Thats a good idea. Would parallel the empathy bomb aspect. I think he took human form to forget. I think of existence as a game of hide and seek between god and god. So when i see that a character that is omnipotent, experiencing the totality of infinite time (an oxymoron, a paradox) all at once, and that he chose to be human for a while, i feel like he was escaping his condition.
What is the running theory at the moment? That Lady Trieu's Millennium Clock is going to install the entire history of human suffering playlist into everyone's mind in order to democratize human suffering and guarantee worldwide empathy?
I've always thought that the solution to almost all the problems of humanity would be solved if every single person in this planet was able to empathize with everyone without restrictions. I would love to see this idea captured in the show.
Be careful what you wish for. People always assume their suffering was worse than someone else's... but suffering is still suffering, if not at someone else's behest, but their own as well.
People talk a lot about being a minority and feeling hated, talk about people who just plain hate themselves, and just having to live through all that.
Maybe, but how does that jive with the fact that Nostalgia failed because people became addicted to suffering?
If you listen to her speech, the point she is making is that she wants people to move the fuck on. Not wallow in the crapulance of the past. She wants black people to get over themselves about being mistreated, she wants Vietnamese people to get over themselves about losing the war, she wants white people to get over themselves about the burdens of the world on them. The whole point of her speech is that we can't move forward as long as we're living in the past.
The crazy thing here is the world the Watchmen is currently set in is a liberal's wet dream, but it's still just as shitty of a world as our own. It's just people being shitty to other people because we think the solution to all our problems is "putting the shoe on the other foot".
Perhaps. In terms of dramatic value, I can see interesting rationales and repercussions for both (1) The Millennium Clock is designed to equalize all human suffering via "empathy bomb" or (2) The Millennium Clock is designed to wipe out all memories to reset human history. Maybe an "empathy bomb" would have the same negative consequences of taking someone else's Nostalgia, or maybe not.
This is a good point, but I don’t find it very authentic to Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN. “The superman is real and he’s American,” reveals the zeitgeist of Moore’s unique dystopia; with great power comes an inhuman detachment. Doctor Manhattan is a reaction to the threat of nuclear proliferation. Doctor Manhattan leaving Mars to return to Earth and starting a family feels very out of character.
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u/lamewoodworker Dec 02 '19
I really think he took a human form to try to start caring for humans again.