Pretty much the title. I’ve been watching more realistic super hero shows like The Boys and Invincible. The reoccurring themes is that with great power comes great immorality.
I think it’s easy for us normies to respect other people and their property because there are clear consequences for violating social norms. But what would the average person do if they had super powers?
I would die of old age immediately
That is actually wrong. Countries with death penalty and free weapon carrying show that both assertions are wrong.
If course you need the power to commit a crime in order to commit it. But most people who have the power don’t commit crimes.
Society didn’t appear out of nowhere. And crimes are a much more complex matter than “can I do it without consequences”
Countries with free weapon carrying show what exactly? A few hundred dead school kids asking.
80 million people in the USA own weapons but only a tiny percentage commit crimes with them. Seems like that proves most people are not mad villains
Obviously not all of them, just like not every single person would abuse superpowers. But the numbers are still orders of magnitude higher than everywhere without weapons, even though shooting someone still has consequences unlike doing shit while invisible.
The Boys
realistic
Ooooh boy do we tell them?
The tl;dr is: just because you suck, doesn’t mean everyone else automagically does.
Here’s the thing about the power to stop time: if it doesn’t come accompanied by a lot of secondary-required powers (2RPs) , then it’d become so cumbersome and harmful in short order that your morals wouldn’t have time (stopped or not) to flush down the toiler in the first place. Plusminus the “if you’d do it, you never had high morals in the first place” argument.
Simplest cases:
- No 2RP power to start time. Ooopsie there goes your life as soon as your start your first experiment.
- No ability to transfer movement / moventum to things, including air, in stopped time. You could stop time to think over a plan, but not to take prep steps for it. Forget about going to bed to take a nap: even if you could move, the bed, the carpeting and the pillow would explode into plasma as soon as time resumed.
- If time is stopped, that means you are blind, right? Photons going around are stopped, and they can’t interact with your body that way.
- Breathing too, for that matter. Dragon Ball Z actually toyed with that idea with a character who could stop time but only while holding his breath.
Losing my morals? Goodness no! My morals would be the only thing left, as there would be no one who could stop me. Justice for the wronged, help for the needy, and punishment for the wicked that knows no limits.
Is there a tyrant that threatens peace? Bound and delivered to the United nations. A disaster trapping civilians? Every injured person into the first hospital bed available, worldwide in a moment. Hell, I could read every medical book ever and become the most studied doctor ever.
Lmao yeah but what about when somebody pisses you off? Like that’s kinda the whole point of this question but good job taking some weird moral high ground ig?
Also, what if your ideas about “wicked” and “good” aren’t the same as mine?
For example one of us could see Xi Jinping and the Chinese government as quite evil and actively carrying out a genocide, while the other of us might believe that to be western propaganda and that the Chinese government is generally benign.
What about when the death of the wicked means a power vacuum and strife for a region a la American imperialism?
Anyway just trying to get some interesting conversation related to the topic at hand.
I mean think of if someone pisses you off now, you don’t automatically go and fuck with them anonymously, even though it’s infinitely easy to do.
Goes to show that morals aren’t a hindrance, but a guide. Without morals, who are we?
Bound and delivered to…
Bruh you’re a better person than me. Aint nobody got the time to drag over some weak ass hitler wanna be halfway over the world. Much rather just grenade diplomacy them wherever they are, as another lemming mentioned in this thread.
EDIT: Just occurred to me that this would actually entail investigating and confirming their crimes beyond all doubt. Now I understand the appeal of just dropping them off somewhere with people qualified and trained to do that.
Yeah but you’d walk through the occasional locker room too. You know, when it makes sense for like, justice and stuff.
What are you, twelve? You have a superpower like this, you’re going to get all the partners you want
True, but you know what would really make them go out the window? If I were invisible.
I know that if I had powers, I would be a straight up self serving villain. No question.
There are multiple ways to approach this, but first some context
I identity as an agonistic atheist/ex-muslim and am gay men living in a muslim country. Right now my fear of consequence relates to being found out and killed/losing my job/ put in prison/ becoming homeless or becoming braindead /paralyzed/living with agonizing pain if i try to kill myself, plus the guilt of leaving my family with no money, so yeah. Historically for me, trying to make sense of human nature has been hell itself. There is my sister who identifies as a leftist communist progressive Muslim and then there is mom who calls Black people slaves and servants and think women shouldn’t be allowed to drive(also has on multiple occasions has called my sister then 13 years old daughter “jokingly” a slut). Trying to put the whole of humanity, from all over the world, from all of time into one of two binary boxes is dumb. We do’nt to that to other spices, so why humans. We don’t label all cats, all dogs or all birds as ultimately good or bad, they just are.
Ironically, this is the same argument alot of reglions/reglious people use to control thier followers, enternal damnation and all. In fact, i have personal experience with this way of thinking. Were i am from, we are tough that the west is all hedonist and only care about this plane of existence and we are morally superior and so on.
