Was he right?

Was he right?

Other urls found in this thread:

birdsbeforethestorm.net/2009/02/mythmakers-lawbreakers-alan-moore-on-anarchism/
youtube.com/watch?v=fKfF-nxjDi0
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

yes

Not really, he was just as crazy and broken as Rorschach.

No.

Maybe

He seemed really smart. I'm not sure if I even really understand what his plans was, it seemed complicated. So he's probably pretty smart

Considering the pessimistic tone of the comic, I'm going to say no.
His plan was doomed to failure from the beginning.
The world will probably end up more fucked than if he had just left well enough alone.
All those people died pointlessly.
Ozymandias was nothing more than a self-important hypocrite.

No. And even if it did work, he could have nuked a city with fewer than a few million people in it and gotten the same effect.

My main problem is that eventually, his plan was going to get found out, and his only hope would be that enough time has passed that Russia and the US don't immediately go at it again. If he wanted to create a scary extraterrestrial threat for the world to unite against, he should have done so in a way that didn't leave a giant corpse of evidence behind to be studied.

Should've just convinced Dr. Manhattan that humanity is worth fighting for. Turn all nukes into candy.

In the movie, yes. In the book, probably not.

No. He achieved a small moment of cooperation but ultimately it's going to fall apart and everything will be right back where it started. His name more or less indicates that.

>"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.

Nothing Ozy accomplished is going to last. He killed millions and for nothing. Manhattan says as much at the end.

All the implications, like Dr. Manhattan's comment that nothing ever ends and Rorschach's journal at the end, point towards no.

Nah, he took it upon himself to save mankind from a situation he forced them into the brink of. So basically he murdered millions because he knew best.
What's the difference in the movie? Besides the obvious differences what makes him right vs what he did in the book?

No one was right, except the Comedian.

No

Dr. M wasn't refering to the immediate future. He was just pointing out the flaw in Veidt's reasoning. Veidt was acting like he had saved humanity forever, but he obviously hadn't. It's a constant struggle to save humanity that will never end.

The only thing I can think of is that Manhattans line about nothing ever ending is said by the Silk Spectre instead of Manhattan. Which was dumb as shit.

The Comedian was the most wrong and even he knew it.

Look what happened irl and ask again.

No, the man is equivalent to Stalin. His ideas are theoretically utopian, but practically dystopian.

That is why he was right.

everyone else failed to recognize their own flaws.

Manhattan had all the power but was impotent. Locked forever into a single vision of the future. He could change it, but he didn't want to.

Veidt, like has been mentioned, thought he could save humanity forever.

Owl, Silk, Rawshark, had given up, but thought they could punch their way to a solution.

He would've been right, if he nuked San Francisco 30 years later instead.

Not even slightly.

Not really comparable since reality completely diverges when Dr. Manhattan changes everything.
With Mahattan, Russia was free to make as many nukes as they could afford.
So even if the USSR collapses now they possibly have satellites with nukes.

>he was right in that he was right about being wrong
Fuck you.

>they possibly have satellites with nukes
Where would that sudden surge of technological progress come from?
Even if Stalin didn't purge (or didn't had the chance to purge) the scientific community, some Russkie needed some serious heroic effort to establish them.

We are shown Nixon in the bunker, watching the east coast get wiped out in a simulation. When asked what he is going to do, he says "Sit and wait". Ozy is predicting nuclear war from increasingly explicit perfume commercials.

Then there's pic related.

Ozy is wrong. We are shown he's wrong, and given an entire allegory about how he's wrong, and his name is a reference to a poem about a king who's works crumbled into dust.

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

If Moore wanted it any clearer he would have released issue 13, the Ozymandias was wrong issue, featuring the Ozymandias was wrong burlesque and hosted by MC OW2 (Ozymandias Was Wrong).

It's not just Manhattan's comments, but also the journal combined with the doomsday clock on the intern's shirt at the end, and the whole Ozymandias poem.

This
Ozzy planned was Watchmens equivalent to to silver age DC villain bumbling about world peace by murdering millions played completely straight in a dark depressing alternate cold-war era reality

Ozymandias poem?

Also Ror is a cook. Everyone knows it.

See In the poem, the pharaoh boasts about his achievements and accomplishments on a statue. The narrator comes across this this statue and notices that it has been destroyed by the ravages of time, and the quotation has obvious implications on Ozymandias' own actions.

It also doesn't matter that Rorscharch is personally not credible. The doomsday clock was first presented with the murder of the Comedian, who was similarly not credible. But one thing led to another, each minor action slowly counting down to midnight. Ozymandias pushed the clock back, but he didn't stop it, and the publication of the journal will likely be minor but one of many ticks back towards doomsday.

