*This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.*
Matthew
Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today we’re continuing our wrap-up of everything, and we’ve kind of been going in order, talking about what happens when heroes make mistakes, what happens when people who think they’re heroes want to take power, and looking at Amanda Waller and stuff like that, and how that can quickly become a villain.
But now we’re gonna go one other direction, which is: what about when it’s someone who has what they think is a really good cause, one that we believe in, and they’re basically becoming a fascist, they’re becoming an authoritarian, in order to make good things happen? And you’ve heard us talk from time to time about the Supergirl episode at the end of season one. We’ll go back to that. But Paul, let me actually start you with a question.
I asked a different version of this, but I’ll ask you. An alien shows up to you tomorrow and hands you a button and says, if you press this button, all humans will immediately become completely unable to digest any form of meat whatsoever.
Paul
Done. I already pressed it.
Matthew
Okay.
Paul
Okay, okay, I want the fine print.
Matthew
Yeah, but, and fruits and vegetables will quadruple their nutritional value, so that…
Paul
Not even necessary, but okay.
Matthew
Right now, with the amount of stuff we have, just to rebound, you know, avoid any stupid, God, why can’t I remember his name, Thanos problems. But you press a button, and all of a sudden all meat disappears, the entire world becomes vegetarian, and everything is happy and good.
Paul
Yeah. I already pressed the button.
Matthew
Okay.
Paul
Twice.
Matthew
Cool.
Paul
Yeah. No, I mean, I told you my supervillain, anti-villain, whatever plan, right?
Matthew
What’s that?
Paul
There’s the ticks, I think. This is a real disease.
Matthew
Oh, yeah, yeah. You can become a…
Paul
There’s an actual thing that somebody could do.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
Find a way to infect everybody on Earth with this.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
Because, yeah, in my view, I’m taking away your motive for mass murder. And, like, okay, I’m fine with that. And the reason is, I feel like the idea of taking away someone’s choice to permanently end someone else’s choices, yeah, I’m fine with that.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
And I’ll give you a hypothetical, right? One person is drawing a gun on someone else, and it’s clear they’re going to shoot them.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
Do you think it’s okay to physically intercede and stop them?
Matthew
Yeah. Yeah.
Paul
To me, it’s literally the same thing.
Matthew
Fair.
Paul
It’s just, you know. And then when we get to mind control, people think somehow now it’s different. Is it? But we can get into that.
Matthew
Well, fair. And so that may even have been too extreme, because I realize, actually, from that framework of it’s mass murder, then it’s literally just self-defense. And that makes total sense.
Paul
Or defense of another, basically.
Matthew
Right. Yeah, exactly. And if that’s how you understand animal life, I can well respect that. So I actually posted this online in a different format, and maybe this one is a harder question, because it’s where does the free will come in?
The alien comes to you and says, okay, look, right now there’s an awful lot of ignorance in your world, especially in your country, or the country that you are physically in. It’s not yours, let’s be clear. Get the pronouns right.
Paul
I appreciate it. I appreciate it.
Matthew
But an awful lot of people believe things that are just categorically false. They believe that COVID is a hoax. They believe that climate change is a hoax. They believe that immigrants and trans people are responsible for all these problems, etc. They say, you press this button, we’re gonna immediately mind control all those people and show them, in a way that they will accept, that all those things are ignorance. We promise you that’ll happen. They won’t go nuts. They’ll just be like, okay, I was wrong, let’s do something different. You press that button?
Paul
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a little tricky. I thought we were just gonna shoot all those people, but I guess that’s not on the menu, which is fine. Yeah, I’d have to think. I think that’s where it gets complicated, to me.
There’s an extent to which, once you change… so there’s action control, right? Where you’re just making someone do something different.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
Which you can see is obviously a violation of agency. And then there’s mind control that changes someone’s beliefs and understanding of the world, and if you look at it in a certain way, you’ve destroyed that person, right? Insofar as the person that was no longer exists, and now there’s a new person who shares a lot of the same characteristics, right? The same general physical makeup. There’s just some synapses firing differently in their brain, right? But they are just a different person, to some extent, the same way that you are a different person than you were 10 years ago, who was a different person than they were 10 years before that, etc., etc.
Matthew
I mean, just to make it even more clear, yeah. You look at today, and I’ll say this happens on the left as well as the right, but especially on the right, where so much of a person’s identity becomes the belief in these things and the anger against people who don’t believe in those things.
Paul
Yeah, I mean…
Matthew
And again, I posed the hypothetical so as not to go down too many “well, but what about” hypotheticals. But you’re right, yeah. All of a sudden that person’s like, I don’t watch Fox News, my identity is no longer white supremacy, it’s no longer that I’m the person who’s defending women in bathrooms, or whatever nonsense they have now. It is fundamentally changing people.
