In 1962 John D. MacDonald wrote a wonderful science fiction novel called “The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything”, which was later made into a TV movie. The premise was simple and elegant: A young man inherits from his millionaire uncle nothing but a gold watch. But it turns out that the watch has the ability to freeze time — its bearer can inhabit the space between one instant and the next, doing (and changing) whatever he wants in the interval.<\/p>\n
Obviously this is an enormous super power. The novel contains comedy and adventure, good guys and bad guys, a love story and thrilling chases, but much of the fun simply derives from observing the young man as he gradually figures out just how much power he really has.<\/p>\n
Yet as Lord Acton observed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Suppose (suspending disbelief for a moment) that you really had such a watch. Would it be possible to continue making ethical choices, to avoid over the long run becoming corrupted by the possession of such power?<\/p>\n
Thinking more generally about this, I wonder whether we can rank any given super power by its tendency to corrupt its possessor. Consider invisibility, super-strength, teleportation, control over time, mind-reading, immortality, and all the other power-ups in the D.C. and Marvel canon. In ethical terms, just how much self-control does each demand?<\/p>\n
After all, the only difference in the superhero universe between a “good guy” and a “bad guy” is whether or not they have become seduced by their own power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1962 John D. MacDonald wrote a wonderful science fiction novel called “The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything”, which was later made into a TV movie. The premise was simple and elegant: A young man inherits from his millionaire uncle nothing but a gold watch. But it turns out that the watch has the … Continue reading “Super power corrupts superly”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9581,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9580\/revisions\/9581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}