By Percy Shelly. It's been linked in the thread here and was used partially in the comic. A king named Ozymandias thought he had created works that would last forever and told all future kings to despair at his greatness. The irony being that time had destroyed them all and only his boast remained, which is in itself something that the rulers he was speaking to should despair. Nothing in permanent. Nothing Veidt did is going to last.

So Ozymandias just bought humanity a little time.

Actually probably yes.

This is alternate history remember, it doesn't have to turn out like out history did. The war between the US and the USSR was coming quickly, and when it did half of the entire US would be destroyed.

If nothing else, Ozy bought humanity some time.

>Locked forever into a single vision of the future. He could change it, but he didn't want to

This is actually wrong. There is no future to Manhattan, he is experiencing it right now. He can't change the future anymore than we can change something that is happening this very instant.

It always floors me when someone argues against Veidt with "but the nukes didn't fly irl so Veidt was wrong".

But have a point.

No

He was arrogant enough to believe that mankind was in his hands to do with as he pleased

Besides the blood he spilled only postponed the inevitable, at most

Well he DID make the decisions. He just sees those decisions and follows the motions. It's Groundhog day an infinite number of iterations down the road. Eventually he falls into a stable routine that never changes.

I don't think his peace is going to last forever, or even exceptionally long, but we're shown that Ozy did potentially end the Cold War, and likely prevented nuclear holocaust. It doesn't matter if what he created lasts forever, because his actions gave humanity a chance, and that was more than they had without him.

The reason he's such a good character is that there's never going to be a unified opinion on him, because both his detractors and his supporters have good points.

It's not necessarily that he he just follows the motions, but that he has "already" made those decisions in our future.

Again, he sees the decisions, but is also making them at that exact moment.

Imagine a number line where every point on it represented an event in your life (doesn't matter how big). A normal human goes about the number line one point at a time in a linear fashion. We call the point we are at the present, points we haven't reached the future, and points we've already reached the past. We can't see what lies ahead on the number line.

Dr. Manhattan is different in that he can see the number line, but he is at every point simultaneously. So he knows what is going to happen, but it is already happening to him. He can't change anything. He is on the same number line as us, but he can see it and can't change any part of it.

Yes, and I was explaining how those decisions were made and why he follows them.

That's what I said. He made them a trillion iterations ago. The moment is exactly the same as it was a trillion iterations ago, it's obviously his decision, but he sees it as something he has lived a trillion times.

He doesn't "follow" them, though. Or at least, he only follows them if you look at him from the perspective of a regular timeline. From his own perspective, he isn't following anything, he is just aware of what he is "going to" do because he already did ithat, and regular people just happen to be seeing it chronologically.

debatable at best. Ozy's argument rests on the widely held but flawed assumption that coldwar peace rested on an evenly split balance of power. Manhatten upset the balance of power making it more likely that the Ruskies would act irrationally but MAD was still in effect.

People tend to forget that by the early 80's the USSR was already losing its edge and the balance was tipping towards the west. The army was large but its equipment was starting to become outdated, the latest generation of US jets clearly outpreformed their soviet counterparts and the navy was a joke compared to the US carrier fleets. Throw in a nuclear reactor meltdown and losing war in Afganistan and you can see why Gorbachev threw in the towel. In short Manhatten ends the coldwar sooner rather than starting WWIII.

His name is literally a red flag going "no matter what this guy does, it's not going to matter in the end"

He saw the future. He chose his action. He saw the outcome of that action. He changed his action. He saw the outcome of THAT action. And so on. He in effect has lived every day a trillion times. he made his decision long ago and is just going through the motions, hence his despondency, tachyons nonwithstanding.

>He saw the future.
He didn't just see the future, he saw the future, past and present as the exact same instant. It's not like his conciousness is at the same time point as everyone elses' and he has foresight, but that his conciousness exists at every point simultaneously.

That's what I said but with more reasoning.

See, this comment makes me think you just aren't really getting it. He isn't seeing the future. He is experiencing the future now. Can you change what you doing in this exact instant? Can you make a different choice. And I do mean if you take time to equal zero, can you make your hand be in a completely different place? Your eyes looking a completely different direction?

It isn't like he gets to make a decision and change his mind based on what he sees as the outcome, because the outcome is happening at that very moment. He is experiencing his entire existence, every moment of it, at the same instant. He can't change "the future" just like you can;t make your body be in a different position at this exact moment.

What you are arguing has no solid basis in the comic itself. What I am saying allows for Dr. M to both see the future, accepts that he indeed made his own decisions, and explains why he acts so disconnected all the time.

