- Spider-Man is great, and while Spidey is often showcased
as swinging around New York without a care in the world,
Peter Parker's personal life is almost always
a complete mess.
But he doesn't have the time to sort it all out.
He's busy Spider-Maning.
And you know what they say,
"With great power comes great responsibility."
But does it, though?
(upbeat rock music)
Welcome to Comic Misconceptions.
I'm Scott, and a few weeks back
I was on Comic Drake's channel
talking about Spider-Man.
Now, the web-head is my favorite superhero of all time ever,
but the video was kind of more about our
unpopular opinions regarding the character.
And one that I had mentioned was something
that always bugs me, every single time it happens.
Because he's always out fighting crime and saving the day,
Peter Parker is constantly late
for important events in his life,
or the lives of his friends and family,
if he manages to show up at all, that is.
And when he finally does arrive,
he usually spouts off some lame excuse.
Sometimes people buy it, sometimes they don't.
But I just find it so frustrating.
I know, I know, this is the sacrifice that Peter makes
when he goes out webbing up New York.
He often has to choose between his personal life
and his hero life.
And more often than not, he leans more towards that latter.
Like Uncle Ben says, "With great power
"comes great responsibility."
But just because Peter was granted the power
to become Spider-Man, does that automatically mean
that he inherits a great burden of responsibility?
This is what I want to take a look at today.
And I think a really fantastic story
that will allow us to examine this famous phrase
is the Superior Spider-Man series.
During Superior Spider-Man,
Peter Parker's mind was swapped
with that of Dr. Otto Octavius, aka Doctor Octopus.
There'll be some minor spoilers about this arc
throughout this whole video,
so you have been warned.
But honestly, enough time has passed
already that you probably already know this stuff
even if you haven't read it.
So Peter Parker's mind was put into Doc Ock's body.
And then he died.
Meanwhile, Otto's mind was in Peter's healthy body.
And you might first think that Doc Ock,
a notorious super villain, would use Parker's
spider-enhanced body to wreak havoc across New York,
but he instead vows to become a hero.
Not just a hero, but one who is superior
to Peter Parker's Spider-Man.
That's where they get the name from.
And honestly, he kinda lived up to that,
at least, in my opinion.
He was a more menacing and brutal Spider-Man, sure,
but he got the job done.
His methods were different than Parker's,
and even echoed a villain mentality,
like having an army of spider-clad henchmen, for example.
Heck, Doc Ock even tried to be a better Peter Parker
than the actual Peter Parker
by going back to college to earn a doctorate,
setting up his own company called Parker Industries,
and arguably having a more successful dating life
with his colleague and eventual business partner,
Anna Maria Marconi.
I think Anna Maria summed up Doc Ock's
run as Spider-Man quite nicely
when she said, quote, "That's what I like about you.
"You want a doctorate?
"You get it.
"Your own company?
"Boom.
"There it is.
"You help out Spider-Man, you look after your aunt.
"Anything you want to do, you just do it,
"and do it well, no excuses, just results.
"You're amazing."
But, as philosopher, Alain de Botton, said in his TED Talk,
quote, "You can't be successful at everything."
I love that man.
He goes on to say, quote, "You can't have it all.
"You just can't.
"So any vision of success has to admit
"what it's losing out on,
"where the element of loss is.
"And I think any wise life will accept,
"as I say, that there's going to be an element
"where we're not succeeding."
I think it's fairly clear where that element of loss is
for the Superior Spider-Man.
It's being Spider-Man.
During his tenure as the web-slinger,
Otto put into action a lot of systems
that allowed him to actually spend less time as Spider-Man,
and more time on his personal life, education, and business.
One of those systems was simply allowing
the police to take care of all the
lesser crimes and emergencies,
so he didn't have to do everything himself.
And instead of going out on patrol like Peter would,
Otto sent out spider-bots to patrol the city for him.
And this ended up causing a lot of problems
after they were hacked not to detect goblin activity.
And as you would expect, the goblins took over the city.
Doc Ock knew that he was unable to save the day.
The Superior Spider-Man wasn't superior in this area.
He sacrificed his life to restore Peter's brain patterns
to his rightful body so that he could set things right.
Peter Parker was once again the Amazing Spider-Man.
