Why Would I Save A World I No Longer Have Any Stake In?

I saw Watchmen over the weekend. All things considered, I thought it was great. It's fantastic that a major studio released such a dense, challenging piece of work. While the cinematography and special effects were impressive, I was more engaged by the film's philosophical themes (which are undoubtedly carried-over from the source material).


Dr. Manhattan is especially fascinating. He's practically a god and illustrates just how problematic that proposition is (see title of post). He serves as a counterbalance to the other costumed "heroes" who are driven to crime fighting by emotional needs. Silk Spectre II is trying to live up to her mother's expectations. Nite Owl II can't get it up without a little caped crusading first. The most extreme is Rorschach, who's so dependant on his mask for a sense of identity that he calls it his face. Dr. Manhattan, meanwhile, doesn't seem to have any desires at all. He is a wholly logical being whose humanity has all but vanished.

This paradigm reminded me of a book I've been reading called "How We Decide." Jonah Lehrer, the author, details the neurological process of decision making. He explains that the brain is in a constant argument with itself. This is simplifying it a bit, but there are basically two parties in the debate, the emotional brain and the rational brain. The emotional brain is the sum of a person's experiences. Through the regulation of dopamine, it learns patterns and behaviors that inform our visceral reactions. The rational brain is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. It's our consciousness.


Rorschach personifies the emotional brain. He reacts to everything on a gut level. His experiences have ingrained in him a moral code that he can't bear to deviate from. This leads him to commit acts of horrible violence, but to him it's all about justice. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Dr. Manhattan. His power-endowing accident removes his emotional brain almost entirely. As a result, he is coldly calculated. This also leads him to unspeakable violence (we win Vietnam), but not because of a moral imperative. Instead, it is out of apathy for suffering. He has lost the ability to empathize with others (a problem also associated with autism).

Typically, we think of acting only out of rationality as a good thing. But the film's end takes this idea to a conclusion that's difficult to swallow. I won't go into details, but the trade-off our "heroes" face is similar to one of Lehrer's thought experiments (paraphrased):

Imagine you are in the driver's seat of a runaway train that's approaching a switch track. On it's present course, the train will hit five railway workers on the track ahead. If you activate the switch, the train will be diverted to the side track where it will hit one railway worker. Do you hit the switch?

Now consider this same senario but slightly altered. Instead of sitting in the driver's seat, you are on a bridge above the tracks in between the runaway train and the five workers. Standing next to you is a man with enough girth to halt the train if it struck him. Do you push him onto the tracks?