Do you think about ethical things?

This is what George (Johnson) asked me this morning. Now, of course I do, though I wasn't at the moment, as I was pretty much lost in images of being held by you. But, now focused on his question, I awaited the details. He posited that in his observation, most people learn a great deal of their ethical positions and foundations from TV and movie images. These images present "good" or the "good guy" as one who 'never crosses the line', and further, that the "good guy" invariably wins.

However, just last night he'd watched two different shows that provided a startling (to him) new image: in one case, one of the show's heroes makes a choice to give in to terrorist demands to kill an innocent man in order to potentially save thousands or millions of people. In the other, a space ship crew needs a vital part that cannot be obtained as they're millions of miles from home. They locate another space ship in their sector, ask for the part, and when their request is denied, they wage war against the 2^nd ship, kill several people and steal the part they need.

George was very distressed by the presentation of these choices, seeing them as "bad". I thought that while it wasn't necessarily 'good', it was certainly more realistic: the 'good guy' often has to make 'bad' or 'wrong' choices in order to ultimately do the 'right' thing; good often crosses the line: damn it, we very often don't even know where the line is! Sometimes, our 'hero' does wrong, as we humans do; sometimes, in a confrontation between our hero the other guy, the 'other guy' is really the good guy! And for certain, the good guy doesn't always win!

Since life is full of these gray areas, it does not distress me that this type of image is portrayed on screen-and if in fact the larger society is learning its ethics from this medium, then it seems better to portray scenarios that are *not* black and white. In this way, people can hopefully start to *think* about what is the 'right' thing, and why, and when!

George, possibly sorry he asked me in the first place, has gone away to *think* about this!