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?
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.
Sounds a lot like Kant with his morality of principals to me.
This is an awful lot like the idea that the only think keeping people from raping and murdering is belief in god. It says a lot more about the person claiming it than anyone else.
Wups, I meant to reply to a comment about the Mongol/Huns on another post (hence the mention of nomadic tribes). I was wondering why my comment got downvoted lol
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Dude. they ain’t morals if the only thing stopping me is consequence
So you’re a consequentialist, then. That’s just one short step to utilitarianism, which is a pretty solid moral foundation.
Ehhhh, Consequentialism judges the morality of an action by its consequence. I’m simply not stealing shit because the inconvenience of hassle.
I think OP is guided by virtue ethics actually.
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.
Grenade morality.
that would be extremely time consuming, imagine traveling around the world with every major transport frozen
and imagine the time It would take to actually find everyone who needs a pocket granade
I think one of the necessary secondary support powers would be for time to flow normally for anything you touch.
Otherwise air would be frozen and you’d suffocate.
Also if air were frozen, it wouldn’t flow to move out of your way so you’d be locked in place.
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I feel like after a while, and maybe with a few notes left behind, it would begin to have a chilling effect.
How can you consume time if it is stopped?
Time is change. If you’re not aging then you’re not moving. Imagine destroying the universe by just stopping it.
Would it really be time consuming? Depends on the ruleset of thw world I suppose. Do you age in this time frozen state?
I think you’d have to.
I think it can’t work without the “things Im touching are exempt” rule.
If you can breathe and are not locked into your own clothes, you can surely use motor vehicles as well
The “Death Note” style of super powers lol
Grenade morality.
Big grenade diplomacy
I’d vote for ya
you paint a vivid mental image
I like that
You’d need both the ability to stop time, create a time pocket for yourself and the ability to fly on your own
The measure of a man’s true character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
“Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking”
Huh, my character is apparently about itching orifices.
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If it’s pitch black, I look super sexy. My character is sexy.
The shopping cart test.
Weird self report. The only thing stopping you from being evil is social pressure?
I think someone else in this thread said it best. The more power you have the more temptation there is to fulfill your whims. Why do you think billionaires live the way that they do?
At least, that’s how I see human nature. I made this post because I think there’s room for reasonable debate.
Why do you think billionaires become billionaires? They were already messed up before the money and had no morals to stop them from doing immoral things to get it.
If I knew I’d never be caught, I’d hope I would do things that billionaire brown-nosers think is immoral. But it’s things I believe are moral. Like reclaiming stolen wealth from billionaires.
Or they were given money and have zero qualms or repercussions while exploiting it or exploiting people
It’s easy to be cynical about human nature when the extreme negatives are so amplified and given so much publicity. You have to remember the vast majority of people do still possess empathy.
Reasonable debate about what? That most people would be evil if they had the power because the people who have power are often evil? That inference does not follow. That’s not a logical claim, it’s a self report at worst and a fallacy at best.
Not quite what I’m saying. It goes the other way around: people are morally questionable by nature and this comes out when people have the chance to act without facing consequences.
So the debate essentially boils down to whether you think people are essentially good/bad at heart. That’s something people can reasonably disagree on.
people are morally questionable by nature
You keep making sweeping statements about all of humanity.
Please speak for yourself.
Your evidence for the claim that people are evil by nature is: billionaires are often evil and you would make immoral choices if you could stop time. That’s just a self report and a logical fallacy smashed together
You really would prefer to strawman instead of seeing where reasonable people could disagree huh. Maybe the point is too philosophical for your taste.
You’re not reasonably debating if you start from an illogical premise.
If you don’t like debate don’t come complaining about being debated.
It’s also a bit weird you’re whining about the straw man that you brought up in the first place
If OP had super powers, your life might be in danger right now for debating the incorrect position or way or whatever.
Yeah but think about it: you could check someone’s ass fully instead of stealing glances, put random dirt smudges on people’s faces… it’s hard to resist such a power.
If I had the power to stop time, my morals would suddenly become enforced.
I feel the same way. Trying to be a moral person is quite time consuming, and people seem to love short circuiting it by relying on various rules of thumb. But once you start investing those, it’s like peeling an onion, there’s always another layer to it that you haven’t considered.
When is giving money to someone in need helpful and when is it enabling their helplessness?
How can you tell the difference between someone who needs your help and someone who just wants to take you for a ride?
Don’t forget that your time is literally the most valuable thing you can choose to give someone. If you had unlimited amounts of it you’d be a billionaire. Then again, perhaps it would just end up making it worthless because you don’t need to ration it anymore.
day one: pantsed every pro-life god botherer outside of every planned parenthood, all at the same moment.
day two: watched the internet take in day one. picked charities to give stacks of drug money and swiss nazi money to.
day three: etc
your morals would go out the window.
Why would they? I don’t enjoy hurting people, and I wouldn’t start enjoying it if I could magically get away with it.
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.
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.
Goes to show that morals aren’t a hindrance, but a guide. Without morals, who are we?
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
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.
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.
This is exactly what happens in The Boys too
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!
Oh OK, hubris of the jedi over here
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’ve been watching more realistic super hero shows like The Boys and Invincible. The reoccurring themes is that with great power comes great immorality.
You know that those were still written by humans to tell a story, right? I wouldn’t derive any universal laws from them.
Kind of a misunderstanding. Its not “law” they lay down, its archetypes. If it is realistic it means more like it is more relatable.
Immortality and immense power is meant to give a sandbox view of the world with lowered consequences. Also the naive inheritor in case of Invincible.
In case of The Boys, Homelander embodies the establishment that is not only more powerful, but hailed as the hero of all mankind.
