Be honest: if you had the power to stop time, your morals would go out the window.
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?
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This one time in high school...
(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?
How will you make your billion dollars ethically, without exploiting a fuck ton of people and a fuck ton of land?
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.
Yes. Your taxes could achieve all that anyway. You just want dragon-level wealth and would throw peanuts of charity to maintain a good image.
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.
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.
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.
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
Like in 1984 by Orwell, where every "other party" is the same as the other three from the tristate.