"Syndrome" Syndrome: or the Fallacy of "Special"

[Garthanos]

Exceptions: The babysitter, Bob's tyrannical boss, the Government Agent, Frozone's wife, the guy trying to commit suicide that sues Bob, the normal boy Violet likes, the normal woman who makes costumes that save their skins, the normal woman who saves Bob (& family) from Syndrome on the island.

Those are very good examples...

The babysitter is awesome on wheels.... Incredibly adaptable in her ability to deal with that babies powers is just shy of a super power.

The costumer is incredibly perceptive and good at motivation (this is a leader archetype in 4e).

Syndromes hench woman ... doesnt stay static and just do her job she learns.

The government agent eventually owns up in my opine and takes a little responsibility for continuing to support the familly.

 

[Ourph]

Clark is a good example where both identities are real it is a good thing you didn't pick Batman.
Millionaire playboy philanthropist, who drops out of school, drinks, chases chicks and races cars and gives money to charities out of guilt, is a mask.

Who are Batman's friends? Seriously, name one person the Batman/Wayne character counts as a friend who doesn't either know him as Bruce Wayne only or know that Bruce Wayne is Batman.

You seem to have missed my point. I wasn't claiming that supers' secret identities are all well-adjusted nice guys with glasses like Clark Kent. My point was that supers don't have friends. Only their secret identities have friends. Even if those secret identities are messed up, they still have access to friends that the super identity will never have.

Yes. The life of an elite athlete has always proved to make it too difficult for people to actually enjoy themselves or find friends.

Doesn't it? I'm sure it's quite easy for Michael Phelps to find people who want to be around him and would like to call themselves his "friends", but how many of them would actually be what most of us would consider good friends? And how easy will it be for him to tell the difference between the sycophants and leeches and the people who really would be good friends?

Now imagine that instead of an elite athlete, he's a superhero with superhuman powers who defeats supervillains and saves people's lives every day. I'd say it would be pretty difficult in those circumstances to have normal human relationships that the rest of us "mundane" people take for granted.

 

[Garthanos]

Beautiful work, Celebrim, and I am sorry that I cannot XP you for it at the moment.


RC

I did it for you...

 

[Garthanos]

Only their secret identities have friends. Even if those secret identities are messed up, they still have access to friends that the super identity will never have.

I can name a few friends of Batman... but none of Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne doesnt actually drink he fakes it... Bruce Wayne dropped out of colleges because he was looking for the better teaching available in a different school (but he did so by getting horrible grades or acting up on purpose).. each one of those ...not well adjusted elements used to describe Bruce.. is a falsehood. The only friends the character has are indeed when he is being a super. He is an opposite.

Batman's friends indeed are not everyday joes. Unless you count Robin and Alfred.

 

[Celebrim]

Ah, but Dash isn't an ELITE athlete.

Half of the reason why we admire elite athletes is what it takes to GET to be an elite athlete.

Well, first, I think you vastly overestimate the public in that regard. I think that for the most part atheletes are admired simply for their ability to perform heroicly. Atheletes are generally excused for pretty much any other failing by an admiring public provided that they win, and if not fully excused then at least excused more than they would be otherwise. Another bit of evidence in favor of the theory that for the most part we don't care how they win just so long as they win, is that most people don't spend a whole lot of time watching someone practice and generally don't interest themselves that much in what people do to get to the point that they are winners. The curiousity you predict just doesn't seem to be much in evidence. Finally, we don't generally give out medals for 'tried the hardest' or 'trained the hardest'. It happens, but not that much. I think the most you can say is some of the reason that some people admire some atheletes is the displine that is required to attain such a high degree of skill.

This seems like a good time to address some ideas that are floating around.

Alot of people see an injustice in the 'super' competing against the 'normals' and are calling it 'cheating'. Some of you even picked up on the idea that when someone blows away the competition to a great extent and in a trivial manner that people percieve it as 'cheating' when what they mean is, "We ought to change the rules to make that illegal." The problem raised by 'supers' in atheletic competition is that such competitions become uninteresting and pointless. If Dash participates in the race, the race becomes meaningless because the outcome is basically obvious and we cannot be surprised by it. Watching a race with Dash running in it is even less interesting than watching an atheletic competition in rerun - all the thrill is gone.

The rules aren't important... what's important is -- it's linear. Every time you throw this ball a hundred different things can happen in the game... he might swing and miss, he might hit it... the point is you never know... you try to anticipate, set a strategy for all the possibilities as best you can... but in the end it all comes down to throwing one pitch after another... and seeing what happens. With each new consequence, the game begins to take shape...

-

My suspicion is that if we had 'supers' and if we could not screen the supers so that we could say, "Ahhh.. you carry the mutant X gene, therefore you as a mutant can't compete in the 'baseline human games'", then atheletic competition as we know it would be both destroyed an revolutionized.

