Breaking Bad Poster - Meth Walter

I saw no possible redeeming value in this series when it was initially promoted. After viewing your art, and going to the series Wikipedia page, and reading the plot synopsis of the first two seasons – this initial impression was confirmed.

What the series creator did was replicate Nietzsche’s brute.

Philosophically, Nietzsche was a mystic and an irrationalist. His metaphysics consists of a mystically “malevolent” universe; his epistemology subordinates reason to “will,” or feeling or instinct or blood.

Nietzsche’s rebellion against Immanuel Kant’s altruism consisted of replacing the sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself. He proclaimed that the ideal man is moved, not by reason, but by his “blood,” by his innate instincts, feelings and will, that the ideal man is a “beast of prey” whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim.

Ultimately Nietzsche’s rebellion was a failure, playing directly into the hands of Kantien mysticism. Kant’s expressly stated purpose was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. He knew that it could not survive without a mystic base—and what it had to be saved from was man’s highest virtue: reason. Nietzsche attempted to defeat the theological authoritarianism of his times by beating them to the finish-line—by advocating destruction of the mind, of one’s own humanity, and reversion to animalistic brutality.

While I would agree that the irrational anti-scientific mysticism of traditional theology should wither away – there is a better way, using the very virtue (reason) that Kant sought to refute.  

Ayn Rand wrote “that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win—and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent.”

The main character of Breaking Bad self-destructs his own integrity then proceeds to degrade and erode his own humanity with every seceding choice.

In regards to integrity Rand has this to say: “Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence—that man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions—that, like a judge impervious to public opinion, he may not sacrifice his convictions to the wishes of others, be it the whole of mankind shouting pleas or threats against him—that courage and confidence are practical necessities, that courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.”

When Walter willingly becomes criminal, driven by nothing other than resentment (according to the series own description), it is not the choice of a man, it is the choice of a self-arrested child who refused to mature and take responsibility for his own existence.

“Integrity does not consist of loyalty to one’s subjective whims, but of loyalty to rational principles.”

Every individual knows from very early childhood that the flame from a stove-top burner is hot and will burn you – so I see no purpose in courting the sensation of nihilism that must result from watching the willful self-immolation of human beings who fail to make and maintain this connection. There is no lesson to be gleaned from it –the series description and synopsis makes it evident that there is only the sick-making voyeurism of slow-motion disintegration, of watching people degrade and then obliterate themselves.

I don’t understand why you think the series is worthy of aggrandizement, let alone art.  

My initial judgment of it stands: “Thanks, but no thanks.”