Do you think the world needs or deserves Superman ?

[GBaxter]

Do you (seriously or humorously) think the world (either the real world, or the fantasy world Clark Kent lives in), needs Superman, apart from the more obviously predictable things that come to mind ?

[Trademark]

Obviously the real world doesn't need Superman. The world Superman lives in on the other hand...

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=29721&zoom=4

[karasu]

I think the world needs all of the help it can get. Whether it's Superman, or a walk for cancer.

[MichaelMogg]

Humourously, absolutely not. Don't you think it's funny that in their world there's a few too many 'Earth shaking' events.

I love the old SuperFriends shows, and even the new JLU, where it seems there are multiple simultaneous earth-threatening events going on. Like in the episode with Demon and the magic and all that stuff . . . I think I remember Supes wasn't there. Time and again there is some 'end of the world if we don't stop this problem' kind of problem, but the big hitters like Supes and GL are absent. WTF?! That can only mean there's something equally pressing going on.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; so it would seem that the sizable force of good leads to a sizable force of evil.

[Preus]

Actually, the real world does need Superman. The crimes that are being commited are becoming worse & the number of people each year that are dying increase. Does the world need Superman? Yes. Does the world DESERVE Superman? No.

[bw38]

Actually, the real world does need Superman. The crimes that are being commited are becoming worse & the number of people each year that are dying increase. Does the world need Superman? Yes. Does the world DESERVE Superman? No.

Doesn't it make sense that more people die each year? That's part of the cycle of life. More people are born and more people die as a result later on.

I don't see why this world we live in doesn't deserve Superman. What makes the DCU Earth more deserving than us?

[Ontir]

I said before, that I'd have been quite grateful if there was someone who couldn't caught, and safely landed 4 jet airliners on 9/11. We could definitely use, really need, and I think deserve a "Superman."

[MichaelMogg]

I said before, that I'd have been quite grateful if there was someone who couldn't caught, and safely landed 4 jet airliners on 9/11. We could definitely use, really need, and I think deserve a "Superman."

Not that that wasn't tragic, but compare -- if you will -- to that massive tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean a few years back; would Superman have been able to do anything about it then?

Also, if people [ya know, evil genii] have to take into account Superman, wouldn't their schemes be that much more devastating? Perhaps someone would launch a nuclear bomb simply because there is a strong probability Superman would stop it anyway.

[J. Robb]

It's hard to imagine Superman in the real world. Not because of his powers, but because he's not corrupted by them.

[Preus]

Yeah, it'd take some good ass parents to raise a superpowered kid who wouldn't be corrupted.

[Preus]

Doesn't it make sense that more people die each year? That's part of the cycle of life. More people are born and more people die as a result later on.

I don't see why this world we live in doesn't deserve Superman. What makes the DCU Earth more deserving than us?


Let me rephrase that, more people are being killed each year for nothing. That doesn't make sense at all.

There are many reasons why this world doesn't deserve Superman....to an extent. For one, we're too damn lazy & plus, we commit crimes for nothing. Yes, we need a Superman but we also need to try & make the world a better place ourselves.

[Green Lantern wannabe]

The DC Universe has the social law, equivalent to the physics one, that says that, for every social force, there is an opposing one. So, after Superman appeared, Lex Luthor also appeared, along with other superheroes and supervillians.

There was a story in the 1970's where the Justice League were forced to Earth-Prime, our earth, because a superhero was created in (I think) Australia, and, right after that, an alien ship came by to start causing trouble, and the JL came by as well. By the end of that story, the alien had gone, and the superhero went back to Earth-1 with the JL, and the balance was restored, with no superheroes and no supervillians.

[Preus]

Anybody think superpowered humans will surface in the future?

[Green Lantern wannabe]

Of course they will - we are already like Gods to the stone-age humans, because we have no polio, rotting teeth, or bleeding scars from malnutrition, but we do have means of talking over long distances, ability to fly on noisy monsters that do what we command, artificial light.

The humans in twenty years will be superpowered compared to us, just as we are to those cavemen, or, for that matter, to the humans of Christopher Columbus' time - who also had to deal with polio and rotting teeth.