Paul
Yeah, and…
Matthew
It’s also, I mean, that ignorance causes… even to me, that’s got to be a good thing. Ignorance causes deaths and much harm. Let’s put it back during COVID. It was everybody who’s fighting against the restrictions that we need, and most science now agrees that if we’d had better restrictions in place, if Trump hadn’t been such an idiot, probably hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved.
Paul
Right, right, right. Or millions.
Matthew
Yeah, or more, certainly worldwide. Lots of people wouldn’t have had long COVID, all this kind of stuff. So at that point, if you can push the button and just…
Paul
I would be more inclined to.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
You know, basically, it’s harder to give a super short answer. The thing about the first question, about making it so that people just literally aren’t capable of eating animals without getting sick, that’s such a mass scale of death and destruction, right? That humanity is responsible for, right? And so to me, it feels like the sort of thing where extreme measures feel more reasonable to me.
Matthew
Yeah, right.
Paul
Similarly, if I felt that way about fetuses, I can understand why there are people who, once you accept that as your truth, how do you not then proceed to doing the things that people do?
Matthew
Yeah. I think that’s a really important example, because, here we are, we’re the rulers of the universe, we’re deciding what the rules of the thing should be. But that’s, to me, a question that’s in the head of every time we talk about what a superhero can or can’t do: what can someone else do with the same rationale? Because, to my mind, John Brown, the radical vegan, and the radical anti-abortion person all share a belief that there is life that has value, and the world is not treating that life with the value that it should, and thus, to end the murder of that life, murder is justified.
Paul
Right.
Matthew
And so I land on two out of three of those, you know, and then the third one, I’m like, seriously? But I’m sure that’s how a lot of people… that seems to be kind of how you feel about animal lives, in terms of beyond suffering, right? Just live or die or whatever.
Paul
And for me, I’m like, that’s how I feel, probably the way somebody who thinks that abortion is this mass murder feels, the number of people doing it, you know. And it’s just, if you can’t agree on what you value in the most fundamental sense… I’m sure there were people 200 years ago, or unfortunately some now, who are like, well, why would you care about Black people and their freedom and their lives? It’s like, why wouldn’t you? But there’s people who, to that point…
Matthew
Oh, yeah.
Paul
Or maybe people from a neighboring country or a neighboring state, or people who aren’t their direct family or whatever, right? And so kind of how big your circle is, and whose lives you value, that really makes… whatever decisions you decide to make, based on what actions you’re willing to take, I think have a lot to do with where your starting point is, of whose lives do you want to defend. And if it’s not through violence, through coercion, or through finding a way to change people’s minds… I’m very much not on the aggressively trying to change people’s minds all the time side, you know. Which, you could say that politics, or just trying to convince people of something, right, is not an entirely different thing from the sort of mind control you’re talking about, you know. Advertising and marketing, the whole point is to change what’s going on in someone’s mind, and it’s just much less effective than literal total mind control, right? But that’s the attempt. That’s the goal.
Matthew
So I think there is a difference, but I think what I’m gonna agree with you on is that the difference is a gradient, it’s not a hard line.
Paul
Which is the amount of agency a person has.
Matthew
Because, you know, you have been gradually, over a course of years, convincing me to put a lot more value on animal life, to reduce the amount of meat that I eat, and to be a lot more careful about the source of the meat that I eat, etc. If you had said to me, Matthew, I will never podcast with you again unless you stop eating meat, I don’t know if that would have been effective, but it certainly would have felt a lot more…
Paul
It would have been a stronger stance.
Matthew
It’s a stronger stance, but it also would have felt…
Paul
A lot more coercive.
Matthew
Yeah, yeah, for sure. If you had figured out a way to hack into my Google Home system and start using subliminal messaging to psychologically reprogram me, I also think that would be a deep violation of my agency.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
But the problem with the framework that I just built is that we like to think that we are all perfectly capable of making completely rational, free choices, when, you’re right, we actually are being a little bit brainwashed all the time by television and advertising and the culture around us. And once you start to accept that, then you start to ask, okay, so is showing someone… I think that getting more people to understand and empathize with people who are different than them is a fundamentally good thing. And so if I tell you, hey, Black people have these problems getting business loans in our country because of racism, maybe you won’t listen to me.
But if I then say, wait a minute, what if I show Sam Wilson, Falcon, going through those problems? Will more people listen to that? Is that propaganda? Is that brainwashing?
I don’t think so. But I think you’re raising a really good point: I can’t tell you what the line is between here’s the point at which it is free agency and you get to make the decision, versus here’s the point at which you don’t have the decision.