Also your explanation is shit. No offense.
>he saw the future after action A so obviously he couldn't change action A
Actions aren't just instantaneous things. They are ongoing. If I'm building a house when do I see it get blown away by a tornado? After the first nail? The second? when I bought the lumber? When I drew the first line on a blueprint?

My explanation makes more sense tbph.

No. He changed nothing but a delay in the inevitable. He didn't resolve the underlying cause of the conflicts he didn't move humanity forward he just put off it killing each other.

The underlying cause of the conflict was the sudden shift in power from Dr. M's disappearance. Veidt saw humanity threw that.

Good heavens, would you look at the time?

I mean, we got out of the Cold War without nuclear armageddon without killing millions with a psionic vaginamonster, so...no. No he was not.

>People act like Stalin followed the rules of communism, not realizing that instead Stalin used communism as a way to mask his own self-interested schemes.
user come on... At least compare him to Trotsky if you are trying to prove a point.

Jon literally says what I am saying in the fucking comic.

>There is no future. There is no past. Don't you see? Time is simultaneous, and intricate jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.

>Every thing is preordained, even my responses.

>We're all puppets, Laurie, I'm just a puppet who can seer the strings.

>Y-You know about me and Dan?
>No. Not yet. But in a few moments you're going to tell me.

>I can;t prevent the future. To me, it's already happening.

All of those are direct quotes from Manhattan himself. He explains that time is simultaneous. He explains that he is experiencing every moment right now,, when it happens. Thus even though he knows about Dan and Laurie before hand, his reactions are still genuine.

Again, you are getting hung up on "seeing the future". There is no future to Jon. There is only now. You can not change your actions right now, and neither can he.

>Actions aren't just instantaneous things.
All movement and motion is a set of motionless still frames. That is, when time equals 0 there is no motion and everything is still. That is what I mean by instant. Jon can not change the future because he is experiencing every single point of his life in a single instant. This is directly supported in the comic, as I showed you above.

I don;t think you've actually read the comic, tbqh.

How different do you supposed the story would be if Moore got to use the Charleton characters?

All of those quotes fit into my description.

And seriously, my house example calls into question your whole concept. At what point do you see the fate of the house when you are constantly affectinng it? It gets to the point where you are never actually seeing the future, because your actions are affecting everything around you right up until the point it happens. In which case no one in their right mind would say Dr. M can even see the future.

My explanation howver makes sense of it. He literally sees the future before it happens, and the past, and everything. He is just following the motions because his responses to the eventually approach a stable singular action/decision.

As an example of the concept, there are equations in mathematics where you feed the result back into the equation many many times. In some cases the value eventually approaches a singular value. That is what has happened to Dr. M.

Pic related of course.

The first quote and the last quote do not at all fit into your description.

Let's take your house example. You are building a house. At some point later on, a tornado will destroy it. Your question is, when do you see the house blown away by the tornado? After the first nail, the second? When you make the blue prints?

Obviously a normal human sees the house be destroyed by the tornado when the tornado destroys the house, not before.

From Manhattan's perspective, if he were to build a house from scratch, he would be drawing the blue prints, putting the first nail in, putting the second nail iin, and seeing it destroyed by the tornado at the same exact moment. He experiences it at the same time. Remember, time is simultaneous. When he is putting in thwe first nail, he knows he is putting in the second because he is experiencing it at the same moment. Similarly, when he is drawing the blue prints he is seeing the house be destroyed by the tornado, because again, he is experiencing both simultaneously.

Watchmen as a work follows our own perception of time, so we do not see how Manhattan sees it and experiences it. I think this is leading you to think he sees the future, because he mentions things yet to happen to the other characters. But it is happening to him. His quotes show as much.

>In which case no one in their right mind would say that Dr. Manhattan can see the future.

Exactly fucking right. He does not see the future. He sees only the present because he is experiencing his entire existence in one moment.

If you are now wondering why the other characters say he sees the future, it is because they are viewing his experience through their own lens. When Jon says to Janey that Wally is going to deliver earrings, it hasn't happened yet for Janey, but it is happening right then for Jon.

>He sees the future before it happens
And here is the contention laid out. There is no "before it happens" to Jon. It is all happening simultaneously.

>The first quote and the last quote do not at all fit into your description.
They do though.

>He sees only the present because he is experiencing his entire existence in one moment.
Semantics.

If he can see the future then he can change the future. Your explanation doesn't explain why he doesn't, mine does. Yours ignores his will.

No they absolutely do not.

You're point is that Jon can see and thus change the future.

My point is that Jon can not see the future, and cannot change the future, because there is no future to him,. There is only now.

Let's take those two quotes, shall we?

>There is no future. There is no past. Don't you see? Time is an intricate jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.

Pay special attention to
>Time is simultaneous
If time is simultaneous, then there is no future.

