Batman – Parts Per Billion

The Utility of Human Life and Morality

Why doesn’t Batman kill all his villains once for all? Why the sentence passed by judicial systems in certain heinous and extraordinary crimes feel unjust for the pain victim went through? How one can tell that given person was right or wrong when he/she had no intent of doing it? Can you just look at the end consequences of the actions and decide right or wrong for such scenes? Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of Utilitarianism tried to answer some of these questions but it revealed certain flaws in our ways of judgement. Even though hedonism and utilitarian philosophy create an objective model of morality, they fail to address the subjective and human aspect of any moral discussion. It reveals that the purpose of living is not mere happiness but self-improvement thereby mutual and overall improvement.

How to judge morality and its impact on human life?

The Moral Dilemma

A healthy sense of good and bad makes a society livable. There are some special, rare events that happen in the society we live which challenge our idea of what is good and what is bad. There are uncountable offenses and also in varying types which create problem of who should actually be punished and what should be the punishment.

An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi

If this is really the case, the law and order should punish the victim in such a way that it prohibits the future perpetrators to not do such crimes again. But again, as this above mentioned quote goes if the punishment given for the crime is equally dangerous then what exactly are we trying to establish through such punishment?

It’s like that scenario where murdering a murderer creates a new murderer so the net number of murderers in the society remain the same. An Italian philosopher called Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria had given a thought on this. In his book ‘Of Crimes and Punishments’ he discusses that if the punishments grow on crueler and crueler the net mindset of people also grows crueler. It’s like how water levels itself irrespective of the depths. The baseline of what is right and wrong furthermore what is more wrong and what is more right shifts up. Crueler and crueler crimes reduce the sensibility of people of that society. This could be one reason why people always argue that the judicial system does not provide equivalent punishment as a justice to the victims of certain heinous, exceptional cases of crimes. (Although there are many other factors to make such decisions.)

“In proportion as punishments become crueler, the minds of men, as a fluid rises to the same height with that which surrounds it, grow hardened and insensible; and the force of the passions still continuing, in the space of a hundred years the wheel terrifies no more than formerly the prison. That a punishment may produce the effect required, it is sufficient that the evil it occasions should exceed the good expected from the crime, including in the calculation the certainty of the punishment, and the privation of the expected advantage. All severity beyond this is superfluous, and therefore tyrannical.”
Cesare Beccaria, Of the Mildness of Punishments from ‘Of Crimes and Punishments’

In similar spirit, the relationship between Batman and Joker can be understood. Joker never cares about killing people he will try to stretch the limits of batman in every possible sense where innocent lives are at stake. Batman has one solution to stop all this – to kill the Joker. But with a high moral ground Batman would never kill Joker. What is the motivation behind such character design of Batman. Batman knows that killing Joker would solve the problem once for all. Believe me, this is not just a fictional comic book scenario. The reality that we live in has uncountable such scenarios where exactly same decision dilemmas occur.

The famous trolley problem also points to somewhat similar moral dilemma. Where should the trolley be directed if one track has single person and another has 5 people tied to the track? Nobody wants blood on their hands.

But the same trolley problem becomes interesting if you start adding additional attributes to the people who are on track.

What if the single person tied to the track is a scientist with the cure for cancer and the track with five people are criminals? Then definitely you would kill the five criminals instead of the single scientist.

Did you notice what change made us to decide faster? The moment we understood the consequences of our actions we had the clarity of what is right and what is wrong. Our moral compass pointed to North the moment we foresaw the consequences of our actions.

The foundation of some of the principles of morality are based on similar ideas. Utilitarianism and Jeremy Bentham’s an English Philosophers ideas have contributed to the ideas of morality for humanity, especially when we are talking about the human society as a whole. The ideas put by Jeremy Bentham also faced severe criticism, we will see those in detail too. But the key intention of my exploration is to understand how we create the meaning of Morality and how subjectivity, objectivity totally change the way we perceive morality. In the end we may reach to rock bottom questioning the morality itself to be nonexistent – and if morality is non-existent then what separates human beings from animals? (I hope to enter in this territory with some optimism, I don’t know where will it end.)