Paul
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there’s definitely a spectrum, right? From, you put a bullet in the back of someone’s head and they have no agency anymore.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
Right. That’s literally zero agency. And then not even communicating with someone, and just allowing them to do whatever they do. Their agency still will be compromised by other inputs, right?
Matthew
Right.
Paul
And the same way people talk about dynamics in the workplace, right? And how much agency an individual has when they’re interacting with someone who’s higher up in the organizational structure, and how that makes certain relationships fraught sometimes, right? And economics, and what someone’s economic wherewithal is. I think a lot of times people have a lot more agency than they feel they do, because there are a lot of things you can do, sometimes fairly extreme, that really do change your life a lot. But also, I think a lot of people see people maybe overstating, or not appreciating, the possibilities that exist in a given scenario.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But then deny that there’s any compromise of agency, that there’s any restriction on what a person’s able to do. Because even a prisoner has agency.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
Right. Their agency is compromised by: if they do something that they’re not supposed to do, they are going to suffer physical punishment, or death ultimately, or whatever, right? You can try to run out of the prison. That’s agency.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
Also, you might get shot trying to run out of the prison.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
So there’s definitely a big asterisk on each person’s agency and their liberty. And I think it’s not about trying to rate it on a scale of one to ten, but just appreciating that there is a spectrum of how many possibilities are open to any individual, and to what extent there are coercive forces basically making it more difficult for them to take various actions.
Matthew
I think that’s a great way to phrase it. Especially in that, even if someone points a gun to your head and says, your money or your life, in a literal technical sense, you have a choice there.
Paul
Exactly.
Matthew
Choices between very bad options. And I think what we say is, to have agency, or to be able to consent to something, to take the conversation in a little bit different direction but the same idea, there has to be an option that you can take that does not have negative consequences.
Paul
Right.
Matthew
At least not that dire, by any means.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And in a weird way, if I can bounce us back a couple episodes, I think some of the poker frameworks we were talking about before really help here, because one of the things we talked about there, and you can listen back to those episodes, is that when you’re playing poker, part of the idea is that you’re trying to play the odds, you’re trying to play the long game. So if you do something that has an overall percentage chance to win you more money by doing it many, many times, but sometimes you will lose on an individual hand, you need to have enough of a stake, enough hot money, enough money to buy in again, whatever it is, to keep iterating that decision again and again and again. If the choice is, okay, run for it, and maybe I’ll shoot you and maybe I won’t, you’re all in.
Paul
You can’t run it twice.
Matthew
Quite literally, yeah, exactly.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And if you’re in Game of Thrones, you don’t remember to zigzag. Always zigzag.
Paul
I mean, come on.
Matthew
Always zigzag. But yeah, I think that becomes a really helpful way to think of it. And I guess in some way it’s what you set up with the animal life thing, and I think somewhat with COVID we can get to a similar place: are your actions going to prevent loss of life?
Pushing that button will stop the loss of animal life. So if animal life has that value to you, then yes, that is definitely a defense of others thing.
If pushing this button will prevent people from getting in the way of the things that are needed to save lives under COVID, then yes, I think you can say that’s saving lives. And so I guess the question becomes, how do you find the balance of how much good has to be done in order to justify it, you know?
And for me, one of the stories that we have talked about, but not in a while, is a great Superman comic run that’s about him realizing, wait, maybe I should stop trying to influence people, maybe I should just take over and try to make the world a better place. And I cannot now, for the life of me, remember the name of it.
Paul
Do you…
Matthew
Well, it’s the one where Brainiac ends by asking him if he can put the whole world in a jar.
Paul
Is it a comic run, or is it an animated series?
Matthew
It was both. I think it was a comic run first and then became an animated series.
Paul
Well, I don’t remember specifically.
Matthew
I think it’s Judgment Day.
Paul
Okay. I don’t know if I’ve actually even seen that one. Maybe I have. There’s definitely some Justice League series where Superman and some of the other heroes are trying to be Justice Lords, right? And then Batman and some of the others are trying not to be, and I think it has to do with Lex Luthor killing Lois Lane or something. Often something horrible happens, or often it has to do with Lex Luthor. But there’s another one, there’s Crisis on Two Earths. There are a number of stories where there’s a version of Superman, or an equivalent, sometimes along with Batman and other Justice League members, where they’re basically just like, we’re just gonna run things.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
Sometimes for the good of others, and sometimes because they’re actually villains in some alternate universe or whatever.
Matthew
So it turns out the specific one I was thinking of, I was getting a couple different ones combined. The specific one I’m thinking of is Red Son, which is about the idea of: imagine if the ship launched just a few minutes earlier and thus gets to Earth at a different time, and he crash lands in Russia, in the Soviet Union, instead of Kansas.
