The search for meaning and purpose is at the core of every human heart. This is true for every race and religion, gender and age. Even members of the Christian faith, who believe their overall purpose is to live in a personal relationship with their Creator God, struggle to identify the less universal purpose of what on earth to do with this life, this personal relationship. For those not partial to the Christian faith, the questions of meaning and purpose can be harrowing. As they grapple with these questions, answers are pursued in the forms of moral relativity, materialism, adrenaline rushes, and even criminal activity. Christians have a saying that describes the human heart as having a God-shaped hole, and man will try to fill this hole with many things, but the only thing that fits it perfectly and gives man a sense of completion is God. If this void cannot be filled by anything but God, then it can certainly not be filled with these other fleeting pursuits. The lust for power, for dominion over fellow men, for a life completely controlled by one’s self, will lead time and time again to emptiness, to a life that feels like an empty shell. While our heart yearns for a relationship with God, our natural instincts turn us away from that relationship because of our sinful nature.
“Since a tendency towards crime is present in all humans, criminals are not very different from many law-abiding citizens. If this is true, we may say they are more like normal individuals than different from them. In one sense, therefore, crime is an artificial thing, created by law. It would seem then that people become criminals not because the law raises a barrier against antisocial behavior, but primarily because they act according to their inner strivings.” (Abrahamsen 24)
There have been many studies done attempting to link the attraction of the mentally unstable to the life of organized crime. Tony Soprano, the main character of the HBO series The Sopranos, becomes the boss of the New Jersey operation after a childhood rife with the witnessing of his father’s mob activity, from meeting at a fairground with other renowned mobsters to chopping off a butcher’s pinky to encourage a timelier loan repayment. The connection between the unstable and organized crime will not be divulged to its fullest in this presentation, but Abrahamsen had this to say about mental illness in his work, Crime and the Human Mind:
“Man’s constant strivings, conscious or unconscious, to adapt himself to his environment may result in success or failure, or perhaps a compromise. Possibly crime is a compromise, representing for the individual the most satisfactory method of adjustment to inner conflicts which he cannot express otherwise. Thus, his acting out the crime fulfills a certain aim or purpose. The same mechanism may take place in a psychosis where the person’s delusions have a compensatory character and satisfy his inner strivings and needs. Crime may therefore be only a surface symptom or a symptom of mental illness which has existed for a long time.” (Abrahamsen 26)
Many people believe that the conflict in organized crime is between the mobsters and the police, and between the mafia and the politicians creating policies to hinder their operations. The fact of the matter is that without the cooperation of corrupt police officers and politicians, much of organized crime would be cut off at the head. It is a very sad truth that the very men sworn to upkeep the law and lead our cities and states are fallible, and not without their price. While this is a frightening concept, ponder this: where would organized crime be if there were no gamblers, no customers of bootlegged liquor, no sponsors of violence and union-busting, no John’s (the term used to define the customer of prostitutes)? The perception most law-abiding citizens have of organized crime is that it is here, unwanted, because of the evil desires of power-hungry, money-loving men. The conclusion one must reach is that organized crime exists simply because they provide the supply for a demand of illegal services.
“There are two fundamental flaws in this conception of organized crime. Gangsterism has normally involved collusion among the criminals, police, and city officials. Cooperation rather than conflict among these groups has been commonplace, so the notion of society at war with its internal enemies in the shape of gangsters is more of a caricature than anything else. The second error in popular views of organized crime is that they imply that this criminality exists in spite of the wishes of the public, rather than as a consequence of citizen demands for illegal goods or services. Someone has to pay hoodlums to engage in union-busting and similar violence; someone must be willing to purchase sexual intercourse in order for prostitution to succeed as a business; customers must be found for illegal liquor if bootlegging is to flourish; and at least two persons are required in gambling, one of them a citizen who wishes to place a bet or draw a card. In short, organized crime exists to provide for the satisfaction of widely demanded, but legally prohibited, activities or products.” (Gibbons 408)
Gibbons goes on to say that organized crime is as natural to society as many other social behaviors. This ties in to the fallen nature of man, whose basic instincts lead him to have control over other men, and to be in control of his own life, rather than hand control over to God. His assessment of society is depressing and accurate when he says in his book, Society, Crime, and Criminal Careers:
“Organized crime is not some kind of alien “sickness” afflicting an otherwise healthy social organism. Instead, organized criminality is as natural a part of society as various kinds of socially esteemed behavior. Three basic groups of citizens are bound together in the complex comprising organized crime: the criminals who engage in organized crime, the police and city officials with whom they are in collusive cooperation, and the citizens who purchase the services of racketeers, gamblers, and kindred types.” (Gibbons 409)
Perhaps it is a reflection of our culture today that men try to find a righteous life in relative terms compared to another man, rather than to the model of Jesus Christ. For criminals, the actions they choose to be justified are justified, while they can condemn others for committing the same act on a different person as evil. Take, for instance, a rapist: in their situation, forcing themselves onto young single women is alright, but if they see a man forcing himself onto an elderly widow or young girl, the rapist will intervene on behalf of that female. The fact that the criminal simply wants to commit the crime makes it okay in his mind. Samenow describes this in his book, Inside the Criminal Mind:
“The criminal knows right from wrong. He may be more knowledgeable about the laws than many responsible citizens. When it suits him, he is law-abiding and even takes pride in being meticulous about it…Despite his knowledge of what is legal and illegal, the criminal decides that he can make exceptions for himself just because it suits him at a particular time. The fact that he wants to do it makes it right…If a criminal regards something as wrong for him personally, he will not do it. An act is wrong if it is too risky. An act is also considered wrong by a criminal if he thinks it is too petty. A big-time operator may consider shoplifting wrong only because it is not worth bothering with. If a criminal makes an error in judgment and is caught, he will say what he did wrong, but only because he was caught. The semantics of this last point are interesting. One teenager said that lately he had been “messing up” and he needed to stop doing that…By “messing up” he meant getting caught. If he hadn’t been caught for a crime, he would not have called it “messing up”. What was wrong was getting caught, not his commission of the offense.” (Samenow 160-161)
In the HBO series The Sopranos, viewers are not just exposed to countless vulgarities, various substance abuses, abdominal nudity, and brutal killings. After all, the American public does need some dialogue and plot every once in a while. The aspect that keeps audiences so tuned in is the characters’ search for meaning in their individual lives. It is indeed a journey we are all on together, yet separately.
“Today, in watching The Sopranos, about eleven million viewers an episode are taking an advanced course (one containing adult language, violence, nudity, and explicit sex scenes) about the self-defined universe of Mafia ethics: What is Duty? What is Honor? What is Omerta? But more than just a curious and titillating analysis of an aberrant ethical code – the tribal or warrior justification of murder, mendacity, prostitution, infidelity, extortion, and usury – it is, in some sense, a traditional morality play. The Sopranos may not be high art, but neither is it a cheap action thriller or a murderous melodrama. I believe it is a mass media, action-packed, X-rated version of Waiting for Godot, a story of both existential despair and, in the words of Victor Frankl, “man’s search for meaning.” (Greene 8)
The Godfather Part I 
