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The Superhero Handbook
A Do-Gooder's Guide to Saving the Planet A Book in Progress by Glenn Campbell Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Production Notes This is a DRAFT document, and everything here is subject to editing. Your feedback is encouraged! FamilyCourtGuy<at>gmail.com |
My name is Glenn, and I will be your instructor for this class. I hope all of you have had plenty of sleep and are ready to absorb a lot of new material. Have you each brought a Number Two pencil? If not, I have a limited supply of them up here in the front. One way or another, you will be tested on everything we learn here.
Security and confidentiality prevent me from describing my own exact superpowers, but that's not really important. This class is going to treat all superpowers the same. It doesn't matter whether you can bend steel or fly through the air or just have some extra time or money to give to worthy causes; you still face the same dilemmas. How are you going to intervene in the world to make it a better place? If two people need to be saved at the same time, which one should it be? If someone is in distress, when should try to save them, and when should you stand back and let nature take its course?
I can reveal that I have swooped down from the sky many a time trying to save people, not always with the intended effect. I have experienced defeat and humiliation when I misjudged my own powers — when I tried to do more than I was capable of and when I failed to predict the reactions of others. Hopefully, I can convey some of my experience to you so you don't have to make the same mistakes.
Already, you have taken one positive step: You have turned up for this class and seem willing to listen. I'm not sure that I was ready for that when I first gained my powers. As soon as you find out you have a superpower, you want to race right out and use it, damn the consequences. Unfortunately, that's where the majority of accidents happen, right out of the starting gate.
It's like when you first learn to drive a car. You think, "Hey, this is great! I can do anything!" But then you drive too fast and forget to stop for red lights and—Wham!—reality hits you in the face. It is a terrible tragedy when you lose a friend or get crippled for life because of one momentary misjudgment, but that's the sort of thing that happens when you gain great power and don't yet have the maturity to use it.
There will be a central theme to this class, and it is very simple: SAFETY. You'll hear me mention it throughout the course. Safety, safety, safety. I know it is going to sound tedious, but I have to drive home the point. You're not going to be saving anyone if you're dead or crippled. For the good of everyone in your community, your Number One responsibility out there in the field is to protect yourself and your own special powers. Preserving your own health and integrity is absolutely essential to anything you expect to do for others, so self-protection always has to be in the front of your mind.
If someone needs to be saved, but you are placing yourself at significant risk by doing so, then the decision is brutally simple: You have to let them go. Your own safety has to come first.
If there is safety equipment and approved safety procedures for your particular field, I expect you to use them. If you are going to fly through the air, you need to wear a helmet. If you have been issued a reflective safety vest, knee pads and steel-toed shoes, wear them! Maybe you think you'll look like a goofball flying around like that, but answer this question: Would you rather look like a flying dork or be seriously and permanently injured and not be able to fly at all?
This is a dangerous, dangerous business. Just because you are superhero doesn't mean you are invincible. Every hero has their kryptonite, their Achille's heel. Everyone has their limitations, and you don't want to find out the hard way what happens when you exceed them.
We'll talk later about how to evaluate risk and what acceptable risk is, but for now I want you to hold back. I don't care if you save no one at all during the period of this class, as long as you are safe. It is okay to take things slowly and use your powers only when you are ready. What I don't want to see is for you to sabotage yourself by some foolish misuse of your powers before you are ready. It happens in almost every class: We lose one or more promising superheroes to some tiny miscalculation. They attempt something beyond their ability, and it's "End of Game" before they even begin.
I don't know what your specific superpower is, and frankly I don't want to know. That's not the issue. If you find that you can fly through the air under your own power and you want to know about the various aerodynamic principles involved, don't come to me. Personally, I can't fly through the air except in an airplane, and I have no idea how you people do it. My job is to teach you about the social and philosophical implications of what you do with your skills. Just having a superpower and using it with good intentions are not enough; you also have to understand what happens next, as an indirect result of your actions, and that's what this class is all about.
If you want to use your powers to neutralize an evil dictator or solve some other kind of real-world problem, that's an issue I can help you with. Together, we can think things through and try to figure out, pragmatically, what is going to happen under various scenarios. I'm not concerned with the particular technical means by which you save people or slay villains; I am interested in what the long-term effects of this action are going to be. In the big picture, is this particular intervention a good idea or a bad idea for the future of humanity? Hopefully, I can give you some of the intellectual skills to figure this out for yourself.
Unfortunately, this class is too short, and we have a lot of ground to cover, so we need to get started quickly. If you take out your syllabus, you'll see some of the areas we'll touch on.
In Chapter #3, we will be describing what a superpower is. We will find that a lot of seemingly mundane skills and resources can be super powers if we choose to use them as such.
In Chapter #4....
In Chapter #5....
[This section will contain a list of all future chapters and what each will cover.]
Continued in Chapter 4
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