The comic strip Frazz was exploring costumes and superheroes for Halloween, and managed to touch on something really fundamental. As long as we’re getting magical, what power would make someone the greatest of all superheroes from an Objectivist perspective?

Not that they would frame it quite this way, but I thought it was pretty cool because they’ve hit upon disabling the source of evil by preventing the self-deception inherent in bad guys evading what they are really up to.

A friend who is working through OPAR bounced these comics to me, probably because he recently saw Peikoff’s discussion of focus, evasion vs. drift, etc. The section, “The Primary Choice as the Choice to Focus or Not” closes by naming the stakes regarding evasion:

The process of evasion, as we will see, is profoundly destructive. Epistemologically, it invalidates a mental process. Morally, it is the essence of evil. According to Objectivism, evasion is the vice that underlies all other vices. In the present era, it is leading to the collapse of the world.

Superman and Batman would be wusses in comparison to Introspection Man, a superhero able to wipe out the world’s evil at its very root!