Utilitarianism

As I already explained in the trolley problem that by adding one simple, short part of information shifted our moral compass in (supposedly) proper direction. What did this information add in the dilemma to make it solvable?

The answer is the foresight of consequence. Once you saw the consequence it leads to you got the hold of what is right and what is wrong. You decided one side to be right and other one to be wrong. This foresight of consequence helped you to weigh the ‘right’-ness of your decision.

Utilitarianism is based on the measurement of morals based on the consequences of the actions you take. What is the other side of taking actions? It is ‘the intent’. This is where the fun game begins.

Many philosophers are always fighting over morals based on the intent of the person and the consequences of the actions they take. For example, thinking of murder (pardon my thinking) makes me less of convict than really murdering someone. My thinking has not led to the loss of the person I hate. Utilitarianism thus calls out for the construct of morality based on the actual actions and their consequences; it’s like saying ‘what a man is more about what he does instead of what he thinks’.

Hedonism, Utilitarianism and Jeremy Bentham

Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.
Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham an English philosopher contributed to the utilitarian ideas of morality. He was not well appreciated in his home country due to the misalignment of his ideas of socio-political reforms with the British sovereignty of those times. The French translation of his works on law, governance gave him popularity in Frenchmen. Bentham was one of the people who pushed the political reforms during French revolution.

While reading Joseph Priestly’s Essay on the First Principles of Government, Bentham came across the idea of “greatest happiness for the greatest number” which motivated him to expand the ideas of utilitarianism.

Priestly brought the idea of “Laissez-faire” (‘allow to do’ in French)- a policy of minimum governmental interference in the economic affairs of individuals and society. Joseph Priestly developed his ideas of politics, economics and government based on the ideas created by Adam Smith (Author of the Wealth of Nations – the holy grail of classical Economics).

The Greek philosopher called Epicurus was the supporter, creator of hedonism. Hedonism defines ethics to pleasure or pain. According to hedonism that which gives pleasure is morally good and that which give pain is morally wrong. The idea behind hedonism is the aversion of pain to live an undisturbed life because anyways this all won’t make sense once you are dead. According to Epicurus – fear of death, retribution is pushing people to collect more wealth, more power thereby causing more painful life. The collection of wealth, power is done thinking that they can avert the death but that is not the reality. So, worrying about the death sucks out the pleasure of living the life which itself is equivalent of death.

Non fui, fui, non-sum, non-curo
(“I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care”)
Epicurus

So, epicurean hedonistic morality tries to maximize the pleasure. The other end of this idea is that if everyone tries to maximize their own pleasure (egoistic hedonism) wouldn’t it disturb others?

If I want to listen to a song on loud speaker while bothering my neighbors, what is the moral standpoint here?

The answer is the overall good of the system. So, if you neighbor also wants to listen music loud and overall loud music is good for the group then we are morally right to play loud music. (Just pray that the group has same music interests!)

So, Jeremy Bentham is known to rejuvenate this ancient philosophy of egoistic hedonism through his philosophy of utilitarianism.

The basic idea behind Utilitarianism is to maximize the utility of anything, value of anything. The utility can be increased by doing what is right which can be done by doing what gives more pleasure or by avoiding those things which increase or give pain.

Utility is a property which tends

To produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness
To prevent happening of mischief, pain, evil or happiness

So, the right action is the one that produces and/ or maximizes overall happiness. Please understand that the word “overall” is important for Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of Utilitarianism. Because from selfish point of views, what is pleasurable for one may not be pleasurable for others. (This is also where the certain philosophical problems of Utilitarianism are hiding, save this point for later.)