But even if we could exclude the supers, I think for the most part people would just stop caring that much about who was the fastest normal human. Dash destroys the race whether he competes in it our not, because even if we exclude him from participating we still know that its just a race for second place anyway. Athletes might still compete, because already 95% of those that compete know that they'll never win and 99% of them know they'll never even compete at a high level, but normal sports would hold little interest to the spectator. What people would care about and pay to see would be competition between supers. People watch athletic competition to see 'the best', 'the elite', to witness the highest level of performance. Most of the sports in the Olympics we don't care the slightest about except during the Olympics when the worlds best are gathered together. Athletic competition would adjust to compensate. People would watch the Olympics to see something amazing - which is the reason we watch the Olympics now - and they really wouldn't care who was 'super' and who was 'normal' because from the perspective of a normal person every Olympic champion is already a 'super' capable of doing extraordinary things.

 

[Mark]

On the contrary, he's unhappy when he is not participating at all. He seems perfectly happy at the end of the movie when he is participating, but not necessarily dominating.

Oh, I don't think being resigned to something is the same as being happy about it at all. Dash has grown, which is a requirement of the narrative, but he can still in no way find fulfillment or happiness in the competition with the slower schoolchildren. He and his parents have come to an understanding and his being given some leeway helps him to adjust. His happiness derives from his new arrangement with his parents which marks of rite of passage for him.

Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl had secret identities even before the supers were outlawed. They were unfulfilled because they were prevented from being heroes, not because they needed their hero identity to be their ONLY identity.

Unless we concede that within that universe the duality paradigm is the only one available to supers. In which case it would be impossible for them to ever achieve happiness except as an artificial construct required as part of a movie aimed at an audience primarily of young age and thus not really mature enough to grasp the concept of pathos. It, of course, resolves somewhat differently in your Superman/Batman analogies where the supers are meant to be in such an extreme minority that it is largely inapplicable. Look toward something like Hancock for that model to be more fully explored, particularly in regard to the physics of that universe being set up to exploit the pathos.

 

[Garthanos]

If you want to play a game with your 3 year old nephew where the goal is 'fun', then I suggest you find a game that you can compete more as equals than floor hockey. I get beat by my 4 year olds in 'Monkey Madness', 'Disney Yatzee', and so forth.

My son when he was 6 managed to beat me in chess... after many many games where he did not. (the boy qualifies as a genius and was memorizing the moves of the pieces at age three when the Harry Potter film came out) but there was no doubt he won fair and square, I did not play as well as I sometimes do but no doubt about it he earned it. This win was a hell of a win... but I can barely get him to play me now... ;( I think he accomplished his goal...

 

[Storm Raven]

Ah, but Dash isn't an ELITE athlete.

Half of the reason why we admire elite athletes is what it takes to GET to be an elite athlete.

You are engaged in wishful thinking if you believe that elite athletes don't have a natural advantage over the rest of the populace that is almost frightening in scale. Or that there aren't professional players who aren't lazy slobs who let their natural talent carry them (they don't usually become superstars, but they are out there).

Phelps broke the world record for the number of gold medals and his training regime started when he was 11. Similarly, Usain Bolt has been a runner since he was 14.

And we're not talking 1 hour at the gym here. We're literally taking 6-8 hours of training every day for meets that happen every 3 months.

Yeah, its cool and makes for a decent story. But most people wouldn't care if they had jumped in the pool/walked on the track with no prep at all and done what they did. In fact, it probably would have made them more famous and admired, not less.

 

[Storm Raven]

Wouldn't it be farcical to call them competitors at that point? If no one can conceivably beat him, especially normal elementary school children, let alone actual Olympic level athletes, how are they competiting against him? At that point they could just give him a Gold Medal for "showing up" and not bother racing against him at all.

Maybe it would be and maybe they should. But it would also be fair. Was Sergei Bubka behaving unfairly when he dominated his sport to an extent no one could even come close to competing with him for the better part of a decade? All Flash (or Dash) would have done is elevate the level of competition dramatically. To compete, the bar is now set differently.

How is beating a bunch of people that are relatively mediocre not just a different way of celebrating mediocrity? Challenging oneself is a way to excel. Showing off by winning without really trying isn't.

So pretending that the mediocre is deserving of victory isn't celebrating mediocrity? Your definition of celebrating mediocrity (the best at the skill being tested actually wins) seems odd.

Exchanging mediocrity with underachievement by relying on natural talents without actually trying to excel or improve oneself isn't really a good goal. Instead of everyone getting a medal for showing up, only Dash gets a medal for showing up ... but you still have a reward for doing nothing, just in this case, the reward is also for being born lucky.

Chris Long was born lucky. We don't keep him off the field. Cassius Clay was born lucky, we didn't keep him out of the ring. Lew Alcindor was born lucky, we didn't keep him off the court. We also didn't check up to make sure they'd actually worked hard either. You are setting a new requirement to compete (you must work hard to be deserving of being allowed to compete) that simply has never applied (nor should it).

 

[Storm Raven]

Doesn't it? I'm sure it's quite easy for Michael Phelps to find people who want to be around him and would like to call themselves his "friends", but how many of them would actually be what most of us would consider good friends? And how easy will it be for him to tell the difference between the sycophants and leeches and the people who really would be good friends?

And yet somehow these athletic superstars somehow manage to get by, have friends, get married, and have lifestyles that are envied by millions. Sounds really like it would be much too tough for anyone to handle. I'm sure if he had it to do all over again, Phelps would have given up swimming as a preteen to avoid all this terrible fame and attention.