[Staffbearer]

I want to talk about those characters we come to consider "above reproach"... saint-like... SUPER heroes. We've all read books where we've run across them.. those all power beings who tread lightly, spread knowledge, generally fight evil doers. My concern is... just how likely is this?

I ask because its hard for me to empathize with a person who is obviously more powerful than everyone else and never once utilize it. I believe its pulp (is this the correct way to use the word?) to write characters in which you draw a line in the sand diving good/evil and say all evil characters go left and good characters go right and no tug of war. Its of the most notable of cliches that I feel never gets called upon. As aside.... for instance.. I hate the relationship between Superman/Lois/Clark (I Know Superman isnt to be over intellectualized but just bear with me). Many guys (and gals) out there can understand Clark Kent's dilemma.. He's an avg guy with not overt appeal... fairly boring.. but overall "Safe".. he likes this woman who is spontaneous, popular, has massive sex appeal with the mystique of "who is she really?".. thats cool .. that sort of attraction is natural... What isn't is that same geeky boring guy being the most POWERFUL person on the planet. I understand many powerful people hide their affluence and influence to gauge just how "real" things are but only to an extent. To cut to the matter... Clark Kent loving Lois Lane is demeaning.. because he knows she likes Superman and the only reason she'll ever love Clark is she can't have superman.. Do superhumans lower themselves to standard limitations in the name of "good"?

To explore real life examples.. I want to go to something thats just around the corner... The Olympic games... our treasured sons and daughters who have risen from an extremely skilled pack of competitors to champion our countries in honor of seeing who is the best. How humble are these men and women in comparison to you and me? Oh I know what they'll say in front of the camera.. but really how down to Earth are they? I know its not the same for women.. but when guys reach a certain status (for whatever and whatever reason).. women become readily available to them.. I'll pose this question in regards to the USA basketball team.. how many of them have NEVER cheated on their wives or girlfriends? True AC Green of the Lakers never had sex while in pro sports.. and many men and women never cheat but were talking about superhumans.. those who feel beyond reproach. I pose the infidelity issue because thats always been our societies litmus test on how moral you are and its pretty transparent this is objectified in our forms of art as well. Its very hard not to like Superman he'll take the time to fly half way around the city just to help an old lady across the street. The same way its hard not to like Richard from the Sword of Truth series.. while JaGang rapes/murders anything that moves.. Richard is helping redeem his tormentors. There's a lot of grey area left to be explored.. I love when I have to forgo my own sensibilities to explore them.. if only in artistic expression.

I know I got off track a little with those analogies but thats because I wanted an exaggerated human (superman) and our own humans (Olympians) paired together. I just wonder how plausible it is for people no matter how powerful to always side with the good.

I believe we are the way we are because everyone of us.. if not everything.. has certain checks and balances. If you take away those checks/balances.. we will not be the same. We'll be that which ventures out the boundaries if only by a little or wades a little bit deeper into the water because how much do you really know?

Just so there's no debate.. Know I say the same thing for Chaotic Evil characters just inverse everything I said above...

I'm interested in your thoughts...

[manephelien]

It's a good question, and one I've sometimes pondered myself. That's why the heroes I find most believable are those who are unhappy or filled with self-doubt occasionally. That's certainly true of, say, Batman.

In general, I dislike the almost godlike good characters who are 100% certain of their cause and who manage to overcome any and all obstacles to attain their object. I prefer the "hero in spite of himself" type characters. It's no wonder, then, that my two favorite LotR characters are Boromir, who has good intentions which turn out badly, and Gollum without whom Middle-Earth would be Sauron's territory, even though he was corrupted and considered evil by most who met him.

Personally I've always found Superman unconvincing, since Lois Lane has to be legally blind not to recognize Superman in Clark Kent.

[Fung Koo]

In the context of D&D style alignments, I too have always found the idea of Lawful Good to be pretty ridiculous, if not dangerous. Lawful Good always sounded suspiciously like voluntary sociopathology. Chaotic Evil basically describes anti-social personality disorder (as opposed to psychopathology, which is closer to Chaotic Neutral in spirit). The most confusing one to me has always been Lawful Evil though. The only difference between LE and LG is semantics. Rule-based actions dictated by a strict ethos... what's the difference? The only "real" alignment is Neutral Evil. I think it's humanity's default state.

OP: I'm unsure if the question centres on the idea of Lawfulness or Good/Evil. Actually, it seems like the question is more about Power.

When you say "beyond reproach" are you bringing up the way that the ubermensch is -- by nature of their very existence -- outside of the systems of power? Or are you suggesting that they define the systems of power?