To solve this bottleneck of clarity, there are two types of pleasure in human life – one is happiness from senses, physical experiences and one is from intellect. The intellectual happiness is higher than the pleasure from senses. So, on personal moral dilemmas these two attributes can solve the problem.

All good on personal level but what about the moral decisions for the group, for society? Here, Bentham solved the moral dilemma by using the idea of “greater good for all”. When we don’t agree on what makes us happy together, making sacrifices in your happiness to make others happy is the solution. (Keep this idea parked in your mind.)

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters – pain and pleasure. They govern us in all we do, all we say and all we think.”
Jeremy Bentham

Felicific Calculus – Measuring happiness

Jeremy Bentham is known as the Issac Newton of the Morality for developing the felicific calculus/ hedonistic calculus. Bentham pointed out the key factors which affect the net happiness and using this factors’ effect as a whole, one can quantify the happiness.

Following are the factors which affect the happiness:

Intensity – how strong is the pleasure from the given action?
Duration – how long does the happiness remain from given action?
Certainty – what is the likelihood of given pleasure to occur?
Propinquity – how soon/ immediate is the occurrence of the pleasure?
Fecundity – what is the possibility that this pleasure will also lead to the newer pleasure(s)?
Purity – what is the change that this pleasure will not bring some opposite sensation?
Extent – how many people are affected?

If one considers these factors and the principle to maximize the communal happiness, most of the social moral dilemmas can be effectively solved.

So, according to this felicific calculus,

Batman should kill the Joker for the greater good of the Gotham
The trolley should go over the group/ person which creates more pain for the society
Baby Hitler should be killed once we get the chance to travel back in time

You must appreciate the clarity which the felicific calculus brings. This clarity is very important for the policymakers, politicians while deciding the fate of the group, state, nation as a whole.

Now a simple question –

If batman keeps on killing the villains, won’t he become the greatest killer of them all? What would differentiate Batman from other villains?

What would happen if you were given false information about the nature of the people tied on track while riding that trolley? Could your wrong decision be undone? If it was the wrong decision then now ‘you’ are morally wrong, with the blood of the innocents.

You would kill baby Hitler only because you have vision that this baby will grow up to be the mass murderer tyrant. The mass murder hasn’t happened yet. So, now you are the killer of a ‘now’ innocent baby.

Maintaining same emotion, now you would appreciate why even for a strong judicial system giving capital punishment for rapists, terrorists is difficult morally. You would solve the problem for now because the act has been already done, the consequences have already happened (which is why moral judgement is effective as it relies on the consequences). Killing the perpetrators or punishing them with equal pain would definitely bring peace of mind using the principles of morality but that also degrades the morality of innocents who fell down from that morality. It is not matter of what one deserves because what bad happened to them, it is about how less human you will become once you perform that act of punishment.

Recall the quote of Beccaria in the early part of my discussion.

Killing joker will create fear among other villains but it also creates chance for the creation of even dangerous villain in future.

Killing baby Hitler doesn’t guarantee prevention of World War and mass murders, as our personalities are the result of our surroundings – another Hitler-like person would have emerged in such given circumstances. (I honestly don’t know if he/she would be worse or less harsh than the original one but you get the point – conditions anyways would have created another cruel person.)

Jumping out of the trolley seems the best way to run away from the pain of murder of other unknown people (joking). The trolley dilemma remains dilemma.

Also, the felicific calculus allows pain for small groups for the betterment/ pleasure of the bigger society. For example, according to this utilitarian idea killing few healthy convicted prisoners to save lives of many innocent people by harvesting the prisoners’ organ is justified. It is for the good in the end.

You see where this goes?

See the level to which any human or a group could go if they start justifying their moral rightness using these ideas. Using these principles any big group can overpower the minorities in morally right way. It is just a matter of time that the felicific calculus principles would get exploited for other “immoral” gains.

That is exactly why many people criticized the felicific calculus saying that a pig laying in the mud for his whole life would be happiest than a human being (Socrates to be specific) if Bentham’s calculus is used to decide morality.

