Superpowers vs Your Own Powers

The idea of superpowers is basically the idea of power without effort – of great results, with very little effort. You just sort of flick a finger, or think a thought, and it happens. And that’s intoxicating to us. But it’s not very good for us, because the more that you spend your life exercising superpowers, the less time you spend actually developing your own proper powers, that is, your ability to actually become something different. When we’re exercising superpowers, almost always the technology’s doing most of the work, and we’re doing very little. But the joy of being human is actually engaging fully in the world and learning to do something very difficult often over a long period of time; acquiring a depth of capacity in the world. And I think the superpowers that our devices give us, though they’re very appealing and intoxicating, don’t actually help develop us. And I’d much rather spend my days exercising my proper powers than just playing around with superpowers.