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?
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.
(I didn’t want to declare my gender, because ‘the site that shall not be named’ is an absolute dick to women, but I’m feeling like that might not be as much of a thing, here)
… I came across a group of 5 or 6 huge 6ft footballers, in a circle, kicking this small indigenous kid around and taunting him, I’m half their size, a girl ,probably 12, and just about the shyest quietest kid in school, but when I saw that, the pure rage that welled up in me, has no equivalent on earth, my muscles all lock up and knot and I (somehow) came out with a deep booming growl of a voice, that made all a these blokes just freeze dead, I boom at them, “what the fuck do you all think you’re doing!!” , and in a slow angry tone I add “do you all feel like big men, a heap of you, beating up on one guy” . And I stood there, all rage, staring them down. The indigenous boy noticed they were all frozen and scattered along the ground and grabbed his bag and pelted.
I realised this needed to end, and he had escaped, so I tried to throw out some finalising statement of ‘do you feel proud’ or’this better never happen again’ or something, I don’t really know, because by this stage, I’m gripped with ultimate terror of what I’ve done. These guys are twice my size, and happily beat up kids smaller than them. If they snap out of this and realise, I’m easy prey, I’m done for. I fake a hold on my rage, turn and (painfully) slowly walk away and proceed to lock myself in the girls toilet and cry for the rest of the day, expecting a mob of footballers to be out there, after snapping out of their trance, ready to dust me. But I made it home, unscathed. Those footballers gave me death stares, the rest of high school, but none of them ever spoke to me or gave me trouble, really. A taunt here and there, but always when surrounded by classmates. The indigenous boy came and found me and thanked me, later, I asked him if that had happened since and he said, yeah. But he still really appreciated me sticking up for him, that day.
I didn’t really think about what I did that day, those words to those footballers just fell out of my head, they rose up from the depths of my soul, I didn’t really feel like I controlled it.
But also, I know I’d do immoral shit, if I got superpowers, I’d go around and kill all the billionaires and dictators. I’d probably give them an ultimatum, give away your money or die.
I feel like the boys just represents a more realistic subsection of humans, there would be a percentage that are narcissists and have powers, and a percentage that are highly moralistic, like in gen v. And I could see capitalism being the real bad guy, in real life, just like in the boys.
But I want to be a billionaire one day. I want to start a company and grow it, as ethically as I can but still survive in capitalism. Would you still kill me? Will people hate me if I fulfill my dream? I want to raise incredible capital, invest it in people, their bright ideas, and trade schools for autistic kids, and retire to a private island. Am I still in your hit list just because I’m a billionaire?
If you become a billionaire. When I get my superpowers, I’ll be coming for you. Maybe I’ll do a “Christmas carol / Scrouge” style montage and show you how many dead tiny Tim’s are in your trails.
You are probably safe for multiple reasons. Not the least of which is, unless you are already on the winning side of the rigged game, you will not become a billionaire. Millionaire maybe.
Hopefully by selling multiple products with good value at a favorable market price, and then reinvesting to repeat with another idea. I’m not trying to be an oil company, though I would invest.
I wouldn’t bother with trying to argue these points on Lemmy. It’s like being leftist who thinks anyone who makes more money than them is the devil is the mandated religion on this site.
And I live in Argentina I know what “redistributed” wealth ends up looking like so I do understand where you’re coming from. But people on Lemmy have no interest in even considering any other point of view in this regard
But do you consider the other side of your views? I find it hard to believe someone actually has a true and complete understanding of capitaliam and then still goes on to defend it. Unless they have skin in the game. You don’t sound like you listen, while bagging out other people for not listening. If you do have a deep understanding, I would genuinely like to know how, specifically, you went from that understanding to pretending you don’t see how harmful it is. Please correct me if I haven’t taken your meaning correctly.
Please list me 500 sources for your world views so I might discredit them one by one!
I don’t defend capitalism further than the fact that it’s the best system we have at the moment as something people will accept, considering the only alternatives are anarchism or socialism.
What I do hate is the ideas that turned my country from a first world country to a third world country in less than 100 years. But trying to explain what it’s like to someone that lives in such privilege as the US is like trying to explain a color to a blind person. And my comment wasn’t aimed at the validity of leftist ideals or the value of capitalism but rather at how polarized Lemmy has been in my short experience on the site.
I’ve blocked over 30 subs at this point trying to get politics out of my feeds. And for some reason all of those were leftist subs, like as if opposing opinions weren’t allowed on lemmy
Edit: And a final comment, I’ve come to the conclusion that the concept of left and right that each person has depends on their country of origin. But everyone seems to think that when someone says right wing in another country they’re referring to the same kind of right wing they have at their own country
Taxes? Taxes can immediately and directly affect the specific changes that I want to see in the world? Tell me, what are you smoking? Get your socialist bitch ass out of here.
