We're Better Off When Things Feel Terrible
A lesson in paradox.
In Alan Moore's 1986 graphic novel Watchmen, a retired superhero named Ozymandias genetically engineers a giant alien squid and then teleports it to New York, where it kills 3 million people in a single day. The attack shocks the world into peace, ending the Cold War.
There's a weird logic to what Ozymandias does.
In order to reverse the planet's slow descent into a nuclear apocalypse, he has to trick them into thinking there's a far bigger threat. Even that's not enough. This fake threat has to cause so much death and destruction so fast that it looks and feels worse than nuclear armageddon, which would kill far more than 3 million people but which everyone in the 1980s seemed to tolerate as a daily risk.
Maybe you find yourself reminiscing over the early days of 2020, despite the accusations that it makes you sound mentally ill or sadistic. Maybe you've been accused of wishing for things to get worse. Maybe sometimes you secretly pray for the equivalent of a giant squid att…