In a crude way, there are two type of Utilitarianism which help to solve the problem to certain extent, but it is not a complete solution:

Act Utilitarianism – to act for the greater good of all
Rule Utilitarianism – to set rules in such way that no one inherently gets the pain or everyone is happy because actions and their consequences are bound by certain set rules in first place now

Happiness is not the ‘only’ and the ultimate goal – the limitations of Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarian Philosophy

What people were not ‘happy’ with Jeremy Bentham’s felicific calculus was that it made humans more like machines and very objective. People don’t always want happiness for their or the group’s greater good. Exercising daily, reducing fat-sugar maybe painful but that guarantees healthy, illness free long life. Doing drugs isolates the person from pain but it impacts the long-term physical and mental health of the person. Hardships and pain make people to reach their difficult goals which is what is the real and ultimate happiness for them.

Happiness is not always the goal of life, if one is completely tangled in the pleasures of life and if everyone is having same mentality then in the end no one will be happy, because as a group we all would never agree on what makes us happy; different environments in which we grew, our personal experiences, our upbringing, our motivations prevent us from creating a common definition of happiness.

The subjective factor of pleasure or pain is not present in Bentham’s philosophy of Utilitarianism. Building further upon that, the victim who has suffered from the morally wrong action will only be satisfied when he/she gets justice, not when they are made happier than their perpetrators. (This justice must again not be mechanical and objective like the felicific calculus.)

One more flaw of the Bentham’s utilitarianism is the imbalance between personal scenarios and the communal scenarios. In most cases, it demands personal sacrifice irrespective of their subjective morality for the betterment of the group. (that is exactly how many past cruel dictators have justified their moral correctness on their acts against the minorities.)

A British philosopher, Bernard Williams presented a thought experiment to highlight such flaw of the Utilitarianism.

In this thought experiment:

A botanist on his South American expedition is ordered by the cruel regime soldiers to kill one of the Indian tribe people. If the botanist fails to kill one Indian the soldiers would execute all of the tribe members.

So, if we implement utilitarian principles, then the botanist should kill one Indian to save the remaining all. That is morally right.

But on the other hand, one must also understand that the botanist has nothing to do with the cruel regime and even with the indigenous tribe members. He is under no moral obligation to do anything. The consequences are in such a way that whatever he will do he will be called morally wrong. Which in the end is wrong.

The utilitarian philosophy neglects this subjectivity and consequentialism while we are deciding morality of anything.

Maybe that is also why even when we have all the rules in place, penal code in place for all types of offenses, similar crimes – we have a judge – a subjective, consequential observer to grant the final justice.

You must understand that the discussion does not want to pose Utilitarianism as completely wrong idea. The intent of this discussion is to understand how to de-clutter a complex moral scenario and how to inject subjectivity in it so that the correct person will get the justice in the end. As we are human beings and not machines, every day brings new subjective scenarios with new subjective moral dilemmas. Direct implementation of utilitarianism may bring in the transparency in the moral puzzle but it is at the expense of oversimplification and loss of personal subjectivity, consequential personal point of view and also freedom of person to exist.

The ways in which Utilitarianism brings immediate clarity by elimination of some important subjective aspects is dangerous and limits the judgement of real morality. Friedrich Nietzsche had warned new philosophers in his book beyond good and evil about the philosophies which create such “immediate certainties” like Utilitarian philosophy creates-

“The belief in “immediate certainties” is a moral naivete which does honor to us philosophers; but – we have now to cease being “merely moral” men!”
Friedrich Nietzsche

Conclusion – If not happiness then what is the goal of being human?

Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of Utilitarianism and the felicific calculus can help to decide the morality of what is good for all but it ignores the presence and worth of personal integrity, the well being of the minorities, subjectivity of the person in given consequences. It by default eliminates the possibility of humans remaining human beings instead it attributes them as the machine maximizing a targeted outcome (which is pleasure here).

