Super Powers and the Right to Life

[Stravo]

The following hypotheticals are meant to explore when does a person's right to live end when its out balanced by the needs of the many. By that I mean let us assume that it is our world, our current tech level, our current history.

Mutants exist much like we see in the X-Men movies. These mutants are generally low powered and not god like in any way.

When however, does the power level start to make it fairly difficult to allow a person to live due to the harm that they pose.

For instance, a Charles Xavier with god like mental powers would be a significant threat to any person or city perhaps even nation. Imagine someone that can pluck secrets out of your mind, kill from thousands of miles away in a way that noone would suspect was caused by him, etc.

How about Magneto, someone that can manipulate the magnetic fields of the Earth to do things like move bridges, cripple whole Police Forces and Armies, even some not so obvious things like fuck with guidance systems and satellites through use of his power.

With mutants like that must humanity exercise an inherent right to self defense and eliminate a threat before it acts? Does humanity have a right to preemptive action against a sufficienlty powerful mutant or must it wait until the mutant acts? When does a mutant's right to life and liberty get superceded by the right of society to be safe and secure?

Would it change the equation if said mutant were raised in the Middle East in a radical Islamic Home or a similar background that signicantly raised the threat that the mutant posed by dint of its culture or background?

Remember we're talking tech of today, no magic potions that sap a mutants ability, no inhibitor fields, no force fields or comic book military tech.

The only magic ability is the ability to predict a mutant's abilities and power levels in blood tests by the age of 5. So you know you have a Magneto before he can do anything to defend himself.

Where do we draw the line?

[SirNitram]

Depends. Do we know enough about how the X-gene(Or whatever) works to suppress it, inhibit it? Cap a Phoenix at lower levels without spawning some god-awful duplicate personality? Prevent a Magneto from ripping up a city?

Can we duplicate their powers?

[Alyeska]

Consider this. Making such mutants enemies of the state will now make EVERY mutant an enemy of the state. You go from having a half dozen enemies to thousands of enemies. I don't think the situation has really improved.

[Cao Cao]

I'm sure that some would argue that mutants are another stage in human evolution, a seperate species and thus human rights wouldn't apply to them. Backed up by good helpings of pseudoscience and technicalities.

The government might seek to control such powerful mutants, placing them into a B5 Psi-Corps type of organization.
Enemy countries would seek to assassinate or kidnap each other's mutants.

As for what I think.. it's hard to say. It's very easy to feel threatened by beings many times more powerful than us, and someone of Magneto-like powe levels would certainly trigger a survival instinct in me.
But then, he would still be a person.. he might be a criminal, he might not. Maybe he'll use his powers for the good of all if left alone.

[SWPIGWANG]

I see no reason to surpress people for their natural powers. Fight the evil not the power.

If there is a X-Gene, it probably make sense to try to do a forced evolution and make almost everyone uber....

[Justforfun000]

Ahh, the dilemma of ethics. lol.

There is no easy answer. Certainly no "right" one. It would be an issue diametrically opposed eternally by libertarians and fascists, and every shade of political view in between.

Opinion wise? I would personally say the fairest solution would be to act first in the interests of the greater good, and in this case that would naturally mean the billions of humans on the earth as opposed to the very small minority of mutants. So their safety would be first because the THREAT is coming from the minority, so like it or not, they are the potential aggressor in the situation, and so it would be little different from stopping a mentally challenged person from causing harm to themselves or others.

Now as the first premise of fairness, that would start you on the path, but this would not give people a justification in simply pre-emptively harming or killing the mutant. Neither would it give them justification in taking away certain civil rights and liberties indiscriminately as if they were a criminal. It would have to be a very careful balance of care and control that would ideally allow the person to potentially live their life with little threat from their existence to humankind as a whole, and yet strive to give them every opportunity to live as free and fairly as any other equal sentient being.

HOW you would do this, I have no clue.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I see no reason to surpress people for their natural powers. Fight the evil not the power.

