How Dexter Deals With Moral Ambiguity
The moral case for learning to live within the moral ambiguity of your choices.
Author’s Note: As mentioned before, I’m offering half off paid subscription until January 14th, 2022.
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What do you do when you don't know what to do?
What action do you take when there isn't a clear path forward? When the choices you have in front of you are both of equal value, whether it's equally good or equally bad. You have to make a choice of some kind. Although by not making a choice, that is a kind of choice in and of itself. But when you do something or fail to do something, those choices are still in front of you. At some point, the only real option is to choose one over the other. If they're both equally good, then you run the risk of not getting the benefits of the other option. If they're both bad however, this can be even worse in some cases. Choosing between two bad choices usually involves accepting the negative impact of the choice.
You have to be able to live with the fact that either you harmed yourself or you harmed someone else. Most people would prefer not to harm anyone if they can avoid it. Which is part of the reason why they have a preference for not doing anything. To avoid the choice all together. At least if you don't make either of the bad choices, you're more likely only to harm yourself rather than others. People will accept the harm to themselves if it reduces their impact. In doing so however, you end up taking away many different choices from others. It might be that by not making the choice, the lessons that those you might harm would learn from them, won't come to pass.
This can also be a type of harm. Denying people the ability to move forward might cause them to learn an even worse harm later on. You might have to live with that too. So they end up trying to figure out what the right choice is. Sitting in that type of ambiguity is deeply uncomfortable for most people. They don't like to really live in that uncertain place. It's better to just go right for a decision or to withdraw entirely from the question. However, there's something to learn from living in that place of ambiguity.
One of the best parts about Dexter and in particular its continuation/sequel series Dexter: New Blood is how it lets you live within that ambiguity. There's no simplistic either or situation from which a clear moral choice emerges. Only different degrees of good or bad to choose from. And because of who Dexter is, the level of bad is never as easy as being willing to lie or not. It's about who to kill in order to stop people from knowing that he kills people.
He spent the first 8 seasons of the show coming to the conclusion that escaping from that moral ambiguity was his only way forward. In finding his way out, it cost so many people their lives. Rita, LaGuerta, his brother Brian and ultimately his sister Debra. And those are just the biggest, most impactful ones.
But in choosing to escape this moral ambiguity, he left people like his son with his own moral ambiguity. An uncertainty about his father and what he can become. Something that in the sequel series, Dexter must now live with the long term consequences of this unwillingness to choose.
Do yourself a favour and live with the uncertainty by checking out Dexter New Blood on Showtime in the United States, Hulu and Amazon elsewhere.