Justified, the meaning of a hat

The Cure is playing as I sit down to type today.  Nice touch.  

Last night my favorite television program, Justified came to a conclusion.  Justified’s writers crafted a very nice closing episode.  Some of what would happen (and what did happen) I had guessed.  Boone had to die. Rayland had to carry out some larger act of morality beyond what the law would allow. Some of the plot twists I found surprising but ultimately satisfying.  I now don’t need to keep up cable television any more.

Over the past several months I have been rushing to read the New York Times synopsis of what had occurred.  I do find it humorous that one of the most prestigious papers in our country runs synopses of all the major alt soap operas. The person who did the weekly synopsis seemed to have a very good eye for the themes that were developing during this season.  To my mind the season was about real street level justice in a flawed and dirty world. In the closing Times’ post the author talked about how every character’s moral code, from the most peripheral bit player to the three leads, led to the conclusion of the tale.  I think this was a valid and astute point. Belief in certainties and the rules those certainties demand seem to run through every character that populated these last few months.

No matter which side of the line we stand assuming there is a valid division between right and wrong, good and bad or sin and virtue we have rules, we have our code.  There are things that you and also things that I won’t do. In philosophy this comes under the rubric of ethics.  In the Christian religion many people derive their code from the Ten Commandments and the admonitions of Jesus and the preachers who have followed him. In ethics there is no God who sets absolute bars of what is and what is not holy and sacred.  In a world without God, a world that humanists populate coming up with a basis for behavior that is not totally self-centered and without common rules can be a challenge.  Perhaps the mere survival of life is a starting point, perhaps. 

In Justified the codes came from both sides of the spectrum.  Although there was a healthy degree of Bible belt upbringing infused in most of the characters each carved out rules that as a viewer seemed to make sense given their life experiences.  In the end the humanity of the characters was the story.  Yeah there was some T &  A and lots and lots of violence.  Still the story was ultimately about people and what created the boxes their own rules constrained them to live in. Life is complex. People are complex. White hat or dark hat it is what is under that hat that creates the reality of our code.