Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Blood and Virtue; The Unconventional Philosophy behind SAMCRO and Sons of Anarchy Installment 1 Matthew Powers #8

Nobody would think that Socrates and a motorcycle club would share any resemblances. However, they both represent the idea of counterculture. Socrates tried to teach rationality to unreasonable people, which led to his death sentence. SAMCRO also challenges us to look against the grain, although I do not recommend riding around on a Harley guns blazing. This is only the tip of the iceberg for the morals and ethics, or lack thereof, that surrounds the whole ideology behind the motorcycle club known as SAMCRO.
On the outside they are seen as violent spawns of hell, however, once you look deep into the club you see a family bound by their own set of virtues and brotherhood that is binded by a leather cut. When the audience looks at the club as a whole, there is no real sympathy for the club do to all of the seemingly unjustifiable actions that the club commits throughout the seven seasons. However, that is not how the audience looks at the club; they see they individual members and the virtues that drive them down the road they go. This allows for sympathy for almost all of the characters that we can almost see the justification for their actions, although even sometimes that is a stretch. Although I do not believe that Aristotle would agree with the actions of SAMCRO, I do believe that he would commend the club’s commitment to virtues.

The Sons of Anarchy draws ideals from various philosophers such as Nietzche, Aquinas, and Machiavelli, of which will be continued in subsequent posts.

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