With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. What Superheroes Teach Us About Building Non-ableist Systems of Respect.
What is a superhero?
Superheros are fictional beings who have super-powered abilities and use them to help others. Here are a few examples of powers in popular superheroes from the Marvel and DC universe:
-Flight
-Super Strength
-Super Speed
-Super Senses
-Shapeshifting
-Telepathy & Mind Control
-Telekinesis
-Powered Attacks
-Special Weapons
-Super Intelligent
-Super Rich
However, it is important to note that there is a difference between powered people and superheroes. For example, both Spiderman and Doc Oc have super-powered suits. But only Spiderman is a superhero because he is the one who uses his powers for good. Tony Stark is still a brilliant tech billionaire before he becomes Iron Man but when he is a weapon manufacturing playboy he is not regarded as a superhero.
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Real-world superheroes
But the reality of the world is that exceptional abilities do exist. Maybe not to the dramatic extent of superhero movies but still real. There is average intelligence, strength, hearing, vision and wealth and lots of people have above-average abilities in these areas. Yet in our current world, we often see ability as simply equal footing or "disabled." But just as disabled people have less ability in some areas than able-bodied people, some people have exceptional ability. Just look at Olympic athletes or chess champions.
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What can superheroes teach us?
Superheroes are one of the few mainstream cultural examples we have of exceptional people whose skills are not expected to be utilized self servingly. When we see a young child who is exceptionally skilled at computers or music we automatically assume that those skills will and should be used to make the child famous and successful. But superheroes offer a different path, one where exceptional skills are expected to be used for the common good.
(Note that there are still major issues with a single-handed crime fighter in ignoring systemic issues and focusing on policing, but this post will be examining what we can learn from the morals and intentions.)
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With great power...
Comes with great responsibility. Is the classic Spiderman quote that summarizes this idealized version of the superhero. I argue that this is how we should see all abilities. A gift that comes with responsibility.
While ability should not be seen as a mark of virtue, it is important that we appreciate the contributions people make to society. What those contributions should be is determined by ability. We see superman as heroic for stopping a train headed for a broken bridge not because he's super strong but because of his action. If he ignored the train he would not be a hero, regardless of strength. Exceptional ability does not give you the choice to do whatever you want, it gives you the responsibility to use that ability to help others.
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Action over ability
The idea of the great responsibility line is to remind the hero that their power is not what makes them a hero, their actions are. This is a crucial message to making an anti-ableist world. We must stop seeing people as virtuous purely because of what they _can_ do. It is what they choose to do with the abilities they have that matters.
This applies to disabled people as well. We should be judged not by what we can or cannot do, but by how we use the skills that we have.
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All ability as exceptional
In fact, there is no reason to consider average as some magical benchmark above which you have a responsibility and below which you deserve saving. Instead, it is much healthier to see ability as the sliding scale that it is. Sure at one end of the scale, you would have someone exceptionally talented in every single field who would have a great obligation to their community and need nothing in return. But that person is fictional. Just at the person who is utterly disabled in every possible way with nothing to offer and in need of everything is also fictional. Real people exist in the middle, with a responsibility to use our strengths to help and deserving of help in the areas we struggle.
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Ought implies can
This entire idea of responsibility contingent on ability is deeply embedded in a basic tenet of moral philosophy: ought implies can. You can only have a moral obligation to do something it is physically possible for you to do. This tenet of morality is also the most crucial to living a moral life when disabled. The ability to tell what we can do and to base our moral obligations on those abilities. As our health fluctuates throughout our life so do our moral obligations to ourselves and society.
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Breaking toxic expectations
In applying "with great power comes great responsibility" we need to keep in mind that great power or "ought" includes the mental capacity to control and harness that power. This is why physically able-bodied people with mental illness for example might have different responsibilities than if they were in good mental health. In remember to consider all aspects of physical and mental ability we avoid creating toxic expectations of self-sacrifice.
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Responsibility as the glue of society
The reason this view is so powerful is it targets the main way society harnesses collaboration, responsibility to the community and ourselves. While in capitalist society money may serve as an indirect way of representing incentives, the reality is that people still work out of responsibility. When we focus on that responsibility directly, we can see incentives for work that are focused not on making money but on the legitimate contributions to society workers produce. We can also look beyond assigning value to labor based on capitalist markets and better see the value of tasks like caregiving, housework, and community building.
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We are so used to meritocracy it can be hard to find any way to think outside of it. But meritocracy is really just ableism with a thin disguise.
So in today's lighthearted post, I want to challenge you to think a bit outside our society by thinking about the escapism of superheroes. Now superheroes are not often thought of as super leftist especially as they often glamorize great man history and the military-industrial complex. But they do offer a different view of ability in a world where powered people exist, and that is the focus of this post.
The lesson we can learn from superheroes is simple:
Ability is a responsibility, not a gift. Being exceptionally able does not make you a hero, what you do with your abilities does.
This distinction seems obvious and yet it is one that we lose so often. How frequently do you hear "work smarter not harder" or "they might be an asshole but they are brilliant" as a way to justify billionaires? Our society is so obsessed with meritocracy and ability that we lose sight of what matters: actually helping society.
And in the same way that normal people in comics are not shut out from helping just because they are not powered. See Nick Fury, Mary Jane, or Coulson. Disabled people should not be shut out simply because they have a lower level of ability. After all, a small contribution to the right side is a thousand times better than a massive contribution to the wrong.
The truth is, superheroes do not add something new to the world. We already have a vast range of abilities. What they add is with great power comes great responsibility. Something the highly abled people of our world are often told the opposite of.
So often we hear "skill is a ticket to escape your upbringing" or "smart people are not bound by borders and money" but in reality the greater your skill the more responsibility you have to collectivism and to help your community.
There is no magic benchmark at which skill becomes a responsibility. There is no magic benchmark at which needs to become a charity case. All of us have responsibilities and needs. It is not our abilities that make us heroes it is our actions.