Also, regardless of my morality, fuck yes I want dragon level wealth. I want to never ever think about money again, and give my offspring and living kin the same privilege.
If I had the power to stop time I’d stop it, travel all around the world putting live grenades in the pockets of every type of evil greedy cunt I could find, then start it again and wait for the fireworks to ensue. Every time someone starts making psychopath money again? Suddenly a grenade appears in their pocket. Funding wars, poison and incarceration? Every person with a finger in haliburton or monsanto, turned into red mist at a board meeting. Shareholders, exploding in hot tubs, saudi princes splattered in their shitty lambos. Every jordan belfort wannabe fuckstick exquisitely morphed into charcuterie.
Looks up social control theory. It basically argues that we all are well behaved because we worry about the social consequences of our bad actions. You remove social control. The moral behaviours goes out the window. It’s pretty well supported framework for understanding human behaviour.
I feel like this doesn’t adequately explain why I can’t manage to force myself to do an evil playthrough of Baldurs Gate 3…like the social sphere there isn’t even real. Nobody bloody cares and I am missing out on a fair chunk of game content that I purchased but I feel too bad about being a dick to imaginary people who don’t exist to betray or kill them.
I have the feeling that if I ended up with a sort of superpower that made me able to stop time I would barely use it for anything like mean spirited pranks and probably just use it to get to work on time, take breaks when I feel like and have more free time to read.
Usually how it works is time for you is active, but what is you? Usually thar includes clothes and stuff, and other matter inside of us that isn’t usually considered a part of us. If we extend this logic, it’d include the air in us and maybe toughing us. I think this would be more fun, because it’d leave a vacuum behind us and superheat any air we move, because it’s instantly moving without any time passing. Basically when time unfreezes there’s be a massive sonic boom on out path with superheated air all around.
For sure. I wouldnt outright hurt people but id definitely do things to improve my own life. Assuming it’s the kind of time stopping power where I am not affected and can still interact with objects I’d use sports or roulette gambling to get rich. Easy to manufacture winning with time stopping powers in either.
If I wanted to be ethical I guess I could put on some sort of circus/magician act with tricks and feats abusing the power but I don’t know how rich you can get off what would be perceived as a really good trick.
Id also like to know the extent of the ability, if I stop time indefinitely, do I still age or am I immortal in a paused world? Can I stop time travel the world and see every sight and read every book then restart everything having lost nothing aside from my own sanity?
This is important because it determines if it’s worth trying to be a super hero with this power imo. If I can stop time and help people avoid death all while being able to go right back to where I was losing no true time it’s worth it, otherwise I’d still be aging and I’d grow older faster than everyone around me. Id die earlier in real time if I continue to age while I stop time for everything else. If that’s the case I’d only use the ability really for my own benefit.
True but if you had potentially infinite time, why not? I suppose nutrition and hydration maybe an issue depending on how the ability works too. It would be annoying to have to lug around supplies.
Thing is if you stop time you would also stop yourself, so either you can move stupidly quickly(or even FTL, which means physics just goes out the window, since the entirety of your body can’t convert that much energy to go even 1% the speed of light, so either you would have to somehow inject massive amounts of energy into your body which will still only grant you a short amount of time, not to mention medical complications; or you literally generate energy out of nowhere, which at that point you might as well be a god);
or everything else stops, which means you can’t breath unless you also control air around you, and if you can control air particles around you, why not other types of particles? And once you can control any types particles you might as well be a god since what’s stopping you from literally doing bloody nuclear fusion and turning the entire planet into a star?
So basically if you can stop time you are literally a god Or you defy the laws of physics which also makes you basically a god Or you die while stopping time which would kinda be weird as you just kinda suffocated to death out of nowhere
He did not outright tell that it would be unetical but he implied it.
…gambling lottery… But if I wanted to be ethical
Imply that the roulette part is unethical.
He said he would do it tho, so I guess it’s not unethical enough for him not to do it. Stealing is unethical but yeah, it’s casino, so it’s not that bad.
Power does not corrupt. It reveals. If you have the power to do whatever you want, it becomes apparent what you wanted to do. If having this power makes you do evil deeds, it means you already wanted to do evil deeds but lacked the power to.
I think the issue is that it’s impossible to have “perfect morals” and morals are subjective. Once you have absolute power there will no longer be someone or something to keep you in check when it comes to more questionable morals. Sure you might not think you are doing anything wrong, but you can still look like an evil villain to everyone else.
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.
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.
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.
