Thought-Provocation in Comics
So, I just got back from a borrower my copy of The Oath, a short series featuring Dr. Strange, written by Brian K. Vaughan. The reason I bring this up is because The Oath is a great example of comics, which are treated by many non-readers as very flat and superficial, dealing with thought-provoking issues.
The premise of the comic is essentially this: Dr. Strange (who is often criticized by readers and writers as being too overpowered, the deus ex machina of the Marvel universe, if you will) stumbles upon the Panacea in an alternate dimension. Obviously overjoyed, the good doctor plans to use the cure-all to end many of the worlds problems. However, through multiple unfortunate encounters with nefarious sorcerers and big-pharma heads (ya, it’s true), Strange is left with only one drop of the stuff left. Of course, being a master magician, he could easily replicate it in his cauldron, but a new variable enters the mix - Strange’s man-servant Wong reveals to his master that he has an inoperable brain tumor, and on top of that has a stroke in a very inconvenient time and place. So, the doctor (and, hypothetically, we) are left with two questions:
1. If you had to choose between saving your friend and curing, say, AIDS or cancer, which would you choose? Certainly it would be cold-hearted to let your friend die, but what about all those children in Africa?
and,
2. Maybe more importantly, if you had access to the Panacea, would it be right to allow its use at all? Introducing a cure-all into the process of human evolution could cause numerous problems, and it is debatable whether the benefits would outweigh the costs.
So, chew on that for a while and let us know what you think (hint: use the comments feature!). As for what Dr. Strange decides, you’ll have to read the book.
Hmm…to the first question, i have no idea. By my thinking it seems as if we owe our close friends a certain amount of care. Now does that mean sacrificing the panacea to mankind for one person, i don’t know. I think the second question has to be answered before the first question. If we introduce this cure-all into society right now, there will obviously be some sort of tilt in global equilibrium. Since we have been in this system of pathogens for a while (yes…system of pathogens), the world will undergo some drastic changes such as overpopulation which would eventually lead to resource wars, and maybe even nuclear war. That’s a really drastic scenario, but eventually the world will come to stability by itself and other problems will be encountered until the idea of a panacea will have taken root and be a sort of everyday thing. Sort of like the introduction of fire by Prometheus and how much controversy it caused. However eventually the world settled. Having established that the introduction of a panacea will effect the world in the short term, in the long term it won’t really make a stupendous (MAAAAN!) difference. Now back to the first question. I believe that either decision won’t effect the eventual outcome. If you save your friend, then even though the world won’t have a panacea, they also won’t have undergone the problems caused by it. Also, eventually because of our progress into technology, disease will eventually be eradicated. If we let the friend die, then we will just cause a drastic shift in the world’s equilibrium which will eventually sort itself out. well…that’s my thoughts on it…
I’m not really thinking on the scale of humanity (although I think it will be a coke bottle in The Gods Must Be Crazy situation) but more on the effect on an individual human life. What are the limits for what it can cure? Say it was used to cure cardiac arrest on an elderly person, prolongling their life, how long can it keep them alive. People don’t just die of ‘natural causes’ when they’re old, their bodies lose their stregnth and become more susceptible to disease. Immortality?
Also, while the immediate effects of introducing innovations usually work themselves out, the domino effect of new problems that come after are immesurable. The Industrial revolution can be applied to everything so I’ll use it here. With the widespread rise of factories, laborers worked in deplorable conditions because the type of labor was so new, so factory owners could implement anything they wanted on their employees. But then labor unions, minimum wage and all that good stuff were created. So that problem was solved. But factories needed steel or cotton or other raw materials, and that required exacerbating our earth’s resources. Also, there was a surplus of food! Huzzah! If you look at graphs of the world population, the 19th century is when the exponential growth started. You probably already knew that. Anyway, the surplus of food caused a surplus of people in europe, which was already burgeoning with people, who then came to america and dealt with crushing poverty and had to be assimilated, and a slew of other problems. So basically advances only make things worse.
Oh yeah…#1…i’ll leave that to the next commenter
Is this weird, commenting on my own site?
I don’t think a panacea is a good idea at all. I think, if discovered, it should be destroyed. Seeing as the world can’t really be united right now, and when all attempts of unification are met with complaints of globalization and how much modern times are ruining traditional culture, a panacea would just be a bad idea.
No one would or could know what the long term consequences would be: immortality, overpopulation — balance in the world is hard enough to achieve as it is without something being there to upset everything.
Most of the rest of the problems have been covered by (J/T)I.
@TI: I wouldn’t say advances “only make things worse.” Obviously any change in anything is going to cause some terrible consequences, but with that comes incredible inventions and, well, advances (there’s really no better way to put it) that are generally taken for granted.
I’m not saying that there aren’t any postive outcomes from inventions and progress, I just think for the most part the the negative ramifications outweigh the postives a good portion of the time