generations which also spread the mutation at an exponential pace until the previous form of the species either loses out on competition for resources, or the new species begins to occupy a different niche. Sylar is GREEDY and POWER-HUNGRY!!!! He isn't evolving...he is hording.
Also, attempting to justify Sylar's murderous habits by saying that murder is common in the world is the same as saying cheating is OK because it happens all the time. C'mon takadi...what are you thinking??? Yes, revenge is petty...but Mohinder was trying to kill a monster...Sylar kills unsuspecting people and even goes after children.
Yes, there is more to the show than Good vs. Evil...there is also Order vs. Chaos to consider, among other themes. However, the idea that the conception of "evil" is subjective, is based on the notion that ethics and morality are the same thing. Morality is entirely subjective and generally is based on cultural/religious preferences...ethics are universal and immutable, like the Golden Rule. People who would represent harmful actions as nothing more than an interpretation are dangerous individuals...kind of like Sylar who creates rationalizations to justify his horrid deeds. Sylar is (or has become) psycopathic/sociopathic...he views other human beings as tools or objects to be used in the furtherance of his own goals. That is wrong...seems this should be clear to anyone.

[slimshady]

Good analysis, takadi. There's no absolute right and wrong in the world, just like wars sometimes there's no good sides. It's just how you think about the problems. Take linderman as an example, he's trying to change the world into a better place, but in what we usually think a brutal way. Looking into his minds he must feel good about himself for he is proud of the role he plays and the crime he's done, which he thinks is a holy deed. Morality doesn't work at this time. So it is with Sylar who considers himself as a servant of God. I've watched a lot of shows in which there's no definite goods and bads, but I can always distinguish who's doing the right thing. Because we're all normal people, we adore the morality the human society has build for a long time and cirme is crime whatever the reason is.
Just imagine what the world will be if everyone turns into Sylar, who murders the others in the name of chasing dream and goals. That's definitely not God's plan in any way. So what Sylar believes is wrong, logically speaking.

[takadi]

It is called philosophy, not actual criminology or justice debate. I am not going to go out and murder my family and close friends because suddenly I see things differently. Look outside the box and analyze Heroes in an open minded stoic fashion without knee-jerk reactions, and see how things change. There is staunch difference between action and actual debate and thought. Of course there is good and evil...in your mind. How do you know that your good and evil is someone else's good and evil? One person might hear a string of sounds as complete jibberish and nonsense, but another person might hear it as "Hi how are you doing". Do you know what infinity is? Do you know truth? Are you God? As a finite being, you can only surmise only a minute fraction of truth. Your only sources to the objective world only consist of five finite outlets: your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and sense of touch. Can you detect every spectrum, dimension, aspect of the universe? You will know that your sense of morality only represents the smallest infinitesimal proportion of what there is ever to know in the world. Therefore, you should know that you, as a finite being, will always no matter what have a potential for flaw. Knowing that, in philosophical discussion, it is important to let go of conventional ideology, especially ones with emotional attachments and overtones, and clear your mind to allow yourself to see as much as you can with EVERY outlet of your body.

[kaleidoscope_eyes]

I can definitely see the Good vs. Evil debate when it comes to characters such as Matt Parkman. While he seems evil in the future, he is simply looking out for his family and doing so in the best way he sees fit. He has good intentions in his actions, even if when not taken in full perspective, they seem "wrong." Looking into his motives, he pretty much checks out. Linderman is a little more of a grey area. I find his idea of killing "a few" to unify everyone else to be fascinating, if something that would never hold up in real life - the ends certainly do not justify the means in this case. But even then, you see the foundation of good intentions. Still, what about Sylar? I don't think he sees himself as a servant of God (unless he's said that in some episode, and I've missed it, in which case I'm wrong). If anything, I would think that he scorns God for giving him such a meager, meaningless life, and his current work of stealing powers is like somewhat defying God. I do not see any good motives in Sylar. He has probably had a tough life - his evil may be due to circumstance rather than disposition, but that still doesn't change my opinion of him. Kring says soon we will being to care about Sylar's well-being, but as of yet I don't exactly like the guy that much.

As far as the evolution/natural selection debate goes, I think it's "natural" when animals kill other animals for food. Murdering another human being for emotional reasons is a totally different thing. That doesn't mean murder isn't sometimes justifiable - at least for the purposes of Heroes - but I think it does go a bit to demerit Sylar's actions.

Fate and destiny are complicated as well. You could say it's fate for New York to blow up; you could say it's fate for the heroes to change the future - maybe you "can't change the future" because that IS actually the future, that they stop the bomb, no matter how many "alternate" futures they have to go through first. But I did think it was sort of funny when Isaac said he couldn't change the future, because I thought that one of the show's major themes was the fact that you COULD. So, I guess, it will be interesting to see where that plays in. Isaac was an integral character, though: His paintings helped lead Peter to Claire, and guided Hiro on his journey. Maybe it just meant that Isaacs powers in themselves couldn't change the future, they just predicted it. Hiro's powers HAVE changed the future, as with the waitress. The end result was still the same - she died - but for different reasons, and in the end Sylar didn't get her power. So, I think there is hope for the whole changing fate card.

[slimshady]

Originally Posted by takadi

It is called philosophy, not actual criminology or justice debate. I am not going to go out and murder my family and close friends because suddenly I see things differently. Look outside the box and analyze Heroes in an open minded stoic fashion without knee-jerk reactions, and see how things change. There is staunch difference between action and actual debate and thought. Of course there is good and evil...in your mind. How do you know that your good and evil is someone else's good and evil? One person might hear a string of sounds as complete jibberish and nonsense, but another person might hear it as "Hi how are you doing". Do you know what infinity is? Do you know truth? Are you God? As a finite being, you can only surmise only a minute fraction of truth. Your only sources to the objective world only consist of five finite outlets: your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and sense of touch. Can you detect every spectrum, dimension, aspect of the universe? You will know that your sense of morality only represents the smallest infinitesimal proportion of what there is ever to know in the world. Therefore, you should know that you, as a finite being, will always no matter what have a potential for flaw. Knowing that, in philosophical discussion, it is important to let go of conventional ideology, especially ones with emotional attachments and overtones, and clear your mind to allow yourself to see as much as you can with EVERY outlet of your body.