This is an absurd proposition; a lot of mutants are going to be walking around with the equivalent of an assault rifle (or a howitzer--see Cyclops), with the added advantage that their weapon is concealed. Just letting it slide isn't realistic in the least, what about the guarantee of protection that is owed to the average citizen? The bare minimum is universal testing and then registration of those mutants with potentially dangerous powers. At the same time, they need other assurances; their registration data must be kept confidential, and all of them would recieve the full protection of the law against discrimination and prejudice.

I think the point at which registration is a minimum requirement is abilities like having the strength of several men, energy projection equivalent to a firearm, the ability to shoot bone knives out of your wrist and impale people, etc. Above that, I'm not sure there's really a definite line but clearly the upbringing of someone with powers on the level of Magneto or Professor X can't be left to chance (anybody seen Akira?). What if, for example, a boy with Professor X-equivalent abilities grows up in a sexually abusive home and develops serious emotional problems as a result? What happens then?

[Darth Wong]

Remember the Star Trek episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before?" This dilemma was addressed there, and in a manner that I have to agree with. There is a limit to the risk we should tolerate to human society for the sake of the rights of the few.

Take Professor X in X-Men. In the second film he demonstrated the ability to wipe out all of humanity, and nearly did it! How can any rational person deny that this man is an enormous threat to public safety? He may be the hero of the film and a decent man, but he's too fucking dangerous to be allowed to run free. He should be controlled using any means necessary.

[Justforfun000]

Remember the Star Trek episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before?" This dilemma was addressed there, and in a manner that I have to agree with. There is a limit to the risk we should tolerate to human society for the sake of the rights of the few.

Take Professor X in X-Men. In the second film he demonstrated the ability to wipe out all of humanity, and nearly did it! How can any rational person deny that this man is an enormous threat to public safety? He may be the hero of the film and a decent man, but he's too fucking dangerous to be allowed to run free. He should be controlled using any means necessary.

I tend to agree. As much as the concept is an anathema to the liberal side of me that wants equal treatment accorded to everyone on principle, the fact of the matter is that there is a huge power imbalance in the equation here. Whether an entity is benign or not, it is reasonable for lesser beings to secure their own safety first, but at least they should do so in a manner that is as ethically humane as possible towards the being they are dealing with. They can at least claim a righteousness that is concerned with survival and concern for their existence and their children's continued survival, and not just for petty or vindictive reasons.

[Broomstick]

I'm not sure there's really a definite line but clearly the upbringing of someone with powers on the level of Magneto or Professor X can't be left to chance (anybody seen Akira?). What if, for example, a boy with Professor X-equivalent abilities grows up in a sexually abusive home and develops serious emotional problems as a result? What happens then?

What if a mutant's family is wiped out due to racial or religious bigotry... oh, wait, that happened to Magneto, didn't it? In fact, his experience in WWII and the Nazi-run camps was the backstory for his distrust and contempt for normal humanity.

Take Professor X in X-Men. In the second film he demonstrated the ability to wipe out all of humanity, and nearly did it! How can any rational person deny that this man is an enormous threat to public safety? He may be the hero of the film and a decent man, but he's too fucking dangerous to be allowed to run free. He should be controlled using any means necessary.

It's Professor X + Cerebro that is that level of threat - take away Cerebro and Xavier is still enormously powerful, but he can't simply strike down humanity on bare brain power alone. So at the very least, Cerebro goes. Then you have "just" the problem of not allowing him to rebuild it.

The problem is, as alluded to briefly in the first movie, that you have people who are the equivalent of heavily armed, but whose weapons you can't take away. Would you allow, say, Pyro to board a commercial airplane? Or Cyclops? Especially Cyclops, since his control over his abilities is marginal and he could, if someone bumped his glasses, have an accidental discharge. Or Wolverine - the man has unbreakable knives he can't pack in baggage AND a history of angry outbursts. Even if an air marshall shoots him, he'll just stand up again in five minutes, good as new and twice as pissed off.

The problem is, some of these folks are dangerous even when they don't want to be, and simply saying "I'll be good" isn't really enough assurance. There is precedent for isolating disease carriers for the greater good of society, or barring them from certain professions such as food handling. It's a drastic step, but it may be necessary.

