Editor’s note: Below is a passage from a video about Breaking Bad, transcribed by Mauricio, in which the author alluded to the famous novel by Herman Melville.
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There is another famed literary work that may provide insight into Breaking Bad’s true significance: the aforementioned Herman Melville novel Moby Dick. The White Man, then, is America’s White Whale, and he hunts himself. His poisoned consciousness striving to slay the primal, untamed life force within, the inner Heisenberg. Pitted against himself, he despises this uninhibited inner nature, because it does not conform to the false moral system that has been imposed upon him, and by which he judges and condemns his own being.
This is why we are driven to subjugate ourselves to systems that chain us, moral precepts that harm us, and drugs that weaken us. It is why we mutilate ourselves through endless self-critique and why we relentlessly scrutinise our own thoughts and deeds. It is why we are now compelled to submit to the synthetic gods that, through AI, we are in the process of creating. And like Ahab and his Pequod, we recruit peoples from all corners of the Earth to assist us in our task. This hunt to slay the Great White Beast has become the meta-narrative of the Modern Age, and it is the secret tie that binds its many myths together [emphasis added by Ed.].
We hunt ourselves because the conflict between our primal inner being with its forbidden strength and the servile creature we have been trained to become is irreconcilable. And one force must inevitably triumph above the other. Either the moral system we have accepted dies, or we die. There is no middle ground. This is the choice that lies before us.