Everyone who has ever read a comic book, watched a superhero movie, or hell, even had a childhood fantasy has considered what it would be like to have superpowers. Everyone thinks it would be the absolutely coolest thing to be able to fly around the world, fighting crime and being a hero. But you know what? We’re pretty certain that, while there would obviously be some exceptions with people who are truly heroic, most of us would simply abuse the crap out of any superpowers. Because at the end of the day, we’re all kind of selfish jerks who crave ease and convenience. And what better way to get those two things than through superpowers?
6We Would Even Lazier
This one should be pretty obvious, really, since modern technology is already well on its way to turning us into lazy quasi-vegetables with an overreliance on having access to anything and everything at the touch of a button. Honestly, just dig out your smart phone and look at the insane ways it can help you accomplish most of your daily routine without ever getting off the toilet. You can order food, pay bills, and even with some apps turn lights and other appliances on and off. So naturally, if someone had, say, telekinesis it would multiply this by about a hundred. We don’t want to get off our asses and do anything, and with a power like telekinesis which are you more likely to do: stop a bank robber, or float another beer to you way over on the couch with the powers of your mind?
5We Would Use Them for Personal Gain
Let’s say even if you did have superpowers, you wanted to use them to make the world a better place. Well, you may have noticed in comic books that even superheroes – at least, the ones not named Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen, and Tony Stark, for the most part – have to hold down day jobs. Vigilante justice doesn’t exactly pay very well, and there sure as hell isn’t any health or dental involved. So while you might be ready, willing, and able to use your powers of teleportation or super strength to save a group of hostages, you might decide that, you know what? You’re owed a little something for it, so you’ll just zap yourself into a bank vault and pocket some cold hard cash for your efforts. Why bust your hump at a crappy job when you could just be fighting crime all day, anyway?
4We Would All Become Perverts
Let’s say you are granted X-Ray vision or invisibility. Right now, think about what the first things you would do include. If you’re a red-blooded male, chances are your mind at least flickered on the notion of sneaking into a women’s locker room and or being able to check out your hot co-worker in her underwear by simply looking through her clothes. Deny it all you want, but the idea would at least cross your mind at some point. And can you imagine some lecherous jerks suddenly being granted the power of telepathy? We aren’t saying everyone would succumb to the overwhelming temptation and become a groping scumbag, but the fact that the temptation is even there in the first place might be a little too much for some people to overcome.
3ORDINARY PEOPLE WOULD LOSE JOBS
Not everyone is going to have superpowers, right? That means there are still going to be the everyday, average Joe’s going about their business trying to earn a living. Only the thing is, with real life superheroes running around doing their thing, some of those businesses would start to become obsolete. Say you’re the only superhero in a relatively small town in the Midwest, and you decide to be a good citizen and start fighting crime. Wouldn’t that render what we would assume to be at best a moderately sized police force to be rendered useless? At best, they’d become caretakers of the prisoners you keep swooping up, but you can’t pay an entire staff to simply babysit a few criminals now and then, so there would be a rash of staff cutbacks. And if suddenly half of the population could fly, what would that do to not just the airline industry, but the auto and train industries, too? Who needs to buy an expensive car when you can just fly everywhere?
2THE DAMAGE WOULD BE CATASTROPHIC PHYSICALLY AND FINANCIALLY
At this point it’s kind of obvious to point to the recent film Man of Steel and look at the absolute carnage that one single brawl between Superman and Zod does to the whole of Metropolis. Thousands of people must have been killed, and in all likelihood billions of dollars in damages have been inflicted upon the city. Who is going to clean that up? And what happens when another villain comes out of the woodwork and it’s up to you and your superpowers to stop them at all cost yet again? The city will be bankrupted over and over trying to repair the damage, and as soon as things are finally settling down, they’ll just have to do it all over again because some other tool in a cape decides it’s his turn to try to rule the world. There’s no way to sustain any semblance of an economy if the cities are constantly being destroyed, meaning more people will begin to flee to the countryside, leaving businesses deserted and turning each city you protect into a barren wasteland because, at the end of the day, it’s just not worth trying to rebuild again.
1IT WOULD TURN EVERYONE WITH POWERS INTO JERKS
There are very few Mother Teresa’s out there, who only do aspire to do good. The rest of us have flaws and vices, and if you were to add superpowers into the equation, things would get completely out of control. We already mentioned how everyone would start robbing banks to support their crime fighting habits and use other powers to spy on naked girls and just generally be skeezy, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It goes back to one of the themes of the acclaimed series Watchmen, which asks, “Who watches the Watchmen?” And the answer is: nobody. Because no one is equipped, so what is to stop a god among men like Superman from just deciding one day to simply live above the law, take what he wants, and do what he wants? It’s nice to think that most of us are good enough people to know better than to go down that path, but take a look around at the power hungry people in the world. Look at politicians, look at guys like Donald Trump, and ask yourselves – if those guys had superpowers, how royally screwed would we all be?
