[NOTE: The following essay contains plot spoilers for the movie and book versions of Alan Moore's Watchmen. It is highly recommended that you experience one or both before continuing. You have been so warned.]
In making her case for the usefulness of disaster, Rebecca Solnit argues that catastrophe holds a certain cooperative potential that exists outside governance and law; in creating the conditions for a ”state of nature’, natural disasters expose human behavior uninhibited by the concerns (and external limits) of the everyday and provide a ‘profound satisfaction’ that ‘transcends even disaster’s devastation.’ In using comparative language, Solnit claims that disasters are on the whole a positive, transformative development in their ‘rupture of the ordinary’ – that is, a world with catastrophe, particularly effective and destructive if possible, is preferable to an existence in a perfect state of control.
On face, it seems a callous and repugnant moral calculus to make; people die for the sake of, say, connecting with old friends and holding an impromptu village meeting. From another perspective, however, a disaster of large enough scale can broaden the global consciousness and expose injustices, as Solnit cites in the sympathetic response to 9/11 or the feelings of solidarity after the Mexico City earthquakes.
Solnit’s philosophy exists on a similar wavelength to Adrian Veidt’s in Watchmen. In unleashing deadly staged attacks throughout the major cities of the world to look like an externally controlled disaster (in the graphic novel, aliens; in the film, a Dr. Manhattan atomic explosion), Ozymandias intends to bring world peace. America and the USSR, great powers on the brink of nuclear annihilation, would mutually disarm and work outside their ideological differences in the face of destruction beyond their immediate control. As long as the secret – that their strings had been pulled by a rogue hero-turned-super-vigilante – was kept, peace was possible; the twenty million or more innocent victims that Veidt’s schemes killed ‘would not die in vain.’
Ozymandias’ argument seems persuasive if we accept Solnit’s premise (namely, that the long-term results of disaster relief outweigh the short-term deaths of thousands or more) and a utilitarian ethic. As Veidt responds to his colleagues’ angry objections, he has killed millions – but to save the billions who would be destroyed by an all-out war.
To put the ball back in Solnit’s court, what gives us – or Ozymandias – the moral authority to claim what level of disaster is justifiable against murder? The most salient response would probably come along the lines of Walzer’s ‘dirty hands’ – Ozymandias accepted the moral culpability for his mass murder, at least claiming to have seen and experienced the pain of every one of his victims, and has to live with the consequences of keeping the truth to himself.
Though the series’ end is somewhat ambiguous, Alan Moore himself would probably disagree with both Solnit and Walzer. To the unabashedly anarchistic Moore, the decision to exterminate all or a portion of humanity – regardless of whose hands the ‘big red button’ is in, be it a comic book villain or the President – cannot fall to a single person or any hierarchical system of policy making. Annihilation, by the will of a ‘majority’ or an intellectual (here, Veidt and the complicit Solnit) leaves the door open for twisted interpretations of who deserves to live and die.
Perhaps the most explosive response is also the shortest. When asked by Veidt whether his ostensibly fateful and final decision was, in the end, the right one, Doctor Manhattan replies:
“Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”
Sources:
Moore, Alan. Watchmen, 1986. DC Comics.
Solnit, Rebecca. “The Uses of Disaster”.
White, Mark. “The Virtues of Night Owl’s Potbelly”, 2007.
–kd
I would have to agree with Moore’s perspective on the role of disaster on human nature. Disasters in any form may be beneficial for the general will, but to individuals in society, a disaster can be devastating. The question that arises, then, is that of who deserves the negative aspects of disasters. Such a decision should not lie in the hands of any explicit portion of society. Instead, society should look for positive solutions to general maladies caused by selfishness. The only question I would pose is whether utilitarianism can be applied to situations that do not involve the death of any individuals, or if it should not be applied to any situations at all, due to the double standard of applying it only in certain situations.
It’s funny — I saw Watchmen in theaters last March and loved the film; however, only after reading this blog post do I realize the correlation between Veidt’s and Solnit’s arguments. It seems as if the character Veidt is taking Solnit’s claims to an extreme here, trying to argue the benefit of mass murder. I wholly doubt Solnit was ever attempting to convince her readers that, while positive results do derive from disaster, the instigation of tragedy should be the prerogative of any one person or the government. It’s important to remember that she was more or less offering a counter-argument to Hobbes’ claims of the State of Nature. In doing such, Solnit speaks more to the natural essence of human character than she does to the “benefit” of society suffering from such a calamity. I think this difference must be maintained before attempting to defend Vedit’s heinous plan.
Your blog post poses an interesting correlation between Watchmen and the Solnit reading. I would have never thought to link the two together before reading your post. While I see how Ozymandia’s plan brings people together and ultimately achieves wolrd peace, I don’t necessarily agree that it follows Solnit’s views exactly. I feel like her writing was to make light of a bad situation; that in natural disasters, some good can come out of it. Those disasters and the devastation it caused could not be helped. Doesn’t it kind of defeat the purpose if a disaster is planned?
@ Josh and Julia:
I partially agree with both of you – Solnit’s essay is perhaps not an on-face _affirmation_ of Veidt’s argument, but as outlined near the end of the essay, her philosophy would likely be complicit with his actions (that is, like Nite Owl and Manhattan, she would see the importance of silent cooperation instead of attempting to expose injustice like Rorschach).
If Solnit’s argument is not normative – i.e., given the choice to ‘play God’ like Ozymandias does, we should choose an ostensibly small ‘disaster’ over letting a potential nuclear war play itself out – it still serves as a foundational, descriptive justification for Ozymandias’ actions. If we can be guaranteed that the world sees the Manhattan bomb (or the alien squid) as an opportunity to unify and rebuild without the interference of nationalism or ideology, and that such a world is, as Solnit seems to agree, preferable (see the use of comparative language, first paragraph), then we should have no compunctions about Veidt’s villainy.
(That, of course, presupposes a whole variety of other ethical concerns, like Moore’s objection to proto-authoritarian decision-making and the massive lie that Veidt has to stick to…but both are worth essays in and of themselves.)