Desire--The Majority Flaw

Ok—This may be a stretch, but it’s the best I can do regarding my reading of the Minority Report, including watching the movie.

I’m paraphrasing, but in the movie, John Anderton defends the Precrime system by saying that it is perfect and flawless. The agent investigating the system says that there is always flaws in the system—that of the “human” element. In comparing this story to “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” from last week I can find one common thread—that of human desire. We posses this desire because of the things in our life that we lack, our flaws, and it seems almost as if our sole pursuit in life is to make up for the things that we lack.

In TGWWPI, the human desire that P. Burke sought after was for love, for Eros, and for beauty. In the Minority Report, the desire that Anderton has is for control, and for perfection in the area of his work. In both readings, the characters desired that which they lacked, but the greediness of human nature seems to get in the way. This is probably more pronounced in the movie than in the reading because we find out that Anderton has lost control of his life since the death of his son, and the man that started up Precrime wanted to achieve a level of perfection in his system so bad that had to kill the mother of one of the precogs in order to be able to use her to predict the future murders. (Talk about being hypocritical!)

I think that what this shows, though, is the great lengths that humans will go through to obtain what ever it is that they desire, no matter what the costs. Although love and Eros seem to be the downfall of a lot of great people, I think that perhaps it is simply their desire that is their flaw---not that what they specifically sought was love. Maybe desire wouldn’t even be that bad if we just weren’t so greedy as humans. Desire fueled by greed…doesn’t sound like a good combination to me. (At least its comforting to know that we all have the same issues!!)