So, the question remains – If we are not meant to maximize pleasure during our tenure in life because in the end after death there will not be anything to experience or gain happiness – if our existence and final purpose does not align with being happy then what exactly is the purpose of being a human being?

Based on my understanding on what many great people have commented about the purpose of life, I found that most of them point to remaining the human being you always were. I am not saying that the personality should remain the same, rather it should change and keep on upgrading itself till the end but the core should remain same or it should not degrade at least.

Some wrong events, injustice, oppression, cruelty will make you suffer, but that should also not vilify your human spirit. Once we let go the pursuit of happiness and chase the goal of being a better human being (or at least remain the human being you are) we can fulfill the purpose of our lives and also make other people’s lives better.

Once you will let go of such utilitarian, mechanistic setups of morality you will realize that people don’t need gods, religions, governments, judicial systems to keep in the check of right and wrong. Our inner compass is more than enough to take care of what makes us human beings, this inner compass is not about what is right and wrong, for me it is about what better version of yourself you would become if you act in that certain way. It takes care of what you are thinking and what would be the consequences of actions thereby resolving the dilemma of morality which got separated on the basis of either intent or the consequences.

I am highlighting the importance of inner personal human compass because the rules designed to keep morality in check would always need revision and the utilitarian philosophy would wait for the consequences to happen to decide the morality. The goal of human struggle to improve their current version to a better one does not need either of the metrics to decide the morality.

Imagine what the world would become if everyone started appreciating this inner human compass!

(For now, we can only imagine, but I am optimistic on this.)

P.S. –

Even though the Utilitarian philosophy had many flaws, Jeremy Bentham contributed largely to bring in new political reforms, improve governance, establish penal codes in judicial systems, define sovereignty, reduce the influence of religious institutions on the lives of people and governments. His works were strategically maligned by some lobbies to lessen the impact of his other notable works. He was the proponent of liberty and freedom from religious influences on lives of people. The pushed for the establishment of a secular educational institute in London – now famously known as University College London. Jeremy Betham’s fully clothed wax statue containing his original skeleton remains in the entrance hall of the University main building upon his request.

The Batman- The superhero who ‘unlearned’

Journey of a person through cognitive dissonance

The Batman by Matt Reeves is one of the most important and influential movies. It is important not because some profit expecting comic book franchise is trying to reboot their most valuable asset in order to establish the character so as to drive the future narratives of the stories which will be getting introduced in the near future but it stands important because of the fact that it shows mirror to us as a human dealing with the nature of truths we are taught. The Batman by Matt Reeves is not a superhero movie, rather it tells the story of a person who discovers that all of his life decisions which made him who he is today were based on the lies and his journey out of these lies. It is the story of the batman ‘unlearning’ the facts he accepted throughout his life about his parents.

There will be some spoilers hereon in the discussion, WARNING! Watch the movie and get back again or never mind.

We all know the origin story of the Batman, the murder of his parents by a goon for few amount of money influenced his life decisions creating a strong hatred for the injustice and idea of punishing criminals with violence for their deeds. That is why he considers punishing the criminals and goons in the Gotham as a way to avenge the murder of his parents. Hence the reason the Batman of Matt Reeves always introduces himself as ‘Vengeance’ in the movie. Vengeance is the foundation of the Batman in this movie based on the fact that his parents were the innocents who fell victim to the disorder and crimes of the city. This is the truth of the Batman as a character. You will see the Batman and others (mostly Cat woman) calling him as vengeance throughout the movie.

The movie builds upon a series of murders done by the Riddler and sending one by one love letters to the Batman in each investigation to reveal various political, personal lies which were told to the people of Gotham city to maintain the power concentrated in the hands of bunch of people. These people used the power for personal gains only, thereby creating chaos and distress in the Gotham city. One-by-one murder of high-profile persons from the Gotham city administration and judiciary system finally reveal that the parents of Bruce Wayne- the Batman and especially his father was also one of the persons who was responsible for the downfall of the Gotham city.

