What are you capable of?

This week’s Heroes was really quite drawn out, but there were still a few things I got from it. This episode had a lot of flashbacks to when Mrs. Petrelli was a young girl. The main idea was that the government found out that certain people had these special abilities and they locked them up in a camp in the desert. The doctors there killed kids and adults because they were different and Mrs. Petrelli lost all her family. The guilt she felt, combined with seeing a horrendous future, lead her to form a group with some of the other kids at the camp. Together they formed the “company” that we’ve seen from the very first season. This “company” has come off as evil, but as we find out here, it didn’t start out that way. This is what leads me to my point today.
The company’s goal was always a good one at heart, just gone horribly wrong. So it leaves me thinking about a few things.
Is it okay to do evil things, in order to achieve something good, the ultimate good? The ultimate evil for the ultimate good? You’ve heard the question before. Could you kill one to save twenty?
Well imagine this was a reality. Hundreds will be tortured and murdered. If you could try to change that, if it meant killing, would you be able to? Would you even want to?
It comes back to that whole ‘you can’t change the future’ notion. How can you be sure? Isn’t it worth trying?
I tried to think about what I would really do in this situation and I think it comes down to the fact that we are capable of anything if we put our mind to it. So I asked myself, am I capable of doing something like this? In this world, no. But I’ve had a good life, where I’m not fearing for my life every day.
What do you think? Would you be able to? Even if you were able to, would you take that course?
In life, right and wrong isn’t always clear. You might think the scenario here is outlandish or a waste of time to think about. But it’s not impossible. History’s already shown us that one man is capable of manipulating and brainwashing a country into thinking some people aren’t worthy of life, that it would be okay to imprison thousands, torture and kill them, just because they weren’t the same, because one man said his way was right, that some people were less than him and his followers, and it was their duty to destroy all of them.
So it’s not impossible. History repeats itself. I don’t think that sitting at my desk, thinking about how I would handle a situation like that would prepare me, nor do I think that I need to prepare. But it does help put my life in perspective.


With reflective thoughts,
Pearl