Thats lots of peoples vibes. You are not the hero in shining armor. You are an insurgent at best. You dont just get on a suit and start saving lives, but you have to go up aganist THE establishment and fucking prove yourself first. The very thing that is being actively hailed.
I think you misunderstand my point. I’m not saying those shows lay down any laws. I’m saying you (the viewer) shouldn’t derive any universal laws from consequences or situations depicted in stories made up specifically for entertainment.
I genuinely believe it’d depend on the person.
First: Most people who use cheats in video games eventually either stop using them or stop playing the game altogether, because it gets boring.
Many people who win the lottery get a bit of splurging out of their system, then invest the rest into financial security but keep living their loves mostly like before.
So there genuinely might be some people who will eventually settle into just fixing their most glaring problems and then just keep living “regularly”, possibly with the occasional minor indulgence.
Then there’s people who are willing to go to extreme lengths to enforce their beliefs even without superpowers - imagine super-powered criminals and terrorists, but also super-powered firefighters, doctors or scientists.
And then there’s everything in between.
So, if it’s just one (or maybe five) people getting superpowers, it’d probably be a roll of the dice. Maybe there’d just be one person going through life easier. Maybe we’d get lucky and someone solves a major problem for us. Maybe we get unlucky and every president that doesn’t reinstate segregation gets assassinated.
If it’s more people getting powers… well, there’s already a lot of fiction exploring that in-depth.
The funny thing is that humans are pretty much “the animals with superpowers” in this planet.
We can practically do almost fucking anything we want with almost any animal in the world.
And there is no animal resistant group to attempt to stop us.
It’s other humans that keep us in check. So you definitely have a point!
Those kind of darker ‘realistic’ shows have a very cynical view of human nature where people are inherently bad and the social contract is what keeps us at bay from becoming monsters. I dont agree with that assessment (though I did as an edgy teenager)
The rich and powerful act the was they do not because they can but because they have nothing to strive for. IMO people require a certain amount of conflict and struggle in order to truly attain happiness and a fulfilling life. You also need to learn new skills to have fresh experiences. See this excellent documentary on the mouse utopia experiments.
You cant really appreciate success until you’ve failed miserably and earned it through blood sweat and tears. If you live your whole life being too rich to fail, and get everything you’ve ever wanted without having to work and struggle for it, then you eventually run out of things to want and life becomes hollow. Food looses its taste, drugs no longer get you high, regular and even kinky sex looses its appeal, luxury and convinence becomes meaningless as does social status. The only thing left is the thrill of depravity.
Time powers wouldn’t make a normal person with proper life goals and average moral values instantly go off the deep end. Only people who think money and power buys happiness.
Well, a lot of people would suddenly find themselves with their pants down in public. So better put on clean underwear, people. The Timestopper is in town.
You get that power, you use it on people who are making the world a shittier place first.
Now, that’s not precisely moral, but let’s be honest, beyond a bit of minor larceny there’s not a whole lot of personal gain you can realistically achieve.
Steal a truckload of cash? Sure, but then you’ve got to launder the heck out of it, and I’ve seen Ozark, that’s more drama than I want in my life even if I had the skills, which I don’t. And nobody pays cash even for groceries any more, have to wait for one of the non-card registers to open up and it’s a pain in the ass. Maybe you could rig a horse race or something, but the people involved in serious gambling are very good at spotting anomalous wins, and your life wouldn’t be worth dick the second time you tried it.
That pretty much leaves pranks and murder, and you’re a damn fool if you bring that within a dozen miles of any kind of personal connection.
Which pretty much only leaves assassination of high-level assholes as something that would a:) make a noticeable difference, b:) keep you under the radar and c:) be immensely satisfying.
If you had super powers you probably wouldn’t have to steal anything or commit crimes to be rich. You’d just make money the same way people like the Kardashians do or worst case sign up to some sporting team and absolutely trounce everybody else then sign endorsements.
Oh, so you are going with the whole “I am not a selfish idiot” response… respect.
Well, not a selish idiot, that’s the trouble.
If I could think of a way to become comfortably well-off without eitehr getting in trouble or living in crippling anxiety that I was going to get in trouble, that might be another story.
It’s just that getting away with shit is for rich people with powerful connections, and bootstrapping into that state without passing through an uninsulated trouble phase is pretty damn nontrivial. They don’t let just anyone into the club, and they stomp anyone who dares to try.
I don’t actually know about the international-super-assassin club, but I’m willing to bet it’s either a fair bit more porous, or a lot more discreet, to the point that you never have reason to suspect they’re onto you.
Maybe wait around the lottery office for someone with a good winning ticket and swap them when they go to turn it in, seems pretty risk free if you can freeze time
That’s a fairly good point, but I’d argue that it’d depend on how subtle the application of your superpower is.
My overall assumption would be that any application that doesn’t raise red flags will probably require enough work and moderation that it’d be more like a job - but it could be a very well-paying job.
I.e. for the time freeze: You could acquire a well-paid reputation as a freelancer troubleshooter for a certain type of WFH desk job (analyst? translator?) that can finish any overdue project in record time. Or, easier, become a stage magician.
You’d probably still eventually wind up in a situation where you watch some sort of unacceptable crisis on the news and think “well, I could do something about this” - be it removing a mass-murdering dictator or dismantling a hostage situation.
Why do you have to conceal what you do? You can stop time, for crying out loud. That’s almost unlimited power.
You see a bunch of law enforcement run to you, you can easily get the fuck out - with all their guns and car keys.
Edit: if you downvote me, then it’s a good thing you don’t have this power, for you would waste it unnecessarily.
Snipers are a thing. And at best, who wants to spend their life on the lam? I want to play video games and eat toast, it’s hard to do that if you can’t spend an entire day in any given location.
That’s why you stop time and kill all snipers or disable all sniper rifles.
Like I said… UNLIMITED POWAH!
