light, mikami, and the nuance of criminality

over the years that i’ve been involved in death note spaces online, i’ve seen a few people surmising that if light yagami had lived any other life - so to speak, if he had not been the privileged son of the chief of police - that he might not have become kira, or at least, not in the way that we know him to be. i understand why many would come to this conclusion; take away the comfortable life and lofty social status that he coveted for so long and surely he would’ve had different ideas about what ‘justice’ entailed, and what made a criminal a criminal. 

except, would he?

let’s talk about light. light, as we all know, is born into a life of privilege: upper middle class, highly intelligent and conventionally attractive with a relatively normal upbringing. his convictions are formed and nurtured above all by his father, and thus his sense of things like criminality, moral wrong-doings - they all come from a place far-removed from material reality, behind the deeply flawed lens of law enforcement. he grew up hearing about crime, investigating it, but he never particularly paid any attention to the nuance of criminality. we never once see him question what drives a person to commit a crime, or how an individual's place in society could influence their behavior, or how policing differs between classes and intersectionally with other groups, etc. this is because he is comfortable with his place in society, and therefore has no need to question it. to him, crime exists because of a perceived moral failing in the criminal, an innate "evil" rather than a multitude of complex influences both external and internal that could drive a person to commit a crime. he lacks any empathetic connection to the concept of crime, which gives way to an extremely narrow view of it as a whole.

mikami, on the other hand, experiences an entirely different upbringing. he is born into relative poverty, raised by a single mother and with an absent father. his idea of justice and morality is not fed to him but rather is the result of a childlike observation of the world around him. he distinguishes the moral concepts of 'good' and 'evil' with little nuance, like any child would. but unlike other children, mikami clings to this idea as a sort of structure for reality itself, and devotes himself to the preservation of justice — or “good” — entirely. unfortunately, his intellect and strong moral rigor earn him nothing but ridicule and abuse from his peers. unlike light's detached view of moral wrongdoings, mikami becomes intimately aware of and familiar with 'evil.' despite this, or perhaps because of it, he is only driven deeper into the safety of these self-imposed morals, and he never wavers in his pursuit of a 'just' world, one where all evil has been eliminated. to him, there is no nuance, because that would mean restructuring the concepts of reality that have kept him sane and motivated for as long as he can remember. and furthermore, it would mean that his suffering in the pursuit of justice meant nothing, that justice itself meant nothing — essentially, that his life meant nothing.

and yet, it seems that he and light come to the same black-and-white conclusion: evil must be eradicated for the betterment of humanity. why is that? 

 i think that something really interesting and compelling about death note is that it shows that no matter the intent, no matter where a desire for justice or order comes from, it is a power too great to be wielded by any human being. we are inherently emotional creatures, easily corrupted by power in any form - authority, wealth, etc. - and susceptible to the influences of each other and of the world. being poor or disadvantaged in life does not automatically grant somebody empathy for their fellow people - in fact, it can lead to apathy or, like we see with mikami, resentment toward humanity as a whole. this is a good parallel i think to the way we see many members of the working class supporting capitalistic, conservative ideals in the misguided belief that those who are deserving of wealth obtain it through hard work and perseverance, without understanding that they are closer to abject poverty than they will ever be to wealth, regardless of how hard they work or what they believe. they resent their fellow proletarians because they are conditioned to see them as competition, and therefore, they turn to hatred of the oppressed and the poor because, in their minds, if they worked hard enough and conformed to the norms of society, they wouldn’t be in such a difficult situation at all, and thus they deserve to be where they are. it’s the same kind of dogmatic fervor that we see both light and mikami succumb to throughout the manga: the assertion that slaughtering criminals en masse is a better solution to crime than addressing the circumstances from which crime itself is borne, because… well, they’re criminals. they deserve it. light and mikami’s beliefs may come from entirely different foundations, but the end result is the same: a fascistic, cynical outlook on humanity that ultimately leads to their demise.

i’ve given it a lot of thought recently, considering the state of the world at large. it's important to remember that any one of us, rich or poor, has the potential to travel down the path of fascism, to believe that ruling by fear and oppression could create a better world - a perfect one, even. but just as it did for light and mikami, this path can only lead to annihilation.

ps: i just checked and it's been two years since i last posted! insane. i've gone through a period of insane personal growth and change in that time so here's to hoping i can frequent this place more often (i probably won't lol). also sorry if this sucks i churned it out very quickly late at night because i had to get the thoughts out of my head :3