Fiction and Power

One-dimensional

Most fictional worlds seem to be designed as if there were only one dimension along which you could have power. For example, it is magical power in the Harry Potter universe where Albus Dumbledore and Voldemort are the most powerful characters; thinking power in the HPMOR universe where Professor Quirrell and Harry Potter are the most powerful characters; fighting power in the DBZ universe where Goku and Vegeta and Frieza and so on are the most powerful characters; fighting power again in the Batman universe where Batman and Joker and so on are the most powerful characters.

The point is the others have little or no say in how events unfold. It’s not like politicians or rich people or large groups of ordinary people or the organized military forces or just about anybody else could do the things that the main characters do.

In real life, by contrast, there seem to be lots of dimensions and lots of people with power. There is no single factor that determines the course of history. The scientists argue that it was the scientific revolution that has brought about the quality of living improvements over the last few centuries - the victory of the so-called Enlightenment ideas of progress¹. The finance people argue that financial innovations played a crucial role in global development over the past few centuries². They all seem to be able to give good evidence for their claims, and so they probably all had a role to play.

However, if we feel like emulating our favourite characters from fiction (in books or movies or TV shows), then we might expect there to be some single dimension of power along which we should optimize ourselves and hopefully become the “most powerful” person in the world someday. But that is insanely improbable and thus a very unhealthy goal to shoot for.

Unassailable Lead

Fiction gives you a fundamentally incomplete view of the situation. There is nobody who can be called the most powerful person in the world. No, not even the President of the United States of America - he is hemmed in by several forces outside of his power.

Humans aren’t so different that they can shoot so far ahead of others that nobody can ever catch up. If we agree with the psychological view that humans aren’t born with the skills they use, and in fact learn those skills over years and decades of practice, then what one person can do in ten years, another can do in ten years too, maybe twenty years tops.

Then, how come the top fictional characters are so much more powerful than others? Well, they aren’t constrained by the laws of the real world, only by the limits of what people will accept as stories. And as millenia’s worth of stories will tell us, people will accept just about anything as long as it sounds good.

It’s easy to just say that “Voldemort was the most powerful Dark wizard to come out of Hogwarts in centuries” without having to deal with the difficult questions. Like, why didn’t anybody else become as powerful as Voldy? Ok, maybe he killed everyone who might have done that after him. But what about the people before him? Why didn’t they reach even half of his power level.

The real world is a lot messier. You would be hard-pressed to find a single domain in which you can say someone is the undisputed champion, period.

No matter how strong you are, there will always come along someone who is stronger than you.

– Master Popo, Dragon Ball

More importantly, humans didn’t conquer this planet by having singular heroes who obliterated roadblocks with their sheer power. It was through collaboration. People shared their knowledge, so that nobody had to invent the same thing again and again. People pooled their power, so that together they could overcome enemies who were several times stronger than any man.

But that doesn’t make for as exciting a story.

So what?

Why do I care? Because it is easy to envy a fictional hero, someone who inspires you. I want to become as driven as Batman. I want to be as strong as Goku. I want to think as rationally as Professor Quirrell. I want to be as knowledgeable as Albus Dumbledore.

But that isn’t going to happen. And neither is it as desirable as it seems.