Niebuhr: Jack’s Ethic
I’m finally getting around to watching the final season of 24. I’ve been a 24 fan since the beginning, for the same reason that everyone is a fan of 24—Jack Bauer.
About half way through season 7, I remember having a conversation with Josh Linton about Jack Bauer’s renegade tactics. Josh said, “I want to believe in an ethic that allows for Jack Bauer.” I never forgot that question because it really set me up with a hard dilemma. Is my intuitional support for Jack—torturing terrorists, shooting down the baddies without blinking an eye, breaking the law to maintain his cover—really just an illusion? Instead of rooting Jack on and supporting his every decision, should I really watch the show and think that he is pure evil for not “turning the other cheek”?
Every season there are numerous situations that involve an ethical tension where Jack unhesitantly breaks the law or is involved in morally shady activity while the people around him constantly get in his way. Jack wants to torture a terrorist to find a nuclear bomb, while the beurocracy is trying to arrest him.
This kind of tension is exactly the thing that a pacifisit tries to ignore. I’ve been a pacifist pretty much my entire life, but I’m finding myself as a struggling pacifist who is tempted by the more nuanced and tension-filled Niebuhrian idea of a “Just War.” I’m not sure how far the connection between Niebuhr and Jack Bauer could go if you pressed it, but when I watch 24, I see a much more realist conception of the world than idealist. Ideally, the nuke can be stopped while Jack amiably requests for the villians to surrender. But, realistically the bad-guys are crazy and powerful.
This is not a final decision on the matter. But I think that a lot of Niebuhr’s ideas of realistically navigating the world have commonality with my intuitional feelings to think Jack is more good than evil.
Josh, I think you may have found your ethic where Jack belongs.
