Daniel Wilmoth

Graphic novels filled with superpowers, costumes, and secret identities seem an escape from reality. However, because the characters can break the law with impunity, graphic novels are a place to explore important moral questions. As Alan Moore notes in his classic graphic novel Watchmen, the term “superpower” is also used to describe the United States in the decades following the second world war. The economic and military might of the United States allowed national security officials to act with impunity, confronting them with the moral questions explored in graphic novels.

In Watchmen, Moore introduces us to “masked adventurers” who blur the line between hero and villain. The story begins with the murder of The Comedian, a ruthless mercenary employed by the government. That murder is investigated by Rorschach, a fanatic unwilling to compromise his principles. The investigation leads us to Ozymandias, the “smartest man in the world,” forecasting the future and judging his actions by their consequences. Seeing the future even more clearly is Dr. Manhattan, a scientist accidentally transformed into a being of such power and intelligence that he is losing his connection to humanity.

Differences in values bring these characters into conflict. We learn that Ozymandias murdered The Comedian to protect an elaborate conspiracy. Ozymandias has foreseen a devastating nuclear war and intends to avert it by uniting humanity against an alien invasion. Simulating the invasion will kill millions, but Ozymandias believes he is justified by the billions he will save. After executing his plan, he explains to Dr. Manhattan,

I know people think me callous, but I’ve made myself feel every death…. I know I’ve struggled across the backs of murdered innocents to save humanity…. but someone had to take the weight of that awful, necessary crime….¹

We encounter the term “watchmen” in the graphic novel as graffiti. Protestors demanding that the government control masked adventurers paint a wall with the message, “Who watches the watchmen?” We encounter that message again at the end in a quote from a real 1987 report on misbehavior by national security officials in the United States.

In a scathing biography, David Talbot recounts the choices of one such official, Allen Dulles of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Dulles began his career as a Wall Street lawyer before joining the precursor of the CIA during the second world war. Dulles became director of the CIA under Eisenhower and continued until dismissed by Kennedy following the disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Under the leadership of Dulles, the CIA ranged far beyond traditional moral boundaries, engaging in torture, political assassination, and even experiments with mind control. When he died in 1969, CIA officials wrote a eulogy to be delivered at his funeral. Talbot writes,

[T]he minister stood up in his church—whose pews were filled with the solemn ranks of CIA spooks and political dignitaries—and recited the eulogy as instructed. “It is as a splendid watchman that many of us saw him,” he declared, “a famous and trusted figure in clear outline on the American ramparts, seeing that the nation could not be surprised in its sleep or be overcome in the night.

“It fell to Allen Dulles to perfect a new kind of protection,” continued the preacher, not knowing how ironic the words he spoke were. “[F]or us, as for him, patriotism sets no bounds on…the defense of freedom and liberty.”

Dulles’s funeral oration was a celebration of the lawless era that he had inaugurated. Under Dulles, America’s intelligence system had become a dark and invasive force—at home and abroad—violating citizens’ privacy, kidnapping, torturing, and killing at will. His legacy would be carried far into the future by men and women who shared his philosophy about the boundless authority of the national security system’s “splendid watchmen.”²

If, like Ozymandias, we judge actions by their consequences, we cannot evaluate the choices of Dulles without knowing what he achieved. His failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs caused the death or capture of thousands. However, even Dulles victories often brought great suffering. For example, in 1953 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and gave power to the shah. A CIA report celebrated the coup as “a day that should never have ended.” Talbot writes,

All hope for change was ripped from the hearts of the Iranian people, replaced by poisonous seeds whose bitter fruit grew slowly over the next two decades. The shah ultimately reaped what he had sown, driven into his final exile in 1979 by a popular revolt led by the country’s Islamic mandarins, the only oppositional sector of Iranian society not crushed by the…regime. The Americans and Iranians are still paying for “the day that should never have ended.”³

The Islamist government of Iran has repeatedly come into violent conflict with the United States. Dulles did not intend to establish a regime hostile to the United States. He was a clever and accomplished man who oversaw sophisticated operations and outmaneuvered determined enemies. However, a problem with choosing our actions based solely on their consequences is the difficulty of foreseeing all consequences.

Apparent conflict between choices based on virtue and choices based on consequences may reflect failure to foresee all consequences. Confucius teaches that by behaving virtuously we teach virtue to others. Conversely, our cruelty teaches others to be cruel. Violence and threats of violence can have desirable immediate effects by changing incentives but negative long-term effects by changing values. Confucius argues that in the long term coercion is less beneficial than modelling virtue.

