More appropriate than it was supposed to be

Since I picked up Man is Not Alone tonight and since yesterday was MLK's birthday I present these quotes from Rabbi Abraham Heschel:

"A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair."

"A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture."

"Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme."

Or should I say SPECTRE?

After watching nothing by Bond flicks for the last 6 hours interrupted periodically by 24 commercials, I've come to a conclusion: Jack Bauer is the 21st century James Bond.

Bond is a relic. In this day in age, there isn't a need for James Bond and his world no longer exists. The megalomaniacs the populate Bond's world are the terrorists of the Cold War. Rather than populating the underbelly of society, they populated the glamourous world of the European Elite. In order to infiltrate this world, Bond had to become as shallow as those he was fighting against. We look at Bond and we see the glamorous life that surrounds him; the world of women and intrigue that many admire.

However, we miss that Bond is really a tragic figure. Does he have any friends? Maybe Felix Lighter, his CIA counterpart, but he was eaten by sharks. Felix's wife was killed on their wedding day. Bond himself lost his wife on the day of their wedding. James Bond cannot make lasting connections to anyone; they invariably are placed in danger by his work. Everyone he loves dies, so he has long abandoned love for lust. His seduction of women serves him well in his work too, but this is not something to be admired. Life is disposable for Bond and he lives his life to excess because every moment could be his last. Bond is shallow because he has sacrificed his life to protect society. It just so happens though, that his sacrifice doesn't seem like one because in his world glamour disguises the depravity of the society he inhabits.

In other words, Bond worked well when we perceived the threat to society as depicted in those movies. However, now that the threat is different, James Bond becomes Jack Bauer in order to confront the enemies of the 21st Century in their chosen arena. That's why Bond movies aren't as good as they used to be: because we can no longer empathize with Bond's methods, whereas Bauer's motives are much clearer to us.