How would you describe a color? Of course, you can name things that are a specific color. What is blue? What is green? “Well, the sky is blue and the grass is green. Green is a mixture of yellow and blue. And, teal is like in between blue and green. They’re colder colors.” You can talk about similar colors and attributes that have been given to these colors, but there has to be a baseline understanding of what a color is. This understanding is based on one’s perception and relativity. The sky for you could be purple in my eyes and grass could be red, however we have labeled the sky as blue and grass as green, so that’s what they’re called. To a blind person, you cannot describe a color.
Colors (much like a lot of other things) are based on perception and the aggregation of information. Although we can agree on a lot of things to be true, we cannot truly understand what someone else’s perception is. That’s the nature of perception. “All perceptions begin with energy-producing events, either inside people or from the environment” (Markovsky). From these events, information is carried to the brain and representations are made. These representations may or may not reach the conscious, but they are still formed. So even if you believe you don’t have a perception of something, you do, unless there was no energy-producing event to begin with. Inherently, perception is subjective, based on the person’s prior experiences and brain. From this general definition of perception, this leads into social perception and one’s identity. Social perception is divided into three main categories: self-perception, person perception, and group perception. Self-perception is the most important one for the topic of this blog. Self-perception is perception with the individual as the object. “Through introspection and information from others, people develop beliefs about their many qualities: personality, physical appearance, behavioral tendencies, moral stature, athletic prowess, and the like” (Markovsky). This introspection and information has to come through lived experiences and energy-producing events to create a response and, in turn, a perception. However, without memory, one is not able to develop this introspection and new information, so they must rely on what they already know. In doing so, their actions will be questionable to someone who has a more accurate perception of them (due to their ability to remember), but completely reasonable to them because of their skewed self-perception. In the absence of introspection from outside sources and the ability to retain allocated information, a person will act based on what they know and feel, possibly disregarding the liberties of others, ignorant to the philosophy of justice, abusing one's perceived individual liberties, and could possibly lead to a cycle of suffering if nothing is changed.
For this post, I will primarily discuss Leonard Shelby from Christopher Nolan’s Memento. Leonard, in his sense of hubris and anger, set himself up to solve an unsolvable mystery to eventually kill Teddy. While this is “clearly wrong,” reasoning can be made to say that he needed an identity and a purpose to live. Without the mission, there would be no purpose to Leonard’s life, as he cannot make new memories. In his life before he lost his memory, Leonard was a detective and is now “clinging to the scraps of an identity” (Goldberg). With this in mind, it’s a bit easier to imagine what Leonard’s situation is like, although we could never experience this. Leonard was angered and made a rash decision, knowing that he would end up killing Teddy. Leonard’s self-perception is that he is doing what is best and that he is completely justified for his actions. He “knows” the truth and acts based on facts rather than observations and perceptions, much like other people. The flaw in this thinking, however, is that Leonard is acting on perceptions as much, or maybe even more than other people. His sense of justice is biased and not reliable. Throughout the whole movie, Leonard is believed to be in the right to find his wife’s murderer and achieve justice for her. His motives were never questioned and characters went as far to offer help. What makes it okay for them to make the decision to kill someone? Is it alright to take away from someone if they took away from you? When does it go too far?
Justice, in a theoretical sense, is “the first virtue of a social institution,” and is essentially “fairness.” Justice, in regard to utilitarianism, is supposed to be what provides the “greatest good” for the “greatest amount of people.” However, John Rawls in A Theory of Justice concludes that “a social contract by which individuals implicitly agree to the terms on which they are governed in any society… will guarantee a just society without sacrificing the happiness or liberty of any one individual.” (A Theory). Utilitarians would say that Leonard was justified for trying to kill John G in the first place (not killing Teddy, however). Rawls, on the other hand, wouldn’t say he is completely justified. Leonard sacrificed John G’s liberty for his own personal reasons which is not just. But, John Rawls theory and ideology of justice, although ideal, doesn’t work in this context. John G killed Leonard’s wife and, in Leonard’s mind, the government didn’t do anything about it, which is not a just society, as described by Rawls. Now, there needs to be a different form of justice. According to Social Justice, “disruptive justice is in the eye of the beholder” (Alwin). So, using this thinking, Leonard was justified in his efforts.
It is debatable whether or not Leonard was justified with his intentions, depending on what ideology you use, so let’s look at another example. (Spoiler Alert!) In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos is the bad guy to the audience. He kills off half of all life. There should be no justification for this, right? Well, looking into the movie deeper, there are a lot of critics saying that Thanos actually did nothing wrong. Hard to believe, but it’s very compelling. Thanos’s rationale behind killing off half of all life is to reduce overpopulation, and avoid mass extinction. Thanos understands what he is doing isn’t ideal, but it’s a “necessary evil” required to achieve a “greater good” (much like utilitarian ideology). Thanos will promote greater, long-term biodiversity and reduce overpopulation and suffering of survivors. The Avengers, however, heroically (or naively) try to bring those who were snapped out of existence back to life. They put themselves at the center and could actually be considered selfish for this because they failed to realize the risk they could be putting the world at. Thanos, considering everything, not just humans, did nothing wrong and was justified in his actions (Chamary). He is justified in actions under utilitarianism as it gives the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. It is reasonable to think Thanos is justified too because of his self-perception. Thanos saw this as a way to decrease suffering and was a necessary step in giving society a better future. He didn’t have malicious intentions, actually, one could argue that Thanos was rather peaceful and gracious. Although he does remove half of life from existence, he does it in a way with no suffering and when he is finished, he rests.
