There is a common theme in movies about high paid assassins and I’d like to explore the reason behind biting the hand that feeds. From Bourne Identity to the current The Mechanic and countless others, assassins seem to be destroying the very system that has made them assassins and has made them rich. Is this just the structure of the assassin world or are we actually interested in removing the system that makes us lonely, heartless, on the constant move? Like these assassins we too make a large collection of personal wealth from a structure that is abusive to us; we too are on the move from place to place more frequently, and we live in a system of bending rules at the demise of others.

The system we live in is called civilization. It helps us kill off life other than humans in the benefit of more human lives. It also helps those humans who are already on top of the system to stay on the most benefiting side of civilization. Of course civilization has benefits to the wealthy, and to humans. Civilization is the human organization of importation and exportation of resources. Could the hollywood stories of assassins really be displaying our desire to become morally sound and equalize the corruption of our own system? Bourne had amnesia and he went through an awakening that did not allow him the same ethical freedoms he had prior to his awakening. As he gained a recollection of who he was and who he wants to become he realized he must take down the entire system, fortunately for him it was built exactly like a bureaucratic pyramid and he could just go after the person at the top in order to stop all the other violence that might come his way. He knew that if he didn’t meet his makers with informed well thought out violence, he would be dealing with constant attack. Like him we too would have to stop the entire system in order to avoid the affects, but only our economic system keeps us in any pyramid fashion and any action from someone lower on the chain against someone higher on the chain is first human on human violence which is not allowed and even if the top chain was removed, the entire system would just adjust itself to the next chain in line. Violence is not called for to defeat the structure we live in, it would require the consent of all the links involved. A mass Borne identity on the account of all the links. Like Borne, without the consent of the masses, constant struggle will be the only result.

This leads me to think more movies about assassins gaining a perspective about the system they live in, are involved in, participate in, benefit from, is actually the immoral system we encourage and we are ourselves becoming conscious of. We  currently encourage this system because we have refused to recognize our victims. Whether they are leaders of a country in Africa or animals going extinct, cultures and languages going extinct, we see them as casualties in a profession of mass murder.