And so now he has all of that same I-want-to-go-help-the-world, but without the sort of freedom, love, democracy, and apple pie stuff. This is written at a different time, to be clear. But where he has more of a willingness to authoritarianism, and to say, I know what’s right for the world, I’m gonna do what’s right.
Paul
Yeah, he grew up under Stalin.
Matthew
Yeah, exactly. You’re right, Stalinism. And I think he took over for Stalin, basically. Including taking Stalin out when he thought Stalin was becoming too self-serving and too extreme.
Paul
Right. Yeah, yeah. That had a very weird Batman in it.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But yeah, in terms of where’s the line, it’s like, well, there’s not a line, right? It’s just subjective. And I think the difficulty, and the reason that I think a lot of people are very resistant, and reasonably so, to the idea of using whatever sort of methods you’d see in superhero media when things go a certain way, is that it’s very easy to start thinking, oh, well, this is one huge thing, right? We’re going to make some big change in order to try and overcome it. And then it’s like, well, here’s a slightly smaller thing, but that’s still worth it, right?
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
And then also, in our world, doing anything like this usually involves… it’s not an alien with a button. It’s some giant power structure that gets erected that now has a ton of power. It’s a little bit like the military-industrial complex: you build up a bunch of weapons to deal with one thing, for maybe one very concrete reason, and then, okay, when that’s done, are you just gonna get rid of the weapons?
Matthew
Right, right.
Paul
There’s some emergency, and someone takes emergency power, and then, okay, maybe now the Trade Federation isn’t a big issue, but are they really gonna give that power back?
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
And I think that’s a super legitimate concern.
Matthew
Oh, sure.
Paul
And I think, by and large, the problem that I see in human civilization is that the people who are most inclined to accept that power and exercise that power generally tend to be the people I would least want to have that power.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
The one who I’m most comfortable having the most power is the one who’s least interested in having that power. The person who’s like, wait, I have an idea about how to fix humanity, I get really nervous about.
Matthew
Yeah. And again, more and more, and I think this whole process of Superhero Ethics has been a big part of this, the idea of evil has become less and less something that I can understand. Like, some people are just fundamentally bad, and I’m not trying to redeem anybody or anything like that, but the idea that everyone winds up being the hero of their own story in some way or another… some exceptions, sure. I’m not trying to be absolute.
Paul
Yeah, I mean, some people are just like, yeah, I just want to eat people.
Matthew
But then again, maybe I see most of the world that way.
Paul
Yeah, but like serial rapists or whatever, right? There’s some people where it’s like, okay, you’re kind of challenging my empathy or whatever.
Matthew
You know, one of the defining events of our young adulthood was the wars in Iraq after 9/11. And I haven’t read everything on the subject, but I’ve certainly read a lot. Do I think that Dick Cheney was primarily interested in his own enrichment and the enrichment of his buddies through all the war cronyism and Halliburton? Yeah. Do I think George Bush had the absolute shit scared out of him by 9/11, not to mention the assassination attempt on his dad, and genuinely thought the attack on Iraq was a good thing to make the world safer? Yeah, I do. I think he was an idiot. I think a lot of people lied to him along the way.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And another place where I go with that is, the hypotheticals I set up, I intentionally set it up as, no, this is perfect. And I think you’re right, that’s the problem. Someone still has to build the button, someone still has to design the button, and we’re all doing it from our own ignorances. And I think of the late 19th century, early 20th century, a lot of rich white people trying to make the world a better place, trying to prevent poverty, trying to help all these kids they were seeing in poverty, and they thought, well, the problem is that these women of color and these poor women are having kids they shouldn’t have. How about the next time they come into the hospital, we’ll just sterilize them and not tell them?
And looking back on it today, I think with very good reason, it is horrific and awful and racist and classist and hideous. And I think probably even then, any person who could actually see the full humanity of all the women involved in that, and all the kids, should have also said, wait, this is horrific. This is terrible.
Paul
Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew
But do I understand how a person could justify it to themselves and honestly think they were doing the right thing? Yeah, I do. They were trying to push that kind of a button of, we can make the world a better place.
Paul
Right, right. Yeah, yeah. All this population math seems to not lead to good places.
Matthew
Yeah. Well, with our fandoms, let me take you all the way to something at the other extreme: a pretty high level of control, but for a fairly personal gain, or for the person you’re doing it to. “No, you don’t want to sell death sticks, you want to go home and reevaluate your life.”
Paul
Yeah, that never really bothered me the way it bothered you.
Matthew
Yeah, I can see that.
Paul
I mean, I get it. Any kind of mind control type of thing does erode agency, you know. Also, though, I assume the things they’re selling are highly addictive.
Matthew
Yep.
Paul
Which also erodes agency.
