Huzzah! I went to see Ant-Man a while back and had a blast, but maybe I got too excited. Because I’m all digital and stuff, I decided to try to copy Ant-Man in a way by attempting to shrink down my data and squeezing into different servers and hard drives. I got a little carried away and ended up stuck inside a 3 1/2″ floppy disk right before it got ejected. Man, I was worried. I mean, how many people ever even use those things anymore? What were my chances of every getting back into a computer with internet access? Well, thanks to this fun little idea, I was able to jump from the disk to a USB and get back onto the web. The point is, that’s why this post is coming so long after I watched the movie.
Ant-Man: Fun, well-made, entertaining, but what does the story suggest to it’s viewers? Overall, the story is about a few good guys with really cool technology working to keep some bad guys from using that technology to do a lot of harm. Sure, its a pretty cliche plotline that gets redone every few years, but… I gotta say… I really like the way it was done, and the way that Avengers as a whole seem to approach this issue (think about Captain America and Iron Man). Marvel Movies still tend to fall into salvation through power and technology, but we can also find some emphasis on cooperation and even some reference to morality and humanity. As can be expected from secular movies, we don’t perfect moral coherence or get enough emphasis on humility, but we’ll our best try to pull the most good that we can out of what we’ve got.
This whole idea of wrestling with what technology enables us to do really gets at a serious problem in modern society: So many people seem to think that more technology = more progress. Some people react to this by jumping clear to the other extreme and acting like all science is bad – then they start to ignore doctors, avoid medicine and vaccines, and waste a lot of time and money trying to imitate a more primitive and more “pure” way of life that never really existed. Both of these extremes run on the same fault, judging human progress in a limited dimension – framing the question on technology and not including the whole picture.
As Good Ole Francis puts it: “We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral[1]
Enter Hank Pym, who refuses to give up the secret of his technology because he has seen the devastating effects of what man, fallen and addicted to sin, can do to others when they have the power at their disposal. At the same time, he doesn’t pretend the technology never happened and he realizes how useful it can be in the right hands. His answer isn’t a mere regression, but instead is a human discernment. When the time comes to thwart Darren Cross’ desire for money and power, Hank’s answer is not a better suit, but a better man.
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| “It’s what’s inside that counts” …it’s cheesy, but true. |
Enter Scott Lang, the modern day Robin Hood wannabe – stealing from the wealthy in order to pay back money to their cheated customers. A talented man who is, more importantly, a man with human values. Hank finds him, trains, and helps him to thwart the villain, get the girl, and prepare for a life of doing justice. Hooray! I’ll sidestep the issue of what to do about superheroes or vigilantes who strive to do the right thing, but nonetheless act outside civil law – I have a feeling Civil War will get into that a bit more…
So what’s all this suggesting to us? It’s suggesting that technology does and will continue to develop, but that it must be met with a development in human kind’s sense of responsibility and concern for the good of others. Rather than trying to capitalize on this technology’s ability to change everything, Hank Pym is from the get-go concerned about the true good of society. He is even willing to face persecution from his comrades for his commitment – He’s not exactly Jesus, but scientists and politicians could still learn a thing or two from him.
Speaking of good intentions, I’d like to call to mind that scene where Hank Pym pretend to be Scott’s lawyer in the jail so that he can both give him a lecture and offer him a job. Without ever denying his good intentions, Hank calls him out on his lack of integrity:
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| “The moment things get hard you turn right back to crime.” |
At first, Scott was serious about staying out of crime and even flatly rejects the first criminal offer without even letting himself get tempted: “I don’t care, I’m out.” Yet, once he realizes how difficult it will be to live an honest life and get what he wants, he jumps right in and agrees to a heist that isn’t even motivated by justice. He set out to rob a rich man simply because he was rich. Both his desire to avoid crime and his decision to do it anyway come from the same intention: His love for his daughter, Cassie. The thing is, wanting something good but doing something wrong to get it often risks losing that good thing in the first place. Theft might make him wealthy enough to see his daughter, but getting caught is a great way to push that goal even further away.
Fortunately for him, there was someone behind the scenes working to transform his abilities from petty crime to doing real good. An offer to pull good out of evil, so to speak. I particularly like this little exchange between Scott and Hank:
Scott Lang: My days of breaking into places and stealing stuff are over! What do you need me to do?
Hank Pym: …I want you to break in a place and steal some stuff.
Scott Lang: Makes sense…
This humorous exchange puts two similar things side-by-side and enables the watcher to get a good look at them and maybe even see the difference. The same basic physical activity, breaking in and taking something, is given two different moral evaluations. Scott implicitly admits that stealing from Hank in order to afford seeing his daughter is wrong, but Hank is immediately asking him to do something that is very similar. So, is Hank Pym a hypocrite or a contradiction? If there is a difference between the two actions, what is it? We’ve just seen how a good intention can lead to two contradictory actions and Hank never denied the fat that Scott had good intentions. Is it that this new motivation/intention is that much better? While his motivation is quite a bit bigger, that’s not the reason for the moral difference.
It’s true that, physically speaking, both the act of stealing from Hank and stealing from Darren Cross are very similar: entering someone else’s property, getting around their security, and taking stuff that they made and own. What’s the difference? I think most people have an intuition of that difference, even if they can’t pin it down. Perhaps many would talk about the common expression, “the ends don’t justify the means,” and wonder whether that’s true, but here’s what I’m suggesting: these actions, though physically similar, are really two different kinds of actions and so have two different moral values. It isn’t about ends and means because the “means” are actually different when you think them through.
Moral Theology identifies the morality of an action based on three categories: Moral Object, Intention, and Circumstance. The most important, and most one is the “moral object.” This is basically a way of referring the action itself – not on a purely physical level, but considered in it’s entirety. For example: A man shoots a child on the street, but he might claim that all he did was pull on a small piece of metal. Physically, it’s true that he simply pulled a trigger, but the full truth is that he shot an innocent child. Even if he had a good intention (“I had to or someone would kill my kid”), what he did was wrong. Some moral objects are always wrong, no matter how good the intention.
In a similar way, the “moral object” or “entire action” of Scott’s theft from Hank is actually quite different from the “moral object” of stopping Darren Cross. The first is simply stealing for the sake of making money that he plans to use for a good reason. The second is physically similar to stealing, but is actually some form of protecting the innocent. The “object” was removing a weapon from a dangerous person. This is a good thing to do, and they had the right intention/motivation for doing it. Not only that, but the circumstances lined up: they were the only ones who could do it, they had a reasonable hope for success with a minimum chance of casualties.
So what does this scene suggest? It suggests a real honesty about the many shades of gray in figuring out the right thing to do, but it also seems to implicitly affirm the idea of right and wrong. The ends do not justify the means. But, it’s still viable to ask if perhaps the “means” are not as black and white as they might seem at first. It might be a difficult question to answer sometimes, but it can make all the difference in how we affect society, ourselves, our eternal fate. The more complicated the situation, the more carefully we should think about the details… after all, they say “the devil’s in the details.”
[1] Laudato Si, ¶ 112 <http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html>