If you try to guide the common people with coercive regulations and keep them in line with punishments, the common people will become evasive and will have no sense of shame. If, however, you guide them with Virtue, and keep them in line by means of ritual, the people will have a sense of shame and will rectify themselves.⁴

Confucius teaches that modelling virtue is such an effective way of correcting behavior that the best leaders can bring order without apparent effort, a process he calls “wu-wei,” or effortless action. Describing a sage king, Confucius says,

Is Shun not an example of someone who ruled by means of wu-wei? What did he do? He made himself reverent and took his proper [ritual] position facing south, that is all.⁵

Our world is complex, and the consequences of our actions tumble into the future through channels we never imagined. During the revolution that overthrew the shah in Iran, the embassy of the United States was stormed and hostages taken. The United States responded by prohibiting the sale of weapons to Iran. The Reagan administration secretly defied that prohibition, using the proceeds to fund a war in Nicaragua. Moore takes the quote “Who watches the watchmen?” from a report on that affair.

In Watchmen, Ozymandias outmaneuvers his opponents, even the powerful Dr. Manhattan, and succeeds in simulating an alien invasion. However, Moore leaves ambiguous whether the plan will benefit humanity. Not even the “smartest man in the world” can foresee all of the consequences of his actions. After explaining his moral reasoning to Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias seeks reassurance, claiming it all worked out in the end. To which Dr. Manhattan responds,

“In the end”? Nothing ends…. Nothing ever ends.⁶

1. Alan Moore, Watchmen, page 27 of Chapter 12.
2. David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (London: William Collins, 2015), pp. 616 – 617.
3. Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, pp. 240 – 241.
4. Confucius: Analects, with selections from traditional commentaries, trans. Edward Slingerland (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2003), 8.
5. Confucius, 175.
6. Moore, Watchmen, page 27 of issue 12.

Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.

Proverbs 27:1 NIV

Aulus Gellius writes about crossing the Ionian Sea with a Stoic philosopher who was prominent in ancient Athens. A vast, violent storm engulfs the ship, threatening death.

During almost the whole of the night…a fierce side-wind blew, which had filled our ship with water. Then…day at last dawned. But there was no less danger and no slackening of the violence of the wind; on the contrary, more frequent whirlwinds, a black sky, masses of fog, and…fearful cloud-forms…seemed to hang over and threaten us, ready to overwhelm the ship.¹

The Stoics teach that we should care only about what we can control, so we should not fear such danger. For example, Epictetus writes,

If you seek to avoid, then…only…those things that are within your own power, you’ll never fall into anything that you want to avoid; but if you attempt to avoid illness, or death, or poverty, you’ll suffer misfortune. Remove your aversion, then, from everything that is not within our power, and transfer it to…those things that are within our power….²

Eager to see this philosophy applied, Aulus Gellius observes the Stoic, only to find him as “frightened and ghastly pale” as anyone else. Aulus Gellius is not the only one to notice. After the storm, another passenger mocks the Stoic, asking why he was so frightened. The Stoic replies,

If in such a terrible storm I did show a little fear, you are not worthy to be told the reason for it. But…the famous Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates, shall answer for me, who on being asked on a similar occasion by a man much like you why he feared, though a philosopher, while his questioner on the contrary had no fear, replied that they had not the same motives, for his questioner need not be very anxious about the life of a worthless coxcomb, but he himself feared for the life of an Aristippus.

Aulus Gellius must not have been easily frightened, because, despite that caustic answer, he also asks the Stoic about his reaction to the storm. The Stoic, sensing the sincere interest of Aulus Gellius, responds differently. He draws from his bag a book by Epictetus that has since been lost. In it, Epictetus explains that our instinctive emotional reactions to the world may be outside of our control. However, we can control how we react to our reactions.

…when some terrifying sound…occurs, even the mind of a wise man must necessarily be disturbed, must shrink and feel alarm, not from a preconceived idea of any danger, but from certain swift and unexpected attacks which forestall the power of the mind and of reason. Presently, however, the wise man…rejects…them….

Emotions embody beliefs. Circumstances may arouse emotions that embody beliefs in conflict with the beliefs we consciously hold. The fear of the Stoic embodied a view of death that he had repudiated. However, with time, we can reconcile our emotions and our conscious beliefs. Continue reading “The Stoic in the storm”

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul….