Another point of view is, the opposite can also be true, when i am in a bank and filling in a forum and someone needs a pen, i give them an extra pen i brought with me or when i finished my business and lingerie a bit if someone else needs a pen or when i get into the elevator and hold the door open for a little bit in case someone comes or when holding the door open for people or just saying thank you. Its little things but they make a difference in my day.
Also as some other commenters have said i just don’t think about raping people, like if the only thing stopping me is consequence, then it make sense to think that is all i ever think of . Its not like i don’t have impulsive thoughts like slapping someone while in a moving bus and have thought about killing my abusive father in the past more times then i can count. Those things are either very tame and uncommon thoughts or brought on under extreme circumstances and even then, i didn’t act on them.
It should also be pointed out that such narratives benefit those in power. As zoe bee said in her video governments don’t panic, people do. Also nulear Apocalypse was only avoided due to the dystopian threat of mutual destruction which was going to be caused in the first place by an error.
Lastly, saying that those are realistic heroes is cringe, you are a least 30 years late to the party.
Nah… well maybe… a little 😁.
My only hope is that the first time I stepped over the line when using my powers, I’d feel so bad about it afterwards that it would prevent me from doing it again… mostly.
I think it depends. Most people could already get away with a lot of immoral or antisocial behaviors without super powers, but most of us still don’t.
The Boys is an interesting one because there are hundreds of supes out there, enough to have a community of depravity. If you were the only one with super powers and you decided to majorly abuse them, you’d be a social outcast, even if you didnt face strict punishment, which most of us would really not want.
No
This is an idea that has been around for very long time. Plato used the Ring of Gyges to talk about it - which went on to inspire Wells’ The Invisible Man - and influenced Tolkien among others.
The Ring of Gyges is a hypothetical magic ring mentioned by the philosopher Plato in Book 2 of his Republic (~375 BC). It grants its owner the power to become invisible at will. Through the device of the ring, this section of the Republic considers whether a rational, intelligent person who has no need to fear negative consequences for committing an injustice would nevertheless act justly.
So many ideas trace their roots back to ancient Greece/China. I guess there’s nothing new under the sun.
They go further back than that for sure, but a lot of stuff has been lost to history.
I guess there’s nothing new under the sun.
And that’s some old hebrew wisdom 🙂
The reoccurring themes is that with great power comes great immorality.
I mean, this is a thing irrespective of superpowers. Just check out the latest headline about billionaires or how your country’s government is doing.
With great power comes great responsibilities, but also makes it very easy to skirt accountability, regardless if you are “super” or not.
Honestly I think I would mostly use it for naps. So many naps.
Would be pretty cool for transport too: Arrive anywhere instantly; you’d never be late.
You would think so, but once you get used to it, you’d be like, ‘What’s the hurry? I can be there immediately’ and start traveling at the nick of the moment, and then eventually start showing up late, even with the superpower. If you were late to begin with, you’d be late all the way through. I know I would be.
Yeah, that sounds pretty probable.
Yeesh, I’m trying to relax not be attacked.
I know I’d wait last minute for everything, or even worse than I do now anyways
Honestly. This.
There is so much that I would want to do that requires time to be “flowing” that the only things I could probably get done would be some cleaning, reading, and some rest.
Food doesn’t cook without time. Computers and other electronics need time to process inputs. If I want to get anywhere I’m walking.
The only immoral stuff might be some shoplifting, maybe. But even then I wouldn’t really be motivated if I could afford whatever it was otherwise.
I’d definitely fuck with people who were being shitty, not straight up evil, just mischievous:
Park in a bike lane? Oh no, all your valve stems have disappeared!
Attack someone? Your shoelaces are now tied to your belt, which is also now fastened around your arms.
Steal from a person? Your shoes are now hanging from a lamp post and the stuff you stole got unstolen.
Be a shady company that screws everyone over? Your infrastructure keeps breaking and funds keep disappearing, how weird!
Invade Ukraine and commit hundreds of war crimes? Oh no, you fell out of a window and also I have now been “recruited” by the CIA because they found out about my ability to pause time. Now I’m forced to do morally ambiguous things under the guise of national interests.
Oh shit, OP was right!
Also, hey Netflix: Hit me up if you wanna do a series, I know you’ll literally hire anyone. I do comedy too.
There is so much that I would want to do that requires time to be “flowing”…
If we’re talking about physics-accurate superpowers, please add partial blindness - photons are frozen in place, they can’t reach your eyelids, unless you walk into them. And suffocation due to completely still air.
And … now you can’t even nap in peace 😐.
On second thought I’d probably just troll the French by moving them to the bottom of flights of stairs after they’ve walked up.
Photons move at the speed of light relative to the observer, regardless of the observer’s speed.
If we’re going physics-accurate, you wouldn’t be blind, though you’d probably be a black hole (for a very brief time, before you evaporated due to Hawking radiation).
You are truly the best of us.
I’m not sure my mind could handle it. I think I’d lose my sanity and my grip on reality.
