8 Reader Responses

1. Tim Boucher Says:
   September 20th, 2007 at 5:42 pm

   Epictetus: “…We ought not to cast out poverty, but only our judgement about poverty, and so we shall be serene.”

2. Michael Says:
   September 20th, 2007 at 6:14 pm

   Well, The Incredibles said that society would collapse… of course, the moral of that movie, stated by chartacters several times, was “If everyone is special, then no one is special” What happened to Sesame Street and Barney? Anyway, I think things would work out the same, only culture would be completely different. Especially is powers were inherited from one or both parents (dominant / ressesive mendellian 9th grade bio style). Your job would depend more on your abilities. Sadly, it wouldn’t be anything like comic books. I mean, no one would run around with undees over tights fighting crime as masked vigilantes. Or they might, but then they’d get locked up in a pocket dimenscion prison. Problems like poverty, crime, addictions, they would all still exsist. Only imagine how horrible war would be. It would be like frickin’ Crisis on Infanite Earths every week.

   “Today in Iraq, a market full of four hundred Iraqi civilians and twenty coalition troops were killed by an attack by Shiite pyrokinetic group “Flame of Allah.” CIA Telepathy are hard at work screening minds of the inhabitants of the surrounding area for any info that could lead us to the FoA’s secret Volcano hedquaters”

   I would still want a Green Lantern ring…. they are some of my favorite super heros because (in the new continuity anyway) they’re only weakness is fear; totally blending ridiculous space-fantasy with eternal human nature truth

3. Tim Boucher Says:
   September 20th, 2007 at 6:22 pm

   The Incredibles said that society would collapse…

   Was that really the point of that movie?

   Do people not have super powers right now?

4. Julia Says:
   September 20th, 2007 at 8:18 pm

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet

   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/

   http://www.forbidden-planet.org/forbidden-planet

   When I saw it on TV as a kid I was very moved. It didn’t seem schlocky at all.

5. speedbird Says:
   September 21st, 2007 at 6:53 am

   My personal experience is that everyone has superpowers when they’ve had enough to drink. A common one is being able to fall off any drop without either (a) hurting yourself or (b) spilling a single drop of your drink. Personally I can see in the dark. My friend at university once rode his pedal cycle across a river. Seriously, we went back the next day and found the tyre marks in the bank: here they go off, here they come back on again.

   I like ‘The Incredibles’. For me it’s plain and simple about the Cold War and what that meant.

6. Natarajanath Says:
   September 21st, 2007 at 5:32 pm

   First I would assume that if everyone had super powers things would be very similar to way things are today, just with cultural evolutions that are consistent with say the ability to fly, or superstrength. The main fabric of society would stay relatively the same, as long as the superpowers produced a matrice of abiltty similar to the one we have today. Ie some people are smarter than others, thus some would be more “Super” than others. There would still be a range of “Normal” super ability allowing for a system of checks and balancing.

7. Ted Heistman Says:
   September 21st, 2007 at 8:08 pm

   I think we all have superpowers but are raised to think we don’t.

8. Tim Boucher Says:
   September 24th, 2007 at 12:45 pm

   That’s exactly what I was getting at Ted. I was waiting, selfishly, for it to come out of someone else’s mouth though!