[Woadwarrior]

You have a very good point there. I always did think that superheroes like Superman were sketchy in the fact that there was simply no way that anyone could ever be so 100% 'good' and fight evil and all the bad guys were evil just because. Remember, many evil people in the world considered their actions to be good. Hitler didn't think that his actions against the Jews were evil, in fact, he thought he was doing the world a good thing, and despite his talk on racial superiority being considered almost universally repulsive, many people thought at the time that it was actually the correct thing (after World War 2, however, the holocaust pretty much caused the whole concept of Eugenetics and such thrown out of academic circles). This is just one example.

Why do all heroes have to be 100% 'good' or whatever the writer considers to be good, or villains to be so evil that they just kill and do horrid things just because they want to show how evil they are. I heard that Gundam is such a popular anime because they showed both sides of the conflict with their heroes and didn't make any side look super evil or super good and they had believable heroes on both sides (who would be considered heroes by the audience). Of course, I never actually watched more than one episode of the Anime so I wouldn't know first hand if this was true.

[Staffbearer]

When you say "beyond reproach" are you bringing up the way that the ubermensch is -- by nature of their very existence -- outside of the systems of power? Or are you suggesting that they define the systems of power?
~~~~~~~~

I mean "beyond reproach" by their methods 100% being good or evil and unrequited conformation by their society.

Whether outside the system of power/defining the system of power/ human beings with absolutely authority will test that power... atleast once. It will have to be proven that their power can't accomplish a certain task.

The pyramids of Egypt are by all facets marvelous in design and architecture... We look at them now in wonder and try and contemplate the staggering about of imagination and ingenuity it took to accomplish such a daunting project. But we can't discount the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives that were crippled, beaten, chained, forced, and killed in order to complete them.. in the service of a man-god.

I dont mean to take this so many directions because my basic premise with Lawful Good "all powerful" characters is... if they were in turmoil and chaos.. it needs to be explored more why is it they DONT just say "screw it"... and end it all with a big bang... and clean up the pieces afterward.

There's a saying.. "Its easy to be a holy man on a lonely mountain".. I like that statement because there's a lot of truth in it. And we know what comes with great power...

[Fung Koo]

Well...

I think the first thing to remember is that Superman is fundamentally a story about fitting in, and that it's from post-WWI 1930s. Sure, he's all powerful. Sure, he could obliterate the earth and every person in it. He could do really anything he wanted. But he's completely and totally alone. So the story is about finding your place and fitting in when you have a gift/difference.

Remember that Superman isn't the one wearing a costume. Superman is the real guy. It's Clark Kent that's Superman in a costume.

The closest real-world example is anyone who stands out obviously from "the norm" -- how do they blend in? How do they act "normal" when they are not? What we get is simply this: Good guys try to fit in -- Bad guys do not. Good guys act "normal" -- Bad guy do not. Good guys help others -- Bad guys help themselves.

I suspect the root of your question is the cultural tension between essentialist morality and relativistic morality. Superman comes from the era of fixed, essentialist morality. Good was defined, and the important thing was to be Good. These superhero characters are almost messianic, though even less humanly flawed most of the time than even Jesus appears. (Even though we know in reality this kind of character depiction is totally farcical and just another kind of censorship/propaganda that was forced on the entertainment media industry in that era.)

Later superheroes come from increasingly relativistic and secular times. In the modern perception, we often think of the Bad Guys more sympathetically -- for one, they usually seem more honest about who they are as a genuine person. They aren't hiding. Our society generally embraces personal honesty as a virtue, even if it means accepting that you are different (think of AA, for example). The "Lawful Good" superheroes of the past are difficult for us modern readers to swallow because we live in very different, relativistic times.

That's kinda what you're getting, right? In the past, superheroes were expected to be like the perfect version of us -- Lawful Good. And you're asking how that's at all believable. Right?

If not, I'm way off!!! :D

(I see the other part about testing the limits of power, but I'll get to that later ;))

[James Carmack]

"Law" is all about having rules and abiding by them. While I'm not a big fan of D&D, the concept of alignments captured my imagination. "Law" is, in other words, an adherence to Order. The fact that Order has no inherent moral quality offers fertile ground for exploitation.

Fung, you have trouble wrapping your head around the concept of the Lawful Evil. Think of a Mafia don or a totalitarian dictator. Yes, they're pretty much evil, but they also jealously guard their power. To do that, they need Order, a strict adherence to Law.

The Lawful Good, on the other hand, sees Order as the only way to preserve the Good. Good is absolute, Law is absolute, and there can be no exceptions. This is, of course, the concept taken to the extreme.

