Missing the point about superheroes

Claims that they are fascist. [Link]

I was reminded of this by Jor-El’s speech in “Man of Steel”:

You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.

How, though? Those watching him can’t fly, topple buildings or fire heat rays from their eyes. What else does Superman do other than these purely physical feats? The 1978 version of Jor-El warned: “It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history. Rather let your leadership stir others to.” Can you really inspire others with steel? At this point it’s interesting to reflect on the real-life leader who chose a name meaning “Man Of Steel”: Stalin.

Rebutted. [Link]

This reading of superheroes is common but wrong, a symptom of trying to impose political ideology on a universal, fictional myth. Superheroes do say something about the real world, but it’s something pretty uncontroversial: We want to see good triumph over evil, and “good” in this case means more than just defeating the bad guy—it means handling power responsibly.

The “fascism” metaphor breaks down pretty quickly when you think about it. Most superheroes defeat an evil power but do not retain any power for themselves. They ensure others’ freedom. They rarely deal with the government, and when they do it is with wariness, as in the Iron Man films, where Tony Stark refuses to hand over control of his inventions.

Indeed, superhero tales are full of subplots about how heroes limit their own power: hibernating once the big bad guy has been defeated, wearing disguises to live ordinary lives, choosing not to give into the temptation to ally with the villain or use their powers for profit or even civilizational progress. That’s because the creators of some of the most foundational superhero tales weren’t writing solely out of a power fantasy. They were writing out of a fantasy that a truly good people who find themselves with power might use that power only for good—and only in the face of extreme evil.

Consider the conclusion of The Dark Knight Rises where Batman refuses to show his real identity to take credit for saving Gotham City. Batman is regularly willing to trust others for help and does not see himself as the sole hero; the hero, the story seems to say, could be anyone. Like many others, Batman works to be an example of helping others while respecting the autonomy of society and individuals.Perhaps the optimism that an uberpowerful being like Superman would not overreach is unrealistic. Maybe it’s the same optimism that has helped certain world dictators to rise to power. But superhero myths themselves come from a good place. The belief that people are capable of real altruism is inescapable, human, and the farthest thing from inherently fascistic.

When superheroes do appear to flirt with fascism, it's as part of a subversions of the genre, as with Alan Moore's gritty, dystopian Watchmen. Similarly, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns reimagined Superman as a government lackey who gets in Batman's way. Both graphic novels comment on the dangers posed by superheroes with less-clear moral orientations than, say, Captain America—who, by the way, was originally created with the explicit intention of fighting fascists—but they don't damn the self-limiting superheroes that America has come to love. 

I remember reading somewhere about what a superhero's real power was:

Their morals. they are not heroes because they can beat you up or pick up a building, but because they do not abuse that power. They actually are better than us, more moral than us, they are not susceptible to corruption. They are there to inspire us to be better, and while yes, there is adolescent power fantasy there, it is all in the service of using power to do the right thing.

Why atheists can speak in the West

Something to think about the next time someone tries to say radical Christianity is equivalent to radical Islam. [Link]

Recently Bill Maher ripped into CSU San Bernadino professorBrian Levin for making the ridiculous equivalence between Christian extremism and Islamic extremism. The problem, which Maher pinpoints, is that Islamic extremism is not that extreme. By this, I mean that Islamic extremism (e.g., Muslim Brotherhood) has much greater broad based support than Christian extremism (e.g., Christian Reconstruction). The difference here is that you’ve heard of the Muslim Brotherhood, while far fewer have heard of Christian Reconstructionists. That’s because the former have democratic support in a populous Muslim country as the ruling party.

The standard liberal cant is to change the subject, and point to the past history of Christianity, or engage in unrepresentative comparisons. Since I know more history and religion than most of my interlocutors, I have little patience for this. Sophistry loses its power when the tactics are often so nakedly amateurish. And this is not simply abstraction. Let’s look at what’s been happening in Bangladesh, the country in which I was born, BANGLADESH’S ISLAMISTS CALL FOR DEATH OF ‘ATHEIST BLOGGERS’:

On April 6, hundreds of thousands of men and boys spread out across the sweltering capital Dhaka to call for, among other things, the hanging of atheists. The mass mobilization of Islamists was spurred by a handful of “atheist” bloggers who are supposedly so offensive to Islam that they should face the hangman’s noose.

“There is no place in this country for atheists,” was one of the friendlier refrains that a supporter of the organizers, Hefazet Islami, a Sunni Muslim outfit from the country’s second largest city, Chittagong, told me.

The Islamist marchers listed 84 bloggers who they demand be arrested or hanged, In February an atheist blogger named Rajib was stabbed to death a month after blogger Asif Mohiuddin was nearly killed for his beliefs.

