The Great Unified Theory of Mystical Powers - Part One
NOTES: This is something I've been toying with for some time - a broad explanation for all kinds of superhuman powers. Note that the base cosmology uses a lot of Christian symbols - I'm agnostic myself, but I felt that this should serve to explain what I had in mind.
If there are higher powers, is one good and another evil? That notion never made sense to me. Good and evil are very subjective, and nobody in his right mind would call himself "evil" - if you do something that you do not believe is justified somehow, why then? Sure, your reason may be "Because I want lots of money", but do you see yourself as evil? Unlikely. Most likely, you feel you're doing the right thing, that you're entitled to what you want. Are you evil? No, you've *earned* that money. From your view, everybody else is evil, because they're keeping the money from you.
So, the concept of a good and an evil power falls flat, because you ask "Good by whom's definition?"
I propose a creative and a destructive power. The creative power is what most would label "good"; it is life, light. Destructive, then, is "evil". It is darkness, death. So why not call them good and evil? Because it does not match up perfectly. Creative is also conservative, overbearing, stagnant, whereas Destructive is progressive, free, constantly evolving. Neither of the two is really "Good" or "Evil"; they are sides of the same coin, and attaching moral weight to them by calling them Good or Evil serves no purpose, because we can easily see that neither is generally more desirable than the other. Both need to exist and be balanced; tipping the scale leads to problems.
Still, for the sake of understanding, we will call the ultimate avatar of the creative force God and the avatar of the destructive force Devil. Both are beings of pure power; on the other end of the scale, we humans sit, completely bound to the material plane. Humans are not naturally creative or destructive. We are at the middle of the scale, and may tip either way, choosing ourself. *That* is free will - choice of alignment with the two fundamental powers of the universe. It is said that free will was only granted to us humans. Why do angels and demons lack it? Because they are amalgation of matter and force. The further up you climb, the less choice you have, but at the same time, you gain more power. Atleast, that's how I see it...God surely has no choice to suddenly become one with the Destructive force, because his very nature is creative. In any event, lack of personality=power. In celestial affairs, at least.
If we stipulate that those with superhuman powers are lightly touched by these forces, we solve a whole lot of problems. Their powers are so limited that their free choice is not really limited; but consider Superman - is it any wonder, under these assumptions that for all his power, he's really has problems wrapping his head around changing situations. His mind is rather unsubtle, you might say. All powered superheroes seem to have a more vibrant personality, but maybe that's because their freedom of choice is somehow limited? Perhaps.
What is this force, then? I believe it is not an imbued set of power or energy; it is merely the ability to draw upon energy from an external source and use it to generate effects we would consider to be magic, superhuman or mystical. Where the energy comes from does not ultimately matter; it could be Zero-Point energy or drawn from an alternate universe. We are also making the assumption that most things that appear to violate the laws of physics actually circumvent them. Let's start with some of the worst offenders.
Flight. Many superheroes seem to have the unnerving ability to navigate the skies. How do they do that? Well, the basic answer is simple: they somehow counteract their weight. This is not the same as negating their mass, which would affect inertia and generally be a pain in the ass to talk about, so we're keeping it simply. Weight is a measurable force acting upon every object in a graviy field, drawing it towards the field's center. In our case, it keeps us attached to the ground. If you want to fly, you need to cancel this force. The first (and apparently easier) way would be to generate a counter-force - the natural way most things that can fly manage to do so. This should not require much energy, but may be a problem in actual practice because of mass distribution - that might require very careful tuning and probably constant reorientation of the employed force vectors in flight. The other way to do it is more elegant, but requires a different set of abilities: cancelling out the gravity field of Earth. As said, that's quite elegant and shouldn't require too much fine-tuning, since the strength of the gravity field acting upon your body is pretty much uniform to any degree one should be able to feel when flying. However, requirements are something else - we do not know if it is at all possible, but it might involve negative mass, which could present interesting inertial problems. Note that, surprisingly, most superheroes do seem to display little inertia, judging from their agility in flight. In other times, there does seem to be inertia involved when the hero needs to brake himself - had he no inertia, he could basically stop in mid-flight. This represents another interesting problem in itself - inertial dampening must be possible, too, else Superman could be turned into goo every time he went full speed from zero. Both solutions present problems - the first one allows nearly arbitary placement of forces, which would point to a supreme level of control over kinetic energies, whereas the second one involves substances we're not even sure of about whether they can *possibly* exist at all. Or you can blame it on subspace. Your choice.
