In the movie The Dark Knight, The Joker has a scene where he’s being interrogated by Batman. In this scene, The Joker is physically beaten but manages to win the altercation simply through words. He says “You see, their morals, their code, it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you. When the chips are down, these… these civilized people, they’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.”
Recently, the Syrian Refugee Crisis has affected millions of people throughout the world and at a time where morals should’ve helped, instead people turned on one another. Millions of people required safety but instead, countries would close their borders and let people suffer. Everyone would like to claim that they’re helpful and kind, generous people but as soon as trouble showed up, all their morals were dropped. Realistically, no country could simply accept millions of people into their society with no consequences, however, banning entry and deporting people back to a place in turmoil is simply put, an immoral thing to do.
In the play “Medea”, human morals would go against the murder of others, especially children. However, Medea, who is going through a troubled time of her husband leaving her, breaks this moral by murdering her own two children. Before her husband left her, Medea assumingly would’ve never imagined committing such a horrendous act. However, as is clearly shown, a time of trouble or uneasiness can change people and cause them to do terrible things. This may be an extreme example but shows that rules and morals are easily broken. Humans are capable of doing terrible things to one another and are not as trustworthy as most of us assume.
The Past in Present Tense 