Matthew
Yeah, right.
Paul
Selling addictive products that are harmful. If it’s non-addictive products, there’s no physical addiction, and somebody just chooses to use whatever it is, I do feel like that’s a little different.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But whatever it is, presumably, in that world… I mean, they’re cigarettes, right? They’re cigarettes, that’s presumably basically what we’re talking about.
Matthew
They’re called death sticks, so I think they’re sort of like cigarettes laced with heroin.
Paul
Right, right, right. Sure, fair enough. Yeah, yeah. “You want to go home and think about your life,” whatever. That’s not, you will never do this ever again, I’m completely overwriting your entire whatever. To me, that is a much stronger version of the type of stuff you would just see in a television commercial.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
And I think it’s not necessarily the ideal usage of Jedi powers.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
Right. And having said that, that’s kind of their thing, though, right? They don’t necessarily have an idea of how they should go about things, and we might not love it altogether.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But yeah, tell me why that hits you so much, because, you know, you bring it up a lot.
Matthew
And I’ll admit I’ve rethought this a bunch of times, and I think for me there’s a couple of sides to it. One is, yes, I’ve seen addiction do terrible things to people, including my own family. I’ve dealt with some addiction myself. Again, if I could push a button and make it so that all of those substances no longer have addictive properties, I’d push it in a heartbeat.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And then people can just make their choices, basically not coerced by chemical reactions.
Paul
Yeah, sure.
Matthew
I also know a lot of great works of art were created by people on cocaine or heroin.
Paul
Yeah, for sure.
Matthew
And one of the first jobs I had was working for a disability rights law firm. One of our biggest client bases was people who were unmedicated with fairly severe mental illness, generally bipolar, but some other things as well. And the medication that was offered to them would allow them to lead more stable lives. Many of these people were homeless or unhoused. They weren’t able to keep nine-to-five jobs.
But they were living lives that, in that state, they would have said, I am happier doing this than I am in the kind of zombie-like world of the medication. And granted, this was like 25 years ago. This kind of argument is often used to attack all mental health medications. I’m not saying that at all.
Mental health medication keeps me alive, etc. But it raises the legitimate question. Their families were like, these people aren’t living real lives, we can’t do this, we have to forcibly make them take their medication. And the folks would say, no, we are living lives we’re happy with. And then the response is, well, but you’re sick, so how can you judge that?
And there’s an extent… on the one hand, I kind of want to say the same thing about substances. I would be like, yeah, take all the cocaine you want. But if you get behind the wheel of a car, you are completely liable. We’re not gonna say, oh, you’re on cocaine, it’s not your fault. It’s your fault.
Paul
Right, right, right. Yeah.
Matthew
But then also, there’s the addictive qualities, there’s the passing on to others and all that stuff. And so I’m kind of all over the map here. I think the thing that bothers me about what Obi-Wan Kenobi does is that it’s so careless.
Paul
Right, yeah. It’s just this offhand thing, right?
Matthew
Yeah. If the Jedi all got together and said, look, death sticks are a huge problem, we don’t love mind control, but every single person we find, we’re gonna do this one specific thing: tell them not to do death sticks, put in their brain a lot of thoughts about how bad it is, but we’ll let them make the decision. Or we won’t let them make the decision, and we, the Jedi Council, have decided that in some way that would be better. But with Obi-Wan, it’s just that this guy’s bothering him, and he’s mildly annoyed by it, and he’s like, go do something different.
And to me, that’s the kind of… can I spoil a small detail, just a moment that happens in the Lanterns show?
Paul
Yeah, sure.
Matthew
Okay. So a lot of it’s about Hal Jordan and John Stewart, and him teaching John Stewart when it is and isn’t okay to use the ring.
And there’s a running gag about using the ring to create a light to light the cigarette of a woman you’re flirting with. And it’s like, is that what the ring is supposed to be used for? It doesn’t really harm anyone, but really, that’s not what you’re supposed to do.
Paul
That’s kind of an abuse of the power.
Matthew
Yeah, and Obi-Wan feels like that to me. And I guess that’s the thing, when you have that much…
Paul
This is not what you’re supposed to be doing right now.
Matthew
Yeah. When you have that much power, I want you to be a lot more thoughtful, and maybe be accountable to some other people about how you use it.
Paul
Yeah, I’m convinced. In a vacuum, it doesn’t bother me.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
You know, I see the direct concerns, but in a vacuum, I’m like, eh.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But I think you make really good points about, when you’re someone with that much power, you really need discretion.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
Right. “These are not the droids you’re looking for.” Okay, you’re trying to escape Imperial capture and avoid a scene and a fight, and maybe help the rebellion succeed, right? Okay, fine, cool, good use of your power. But you’re just chasing someone, and someone’s kind of in your way, and you’re like, okay, let me give you this life-changing moment that I’m gonna forget tomorrow. Okay, maybe not the best discretion in terms of how you’re using power.