First, Bangladesh is a moderate Muslim country. The ruling party is secular. It is not an Islamic state. Rather, in an old fashioned 1970s socialist manner it is officially the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. But in deference to the religiously conservative nature of the populace there is still some mixing of church & state, as we would understand it in the West. But Bangladesh, unlike Pakistan, has not opted for a monotone Islamic identity. The national anthem was written by a Hindu.

Pacifism in Video Games

Gamers seeking a challenge go non-violent because violence is too easy. There's a moral there somewhere. [Link]

Killing is easy in the moral vacuum of videogames. So when Daniel Mullins needed a challenge, he gave peace a chance.

Mr. Mullins, 19, is the creator of "Felix the Peaceful Monk"—his character in a videogame called "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim." The game gives players wide latitude over their on-screen characters' appearance and actions. Felix, who is half man, half cat, has become a small-time Internet celebrity for his steadfast refusal to kill.

In videogame excerpts Mr. Mullins has posted on YouTube, Felix roams an icy fantasy world doing things like soothing angry wolves with magic. In one video, he explains how to turn away threatening skeletons, noting Felix won't even harm the undead. And when an assassin tried to gut Felix with a knife? While most players have swords and arrows for would-be hit men, Mr. Mullins hit his with a calm spell.

"Apparently someone wants me dead. But that doesn't mean [the assassin] deserves to die," Mr. Mullins explains.

Videogames have long been assailed for their violent themes and gruesome imagery. But a small slice of players has embraced a new strategy: not killing. They are imparting real-world morals on their virtual-world characters and completing entire games on a "pacifist run"—the term for beating a blood-and-guts adventure without drawing any blood.

The cool restraint of pacifism can bring bragging rights and even a taste of online fame. Videogame enthusiasts routinely post videos of their accomplishments on YouTube.

Kotaku, a videogame blog, has done posts on a handful of pacifists, including one who conquered the post-apocalyptic world of "Fallout: New Vegas" without taking a single virtual life. A number of violent videogames award virtual "trophies" to anyone who can complete the game without killing.

Stephen Totilo, Kotaku's editor in chief, says videogame pacifism isn't usually a moral decision but rather "an urge to break the rules"—and dial up the difficulty of the game. "One of the most interesting challenges is to get through the game without killing," he says.

I think the best part of today's more sophisticated games is the option to not kill. The idea that all problems do not have to have violent solutions is a good one.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Woman falls and breaks hip at hospital, no help until she called an ambulance. [Link]

A hospital would seem the safest place to get hurt, but that assumption proved false for 82-year-old Doreen Wallace of Niagara Falls, Ontario.

When Wallace fell and broke her hip earlier this month in the lobby of the Greater Niagara General Hospital, she assumed she would be quickly taken care of, but that was not the case, according to the Toronto Star.

Instead, she was told to call an ambulance.

“It was horrible. It really was,” Wallace told the Star. “Everybody who walked through the door stopped and stared at me.”

Wallace had been leaving the hospital after visiting her ailing husband when she fell. As she lay face down on a metal grate with a cut arm and broken hip, two nurses from the emergency room reportedly refused to help until paramedics arrived.

“I was inside the hospital,” Wallace said. “Why did they have to wait for an ambulance to come and pick me up?”

Wallace spent almost 30 minutes on the ground before a passing surgeon moved her into a wheelchair to await help.

“I was floored,” Wallace’s son Mike Wallace told the Toronto Star. “We’re probably, maybe, like a 50-yard walk, literally down to the emergency department.”

It has a happy ending of sorts.

“I was disappointed this week to learn of a situation where a family did not receive the standard of care they deserved after their mother fell in the entrance area of our Niagara Falls site,” Niagara Health System Supervisor Dr. Kevin Smith wrote in a statement.

“In response to this latest incident, and to ensure clarity to all members of our health care team, I have conveyed to NHS leadership that our policy for response to any visitor in distress will be to ensure a rapid response and transport to the most appropriate clinical setting,” Smith wrote.

The mere fact that they have to tell their medical personnel to help the sick and injured is astounding.

The New Morality

Is shallow and undefined. [Link]

It’s not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you’d expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues.

The interviewers asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life. In the rambling answers, which Smith and company recount in a new book, “Lost in Transition,” you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so.

When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.

“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.

The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”

Rejecting blind deference to authority, many of the young people have gone off to the other extreme: “I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel.”

Many were quick to talk about their moral feelings but hesitant to link these feelings to any broader thinking about a shared moral framework or obligation. As one put it, “I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.”

Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America.

Ah, moral relativism. It always makes me think of this statement by General Sir Charles James Napier, while in India on the banning of Sati, the Hindu ritual of immolating widows at the funeral of their husband:

"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."