I’ve been watching The Following on FOX. The show depicts the battle between a serial killer’s cult and a team of FBI agents bent on stopping the killings. The more I watch the show with a critical eye, the more I notice the connections these writers are making between the average person and serial killers. See, the people following the killer and carrying out his will are lost. They seek the guidance of someone with a moral compass; and with a plan and purpose. In truth they are a lot like church folk in need of Jesus.
The parallels are compelling and the sole difference is the size of the population that follows the religious compass vs. that of a serial killer. One prays to God and acts His will. The other preys on the living and acts their shared dark morality. They both want to be a part of something–anything larger than themselves.
I would argue that our recent national fascination with serial killer shows and ongoing fascination with salacious sexual and explicitly violent content reflects a gradual decline of the baseline moral code. So many web authors point to the parallels between Rome in decline and today’s America, but it feels like we aren’t quite there yet. Still that fracturing moral code was part of the upswing of the Roman era. It ended badly. I suspect the land of us may too struggle if we fail to understand the connective tissues between the baseline moral compass and the prevalence of outliers to that compass. In short, the more the compass erodes, the more likely we are to enter into a space where extremists on both ends of the spectrum prosper. On one end you’ll have the ultra-cons looking to send us back to the formality of the 1800’s and on the other there will be many who treat human life as they would any other infestation and take equal pleasure in snuffing it out–so long as they are recognized for their good deeds.