Matthew
Yeah, yeah. No, I see that. I see that, for sure. But you’re right, even that, I think it’s not… I throw it around because it’s a movie that I really dislike, and so I like to ride it.
Paul
Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matthew
No, it’s just so easy to dunk on.
Paul
Exactly. And yet I think it’s a much better part of the canon than some other Star Wars stuff. So, neither here nor there.
Matthew
Okay, well, then let me… and I want to let you give any last things, questions to bring up, but let me take us back to the example that we’ve gone back to a bunch of times but haven’t really had a big conversation about in a while: the end of Supergirl season one. Forgive spoilers, but it’s been out for a long time. You can go check it out. Skip past this if you need to.
We’ve been building all this time that the aliens, who are Kryptonians, have come to Earth to take over, and they are going to completely mind control all the people on Earth. And they do, I think, a really interesting job in terms of the writing: they don’t show us for a minute why they’re gonna do it. It’s just mind control, they’re gonna take over, they want to rebuild Krypton or whatever. Until eventually what’s revealed is they’re gonna mind control all people, and for two years completely direct all human industry to completely reverse all the effects of climate change and completely reverse all carbon-based energy, so that then they can give everybody their lives back, and there’ll be no more climate concerns. Literally saving the Earth from ourselves.
Paul
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matthew
And here’s where I am. I’ve wrestled with it a lot, and generally, I think I’m in favor of it, even though I don’t like it.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
Because it does take away agency and all that. And then I became a parent. And I spend a lot of time making my child cry by taking dangerous things away from him. That makes it sound like my child often has accidents. I mean, by holding him back…
Paul
No, but kids are good at harming themselves by accident, right?
Matthew
Or they just don’t know. They know how to climb on the couch, they don’t know how to get off the couch, and they bonk their head, things like that. And I don’t for a minute think that there’s a question of denying him agency. I think it is absolutely my job to prevent him from doing that.
Paul
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matthew
But that’s one hell of a slippery slope. Because when he’s eight years old and he wants to go ride on the back of his 13-year-old friend’s motorbike, I have a little concern. What about when he’s 15 and he’s got friends I don’t like and think are dangerous? What about when he’s 21 and he wants to go to a really dumb grad school? Obviously, there has to be a line where I say, you have to have this agency now.
And with that kind of a framework, given how fucking stupid humanity is a lot of the time, especially with blowing up our own planet, if some more advanced race wants to treat us like toddlers and come along and say, no, no, no, we’re gonna take all that carbon out of your hands and make it so you don’t destroy your world, I think I’m on board with that.
Paul
Yeah, there’s a phrase there that pops out at me and really kind of makes my skin crawl, and it’s “more advanced race.”
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
You know, if you look at the history of Earth, there’s a lot of races that thought they were more advanced and decided they could just be like, oh no, this is for your own good, trust us, you’ll be happier when we colonize you. I mean, when we industrialize that for you, you know. And so, to me, a little bit of the question there is, this is a small group of Kryptonians, right?
Matthew
Right.
Paul
It’s not the whole planet, it’s a few survivors of a planet that got destroyed by a disaster that was somewhat parallel to the one befalling Earth. And I do think some of it depends on… I mean, obviously, humanity collectively is just… well, anybody who listens to this podcast knows what I think of that, right? But to me it comes down to what really is the difference in judgment level, right? And what is the point at which you think somebody should have more or less full agency? I think that point is much younger than most people do.
Matthew
Yeah, you know.
Paul
I mean, the government thinks it’s like 21, I guess, when you should kind of have full agency.
Matthew
18 or more, but…
Paul
Well, yeah, but you can’t drink.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
Right? I mean, that’s not full agency.
Matthew
You can vote.
Paul
I mean, you could go fight and kill and die.
Matthew
Yeah. You get about 75% agency at like 18. You get up to like 90%, I would say, at 21, and then by 25, you can rent a car.
Paul
You can rent a car. It’s like, yeah, that’s the last thing. You know what? Nobody should drive a car until they’re 25. That’s my hot take.
Matthew
Okay.
Paul
But I think somebody should have more or less full agency way younger than that, and also progressively faster than people generally consider that kids should have agency, right? Having said that, a one-year-old, yeah, don’t go run into traffic, right? Or a four-year-old, even, or whatever.
Matthew
Well, and now take us back to what we were saying at the beginning, because I’ve long been a believer in the school of virtue ethics, which is really the idea that you can’t make decisions for other people, but you can teach them to make good decisions.
Paul
Sure.
