Just some thoughts...
Nothing especially interesting has occurred lately, I just happened to be thinking and wanted to write down some of my thoughts...
I've contemplated the idea of a 'superhero', and I find the concept quite interesting. Someone who, for some reason, has declared that they are more capable of serving justice than the system of law enforcement in their given area. Some of these heroes are gifted with special abilities, some have trained their entire lives to be what they are, and then there are those, like The Punisher, who are heroes out of necessity, rather than choice. Even if it's unrealistic, especially since it takes an extremely traumatic event for someone to decide that sort of a lifestyle, I think it would be cool to aspire to be a 'superhero'. Something about the life of being poor, having no legal ties to the world, having the freedom to do what needs to be done all seems romantic. I suppose that's why so many people enjoy comics and movies depicting such people. People willing to put everything on the line to protect everyone else, for the pure satisfaction of making a difference. Here I make a distinction, a police officer is no superhero, but they are heroes. The difference is that a superhero is not reimbursed, paid, or otherwise rewarded for what he/she does. A hero is paid and lays it on the line a different way. A hero, like a police officer, is willing to draw their gun and fire on a criminal if the criminal is an immediate threat to the officer, while a superhero has the ability to, without fear of retribution for superceding the law, attack a criminal for no other reason than being there and being a known criminal. A hero follows rules that restrict the amount of justice that can be delivered, a superhero dishes out justice in amounts not possible by a hero, because he is guided by a moral compass rather than a textbook full of laws.
Well, I've run out of flowing thought for that one, however, I did have some more thoughts on realistic situations. I realized that a person is constantly judged based on performance versus average performance of others. Why this is, I'm not sure... would it not make more sense to judge someone based on performance versus prior performance? Sure, I may run a mile seconds faster than my friends, but did I run it any faster than my last time? I may have performed extremely well compared to my co-workers, but it doesn't really mean anything if I still performed less excellently than I had in the past.In the business world, I can understand making such judgements to determine who will advance, but when determining whether a person gets a raise or not shouldn't be a community effort. If in the first period of time I performed perfectly at my job, I would expect to deserve a raise, while if during the next period I, perhaps, was lacking a bit of the effort I portrayed in the first period of time, I would expect that I might not get a raise. In the real world, it seems, a person might receive a raise, so long as they perform marginally better than the majority of their peers. A person might file a piece of paper each day and recieve a raise if his co-workers filed a piece of paper every other day. I believe that a persons progress should only be measured by how well they did versus the last time they checked their abilities. Like in weight lifting, I am not successful unless I progress. I may still be the strongeest person in the weight room, but I am a failure because I did not go anywhere, I didn't push harder.
This is getting awfully lengthy... perhaps I'll finish these thoughts another time.
I've contemplated the idea of a 'superhero', and I find the concept quite interesting. Someone who, for some reason, has declared that they are more capable of serving justice than the system of law enforcement in their given area. Some of these heroes are gifted with special abilities, some have trained their entire lives to be what they are, and then there are those, like The Punisher, who are heroes out of necessity, rather than choice. Even if it's unrealistic, especially since it takes an extremely traumatic event for someone to decide that sort of a lifestyle, I think it would be cool to aspire to be a 'superhero'. Something about the life of being poor, having no legal ties to the world, having the freedom to do what needs to be done all seems romantic. I suppose that's why so many people enjoy comics and movies depicting such people. People willing to put everything on the line to protect everyone else, for the pure satisfaction of making a difference. Here I make a distinction, a police officer is no superhero, but they are heroes. The difference is that a superhero is not reimbursed, paid, or otherwise rewarded for what he/she does. A hero is paid and lays it on the line a different way. A hero, like a police officer, is willing to draw their gun and fire on a criminal if the criminal is an immediate threat to the officer, while a superhero has the ability to, without fear of retribution for superceding the law, attack a criminal for no other reason than being there and being a known criminal. A hero follows rules that restrict the amount of justice that can be delivered, a superhero dishes out justice in amounts not possible by a hero, because he is guided by a moral compass rather than a textbook full of laws.
Well, I've run out of flowing thought for that one, however, I did have some more thoughts on realistic situations. I realized that a person is constantly judged based on performance versus average performance of others. Why this is, I'm not sure... would it not make more sense to judge someone based on performance versus prior performance? Sure, I may run a mile seconds faster than my friends, but did I run it any faster than my last time? I may have performed extremely well compared to my co-workers, but it doesn't really mean anything if I still performed less excellently than I had in the past.In the business world, I can understand making such judgements to determine who will advance, but when determining whether a person gets a raise or not shouldn't be a community effort. If in the first period of time I performed perfectly at my job, I would expect to deserve a raise, while if during the next period I, perhaps, was lacking a bit of the effort I portrayed in the first period of time, I would expect that I might not get a raise. In the real world, it seems, a person might receive a raise, so long as they perform marginally better than the majority of their peers. A person might file a piece of paper each day and recieve a raise if his co-workers filed a piece of paper every other day. I believe that a persons progress should only be measured by how well they did versus the last time they checked their abilities. Like in weight lifting, I am not successful unless I progress. I may still be the strongeest person in the weight room, but I am a failure because I did not go anywhere, I didn't push harder.
This is getting awfully lengthy... perhaps I'll finish these thoughts another time.