[stealthwise]

Of course they will - we are already like Gods to the stone-age humans, because we have no polio, rotting teeth, or bleeding scars from malnutrition, but we do have means of talking over long distances, ability to fly on noisy monsters that do what we command, artificial light.

The humans in twenty years will be superpowered compared to us, just as we are to those cavemen, or, for that matter, to the humans of Christopher Columbus' time - who also had to deal with polio and rotting teeth.

Yeah, we're pretty Star Trek right now.

Except for AIDS, Cancer, global warming, ozone layer depletion, threat of nuclear warfare, overpopulation, international famine... Technology is only as useful as those who wield it.

[bw38]

Anybody think superpowered humans will surface in the future?

This is probably nuts but it deals with what you've asked and it's real life.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13054181/?GT1=8199

Is there a human right to be superhuman?
Special powers aren't just for comic-book characters, some ethicists argue
By Brian Alexander
MSNBC
Updated: 7:45 p.m. ET May 31, 2006


While America was rushing to see sharp metal blades jut from Wolverine’s fists during the opening of the third "X-Men" movie last weekend, an academic conference was being held at Stanford University to discuss what might happen if people with special powers really existed.

The coincidence was too remarkable to ignore.

In the movie, the plot is driven by the government’s attempt to “cure” the mutants so they’ll be “normal,” the very sort of issue the conference, called “Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights,” addressed.

The meeting, sponsored by Stanford University’s Center for Law and the Biosciences, the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, was remarkable for several reasons.

First, leaders of the latter two organizations are “transhumanists” who believe better days are ahead if we take advantage of new technologies to magnify normal human abilities with a full menu of add-ons. Transhumanism has a long history, but in modern times, it has been dismissed by most as a fringe element of comic-book-reading, sci-fi aficionados. No more.

Second, the question of enhancement and human rights is surprisingly topical rather than futuristic, and not just because of the "X-Men" movie.

Finally, the conference was surprising for how far some bioethicists, who were once largely silent on the issue, have come towards not only accepting the concept of human alteration, but asserting that it’s a right.

Coming in from the fringe
Transhumanism is being taken seriously by an increasing number of scholars. The fact that Stanford’s respected legal bioethics program hosted the 150 or so attendees from Europe, Asia, New Zealand and North America to discuss issues raised by human enhancement is testimony to how far transhumanism has come in from the fringe.

Even the government has taken a position — against — in the second report out of President Bush’s bioethics council. Titled “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness,” the 2003 report suggested the need for regulations to prevent the use of biotech to give people powers they did not have naturally.

But the fact is, human enhancement has already arrived. The drug modafinal, for example, was approved for the treatment of narcolepsy. But it is often used by people who just want to stay awake and alert without the side effects of amphetamines. The military is already enhancing pilots with it so they can fly long missions.

The response of bioethics to such new technologies is hardly uniform. Some conservative and religiously based bioethicists oppose enhancement, often basing that opposition on appeals to God, Nature or social equity.

But as San Francisco State University professor of bioethics Anita Silvers pointed out in her presentation, there is a strong case to be made for “enhancement” as a human rights issue. Silvers bases this argument not on the idea of making the healthy stronger and smarter, but from the rights of the disabled.

Consider Oscar Pistorius, a South African who won bronze and gold in the 100 and 200 meter sprints respectively at the Athens Paralympics, and swept the events in last month’s Visa Paralympic World Cup in Manchester, UK. Pistorius, 19, who is missing both legs below the knee, wears carbon fiber prosthetic devices.

Faster than flesh
Those devices can be adjusted to enable a longer stride, an advantage in a running race. What would happen, Silvers asked, if Pistorius qualified for the able-bodied Olympics, a goal he is pursuing and one he might attain given his remarkable times?

“There are those who would deny them what any other runner would earn by running this fast time just because their feet are metal rather than flesh…” Silvers said. “Without the right to opportunity free of penalties for being biologically different, amputees may be denied participation with the old prosthetics for not being competitive enough, and then denied participation with the new prosthetics for being too competitive. This is undemocratic whiplash exclusion.”

Silvers argues that the right not to be normal, is, in fact, the essence of freedom. Human beings, she argues, have always modified themselves, usually because we see the modifications as some kind of advantage. Banning it, as some have argued for, means forcing people to adhere to a government-imposed standard of normal.

