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Your main point is excellent but it is your aside regarding twelve step programs that grabbed my interest. My father suffered from alcoholism and has been sober now for close to 25 years. I believe AA played an important role in his recovery. HOWEVER, I do agree with some commenters that the process is "culty" and "weird" to an outsider having experienced a few meetings in person in support of my dad (i.e. receiving his 5 year token).

All that said, my biggest issue related to how the "sponsor" relationship worked. The process for getting a sponsor seemed to be some form of meritocracy based on the length of time a person had been sober. The clear assumption was the longer you had been sober, the better a sponsor you could be to persons new to the program.

The problem with this logic is that Alcoholics have many personal problems that stem from their addiction to alcohol. Stopping the drinking is simply a first "Step" (see what I did there?) in putting your life back together. The sponsor seemed great on the drinking part but in my dad's case, his sponsors became a bit of a hideously underqualified life coach as well. For dad, his ability to filter the sponsor's good advice received regarding his drinking habits from the poor advice he received on how to handle problems with his marriage, professional career, and finanical issues was non-existent. I can't speak for anyone else, but this devotion my father had to his sponsor over anyone else in his life was one of the primary reasons why I came to despise the program over time.

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I agree; I believe you conclude it to be "[c]haos". But it seems that where Dardseid is evaluated for his evil exercise of agency more weight is given to free will (i.e. freedom) as an unassailable virtue not to be violated because slavery is bad. That is, Darkseid's agency is bad because it violates good agency. Thus we're back to a relativistic critique of good and evil which countermands the established definition of WORKS vs. BROKEN.

So what are your definitions of free will and what constitutes slavery?

Because when I read the following it seems to suggest that the denial of agency (i.e. free will) is the measure of true evil. I can't think of anything more obstructive to my agency than being denied my existence a la The Snap.

>If you ask me, there is no greater evil than slavery, and there is no more perfect presentation of the evil of slavery than the corruption of the most powerful icon of good in superhero history into a destroyer of worlds.

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Wait, I missed that in Infinity War or you're incorrect.

When Stark and Thanos have their final conversation he states "I hope they remember you". This was a criticism of Stark's (and the Avengers) attempt stop inevitability (or destiny) which Thanos believed he embodied. It was a statement that Thanos believed that all survivors of The Snap would remember Stark's futility.

Just as Thanos is about to then deliver a coup de grâce Dr. Strange barters the Time Stone under the condition that Thanos doesn't outright kill him. This is not the same as excluding Stark from The Snap. For all Thanos knew, Stark had a 50% chance of being dusted anyway. Dr. Strange, on the other hand, had the benefit of knowing that Stark was destined to survive The Snap.

There is nothing indicating that Thanos made any exceptions in the The Snap. Indeed, it would be antithetical for him to make any exception when his whole schtick was balance.

I'm open to correction in this regard if there is some evidence contained within the films that prove an exception.

True, but the difference between half of all life in the universe and half of all life in the universe minus one life is basically half the life in the universe.

> All of the universe's consciousness condensed in one density prior to the big bang expansion.

Do you think its experience would be in any way analogous to what we experience? There's no reason to think this entity would have biological sensations, like our experience of hunger, so it's unclear what we might meaningfully derive from this claim even if we accept it as true. As you pointed out, it just results in a lot of "I don't know"s.

> does this density qualify as a god?

Gods are usually described as intelligent beings that interact with humans somehow. I don't think the sort of information processing required for intelligence is possible here. There's also no evidence that it has any direct relationship with humans.

You might be able to simplify by appealing to a sort of deism, but IMHO that usually just ends up making it less godlike. Of course, it depends on how exactly you go about it. Here's an argument for atheism that I made a while back using similar terms. What qualities do you think such an entity might have that could make it worthy of the title "god"?

No, philosophical libertarianism is the bad guy. It’s not my definition of free will.

It wasn’t completely random because he wanted to spare Tony

Thanos is evil.

If he had the power to kill half of all living creatures in the universe to reduce the impact on resources, he also had the power to double the resources.

