That is, no one person is so big and tough that they can't be killed while they sleep, or by some team of five other people. That this was true in his life time, I feel I just have to take his word. Has it changed? Well, there's a good argument that technology disproportionately empowers individuals, especially individuals with good ideas. But there's an even better argument that, in Hobbes' time, casual violence, even murder, was prevalent to a degree most internet citizens would find incomprehensible. Warren Ellis (a expert on the subject if there ever was one, he said, rolling his eyes and smirking conspiratorially) once said that the person who wins a fight is not the stronger or faster, but the person most willing to permanently damage (not his words) another living, feeling human being. So I think that when you find people whose lives have led them to be unhesitating in the distribution of violence, they'll go through people who hesitate like tissue.
But no, that's probably romanticizing again. You see, there's this meme in fiction (and certain related political parties) where the opposite is true: where some people are just better than everyone else. You see it all over the place, from the Iliad to Die Hard to all the animoos there are.
I've been trained to see it as cool! How terrible is that? "Wouldn't it be great if some people could just take charge and run and jump and kill and there was nothing the norms could do about it?! But no, it'd be okay, because, you see, they'd be more real and cool and interesting and morally invested than the people/objects they would practice their will on!" I remember someone arguing for that interpretation of Exalted (an old favorite of mine) back in the old days when I went to forums, and I felt mildly ill from it. Well, sure, some games have characters that are fraught and challenged and made to deserve the gains they have, or else you're permitted to portray them as evil existences, and then it's gotta be okay that they can jump through buildings and be faster than a locomotive and whatever, right?
But anyway, I think that "superempowered," the word John Robb coined for the individuals and small groups who have far greater effect on large systems than you'd expect, is a good name for these people. So mote it be!
6 comments:
While I won't argue against the possibility of a "superempowered" person being so enhanced by technology that they can by definition be immune to the predations of most if not at least some human beings (I'm thinking uploading one's brain or something like that), I certainly wouldn't say that it has happened _yet_.
What are the odds that such a technology will exist without there also existing a cheaper technology that can totally fuck it over? Helicopter Gunships vs. LAWs...
Hmmm... what if you turned it around a bit? What if it isn't that these people are so much cooler than others, but rather that the others out there haven't (for whatever reason) taken it upon themselves to level the playing field? So, no one is better than another, but some have taken advantage of others' apathy/morals/lack of knowledge/whatever to "superempower" themselves... Hmmm... that's not quite what I meant. I mean that everyone is capable of being on equal footing with everyone else, that everyone can be as powerful, but not everyone chooses to, for a myriad of reasons...
So, sure, I could be as violent as anyone, but I may not be because I'm afraid of hurting others, or because of empathy, or because I don't want the social and legal stigma of being a killer...
Are there some moral pitfalls I'm missing here?
But in that system, you're not having a disproportionate effect, you're just making a trade-off. Unless you mean that empathy and fear of stigma isn't actually worth the sacrificed power.
The problem then is that then all the cool ninja-people are jerks by definition, gaining their power not by selling their souls, but their give-a-fucked-ness. Though if anything, that might avoid the moral pitfall in the more common "Some People Are Just Better" meme.
Yeah, I thought the exercise was to get around that meme while still having the "Superempowered" around? Like the idealized idea of Kung Fu... Everyone who is willing to work hard can master Kung Fu, right? But not everyone does, usually 'cause they are mastering something else vital to society...
But that dosen't make the ninja-types jerks, just people with the access and the willingness to make the effort/sacrifice to gain those cool powers.
So instead of "Superempowered" being the Authority and imposing their view of right because of their might, they can also be Bodhisattvas... exemplars of what we can be if we put our minds to it and are willing to do what it takes. (Of course, this can be good or bad, but I think it evens the playing field a little more between the "norms" and the "superempowered" by making the Supes just norms who did what it takes to be powerful but who aren't inherently better than anyone else)
Does that make any sense? I feel like I'm stumbling around the idea I have in my head and not quite articulating it...
Ah-hah! I was failing to understand you. Yes, you have potentially rehabilitated them. Kung Fu heroes are inherently disruptive and incredibly selfish for their social milieu, but they have their own redeeming features: working hard, and doing good things (or else, you know, they're clearly bad), and not always getting all the benefits of family and security. They ain't Achilles, is what I'm saying. They want to honor their family and obey their king, just in a different way.
But I'm not sure if that carries forward to the modern day: white American society, at least, values rebellious superior individuals enough that it seems there'd be a tragedy of the Super-Commons.
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