Perhaps more later, if you want to see it.
If there are higher powers, is one good and another evil? That notion never made sense to me. Good and evil are very subjective, and nobody in his right mind would call himself "evil" - if you do something that you do not believe is justified somehow, why then? Sure, your reason may be "Because I want lots of money", but do you see yourself as evil? Unlikely. Most likely, you feel you're doing the right thing, that you're entitled to what you want. Are you evil? No, you've *earned* that money. From your view, everybody else is evil, because they're keeping the money from you.
So, the concept of a good and an evil power falls flat, because you ask "Good by whom's definition?"
I propose a creative and a destructive power. The creative power is what most would label "good"; it is life, light. Destructive, then, is "evil". It is darkness, death. So why not call them good and evil? Because it does not match up perfectly. Creative is also conservative, overbearing, stagnant, whereas Destructive is progressive, free, constantly evolving. Neither of the two is really "Good" or "Evil"; they are sides of the same coin, and attaching moral weight to them by calling them Good or Evil serves no purpose, because we can easily see that neither is generally more desirable than the other. Both need to exist and be balanced; tipping the scale leads to problems.
Still, for the sake of understanding, we will call the ultimate avatar of the creative force God and the avatar of the destructive force Devil. Both are beings of pure power; on the other end of the scale, we humans sit, completely bound to the material plane. Humans are not naturally creative or destructive. We are at the middle of the scale, and may tip either way, choosing ourself. *That* is free will - choice of alignment with the two fundamental powers of the universe. It is said that free will was only granted to us humans. Why do angels and demons lack it? Because they are amalgation of matter and force. The further up you climb, the less choice you have, but at the same time, you gain more power. Atleast, that's how I see it...God surely has no choice to suddenly become one with the Destructive force, because his very nature is creative. In any event, lack of personality=power. In celestial affairs, at least.
If we stipulate that those with superhuman powers are lightly touched by these forces, we solve a whole lot of problems. Their powers are so limited that their free choice is not really limited; but consider Superman - is it any wonder, under these assumptions that for all his power, he's really has problems wrapping his head around changing situations. His mind is rather unsubtle, you might say. All powered superheroes seem to have a more vibrant personality, but maybe that's because their freedom of choice is somehow limited? Perhaps.
What is this force, then? I believe it is not an imbued set of power or energy; it is merely the ability to draw upon energy from an external source and use it to generate effects we would consider to be magic, superhuman or mystical. Where the energy comes from does not ultimately matter; it could be Zero-Point energy or drawn from an alternate universe. We are also making the assumption that most things that appear to violate the laws of physics actually circumvent them. Let's start with some of the worst offenders.
Flight. Many superheroes seem to have the unnerving ability to navigate the skies. How do they do that? Well, the basic answer is simple: they somehow counteract their weight. This is not the same as negating their mass, which would affect inertia and generally be a pain in the ass to talk about, so we're keeping it simply. Weight is a measurable force acting upon every object in a graviy field, drawing it towards the field's center. In our case, it keeps us attached to the ground. If you want to fly, you need to cancel this force. The first (and apparently easier) way would be to generate a counter-force - the natural way most things that can fly manage to do so. This should not require much energy, but may be a problem in actual practice because of mass distribution - that might require very careful tuning and probably constant reorientation of the employed force vectors in flight. The other way to do it is more elegant, but requires a different set of abilities: cancelling out the gravity field of Earth. As said, that's quite elegant and shouldn't require too much fine-tuning, since the strength of the gravity field acting upon your body is pretty much uniform to any degree one should be able to feel when flying. However, requirements are something else - we do not know if it is at all possible, but it might involve negative mass, which could present interesting inertial problems. Note that, surprisingly, most superheroes do seem to display little inertia, judging from their agility in flight. In other times, there does seem to be inertia involved when the hero needs to brake himself - had he no inertia, he could basically stop in mid-flight. This represents another interesting problem in itself - inertial dampening must be possible, too, else Superman could be turned into goo every time he went full speed from zero. Both solutions present problems - the first one allows nearly arbitary placement of forces, which would point to a supreme level of control over kinetic energies, whereas the second one involves substances we're not even sure of about whether they can *possibly* exist at all. Or you can blame it on subspace. Your choice.
Perhaps more later, if you want to see it.