The moment when the Bruce Wayne knows the truth that his father – Thomas Wayne was also one of the high-profile people who created the foundations of scams, frauds, unreliable charities, unreliable city renewal projects and fake drug raids in order to win the people of Gotham, the whole idea of him avenging the death of his parents, being ‘Batman’ seems useless to him. The truth reveal becomes an attack on his identity when he knows that his father- whom he used to consider the noblest of all- his role model was also trying to hide the truth about mental illness of his mother to maintain his political image during elections and his attempt to prefer illegal acts to control that ‘information’ completely shatters the idea of what made him the Batman.

There are two types of truths that the movie really focuses on- the white lies and the black lies. The white lies are meant to be harmless to the listeners like the parents telling a child not to misbehave otherwise the boogieman will come and get them. The black lies are the lies which are meant for the benefit of the person telling them. The company leaders telling investors misleading profit and false business models to get people invested more in their companies and thereby bubbling the company portfolio are the examples of black lies (read more about the Fyre Festival, the Theranos case).

The lies like the greatest drug raid GCPD carried out in Gotham city to eradicate the drug abuse in order to publicize the mayor-elect, the Gotham renewal fund which was meant to uplift the social infrastructure was actually a money laundering scheme- were the black lies for the story. Thomas Wayne having a clean family background was the black lie for the people of Gotham city.

But there comes a moment in the movie when Alfred confronts the Batman- Bruce Wayne for the reality of his parents that some lies are essential for the well-being of the person and the society. It was a sincere and innocent attempt of Thomas Wayne to hide the truth of Martha for the well-being of families and his love for her which created this ‘white lie’. The white lies with which Bruce Wayne grew up with, brought the best out of him – making him to fight for the ‘Justice of the people’.

As a human being we are what we believe in. Our personalities are built by the facts that our surroundings impose on us. It becomes really difficult to accept the that whatever was told to us our whole life was a lie. Humans do not accept these truths and try to find the ways to move away from such truths. People also try to find the groups of other people who support the similar ideas so as to run away from the truth. Our brains cannot handle such type of clashes because these lies (truths of us) are the foundations of our being. Psychologists call this as a ‘cognitive dissonance’. It refers to the mental conflict that occurs when a person’s behaviors and beliefs do not align. It may also happen when a person holds two beliefs that contradict each other. This is what suffering is. Our mind tries to avoid such sufferings and existential crises. Colin Stokes- a famous TED Speaker and writer in ‘the New Yorker Magazine’ discusses this in a very effective way in a TED talk.

But you know what, one cannot run away from the truth. The truth always finds its way. Jordan Peterson in his lecture has said the following about the nature of a lie-

“Problem with lying is (it’s) like hydra, it has one of the consequences that you expect you can get away with it but it has 3 or 4 others that you don’t expect so it grows some complexity then you have tackle lie on each of those ‘complexity-o-crops’ and then they grow three more complexities and soon this little lie turns into a great Ball of lies, and at some point, it becomes painfully evident to everyone.” -Jordan Peterson

Peterson also quotes Mark Twain about the advantages of telling the truth-

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

This is what roughly lies between the truth and the lie.

Now, let us have one reality check.

According to the scientific studies, a person lies twice a day on an average. The lies are innate part of our personal and social interactions. If a man doesn’t tell lies to his wife about that dress being beautiful on her or her hairdo looking stunning, how could he stay alive otherwise! – Jokes apart. There is one scientific study available in ‘arXiv’ maintained by Cornell Tech which implies that white lies can truly build the society, ‘glue’ it together while the black lies fragment- break the society. Same thing is seen in the Batman movie. The black lie actually leads to the chaos in the Gotham and increases the people’s following to the Riddler.

We humans have actually mastered the art of lying for the mere being of survival. If such small harmless lies are such inseparable part of our life, then how could one handle the real lies which have made him/her the way they are! How could they change the course of this ‘fundamental’ and ‘learned/ believed throughout my entire life’ thought process?

