Reflections on the Nice Superhero and The Last Airbender, Part II

The question raised by The Last Airbender and other action/superhero films is--

If a superhero truly intends not to harm people, how responsible is the superhero for the consequences when the venial and evil people continue to live and carry out their venial and evil deeds? (The question, Does anyone truly believe that death won't result from the superhero's actions? is an important but separate question. Tony Stark and Hancock alone appear to address the issue of collateral damage.)

The issue of unintended consequences--or fully intended consequences--deserves to be answered in either direction. And it deserves to become a haunting question. Reece poses it in Person of Interest. Bren poses it in C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series when he deliberately sends a human back into an imprisoning environment to avoid the man's appearance upsetting the planet's delicate diplomatic relations and potentially leading to all-out war. Bren fully accepts what he has done and its moral implications.

For that matter, Christianity rests on one answer to that question, followed by an eucastrophe, but its followers don't necessarily answer the question in the same way, and I'm not saying they should or shouldn't. 

The point is: the problem must be faced. 

I think a fair answer would be: My people do what they do, but I have absolute power, so I refrain as far as I can. (This is the answer Aang appears to settle on--though stripping another human being of that being's inherent nature presents its own moral quandary.) 

But the cost of refraining (therefore, some of my people must fight and die and/or suffer) still should be addressed/faced. 

There's a reason Dune has such a complicated anti-hero at its core--because Paul is trying to balance impossible forces without resorting to the use of absolute persuasion. And he knows there is no pure answer. 

In many ways, a superhero/deity who accepts the lack of a pure answer is preferable: mercy on a day-to-day basis rather than an increasingly narrow definition of "pure" (determining who deserves to live) until no one is left (see Ono Fuyumi's handling of legalism and current-day university culture regarding the problems of increasingly narrowed definitions). 

But even the fall-out of the merciful decision is part of the problem. Aang's previous Avatars advise him to act quickly and without compunction in part because they regret their failure to do so. But their individual perspectives are skewed due to their regret. In reality, they can't  know how things would have turned out otherwise any more than they can foretell the end result for Aang. Aang must eventually make the decision alone.

Difficult moral problem. Good stories when it is faced!