The problem is keeping the restrictions as minimal as possible. It might be reasonable to keep Cyclops off a commercial airplane flight, but not Angel, who would pose no threat to the flight. Knowing how governments are, though, it would be all too easy to simply restrict all mutants, no matter how harmful or benign they may potentially be.

[Gil Hamilton]

Realistically, people wouldn't and probably shouldn't trust Xavier even without Cerebro. If they were familiar with his the use of his powers and behavior, over the years, Xavier has a rather large history of huge emotional outbursts, loss of control (remember Onslaught?), and even with the two of those in check, he's never respected people's privacy that much. After all, Xavier very often brainwashes people to cover for the sheer amount of collateral damage the X-Men cause (for example, the X-Men and Juggernaut wrecking the shit out of a busy city street) and reads alot of people's minds without asking, not to mention all the manipulation he's done.

Jean Grey is only slightly more ethical and alot more dangerous. Even under normal circumstances, she doesn't keep her powers in check. I know there has been an issue of X-Men where she decided to take the Saturday off from keeping her telepathy in control and was reading the surface level thoughts of everyone's minds she came in contact with. And we know what happens when she loses control.

[Justforfun000]

Speaking of Jean Grey, I loved the new X-men movie as Phoenix was my all time favourite marvel super hero as a kid, BUT....


(Warning: Movie spoiler)

I was severely disappointed that they did not have the phoenix bird as a special effect behind her that always surrounded her as a superimposed mimic of her physical actions when she used her powers. I was so looking forward to how cool she'd look, and they didn't do it.

Secondly, I was kind of dumbfounded about one thing that made no sense. Why did Wolverine not just use the mutant cure on Jean instead of killing her? That made NO sense. They had a bunch of them right then and there, and they jabbed all four in Magneto. Wolverine walks up to Jean, admits he loves her so much and then kills her to save humanity. WTF? Why didn't he just remove her powers. She would have been alive with no threat. Didn't make any sense to me.

[RogueIce]

The problem I see is that quite a few mutants can do their thing and we might never know it was them. Such as Charles.

And then there's the whole Pheonix thing, where if she ever does lose control then we're all basically fucked. Because there's not a damn thing humanity could do to stop her near as I can tell. So what then? Do we just hope that she'll never lose control? Or do we take extreme measures if someone is as powerful as her? After all, if we wait until she (or someone like her) does lose control before doing anything, then it's already too late.

[Lonestar]

Registration, to start with. I'd also recruit and train as many as I can and make them federal employees.

[Spice Runner]

I'd also recruit and train as many as I can and make them federal employees.

The X-Mailmen?

On a more serious note most people are going to be stupid about the whole matter. People are ignorant and bigoted. I don't think there is anything that can realistically be done besides either forcefully controlling these mutants or just leaving them the fuck alone and hoping that there will be enough mutants with some sense of morality.

[Knife]

I would assume that the basic presumption in human rights, is that we're all equal. Granted, there is a range of strength and intellegence but those are not in orders of magnitude (especially the strength part ).

Mutants, as seen in the X-men, would represent a departure in this framework. A typical human is in no way equal to Magneto.

I remember in the second movie, the line Wolverine delievered when the cops told him to drop the knives; "I can't." Some mutants would represent a weapon or a person with a weapon grafted onto their bodies, unable to holster or lock box the weapon. Those weapons, though, do indeed range in orders of magnitude from growning spikes and claws to blasting a target with considerable energy. So, not only are humans and mutants not equal, mutants amongst themselves are not equal.

So, registration away. With perhaps an optional, goverment sponsored schools for mutants to learn to control and contain their power and hopefully some serious anger managment.

[His Divine Shadow]

Clearly the most important thing is to make everyone a mutant.

[outcast]

I'd know that if i was a mutant and humans would be demanding we'd have our information registered, there'd be a lot of alarmbells going off in my head. All the more so since there'd likely be a considerable if not extreme amount of unrest between humans and mutants caused by ignorant bigots who like to go mutant bashing. As such i think a measure like registration would only lead to an increase in tension and possibly even war. After all, if humans feel that taking measures against mutants because they might use their powers against them, shouldn't mutants equally take measures against humans who have a *known* history of violence and opression?