This time you do confuse me, Takadi.
Everyone is doing what he/she believes is right and everyone has different values toward the world. We think some people are greedy, sneaky and they think they deserve what they want and they're clever. And usually these people are the result of lack of education or psychological problems. Clear my mind and allow myself to see every outlet of my body I'm still myself, because of the justice I believe for a long time. There is a situation in which it's hard to decide whether it's justifiable or not such as the case of Mahone in Prison Break who murders the convicts to protect his family. But that's not what you're talking about. Everyone is greedy, and evil in the deep of his/her heart, so there's no evil
in the world, nothing is wrong. Is that what you mean?
Linderman is a complicated person coz of his experience, his bitter past and his determination to save the world. But Sylar is just a man who has low self-esteem and what we call self serving bias in Psychology.

[takadi]

What I mean is that it is hard to understand another person unless we clear our minds temporarily of conventional notions we've had all of our lives. We are all different, but we do have the ability to empathize.

What makes Sylar to conveniently evil is that he is much more difficult to identify and empathize with. What Sylar has done is degrade himself to animal instincts, despite all the cold and calculating logic he puts into it. The most basic instincts include, fear, anger, and hunger, all survival instincts. Sylar is basically embracing his animal instincts to the fullest because he is embracing what he thinks is life itself. He is embracing his hunger, which is his hunger for power. He is shedding himself of all human characteristic and following instincts. It makes it hard for us to understand his plight.

Does that necessarily make him evil though? In a sense, evil is really just a distinction that allows us to survive ourselves. Evil is something that causes us fear, causes us to hate, something that gets in the way of ability to feed ourselves. And really, murder and death happen all around us everyday. Even in the show, we have future Hiro, the sweetest good guy in the show, becoming a terrorist. Justification for his murders can come from reason, but Sylar had a reason too. What reason is a good reason when we don't know the ultimate truth? We can't justify anybody because we are finite beings and we can't understand beyond ourselves. We don't know what to do, who to stop, who to help, who to trust. Therefore, it all comes down to the theme again: Natural selection, vs fate, vs justice. In the end, are we really in control? Or our we dictated by something much greater than us? Maybe when it all comes down to the end, we are all just reduced to animals ourselves and we HAVE to depend on the concept of good and evil to survive. We HAVE to destroy something in order to survive. But does good always triumph over evil? Only to the people who win in the game.

We can think that Sylar has no right to decide who is strongest and who is weakest by killing innocent people and taking lives through coercion. But does that matter? Good people die all the time, but does the fact that they are "good" make them less prone to dying? So here is Hiro, who believes that the bomb is "not supposed to happen". Can he really decide who should die or not? Is it really truthful to think that saving a life is always better than sacrificing a life? Or should we go by Linderman's logic and sacrifice for the common good of the entire planet? Bomb or no bomb, what really is the thing that matters in the end? Perhaps fate is all we have left in the game of life, and we all know that Sylar dies. One can interpret that good will always triumph over evil, but it could be that the strongest has only conquered the weak. Or perhaps that nothing really matters in the course of action because the outcome would be eventually the same. We have Isaac's paintings already drawn out for us...does is really make a difference what path is taken to get to those destinations? If the destiny were different and if Sylar were to actually take over the world, what then? What would we make of good and evil? What would we make of justice? The amount of fear that Sylar instills is so great that if he were to win, good and evil would become irrelevant. So what matters? The strongest? The purest? God's plan? We are completely helpless, and so is Sylar. We are all animals on a spinning planet.

When the last episode comes, this theme will tie everything together.

[maxpig]

Thank you, Professor Fish
:P

There is a short story called, Those Who Walk Away from Omelas, by Ursula LeGuin--here's a summary i ripped off of wikipedia (spoiler alert--for the story, not for Heroes):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
In the story, Omelas is a utopian city of happiness and delight, whose inhabitants are intelligent, cultured and refined. Everything about Omelas is pleasing, except for the secret of its happiness: the good fortune of Omelas requires that an unfortunate child be kept in filth, darkness and misery, and that all her citizens know of this on coming of age.
Some of them walk away; the story ends "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think the Lindermann folks, if you believe he's telling the truth, would stay in Omelas--they've done the calculation and they know that the greatest good for the greatest number involves killing a couple of million people in manhattan. Those who walk away from Omelas (and in the case of heroes, those who are repulsed by Linderman's idea and try to stop him) reject the utilitarian calculation and try to do the 'right' thing. This really boils down to Utilitarianism vs. Kantianism.

I see where you're coming from is a place of extreme skeptical relativism--a view that I share--but I don't think that interpretive framework is going to illuminate much about Heroes--the show is simply not that penetrating. They may show how sympathetic and misunderstood Sylar is deep down inside but i don't think any of the writing is suggesting that he doesn't 'need to be stopped' from the point of view of the 'good'/sympathetic heroes, regardless of how misunderstood or nobly savage Sylar is. The closest they'll probably get is the notion that it can be arbitrary who gets called a 'terrorist' and who gets to be a 'hero'--which, given current events, is more of a political statement than a philosophical one.

However, it is pretty Nietzschean in that it raises the questions of what responsibilities a 'superman' has or does not have to the community they live in.