Flada Blog

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

These are well-known words of wisdom from Ben Parker to his nephew shortly before Ben’s final breath. Sadly, it was left to young Peter to figure out exactly what kinds of responsibilities his powers came with through decades of soul-searching in comics, television series, and movies.

Peter chose to use his powers to help the innocent in a struggle against villain after villain. But, as was highlighted time and again by J. Jonah Jameson, it’s sometimes difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys. It becomes even harder when the good guy starts acting like a bad guy.

Many people believe that the United States has a great responsibility to exercise its power around the world to come to the aid of the innocent. At first glance, the Spider-Man analogy would seem to support that opinion. However, with further analysis we will see that the analogy doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

What Peter Parker Does

When Spider-Man swings into action, he is almost always selflessly protecting the “little man” against a criminal. It’s rare that the victims are placed into greater jeopardy by Parker’s actions. If Spider-Man’s initiatives commonly caused the victims greater harm, if his motivation was to protect his assets, or to deflate the price of some commodity that he badly needed–we would judge his actions quite differently.

Closer To What We Do

A scenario

Over many years, Peter Parker and everyone he cares about have become dependent on a substance called Agricola. Without this substance he and his friends will suffer terribly and possibly die. There are only a few factories where Agricola can be produced, and as more and more people become addicted the prices steadily increase–economics being what it is.

Fearful of the bad press that he will get from The Daily Bugle if he simply swings in and takes the Agricola that he needs, Parker sets up a secret group called the Collectors Initiative for Agricola (CIA) which, for almost 50 years, infiltrates the various factories by methods such as killing CEOs and replacing them with CIA puppets.

Much to Parker’s chagrin, the puppet CEO of one of the largest factories decides to turn on his handlers and do things his own way. It turns out that this particular CEO is ruthless, ruling his factory with an iron fist. He often goes so far as to kill and torture some of his employees who don’t completely agree with the corporate plan.

Seizing upon the opportunity presented by the outcry over these abuses, Parker decides to publicly attack the Agricola conglomerate. Swinging into action, he quickly kills the CEO and allows the employees to appoint new leadership which will be partly under the control of Parker and his men. Some of the employees are loyal to the previous CEO however and start killing Parker’s men and other employees with whom they disagree.

Conclusion

This scenario would change our opinions of Spider-Man somewhat. Yet it’s remarkably similar to what the United States does with its superpower. What’s worse is the United States takes the assets of its own citizens who largely disagree with its military exercises to pay for those exercises.

It’s past time we do some of the soul-searching that Peter Parker constantly does and learn to exercise our power in a more responsible way.