#365DaysOfWriting – Day 192
What is the greater good?
I’m always reminded of Ozymandias from Watchmen whenever anyone talks about ‘the greater good’.
*SPOILERS AHEAD IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T READ THE COMIC*
Let’s talk about the decision he took here, yeah?
Unilaterally, he decided to ‘save’ the world from an impending apocalyptic nuclear war.
There was no murmur of a consultation with his team even. As you can see in the panel above, he executed his plan long before his team got to him.
He took the lives of millions to save billions.
He accepted the decision of one of his teammates to kill the other so he could keep this act of genocide a secret. He even killed a member of the team himself, when that person got too close to the truth.
Eventually, the world goes back to its dull existence, not having known how close to extinction they were.
So the result has been achieved: a nuclear war, averted.
But… is Ozymandias truly a hero?
What gave him the right to decide who lives and who doesn’t?
If he truly was the world’s cleverest man, surely there were other ways to avert a war that he could’ve thought of.
He basically acted like a dictator to ‘save’ the world. When there was no guarantee of the world being saved.
Was the cost of the decision worth the result eventually? Was it indeed for the greater ‘good’?
