The psychology of Walter White Part 2.

So I wanted to finish this article. Or at least do part 2. I could always do another part.

But this is the video that will be the jumping off point for today, Youtube: Moon: Breaking Bad tried to Warn you:

https://youtu.be/ljQmp2TMamc?si=2UDQekSAR-cQHQW6

Summary:

This video was good and has come closer to what I have thought. But it is not the same. I have watched another video that says something to the effect that Walter White was the devil incarnate as well. 

One of the things the creator of this video says is that the symbology of the show shows that it is a metaphor for the corporate world. With Gus and his whole two face thing after he gets blown up! 

This is something that I have been thinking about lately. My previous article made the point that the male quest for status is very strong, and combined with the side effects of Walters intelligence, this is a large part of his motivation and what traps him on the course of action he took. 

But there is one barrier that I can see in considering Walter as a normal person that just got messed up in things. That is his comfort with violence. 

Violence.

Close to the end of season 3 the show is meandering through semi political mundane discussions. The action has wound down. Walter does not need to engage in violence because Gus is handling all the particulars of the business. 

But, as often happened in Breaking Bad, circumstances took an unexpected and brutal turn and suddenly, Walt has to act. He has to save someone from getting hurt and when he does. This is absolutely unbelievably violent.

While we see Jessies various forays with violence lead him to taking more drugs and cracking up psychologically. We see very little psychological distress from Walter at any point from his various forays into violence. Blowing up Tuco's building, it seems he just did it and then went home and went to bed. After discussing Todd killing a child with Jessie and saying that it was terrible and all that, we see him comfortably whistling while cooking a few minutes later. 

In my last article, I excerpted a video that threw around the term of 'narcissist'. But I don't know if I see that. We see clear indication in Season 5 that Walter is attempting to put up a false psychopathic front when he tells Skylar infront of the police that he killed Hank because Hank "got in his way", because Walter always wins. Walter is not comfortable saying something like this because, perhaps, morally, it is a bit sick, and he has shown a lot of care, flawed as it may (may) be, towards his family. 

It also seems to me as though the show is trying to indicate that Walter is a narcissist, giving us very easy recogniseable points such as the gaslighting with Jessie and Skylar. But in the small print making it clear that he definitely is not. When Walt tells Skylar at the end that he cooked for himself and gave her and the audience a kind of moral "out". A way to blame the "narcissist", and not have any deeper perspective on the situation. 

But does it agree with the facts? No, it doesn't. Walter was clear early on that he was cooking and then intended to get out of the business. He tried it a lot and it was only unpredictable elements of the situation that kept him in said business. Plus, his only motivation through a lot of the show and his stated motivation is in fact providing for his family.

But the narcissistic behaviours he does show. Skylar being trapped in the way she was. Does give an easy plot device of this being an "abusive narcissist". But what other explanations are there here?

Morality:

One thing in the video included from today, is to reframe the moral situation slightly. This also annoys me when talking about this subject in youtube comments with people.

When Walt started cooking he had to do it. I cannot think of a more moral position to take than to try and take care of your family, to prevent them falling into masses of debt and to look after your son with cerebral palsy. 

The moral framing is this. That pharmaceutical companies are doing exactly the same and they are not illegal. Or that they are generally amoral. 

This can go further in relation to something else I heard about philosophically. That if the government tells someone to do something it does not change the morality from if the government had not told them to do that thing. 

This goes for the army and the police. The society has a very enabling view towards the army in my perspective. But, well, I don't know if that can be morally defended. 

Finishing up.

Anyway, I have more to say but am going to leave it here. But this is the beginning of how to frame the conversation on Walter. Before we can say what is going on we have to say what isn't. What isn't going on, by my estimation, is that the business Walter is in is specifically more unethical than a lot of normal businesses. Also, I am not taking narcissism to be his motivation. Since we see a clear reason for him to falsify narcissism in creating the myth of "Heisenberg" (Werner Heisenberg? Going to come to some symbology as well later).