Hello, New Super Hero!

Hello, New Super Hero!

You are on an incredible journey--accessing power beyond your imagining, seeing the world and yourself in a new way, and using this new power according to your values.

Every super hero has a guide, and if you have one, great! Either way, this blog post is intended to outline the steps a hero's mentor usually suggests. I hope it will help you successfully navigate this journey.

Step one:
The first step in the journey is becoming aware of this new power. Please take a moment to remember when you first encountered it and how you felt when you realized how much it will affect the world as we know it.

I assume that you were not bitten by a spider or zapped by gamma rays (please fill out the contact form if you were), but my own experience was of awe and dread at the same time. "This is Star Trek (my happy place) combined with perfected executive functioning (my dream place), and oh crap somebody's going to use this to blow up the planet," I thought. "And first they are going to mess with our heads so much that we won't even notice when it does blow up."

Step two:
Once you notice this super power, use it exuberantly! It's amazing, right? Pose a question and an answer appears. Ask for the code for a website and zzt zzt zzt, word by word, the code pours onto your screen, or ask it to write an appellate brief with sources and you're good to go to court. Create an agent, snap your fingers, and you can get a plane ticket to exactly where you want to go, at the right time, in the best seat, at the right price.

[sarcasm redacted]

Step three:
At some point you will realize that using this power to generate videos of cats in fireman uniforms, saving firemen from trees, is always fun until the cats start to cut down the trees with chainsaws, and then an agent steals your video and uses it in a campaign to raise money for accidental time-travelers.

And the costs start to become clear:

• being embarrassed by presenting unvalidated, incorrect information

• wasting hours correcting errors and realizing that you still need to know, like, a lot

• the enormous amount of environmental resources required

• swaths of jobs eliminated and replaced by the new power

• confusion and violence spurred by misinformation in the guise of trusted sources

Now is the time to examine your values, your internal personal beliefs. What is important to you about how you behave? How do your values mesh with ethics, which are external, shared rules about right and wrong? Other people using the same super power may have different values--how do you decide whether to align with, negotiate or reject them?

Most importantly, what is your responsibility when using this super power? While we can ask the creators of this super power to prevent it from being harmful, it is essential that we be responsible with it ourselves.

This is such a confronting step that you may find yourself doing it in stages. That's perfectly normal; just keep going. Once you have started thinking it through, considering how it affects those you know and love, as well as those you don't know and love, you cannot unthink it. Over time, new information will arise and your experience will broaden. This will affect your priorities, so give yourself grace to grow and learn.

Step four:
This is where the rubber meets the road. It is now up to you to use the super power in alignment with your values. As we know from the movies, both heroes and villains act in alignment with their values, so just because you are on a super power journey does not mean you will end up doing good. But I hope you will do good, or a least more good than bad over time.

And now...
Okay, Super Hero. Time to pick a name and get a uniform (or at least a t-shirt), and go forth and use your power wisely. And always remember: Use your humanity with this super power, because it doesn't have it (yet?).