He didn't need to kill everyone.

Prick.

This is a random jumble of thoughts which are so disorganized and poorly composed that the author seems to endorse mass murder, equates Judeo-Christian morality as being the same as an agenda of mass murder, and is rife with run on paragraphs.
seemingly, the author is unfamiliar with the works of the following themes:

Nietzsche, Hobbes, Rousseau, and skips the mention of any libertarian ideas. In fact, the philosophical arguments presented for libertarianism gets a straw man treatment.

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This is just about as far as one can get from an "academic treatment of villainy" and also just about as far as you can get from a real discussion of philosophy or the values inherent in pop culture.

I have lots of issues with contemporary analytic philosophy, but I find this article unpersuasive.

If analytic philosophy "often thinks of itself as above history and politics," that's because analytic philosophers think you can do philosophy without a lot of historical engagement, not because any of them would assert (of all things!) that the history of philosophy in the United States has not been affected by political forces. It hardly tells against the methods of contemporary analytic philosophers that their discipline was shaped by McCarthyism.

I also would report that I find "the story that analytic philosophers tell themselves" pretty plausible. Sure, there are differences in the conception and purpose of analysis found in Frege, Russell, Moore, the early Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle. But they were unified in taking the analysis of language to be the task of philosophy. And while contemporary Anglo-American philosophy is clearly the descendent of such thinkers, it does not take the analysis of language to be the task of philosophy; it shares their style but not that commitment. That is mainly owing to Quine. The late Wittgenstein undermined the idea that analysis reveals a hidden foundation of language and perhaps loosened the hold of analytic philosophy on the philosophical world, but it seems to me that Anglo-American philosophy is really made in Quine's image. He proposed a conception of philosophy as theory-building continuous with natural science; the philosopher's task is to figure out what we need to posit in order to explain _______ (the passing show, ordinary objects, mental phenomena, whatever). That seems to me what unifies the contemporary Anglo-American philosophical mainstream today (even among people who do not share Quine's naturalism).

That's why it's accurate to say that the early analytic philosophers were genuinely concerned with analysis, while today's analytic philosophers are more held together by style and history than particular theses.

All mental disorders, by definition, are conditions that cause people to be unable to function in normal society without duress unless treated. Thats why they are disorders.

But not everyone suffering from psychopathy (or sociopathy) does any more evil things than the average neurotypical. Dangerous people are dangerous, but psychopathy =/= dangerous.

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I'm inclined to disagree. The essay finds a need to emphasize the biggest baddie and call that evil, but much evil is done through the "banality of evil", or through those who are misguided and think they're on the side of the good. Being broken can lead to evil, but sometimes the utmost ordinariness or in fact a rage at the broken can lead to evil.

Batman and The Joker: both broken, and then the interest becomes in dramatizing WHY only The Joker is evil

Marvel's Ultron is evil, and his evil stems from his rage at the evil inherent in humanity, that humans are broken, and he thinks he is superior to that. Vision, in contrast, is forgiving of brokenness.

Thanos's first words (aside from earlier cameos) are: "I know what it's like to lose." Complexity makes a better villain. Too extreme villainy doesn't have as much to teach us. There's nothing for us to identify with and say: well, if I mis-step, I could end up like that. Marvel's tagline for Spiderman is "with great power comes great responsibility", and canonically Spiderman learned that lesson from the death of his Uncle Ben when he sat on the sidelines. Marvel characters can move back and forth between hero and villain, like Loki and Wanda.

I don't think freedom and libertarianism have ever been central comic book concerns. Superman seems somewhat boring, but that's because he's a fantasy fulfillment, what if Good always had the upper hand, what if we never had to ask if God had abandoned us (Kal El means "voice of God".)

Total good and total bad are not guides for us in our lives here on Earth, they are escapist fantasy, like libertarianism.

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He said psychopaths are broken in way that makes them dangerous to society and that psychopaths are considered evil. He didn't say all broken people are evil.

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His Thanoscopter capers weren't enough, so he had to really step up his game

So pedophilia is not evil?

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