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.
Just like tequila!
For anyone who wants to learn more you should read The Power Broker by Robert Caro
That’s it! I knew I learned of this from something but forgot the name of it.
Lindsay Ellis’s Game of Thrones video?
God damn Moses
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.
Dude. they ain’t morals if the only thing stopping me is consequence
Also, lazyness and procrastination.
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.
Honestly I think I would mostly use it for naps. So many naps.
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).
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.
I know I’d wait last minute for everything, or even worse than I do now anyways
Yeesh, I’m trying to relax not be attacked.
You are truly the best of us.
This is an awful lot like the idea that the only thing 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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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.
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.
If I can’t truly know how I’d behave, then this discussion is pointless.
I claim that you don’t know how you’d truly behave, and that people are generally decent and wouldn’t harm others if there were no consequences
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.
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Also if air were frozen, it wouldn’t flow to move out of your way so you’d be locked in place.
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
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.
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.
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.
The measure of a man’s true character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
The shopping cart test.
If I had the power to stop time, my morals would suddenly become enforced.
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
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.
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.
Just because The Boys is gory and pessimistic doesn’t mean it’s realistic
Sure, but given the state of things, I think we’re closer to the boys than we could ever be to the avengers
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.
If you’re honest with yourself about your morals, they wouldn’t change
Mine wouldn’t
Honestly, I’d primarily use the power to sleep
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?
That’s the fun thing about morals, everyone is operating with a different set of morals. Often similar, but some are drastically different.
And sometimes the things that fit within their moral outlines would shock other people
Some people need the threat of terrible consequences to not do terrible things
Ah, I think I know who you mean. gestures to sky
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.