And as he got back into the swing of things,
(laughs) that was a dumb pun,
he couldn't get on board with the idea
of not helping out in every single emergency.
Yes, the police could indeed handle the small stuff,
but to Pete, there is no small stuff.
A citywide attack by Electro is just as important
as a convenience store robbery.
Anna Maria tries to tell him to stop spending so much time
as Spider-Man, and focus on being Peter Parker
because he too has responsibilities of his own.
She explains that great responsibility
doesn't mean all responsibility.
So, based off of this story, I think it's clear
that Doc Ock and Peter have different views
in terms of duties,
but what kind of duties are there?
Stop laughing.
Philosophers sometimes separate negative duties,
a moral obligation to not do harm to someone,
and positive duties,
a moral obligation to help someone,
or at the very least, not allow harm to come to someone.
As a general rule, observing negative duties
is seen as a requirement,
whereas positive duties can be neglected.
This line of thinking is reflected in legal systems
all around the world.
It's typically considered a crime to inflict harm on others,
but not a crime to abstain from helping.
We also tend to see negative duties as more stringent
because they're easier to follow.
Refraining from doing harm to others
is simpler and less demanding
than actively doing good all of the time.
Perhaps Doctor Octopus see being the Superior Spider-Man
as supererogatory, meaning it's good if you do it,
but it's not bad if you don't.
If he takes down Kingpin's base of criminal operations,
then good for him.
If he wants to let the police handle things for awhile
as he stays in, working on his business
or personal life, then that is totally fine too.
To him, the moral obligation of positive duties
isn't as strong as it is in Peter.
And the reason why Peter might feel like
positive duties are morally binding
could go back to part of his origin.
Remember that classic scene
where he allowed a burglar to run past him and escape,
even though he absolutely could have done something?
Again, it's much simpler to not be a thief
than it is to stop a thief.
And perhaps this, at least in some capacity,
was what was going through Pete's mind at the time.
Of course, we all know what happened next.
The burglar he let go ended up being responsible
for the death of Peter's uncle Ben,
and crying faces ensue.
That death instilled in him that with great power
comes great responsibility.
In fact, the exact original quote was, "With great power
"there must also come great responsibility,"
implying that positive duties
aren't supererogatory, but mandatory.
To Peter, if you have the power to help someone
and you don't, and they're harmed because
of your failure to act, that's wrong,
and you're to blame.
This seems to echo the thoughts of
19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill
who believed that it is our duty to help others
if our failure to do so causes them harm.
You might see this as just another positive duty
to help others, and that duty
could be considered supererogatory.
However, you could also see it as a negative duty
to refrain from not helping others,
which I know sounds confusing, but there you go.
And since negative duties are more morally binding
than positive ones, then according to this interpretation,
one might conclude that we do have the obligation
to help others if we have the means to do so.
With great power indeed comes great responsibility.
But does Peter take this idea too far?
Because of how much effort he puts into
his role as Spider-Man, his personal life,
career, and studies are usually suffering.
Perhaps Otto realized that being that committed
would effectively eliminate his capacity
to live his own life.
In my opinion, however, this is precisely why Spider-Man
is so awesome.
He puts the needs of others before himself
so much so that his life as Peter Parker
is constantly in shambles.
And despite all of that, he continues to put on
the red and blue tights each and every day
because he knows that he has the power to help people,
and to him that means he has to help them.
There is no other option.
"With great power there must come great responsibility."
What do you guys think?
Does great power necessitate great responsibility?
Is Doc Ock right in ignoring the small stuff
in order to live his own life?
Or is Peter right in letting his own personal life suffer
in order to help more people?
Let's talk about it all in the comments below.
And if you want more Spider-Man videos,
check out this one on whether or not
Marvel has trademarked the word "THWIP".
It's one of my personal favorites.
We've also got a video I talked about earlier
on Comic Drake's channel
about our unpopular opinions of Spider-Man.
Click the card right up there to give it a watch.
And tell us how wrong we are.
And if this is your first time hanging out with us
here at NerdSync, considering subscribing
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We make several new comic book videos every week
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so you don't miss out on anything.
Once again, I'm Scott.
You can find me on Twitter and Instagram.
And I will see you guys right here on Friday
for a Tie-In video.
See ya.