The instinct to prevent people from making alterations to themselves worries British philosopher Andy Miah, a lecturer in media, bioethics and cyber culture at the University of Paisley in Scotland. “I explain it as a contempt for ‘Otherness.’ We seek to suppress people whom we feel are abnormal, mutants or monsters. Historically, societies have done this a lot. They continue to do it and I find it embarrassing.”

Silvers argues that fears expressed by many opponents of human enhancement, that modification itself will lead to a standardized human being so we’ll all try to look like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, are unfounded. In fact, she takes issue with transhumanists and their use of the word “enhancement,” arguing that an enhancement in one arena may be a handicap in another. Instead, she prefers “biological contingency.”

Eye of the beholder
Biological qualities “are not intrinsic strengths nor weaknesses, nor is any biological property essentially functional nor dysfunctional.” It all depends on context. In other words, Cyclops of the X-Men can shoot energy beams out his eyes, which is great for fighting bad guys, but he can never look in his girlfriend’s face without his visor.

Some people might think that’s a fair trade. Most won’t.

Still, the idea of modifying people does have a great many ethical implications, as keynote speaker Walter Truett Anderson pointed out. Anderson, president of the World Academy of Art and Science, a consultant, and an author of books about the human future, asked his audience to consider the health of the planet when they thought about what rights people should have to change our biology. There is more at stake, he said, than just ourselves. We are part of something bigger.

“We will have to think about it in a global context,” he told me. “A new population problem looms, which has to do, not with birth rates, but death rates and the question of whether we can begin to increase life spans for large numbers of people,” a prospect that could tax global resources.

While the idea of a serious academic conference on these issues might seem to verge on kooky, Anderson thinks the dialogue has to begin now. “There are a lot of issues that are going to begin to surface. People will have to confront them.”

We might not be ready to give people X-Men style options like the wings of Angel, or the fur and agility of Beast, but, he said, it is not too early to begin thinking about what happens when we can.

Brian Alexander is a California-based writer who covers sex, relationships and health. He is a contributing editor at Glamour and the author of "Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion" (Basic Books).

[bw38]

Let me rephrase that, more people are being killed each year for nothing. That doesn't make sense at all.

There are many reasons why this world doesn't deserve Superman....to an extent. For one, we're too damn lazy & plus, we commit crimes for nothing. Yes, we need a Superman but we also need to try & make the world a better place ourselves.

Ok that makes more sense.

I must say though that I don't think your reason for this Earth not deserving a Superman is good enough. For one it's probably biased because you live on this Earth. Secondly, we never get to really see the Earth Superman is from in terms of the daily happenings that you see yourself on our Earth. So yea when Superman goes in to save people they come out looking really unlazy (it seems it's almost some kind of mechanical or technological accident that calls for Superman's help...accidents where people would naturally be working) and appreciative, but I think it'd be the same in our world if you were to make a comic about it. The petty criminals in the DCU also commit crimes for nothing so I won't buy that. You'll always have your smart criminals that are out for something big, those criminals that are careless, and then those that are just plain evil looking to cause havoc in society (serial killers anyone?).

I do agree that we do need to make the world we live in a better place, but I don't see why we don't deserve a Superman. If anything with all the stuff going on in our world I think our world does deserve someone like Superman. A peaceful Earth certainly wouldn't deserve a Superman because they'd have nothing for him to do......our world on the other hand...........

[Black Atom]

The world does need Superman, but not in the way people think.

We don't need Superman to stop terrorists or save people from tornadoes; we need Superman to be an example of selfless altruism and unconditional love. We don't have the power to lift cars, but we do have the power to help eachother out because it's the right thing to do. If everyone followed his example, the world would be a little bit better. Think how better off we'd be if everyone asked "What would Superman do?" before going through with something?

And in that way we DO have Superman. We can choose to believe in what he stands for, even if he, himself, isn't real.

[Preus]

This is probably nuts but it deals with what you've asked and it's real life.


Sounds real but it doesn't really sound nuts when you think about it. I mean, I'd love a world where some of the people are superpowered (including me :D). We are already very advanced. I mean, people are tipping over cars and running at incredible speeds all the time. It's not hard to believe that our world can be full of superpowered humans. It'll be coming eventually anyway, whether he have a pill for it or not.