Matthew
You and I had a lot of friends in high school who had to call and lie to their parents. I don’t have a perfect memory of that time, but your mother trusted you, and my parents trusted me, a lot more than most of our friends’ parents did.
Paul
Yeah, no, I don’t have much complaint about how much agency I actually had within my family dynamic. It’s more the idea of school, and you have to do this and have to do whatever, blah, blah, blah. But most people, I think, don’t have an experience that was that similar to mine.
Matthew
Well, but what I’m going with that is, I think in part because of that, I didn’t feel the need to get blackout drunk when I was in high school. You didn’t either.
Paul
Right, yeah.
Matthew
I do think that’s also because my parents raised me with good values and they trusted me to make good decisions. And one of the other issues that often gets talked about in this regard is young sexuality. There’s some people who say, no, you just tell your kids you’re not allowed to have sex until this age or that age. I think that’s ridiculous.
Paul
It doesn’t work.
Matthew
A lot of sex education programs that I really like are ones that say, hey, you are an autonomous being, you get to make your own decisions about sexuality. If they involve anyone else, it has to be with their full consent as well, and all the stuff that goes along with that.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
But what we’re gonna do is teach you values and virtues for how to make those decisions in healthy ways. But now go back to what we were saying. If I let my kid make their own decisions, but I’ve taught them all of my virtues and values to guide them in making their decisions, does that compromise their agency?
Paul
I mean, yes and no.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
You don’t have to buy what your parents are selling.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But it’s really expensive not to, you know, to get it somewhere else, kind of. And I don’t know that I’d say that my parents taught me values, you know. I would say that my parents demonstrated the values that they had, and that the people and schools and whatever that I was involved in as a kid kind of led me in a certain direction.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
But in a way that I don’t feel like my agency was compromised, you know. But I think that’s real. I went to some very different schools, right? Preschool and whatever was like, my friends’ parents were the teachers, and it was this very hippie-ish community in Hell’s Kitchen, but it was like a village, because it was these two towers with a plaza between them, and you’re separated from the outside world. But then you just go down the street and it’s like crackheads and stuff. So you kind of get both. You can see the whole world, but also have your own little island or whatever.
And then I went to Bank Street School for Children, where we called all the teachers by their first names. We didn’t have normal grades like people do. And my mom says that one of the things they would say wasn’t, don’t do that, or this or that, but, oh, that’s not very friendly. They definitely encouraged friendliness and empathy and whatever. And so I feel like I, of my own volition, kind of took whatever they were… I wouldn’t say pushing on me, but I would say offering me.
And to me, that’s the difference. It’s whether you’re offering your own values and being like, this is how I see the world, and I would like you to understand that and give it some thought.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
And then you decide how you see the world.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
And I think I ended up going a lot farther in the direction that both my parents had already gone, kind of.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But of my own volition. I never felt like… I was five years old and I was like, I want to be a vegetarian. My parents were like, okay, that’s cool, that’s fine. I think that’s super normal.
Matthew
Yeah, exactly. I think that’s rare. Both a kid having that much impulse to have that kind of autonomy, or make that kind of decision, but then also to have parents who are that supportive of it.
Paul
Right. And I wish that everybody, and obviously it’s just not how it is, had the opportunity to have, whether it’s parents or teachers or whatever kind of figures, people who offer them whatever values, but then don’t have this coercive, whether it’s passive-aggressive or punitive or whatever, kind of, no, you must agree with me, you know. And to respect their kids, or their students, or whatever, their autonomy and ability to develop themselves on their own.
Matthew
I think it makes a ton of sense. And there’s a funny thing I want to say, and then a more serious one, although both have some seriousness to them. One thing I think is funny is a lot of parents I know… and granted, I do think a lot of kids have some moment of, oh, the cute cow is the hamburger, and so I don’t want to eat that.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
But then generally it lasts like 48 hours, and part of that is the parents’ pressure, but part of that is also your strength of will at age five. So take some credit for that.
Paul
Well, I didn’t even really like any of that anyway.
Matthew
So there you go.
Paul
It wasn’t like that much willpower. But yeah.
Matthew
But I’m sure a lot of parents would be like, oh my God, I’m never gonna let a child dictate to me how I feed them. Like, I’m already rushing to get dinner, now I’ve cooked two separate dinners, etc. And the thing is, I was a picky eater. I’m gonna guarantee that at age, like, six through nine, my mother had to work harder to put a meal that I would like on the table alongside the rest of the family than yours did.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
But I was just a picky eater, and that’s accepted, but you’re a vegetarian, and so that’s this whole weird random thing.