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

Psalm 23:1 – 4 ESV

Jeff Bezos took a big gamble when he founded Amazon to sell books online. He left a lucrative job at a hedge fund and moved across the country with his wife to be near the largest book warehouse in the world. They ran Amazon out of their two-bedroom home, using desks Bezos made from doors. His parents invested much of their life savings. Bezos told them Amazon would probably fail.

Instead, the success of Amazon transformed his life. Amazon is worth about two trillion dollars today, one of only about a dozen businesses with a valuation that requires thirteen digits. For a time, Bezos was the richest man in the world. He now has homes scattered across the country, and he can live in luxury around the globe aboard his $500 million yacht.

Commerce has also transformed our lives. In his 1776 Wealth of Nations, pioneering economist Adam Smith describes the transformation of the world we now call the Industrial Revolution. Expanding markets enabled increased specialization, and increased specialization fostered technological innovation. Much of the world today lives in a comfort and safety that would have been nearly unimaginable before the Industrial Revolution.

However, our experience of life is shaped as much by our attitudes as our circumstances. Joy can be found even in trying circumstances, and misery even in comfortable. Much of religion and moral philosophy addresses attitude. The effect of commerce on our lives may therefore depend not only on how commerce shapes our circumstances, but also on how it shapes our attitudes. Continue reading “Commerce and character”

Markets are how we take care of people we don’t know.

Nicholas Stern, as quoted in The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

In the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, spiky-haired young Calvin creates chaos as he navigates a world transformed by his imagination. Teachers and parents become aliens and dinosaurs. His stuffed tiger Hobbes prowls by his side, commenting skeptically and refusing to eat his bully because “[f]at kids are high in cholesterol.”

Calvin and Hobbes was created by Bill Watterson, who studied political science while considering a career as an editorial cartoonist. The stuffed tiger Hobbes is named after the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who, as Watterson put it, held a “dim view of humanity.” Hobbes is best known for Leviathan, published in 1651, where he argues in favor of absolute monarchy as a response to inherent human aggression.

…in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death…. Competition of riches, honour, command, or other power, inclineth to contention, enmity, and war; because the way of one competitor to the attaining of his desire is to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other. ¹

Hobbes believes our selfish desires create perpetual conflict. We can escape that conflict by agreeing to grant a monopoly on violence to a sovereign power. The sovereign power then enforces a peace under which we can all flourish.

…during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man…. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently…no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear of danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. ²

For Hobbes, the role of the sovereign is defined by the use of force. We find a very different view of government in the teaching of Confucius. Confucius was a moral and political philosopher in ancient China, and Chinese civil servants were trained in his philosophy for thousands of years. Confucius teaches that the proper focus of rulers is not on controlling the public but on controlling themselves.

Ji Kangzi asked Confucius about governing.

Confucius responded, “To ‘govern’ means to be ‘correct’. If you set an example by being correct yourself, who will dare to be incorrect?” ³

Continue reading “Confucius and Hobbes”

Ji Kangzi was concerned about the prevalence of robbers in Lu and asked Confucius about how to deal with this problem.

Confucius said, “If you could just get rid of your own excessive desires, the people would not steal even if you rewarded them for it.”

Analects 12.18

Dave Ramsey has made a lot of money by talking about money. He peddles financial advice based on the Bible. He started with a radio show, then expanded into newspapers, live events, and popular books. He even sold an “Act Your Wage!” board game with the tagline “First player out of debt wins!”

Eliminating debt is Ramsey’s passion. He counsels listeners to avoid all debt, to pay cash for their houses and perform “plastic surgery” by cutting up their credit cards. The box for the “Act Your Wage!” game features Ramsey holding a credit card between scissor blades. He likes quoting a verse from Proverbs,

The rich rule over the poor,
and the borrower is slave to the lender. (Proverbs 22:7 NIV)

Ramsey helps listeners escape the burden of debt. However, debt is not always a burden, and those who have escaped debt may still have unhealthy relationships with money. To make good financial decisions, we should look beyond simple rules like avoiding debt and examine our attitudes. Proverbs teaches that our attitudes shape our lives.

As water reflects the face,
so one’s life reflects the heart. (Proverbs 27:19 NIV)

Continue reading “The mirror of the heart”

Prepare your work outside;
get everything ready for yourself in the field,
and after that build your house.

Proverbs 24:27 ESV