>> because Helen /suggested/ the activity he was NOT prepared for, was NOT properly trained for, and felt like he could NOT say NO to.
AKA "coerced consent", and no better when it happens for a "good cause" than when it's used to cow a rape victim. <<
I would not classify this as coercion, because it was based on pressure rather than force. Danso could have said no to Granny Whammy; some people do; or far more easily, said no to Hannah who would have made it stick with Granny Whammy.
I'd call it "undue influence." It's a social effect, rather than physical force or official authority. A problem is that Granny Whammy has that kind of undue force over nearly the whole of humanity. There are maybe five people who are both her equal in some sort of power and just plain not impressed by her -- Dr. Infanta and Aidan, for instance. Danso is actually more powerful in terms of his superpower, but he's so awed that he doesn't put up a fight. Hannah will tell Granny Whammy to go soak her head; so will Junket. But most people just do what Granny Whammy says, and that's turning the undue influence into the water that fish don't see. What really pins it down is Danso saying that Hannah shouldn't yell at Granny Whammy because of who she is rather than the validity of her argument.
It's exactly that effect, why people like teachers, doctors, pastors, etc. are widely considered to have undue influence if they misuse their authority. It's not just about official ability to command someone, but about social weight that more-or-less mesmerizes people into following commands regardless of whether they're backed by any authoritarian structure.
>> Granny Whammy is WRONG about this. "Civic duty uber alles" is like "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" -- a decision you can only make for YOURSELF, not for someone else. <<
It's not wrong, it's incomplete. The individual and society are two ends of a spectrum with the healthy part in the middle. Too much emphasis on society and you get despotism. Too much on the individual and you get anarchy. Civic duty is a virtue of civilization. Self-determination is a virtue of individuality. We need both. Terramagne actually has a better balance of that than our world does. It's just that Granny Whammy is ... kind of an avatar of civic duty, and she doesn't always realize that too much of a good thing can be very bad.
She's far enough from her home time that the ideals she grew up with no longer fit as well as they did decades ago. Plus there are not just more soups, but younger and younger ones, which nobody has finished figuring out how to handle yet. SPOON needs more flexibility to cope with that. The premise that "everyone should be a superhero" leaves out all the people who can't or don't want to be, and leaving people out causes problems. Sometimes supervillain ones. It's not an official requirement, insofar as SPOON has any, but the expectation is enough to bug some people.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Merry Giftmas!
Date: 2014-12-22 11:05 am (UTC)AKA "coerced consent", and no better when it happens for a "good cause" than when it's used to cow a rape victim. <<
I would not classify this as coercion, because it was based on pressure rather than force. Danso could have said no to Granny Whammy; some people do; or far more easily, said no to Hannah who would have made it stick with Granny Whammy.
I'd call it "undue influence." It's a social effect, rather than physical force or official authority. A problem is that Granny Whammy has that kind of undue force over nearly the whole of humanity. There are maybe five people who are both her equal in some sort of power and just plain not impressed by her -- Dr. Infanta and Aidan, for instance. Danso is actually more powerful in terms of his superpower, but he's so awed that he doesn't put up a fight. Hannah will tell Granny Whammy to go soak her head; so will Junket. But most people just do what Granny Whammy says, and that's turning the undue influence into the water that fish don't see. What really pins it down is Danso saying that Hannah shouldn't yell at Granny Whammy because of who she is rather than the validity of her argument.
It's exactly that effect, why people like teachers, doctors, pastors, etc. are widely considered to have undue influence if they misuse their authority. It's not just about official ability to command someone, but about social weight that more-or-less mesmerizes people into following commands regardless of whether they're backed by any authoritarian structure.
>> Granny Whammy is WRONG about this. "Civic duty uber alles" is like "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" -- a decision you can only make for YOURSELF, not for someone else. <<
It's not wrong, it's incomplete. The individual and society are two ends of a spectrum with the healthy part in the middle. Too much emphasis on society and you get despotism. Too much on the individual and you get anarchy. Civic duty is a virtue of civilization. Self-determination is a virtue of individuality. We need both. Terramagne actually has a better balance of that than our world does. It's just that Granny Whammy is ... kind of an avatar of civic duty, and she doesn't always realize that too much of a good thing can be very bad.
She's far enough from her home time that the ideals she grew up with no longer fit as well as they did decades ago. Plus there are not just more soups, but younger and younger ones, which nobody has finished figuring out how to handle yet. SPOON needs more flexibility to cope with that. The premise that "everyone should be a superhero" leaves out all the people who can't or don't want to be, and leaving people out causes problems. Sometimes supervillain ones. It's not an official requirement, insofar as SPOON has any, but the expectation is enough to bug some people.