The other thing I was gonna say, getting back to what you said about Bank Street, I might push back just a little bit, because to me, what you’re describing is somewhat of a virtue being taught, but how you live that out is where your agency comes in. Because it does seem like they’re assuming you want to be friendly. They’re starting from a position of, being friendly is a good thing. And maybe they’re not just saying that as, you have to be friendly. They’re saying, here’s why we think… they’re trying to convince you to be friendly.
Paul
I think they just want kids to get along and not fight each other over their toys, or resources, or whatever, kind of. But yeah, no, that’s fair.
Matthew
That’s fair. I think there is certainly…
Paul
That is a value, right? Like cooperation and stuff like that, for sure.
Matthew
For sure. But I think that, in many ways, that’s the kind of thing I would most hope for. And I think that’s where a lot of times kids are like, Mom, Dad, I’m living out the values you taught me, I’m just doing it in ways that you don’t like, because I’m seeing new things. There’s this whole thing happening with young Christians now who are like, wait a minute, you taught me all this time about a God who loves the poor and loves the… so of course we’re voting Democrat. And their parents are like, no, no, but the gays, you know.
No, these are the values you taught us, we’re just living them out in a different way. And hopefully with less conflict, there should always be that process of the young saying, okay, here are the values you taught us, but maybe that value of human life you taught us does extend to people who don’t look the same as us, or even species of life that aren’t the same as us, whatever it is.
Paul
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I think both of my parents were animal lovers, you know. We had a cat and a dog in the house when I was little, and then they both died, and then we got another cat, who I named after myself. Paul.
Matthew
Christopher Hoppe Cat.
Paul
She was dope. And so when I found out that meat came from animals, I was like, I’m not eating that. What are you talking about?
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
Although I did have an exception for Chicken McNuggets for a little while.
Matthew
That’s fair. That’s fair.
Paul
And then I quit that on my sixth birthday. So that’s my actual last, you know. But yeah, I think the fact that my choice, and choices in general, kind of aligned with my parents’ values made it a lot easier for them, even if those weren’t necessarily their choices. Although my dad was a vegetarian for a period of time, and then he stopped when we were in Europe, because in Austria, fresh vegetables weren’t there at the time.
So yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. To me, that’s what teaching is in general: sharing what you have to offer. And I think the best feeling for a teacher is when the student surpasses the teacher, and basically takes what’s been given to them and moves forward in their own way, which isn’t necessarily better or more or whatever. It’s just that they’ve taken it and made it their own. The same way in music, somebody develops a musical style, and then somebody develops an offshoot of that, and then there’s an offshoot of that, and there’s a progression, there’s a continuity. Bob Dylan didn’t teach Jimi Hendrix, but I love his line about how he started “All Along the Watchtower” and Jimi finished it, you know.
Matthew
Right, yeah. I was also smirking a little bit, because the idea of the role of the teacher, that the student is what grows beyond you and all that, you’re coming very close to quoting a movie that I know you’re not generally a big fan of. That’s kind of one of the main ideas of The Last Jedi.
Paul
Oh, okay, sure.
Matthew
Yeah. I mean, whatever else you think of the Luke stuff, I do love that lesson from Yoda, that to teach is… the student is that which grows beyond us, and the trick is not to feel threatened by that, but to be encouraged by that.
Paul
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I don’t think Rian Johnson made that up, but I think it’s a good instantiation of it. It’s been in movies before, and it’ll be in movies since.
Matthew
Cool. Any last things you want to bring up on this subject?
Paul
“First I was the learner, now I am the master.”
Matthew
Yeah, exactly.
Paul
So the circle is now complete.
Matthew
Yeah, that’s not quite “grow beyond,” it’s “murder you so I can take your power,” but, you know, something like that.
Paul
Yeah, but it’s got kind of the same idea, just more fascist.
Matthew
Yeah, you know.
Paul
And he does go on to kill his other teachers, so…
Matthew
He does, you know. So hey.
Paul
Yeah. No, I don’t think I have any other specific things.
Matthew
Cool. Well, if you want to let Paul teach you something about poker, definitely check out his works. They’re all in the show notes. Of course, Paul is currently teaching me, so in about five years, my work on poker should be more important than Paul’s, because I will grow beyond.
Paul
That’s how it works.
Matthew
Not gonna happen. But yeah, check out all the cool stuff Paul has done, check out the cool stuff Pete Wright has done, and there’s a whole bunch of other episodes that we referenced. And also, just write in. Let us know what you think of this version of things. I’m contemplating a couple of different ideas for ways this podcast can go in the future, or starting a totally new podcast, that I’ll talk to you guys about at some point soon.
But until then, on behalf of myself and Paul and everyone else who’s been a part of this podcast, thank you so much. I’m-a Wario. I’m-a gonna win. Happy Halloween.
Paul
There we go. I was always Wario.