The judgement of these characters, whether they are justified in their actions or not, will come from the ideology you agree with. A person who agrees with utilitarianism will say that Leonard was justified in seeking out “revenge” for his wife. The fact that he deceived himself, although much harder, could possibly be justified too. Again, Leonard was trying to cling onto some sort of identity. So when he finds out that Teddy has been taking advantage of him and leveraging Leonard’s condition against him, Leonard took the opportunity to still have some identity and purpose and set him up to kill Teddy. Teddy caused harm on many people and is exploiting Leonard. So, one could argue that Leonard is lying to himself to kill Teddy, which will give Leonard happiness and get rid of Teddy who would keep using Leonard to kill more and more people. Thinking about it this way, using an utilitarian lens, Leonard is not the villain, rather he is justified in his pursuit of revenge and even his self deception. Similarly, Thanos does nothing wrong and his mission is what’s best for the future of humanity. Conversely, if you agree with Rawls then neither of these characters are justified. They take away from the liberties of other people and put individual liberties over the idea of a “just society.”
Taking this conversation away from the philosophical literature and the movies, justification can be seen all around us. There are moral dilemmas that people are faced with all the time. A scenario where a family is homeless and the mother steals from a store to feed her family is seen as justified by a majority of people, but why? The mother takes away from the liberties of the store owners. She takes what is not hers and infringes on other people’s wellbeing. The rationale for most people is that the benefit to the mother and her family is very great, whereas the cost to the store is relatively small. The store is also very successful and has customers all the time, while the mother and the family barely have anything. So, the stolen food is only a very small percentage of loss to the whole store’s value, but it is a great deal of benefit for the family. If one agrees with this thinking, then they likely have a very utilitarian perspective. One could argue that the mother is wrong for stealing from the store and she isn’t justified in her actions. This person is more likely to agree with Rawls’s ideology. There’s nothing right or wrong about either one of these perspectives, it’s simply a certain way of thinking.
The greater message that I believe comes out of all of this is that everyone’s perspective is different. One’s perception is determined by their life experiences, and everyone has their own unique upbringing, so everyone will have a different perception of the things around them. I cannot simply state that Leonard was the villain of Memento, just like how I cannot say he wasn’t completely justified in his actions. Similarly, I cannot say that Thanos was completely right or wrong. Both of the situations that these characters faced weren’t ideal, so it’d be naive to bring ideal philosophy and apply it directly to the scenario. Rather, we should be mindful of the common ideology, but also bring our own perspective and knowledge and create our own opinion on the matter. Not everyone will agree or disagree, but we can agree on the fact that there is not one definitive answer. This thinking can be applied directly to the cases I explained in this blog, but should also be employed in daily life.
The real issue stems from being close-minded. If one is completely adamant on their perspective and is not open to any differing viewpoints, then they will take their values and automatically consider them better than others. In doing so, this will create trauma and suffering for those who disagree with this person and will be a losing situation for all parties involved. Maintaining an immovable mindset is the only thing I can say that truly cannot be justified. Instead, members of society should be able to keep an open mind and try to understand the opposing viewpoint. And, although they may not agree in the end they can both benefit from a discussion. There is so much hatred and arguing in the world, when it should really be substituted with conversation and respectful understanding/disagreement.
Bringing this back to Memento, Christopher Nolan never addressed specifically that either Leonard or Teddy is the villain. He purposefully left this detail unknown because there truly is no answer. He understands that, again, perception and “justice [are] in the eye of the beholder” and that it is up for the audience to interpret for themselves.
Works Cited
Alwin, Duane F. "Social Justice." Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd ed., vol. 4, Macmillan Reference USA, 2001, pp. 2695-2711. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3404400347/GVRL?u=lom_troyhs&sid=GVRL&xid=791beaac. Accessed 8 Jan. 2021
Chamary, JV. "The Science Of 'Avengers: Endgame' Proves Thanos Did Nothing Wrong." Forbes, 7 May 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2019/05/07/avengers-endgame-biodiversity/?sh=62794e6b775b. Accessed 8 Jan. 2021.
Goldberg, Matt. "Why 'Memento' Remains Christopher Nolan's Best Movie About Self-Deception." Collider, 18 Aug. 2020, collider.com/memento-movie-explained/. Accessed 8 Jan. 2021.
Markovsky, Barry. "Social Perception." Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd ed., vol. 4, Macmillan Reference USA, 2001, pp. 2748-2755. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3404400352/GVRL?u=lom_troyhs&sid=GVRL&xid=e9e297e3. Accessed 6 Jan. 2021.
"A Theory of Justice." Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works, edited by David M. Galens, et al., vol. 3, Gale, 2002, pp. 295-322. Gale eBooks, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3424200083/GVRL?u=lom_troyhs&sid=GVRL&xid=34b4962e. Accessed 6 Jan. 2021.
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