Speaking of extremity, few people, real or fictional, represent the extreme form of any of these alignment classes. The is a continuum from Good to Evil, from Law to Chaos. What's more, people fluctuate. They rise and fall, conform and rebel, all in progressive degrees one way or another.

The thing that makes the Lawful Good compelling is how the absolutist vision of the Good interacts (and sometimes clashes) with a more personal interpretation. Take, for instance, an unjust law. The Lawful Good will most likely stick to the equation Law=Good and therefore support/enforce the law while a Neutral Good would be more like to oppose the perceived injustice.

How far can you adhere to the Law without losing sight of the Good? How far can you pursue your own definition of the Good without undermining it? Of course, if you have no moral compass, it kinda becomes a moot point, but even that can be interesting if explored correctly.

In a series I like, we had the setup for what looked like a classic battle between the Lawful Good and the Neutral Good. To destroy an evil entity, the Lawful Good individual seemed like she would readily sacrifice a young boy who held the key to the evil entity's destruction. Our more Neutral Good band of protagonists wanted to find a way to destroy the evil entity and save the boy at the same time. Of course, going the long way around meant that the evil entity had more time to rampage and slaughter, leaving us with the Vulcan maxim "The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few." And when you think about it, how good is it to try to save just one person while countless others suffer and die? Because the one is close to you and the others are strangers? Is that good? Well, it's good after a fashion, but is the Lawful Good wrong for looking at the bigger picture? These are fine points to ponder.

In my opinion, a skillful author can make a saintly character work, but to do it well, and not just be an old-fashioned morality play, you have to play that off people who aren't as saintly. Not just evil folks, mind you, but good people who don't quite meet the same standard. There's good conflict to be had for those who know how to exploit it. Take for instance, the destitute father who steals to feed his family. Our saint punishes him because he broke the law, but he was doing it for a good reason. Yet the saint cannot allow mitigating circumstances to subvert obedience to the law. Now bring in the fallout. Maybe one of the man's children dies of malnourishment. What then? Does the saint's faith in the law waver? If not, how does that affect people's opinion of him?

There's a lot you can do with the Lawful Good.

[manephelien]

Very good analysis.

Most humans, by definition, put their own nearest and dearest first. So much so that if there's an individual who doesn't, we tend to think of him or her as somehow abnormal. In that sense, the lawful good is not only unattainable, in some ways it's also a most dehumanizing characteristic, and thus undesirable in real human beings.

[netghost]

Norse heros were always infallible. They were the perfect hero, the epitome of righteousness and what every man should aspire to be. Their heros are not only perfect, but beyond law and order. Those who wield the greatest hammer make the law.

Superman was a modern hero, true. Spiderman still falls under the laws of the jurisdiction, which is why he's dinged so much in the press for breaking stuff.

Batman falls under the jurisdiction of the law, which is why he gets dinged for intimidation and breaking stuff.

In our society, does that not make these heros bad guys?

Like Beowulf or Sigmund, they go outside the law to protect their interests. Their interests may have been different, and when it comes down to it, being saved is being saved, but does that not also make these heros dangerous or criminal?

I'd suppose it depends on what's going on, who's standing around watching, and who's getting saved.

Spiderman costs the city millions of dollars in broken pavement, broken balconies, broken office buildings, broken bridges, broken transport trucks, broken air vehicles, broken sewer systems every year. I'd see he's a menace.

The lesser of the evils wandering around in his world, to be sure. But a menace nonetheless.

Do we let heros like that hold the hammer over us? Should they make the law like Beowulf or Sigmund?

What are the thoughts on that?

[kged]

Would a genuinely all-powerful ubermensch type even comprehend alignments like good or evil? By which I mean, would they be concerned with how the humble likes of us judged their actions, using our own tiny human subjective moral compasses? I think the best, most authentically superhuman example here is the ridiculously powerful Dr Manhattan from "Watchmen", who in terms of his abilities is virtually a God. He is aligned with the good guys - but I'm not really sure even he understands why. It's clear from several incidents in the book that he has gone far beyond anything we could comprehend as human. His actual comprehension of human morality is an intellectual, detached thing, at best. I suspect he acts as he does purely because he thinks in terms of social logic, i.e. maintaining order. But real understanding of the crimes or threats he fights seems to elude him. As chillingly illustrated by the comments of two other characters in the book; in keeping with the Cold War atmosphere of the story, a journalist asks another superhero about the grim possibility of Dr Manhattan choosing to take a political stance, and joining the other side. What if allied himself with the Communist USSR? The reply is a rueful one - "Which do you prefer, black ants or red ants?"