One lie leading to other one to ‘cover up’ creates a series of misinformation and chaos which has different impact on different people causing them to make different choices. This is the reason we can see that the same lies affect the decisions made by Batman and the Riddler. As Riddler tries to convince Batman that they both can enjoy ‘the reveal’ of truths as one group and purge the whole Gotham city off of all the criminals, he is also willing to accept the harm being done to the innocents as revealing the truth is more important for Riddler but Batman has different ideology.

This is the moment which sets differences between Riddler and Batman. Though having almost same backgrounds and same intentions, same fight to eradicate injustice- Batman doesn’t accept Riddler’s offer knowing that he is also part-victim of these lies.

There is this moment in the third act of the movie when one of the Riddler’s followers when asked about his identity calls himself as ‘Vengeance’. It is in the same fashion the Batman introduces himself. This is the moment when the Batman realizes the consequences of the white lie and how you cannot convince everyone for the white lie (it is a lie after all). He understands in this very moment that act of avenging his parents by punishing the criminals of Gotham is not only spreading the fear for him thereby the fear for ‘Justice being served or their moment of reckoning’ but it is also creating some bad examples for the people who are aware of only the black lies. They are not made aware of all the white lies and in some sense, even when someone tries to tell them the intentions of white lies, they won’t be in a position to understand it. This is the nature of lies. Black or white- a lie is a lie.

Then, what makes the Batman and Riddler or his followers differ?

I think that it is the process of unlearning and thereby accepting the truth.

Unlearning can simply mean discarding the false information which was till date responsible for the foundation of who you were and rediscovering the same things with new perspective, rediscovering what that lie was hiding. The batman unlearns ‘the truth about his parents’ told to him from his childhood. He understands that however bad/ugly it may seem, it cannot change what he is today. That is why our Batman in the third act accepts that the ‘Vengeance cannot change the past’, it will not change the fact about his parents, it won’t even bring them back. Hence the reason our Batman in the end of this movie expects himself to become a ray of hope for people (and not vengeance)

Batman clears off his mind of what is right and what is wrong. He makes the notion to save the people of Gotham as a primary goal rather than displaying himself as vengeance and punishing the criminals. He brings himself out of the shadows, it is greatly and symbolically highlighted in the moment when he sacrifices himself to save people from live electric cables and when he lights up the torch to bring the people out of the floods.

This process of unlearning of the Batman, the journey of Batman accepting the ugly truth of his past, his journey inwards in ‘this’ Matt Reeves adaptation makes the story so special. It is the reason why even though many villains share similar intentions, pasts, personal acts with the batman they cannot become the Batman.

We all have similar type of moments in our life – when the truths we were built upon, when the people we follow, the people we admire, the ideologies we accept as the ultimate truths prove out to be false, wrong. I think these are the perfect moments, perfect opportunities to redefine ourselves, to again question the nature of who we are and the purpose of our being and the influence, the example we are creating in the world. This is the chance to unlearn the same things around us. It is this suffering, the inner battle which we have to endure to learn the real truth. David Brooks, a famous Columnist says these sentences in his TED talk to highlight our dealings with the suffering of realization of the lies that made us- “Suffering’s great power is that it is the great interruption of life. It reminds you that you’re not the person you thought you were.”

This, I think is the power of storytelling for the Batman Movie. Even though he is a superhero, there is that connect between the Batman and we as a human beings which creates an emotional common ground for everyone to connect with each other.

References:

Jordan Peterson – Side Effects of Telling Lies
What to do when you learn that everything is a lie: Colin Stokes at TEDxBeaconStreet
The lies our culture tells us about what matters – and a better way to live: David Brooks
Simulations Reveal How White Lies Glue Society Together and Black Lies Create Diversity – MIT Tech Review
Cognitive Dissonance – Dune : Psychology in Science Fiction