Next one:
>I can't prevent the future. To me, it's already happening.
Jon is already experiencing the future at that moment. Which ties into the "time is simultaneous" thing.
Jon can not change the future because it is already occurring.

It is not semantics. It is a special distinction. You assume Jon experiences time linearly, but can see the whole structure. Under that assumption, you conclude that he can change what he sees.

This assumption is wrong, as evidenced by the work itself. I state that Jon experiences time entirely, not linearly. This perfectly explains why he can not change the future, because, for the nth time, there is no future to him. He can not change his actions because he is performing them all at the same moment.

Your explanation is you ignoring John's will entirely. Why does he make one action and not another? That's the crux of the problem with your explanation. If you gave the power to someone else they wouldn't acct exaclty like John. They respond to events differently based on their personality and will. Your explanation tries to wash itself of those difference and thus fails to adequately explain it.

Sorry, have to get some sleep, as you can tell by my typos. Nice talking with you. I've enjoyed it more than most.

I'm ignoring Jon's will because it is largely irrelevant to this discussion.

Jon is naturally passive, and he does respond to events in a passive way. He tends to leave, or make other people leave, then confront them.

This has been said by Moore to be a part of Osterman's (the human) personality, and not a consequence of Jon becoming what he is.

This doesn't at all change the fact that he can not influence events or change his actions based on what he sees. It just explains why he acts the way he does.

No his plans will fall apart when the truth comes out.

>but the nukes didn't fly irl

A miracle, that. Nuclear war almost happened more than once on pure accident.

Rorsharch's journal has no fucking details about the squid plan, nothing will get "revealed" if it's published other than Rorsharch's vague as fuck notions about the "mask killer" conspiracy he spent the book chasing. Ozy's plan works in the sense that nobody will find out he was responsible for it and he'll be long dead by the time things go back to shit.

fuck no

/thread

It does not need to have details it mentioned viedt thats enough to get people investigating.

He's just as crazy. Crazy right

I've only seen the movie, and don't know the differences between that and the comic, but in the movie he seemed to be right. Uniting people through fear of a common enemy is always flimsy tho.

Read the comic.

>I've only seen the movie,

Fuck off

The plan was worse in the movie (even though it was probably necessary to change it for the big screen, audiences would've thought a giant alien dummy was too weird). With an alien that no one recognizes or is sure of anything about, we can't point fingers at other countries. It's literally all of humanity vs. that alien. But with Dr. M, Russia can point fingers and say that it's America's fault with hubris with nuclear weaponry, or culture of violence, or whatever else. Because of his connection to humanity, he's going to be more divisive and held more responsible.
When Veidt tries to kill Dr. M and Bubastis gets vaporized, that's the biggest hint to how things will end. Dr. M (representing nuclear weaponry) comes back seconds later, but Bubastis is killed. The only thing Veidt accomplished was killing something, and he didn't hinder Manhattan at all. The same deal is going to happen with the cold war.

Assuming his "nuclear war was inevitable" prediction correct, then yes. Couldn't he have achieved the same results by mind-nuking Wyoming or something, though? There'd still be the "oh shit aliens!" to bring the world together.

When you are young, you think Rorschach is right
Then you grow up, and you think Adrian is right
Then you grow out of your edgy nihilistic phase, and you finally understand that Rorschach was SUPER FUCKING RIGHT and there are thing that just aren't worth it and that just because a person has opinions we might disagree with, that doesn't mean they are suddenly wrong when they state "genocide is wrong, you guys".

our real world was in worst situation and we didn't need to destoy half of it. Thinking anyone would use nuclear weapons on a cold war is just stupid.

It's also important to remember Moore is an anarchist. Anarchism views force as a false solution to social problems. You have to get rid of the psychology that underlies the need for policing. Once you take responsibility for your own life you don't need to be policed according to anarchists: your own moral sense will do that. What you end up needing is mild administration.

Ozymandias didn't fix the problems the world had under an anarchist model; he delayed them. even intensified them. Creating an outside enemy leaves intact the antagonistic and deferential mentality that caused the cold war. The result will be the same buildup of weapons, jingoism, etc. The outside threat will just be another justification for a larger police force. There will eventually be an out-group formed by these conditions - just like the 80s produced punk, and 70s the hippies, the 60s and 50s the beatniks, etc, people who want to be free and self-determining - and the whole thing will start all over again.

Veidt at the end of the day is just another guy trying to change leadership - he wants to be the leader - when the problem is leadership.

see:
birdsbeforethestorm.net/2009/02/mythmakers-lawbreakers-alan-moore-on-anarchism/
youtube.com/watch?v=fKfF-nxjDi0

I like to think that Rorschach's journal revealed the truth, but the world remained at peace
is that wrong?