Not really, because you wouldn’t be able to see anything or hear anything if time stops. Even light particles would stop moving, and your eyes would just see flashes of light as you move through space.
I mean we could just assume it to be like what 1/100 seconds per seconds perceived by user and everybody else would be moving and perceiving so slowly that it accomplishes pretty much the same thing right? Bullets might be a bit tough to dodge now at ~12ft/s (for handguns) but not impossible so still seems pretty useful
At 1/100 speed, light would be so redshifted that you wouldn’t be able to perceive it. However, some X-rays (1-10nm) would be redshifted into the visible range (400 to 700nm).
I guess this means you would have x-ray vision. But you would see little to nothing since our environment normally does not include significant levels of X-rays.
None of the cleanup in your brain that takes place when you actually sleep is going to happen either, so you’d wake without getting any of the benefits of rest too, right?
I feel like the average person wouldn’t become immoral but they would probably become kind of a jerk. At least personally I wouldn’t hurt anybody but damn would I use super speed or invisibility to pull some incredible pranks.
Yeah everyone in this thread spouting social control theory forgets that humans have millions of years of evolution for social living, and the scale of moral ambiguity definitely scales with that to some degree. Most people would likely stop short of things which would seriously harm their community, and the knock-on effects of fairly small amounts of deviance would likely become apparent enough to keep most people from anything more than victimless crimes and simple mischief.
It’s really no different than the time travel paradox in a way. You assassinate a tyrant, and see the horrific civil war it causes and then try to intervene to correct that mistake and it all spirals out of control until it’s legitimately way worse than before. Most people would take that lesson and build a much more limited moral code around their powers, if they didn’t do that from day one.
I think I would probably be a jerk a few times, and it would escalate until I hurt someone unthinkingly, and seeing the results of that would shock me back to reality and I’d feel so uncomfortable with myself that I’d hopefully go back to being less of a jerk.
I feel like the average asshole would steal, probably trespass in Area 51, or the White House or whatever. In the former case if you steal from a big enough place its effectively a victimless crime. In the latter, you’re just not supposed to be there, so even less in the way of real victims.
Murder though? Thats when stuff gets real. I feel like no matter your stance everyone has a person or people they’d have to think long and hard about not taking out of the equation, whether for personal reasons or to make the world an overall better place in their opinion. Doubt most would even consequence free but some (not so) subtle influence here and there would likely happen.
Also if you’re a comic guy, give Irredeemable a go. It’s the same vein of plot as The Boys and Invincible.
I suppose with that kind of power you wouldn’t really need to use violence to influence them. Just leave a notes in the field of vision constantly until they give all their money to charity or whatever. Maybe upgrade to random cream pies to the face in public if they’re not getting it.
Knife stabbed into your least favorite government official’s pillow with a note on it that says “RETIRE” would probably be a rather effective deterrent to most, and if the first one doesn’t get the message across the second one after all the cops are watching every nook and cranny definitely will. Or just leave pineapples laying around for them, if you want to do things the funnier way.
The connection between madness and pineapples has been a topic of conversation for years, but no one knows exactly why the two complement each other so perfectly.
Consequences aren’t the only thing that cause people to act they way they act. It’s certainly one reason some people don’t do certain things.
One reason Homelander is the way he is is because how he was raised. If tomorrow I got all Homelander’s powers, I wouldn’t instantly become a psychopath. I mean it might occur to me that any action I might take, and no one could stop me or punish me. But as Homelander observed (at least in the prior season, I’m not entirely caught up) that alienation from his fellow supers is actually a consequence he deals with.
A good example of this is asking yourself if you would kill your immediate family if you could do so with impunity. For most of us the answer is, of course, no. That’s because of familiarity, and how we think of them as our “in group.” Same goes for anyone else. If you’re morally developed then no one should be afraid of you, except maybe the truly vile.
I’m not a violent person and never get into trouble but if I suddenly became superman I’d immediately punch Putin to death. And a bunch of other politicans / plutocrats that have made the world 100x worse.
Spoilers for the first few seasons: the righteous non supers find drugs to give themselves superheroes so they can battle the corrupt super heroes. Yes, this cheat code to power begins to corrupt them too.
Further, the super hero Council and corporation works hard to replace the roles the military covers. They then become an unaccountable shadow agency that the people want to keep doing the work of the government… But then democracy is slipping away.
See I wouldn’t do any of that. I work from the top down only. Just keep punching assholes at the top to death, then the next person takes his place. Eventually there won’t be assholes left, so we’ll actually get good leaders 😅
I wouldn’t touch anything else, policing, military democracy it all unfolds as it does. But assholes wouldn’t run for office or lead any douchenoozle armies becuase, you guessed it, punched to death!
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