It's as Alyeska said, by taking measures against mutants, especially in a time when the general human populace is already acting disfavorably to mutants, you end up making all of them enemies, instead of just the few crazy ones.

Clearly the way to deal with them is not treat their very existence as a problem, and instead assign the same rights to them as everyone else. Incorporate them into society in the manner of their choosing. Like Beast in X3 being a member of cabinet and going on to be the UN ambassador. *that* is really the only correct way of dealing with the issue. Not only is it the fair path to take, but ultimately leads to the least amount of conflict.

[Darth Wong]

Oh puh-lease, this is like saying that gun registration would lead to open conflict in the streets. Despite all the blustering bullshit, people go along with it as long as nothing really bad happens to them as a result. That has been demonstrated in practice.

[Alyeska]

Unlike gun registration, its probably not possible to take away the mutant powers. You potentialy make the mutant as a whole a defacto enemy of the state.

You can't disarm Magneto or Xavier.

And unlike gun registration, these mutants if pissed off potentialy are far more deadly. Remember the Montana Freeman? They didn't want to disarm (among other things). Now imagine having Magneto not wanting to be restricted of his percieved rights.

Some people do rebel against what they precieve as the removal of their fundamental rights. When the people you are trying to control have an inordinate amount of power to them, it makes the threat even greater.

Doing nothing is a bad idea. But on the flip side, you can't push very fast and go too far because a negative reaction from powerful mutants would cause the very damage that was trying to be avoided.

[Gil Hamilton]

With the X-Men comic style mutants, a Mutant Registration Act is not really enforceable. How exactly do you plan to force someone like Magneto to register his identity, location, and the scope of his powers with the government if he doesn't want to? In the comic, the governments solution was to build an army of giant purple robot mutant hunters, but it isn't like we have Sentinels in real life. I suppose they could put something together like Freedom Force, but I imagine they'd be about as effective.

That leads to the big problem. All the Mutants that are dangerous enough to warrant a Mutant Registration Act are so damn powerful that it is beyond law enforcements means to carry out the law. The sort of spot on the wall regular mutants that make up most of the mutant population just frankly aren't that dangerous and often just look weird. They aren't really worth keeping track of.

[Knife]

With the X-Men comic style mutants, a Mutant Registration Act is not really enforceable. How exactly do you plan to force someone like Magneto to register his identity, location, and the scope of his powers with the government if he doesn't want to? In the comic, the governments solution was to build an army of giant purple robot mutant hunters, but it isn't like we have Sentinels in real life. I suppose they could put something together like Freedom Force, but I imagine they'd be about as effective.

That leads to the big problem. All the Mutants that are dangerous enough to warrant a Mutant Registration Act are so damn powerful that it is beyond law enforcements means to carry out the law. The sort of spot on the wall regular mutants that make up most of the mutant population just frankly aren't that dangerous and often just look weird. They aren't really worth keeping track of.

What do you want? Plot device or realistic counters? Xmen gave you plot devices.

[Gil Hamilton]

What do you want? Plot device or realistic counters? Xmen gave you plot devices.

Realistically. I assume we are talking about "What if X-Men style mutants were real?". In that case, even if you wanted to register the dangerous ones, how would you enforce your law?

[Knife]

What do you want? Plot device or realistic counters? Xmen gave you plot devices.

Realistically. I assume we are talking about "What if X-Men style mutants were real?". In that case, even if you wanted to register the dangerous ones, how would you enforce your law?

Xmen III, gave you atleast the counters. Well at least to Mageto and his pawns. Humanity would have won a large victory at Alcatraz, if it were not for the Phenoix.

Humanity, it seems for all it's barbarism; would easily kill off the mutants or atleast takr care of the problem if it weren't for the peskey problem of comic book ethics.

[Alyeska]

Ultimately, X-Men 3 proved humanity could fight, but it would still have a great deal of troubles.

Magneto has a lot of tricks he could pull which would make fighting him even with plastic guns difficult. Mutants like Nightcrawler and Shadowcat can get ANYWHERE they want to and no one can stop them.

And lets not forget that the mutant cure could never stop someone like Xavier if they wanted to fight back.