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?
Yaknow I just thought of one technicality that would make time stopping a very miserable super power. What if you are also paused. Or what is the physics of paused time. Like do you need time to make stuff move. If that’s also the case wouldn’t your clothes stop you from moving in paused time. That’s not even mentioning air is also mass. That needs to move to let you move about. Edit: also if mass doesn’t require time to move. What about energy. Would everything feel like it has a shit ton more momentum than normal. How tiring would walking be.
Not at all. It’s easy to get away with things even without superpowers. If I don’t do something, it’s because I don’t want to be a person that does that thing.
(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.
In classic philosophy, this is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges, in which Plato suggests that we’d be tempted to wrongdoing if we had the capacity to evade harmful consequences.
In 21st century moral philosophy, it’s more complicated than that. What we do with super-powers depends largely on our need. Normally, someone doesn’t steal resources when they have the means to attain them legitimately, but it’s our precarity or even poverty and hunger that drives us to steal, largely due to a society that recognizes property rights without assuring the safety and provisions of those who, well, don’t have any property. Precarity leads to renegade behavior, or as our states like to call it crime.^†^
So what happens when our ring-wearer finds themselves no longer in desperate need for stuff. This is the point of opportunity, where they can choose to use their power to rescue others from their misfortune, or they can isolate themselves from the squalor and bask in their own luxury.
One of the terrible secrets of moral philosophy is that no code of ethics, no religious commandment really matters. Most of us do what we feel like anyway, whether right and well meaning or wrongful and malicious. It just happens that we’re generally affable. That is, eons of evolution have instilled us with social values and the drive to engage peaceably when we’re not starving, and as such we allow total strangers to merge into our lane in traffic and try to telegraph our actions to keep other drivers at ease. When we’re well fed, healthy, warm, well rested and getting laid once in a while, we’re pretty easy to get along with. Keep a whole society in precarity, however, and it turns into social unrest and eventually civil war.
But then, when we’re driven by fear, we tend to think of others in antagonistic terms. Our billionaires have the capacity to improve society on a global scale. Musk or Bloomberg could adopt Haiti and drive the nation into industrial development, and have his statue in bronze adorn every state park countrywide. Not big on that opportunity? $30 Billion will feed the world (That is, all the humans in it) including processing and freight. Less than that could create a free high-speed WiFi internet infrastructure that covers all populated parts of the world (Including Mt. Everest, but not much of the Himalayas).
But none of them do. Not one billionaire is thinking about their legacy on this scale. Rather, they’re all very miserly with their charitable works, and then engage in them only for marketing and tax-haven purposes. Considering how consistent billionaires are about this, the Ring of Gyges may be that corrupting an influence after all.
Superhero narratives are typically about a desperate need and someone with the means to fulfill it in daring fashion. OSP noted The Scarlett Pimpernel who rescued aristocrats from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. (Superheroes are not always on the side of aging well). When someone has super-powers and acts in a more immoral fashion, we regard them instead as monsters. Case in point, Count Dracula or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
SPIRIT: This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom
SCROOGE: Have they no refuge or resource?
SPIRIT:〈mocking Scrooge〉Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
† I generally avoid using the word crime unless talking specifically about things that are illegal as decided by regional law. Many acts of wrongdoing are not criminal. Many crimes are not immoral. Same with sin which are proscriptions according to religious institutions.
“Let me tell you something about Hu-mons, nephew. They’re a wonderful, warm, sociable people. But take away their creature comforts, take away their food, their holosuites, and put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same warm, wonderful people…will become as nasty and vicious as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.”
I’m a little tired of everyone being such a doomer all the time tbh. No they wouldn’t, and The Boys isn’t realistic, it’s cynical. Maybe you believe you would start doing immoral things given this power, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else would. If the only thing stopping you from doing it was the potential consequences, then you didn’t have those morals in the first place; you always wanted to do those things, you just didn’t have the ability.
That being said, I would totally do things that are illegal but not against my own morals. Do you know what you could do with that kind of power? You’d be like Dr. Manhattan, the only superpowered individual in the world. Anything you want to be the case (physically), given enough time, you could make it happen. Whether your desires are good or bad, there’s really no reason not to enact them. TL;DR: Things go very differently depending on who gets this power.
I’m on the same page as you, dude! My first thought was that I could take naps ANYWHERE at ANY TIME. It’d be a dream to never feel tired and always refreshed. Also to have absolutely no pressure from time commitments. I’d just be a happy guy most of the time.
Honestly I’m having trouble imagining what terrible things others here seem to be considering doing if they had the power to stop time. Hopefully it’s not more than stealing money from a bank vault?
I suppose it depends a lot on the nature of said time-stopping power. Using it to threaten some of the most powerful people on the planet into using said power to do good (or at least not bad) would be on the list of stuff to do.
For instance - a note threatening Putin with the loss of a toe or something (and further escalating consequences) unless he makes a public statement announcing the intent of Russian Armed forces to withdraw from Ukraine.
The counterargument for this line of thinking is that it’s just theoretical. You don’t have actual experience with the scenario, so you can’t truly know how you’d behave.
We all like to think we’re paragons of virtue. But when the chips are down, most people behave in ways they never expected to.
In the words of an eminent poet, “Everybody got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Sure, I don’t know how I’d react. I know for sure I’d do dodgy, illegal things. I also know that legal and moral are not synonyms. And I also know that the only person I have no choice but to live with is myself, and I have no intention of doing anything that makes me hate myself. Stopping time doesn’t change that.
It would depend on how the power actually functioned, but my descent into time-stopping degeneracy would probably happen in stages. I would take care of money first, doing whatever to get my house paid off and. Basic needs taken care of for life. Not really sure the quickest and/or easiest way, but robbing a bank maybe? Though that seems a bit too out there for me. Maybe money doesn’t even matter when you can freeze time, you can just grab whatever you want anyways, apart from paying your rent/mortgage. I’d still work my job, but my weekends would probably last awhile. Hell, I’d probably take a day off in between each day. Probably the biggest danger with time-stopping is that I’d prematurely age from all the extra time I’d be taking off (assuming I aged normally while time was still).
I can totally agree with the whole with great power comes great immorality way of thinking.
But I view it in the adaptation angle. Like, how many “average” people can adapt to such a huge shift in power? Pro athletes tend to have bad spending habits because of sudden shifts of wealth. Country laws and legislations stay for generations because the lawmakers are stuck to their own bubbles of how things are progressing.
Being able to adapt is a general trait for people, but not everybody can do it as quickly. I think that part causes conflicts that may or may not lead to immorality.
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