For years now, I’ve been writing and talking about superpowers in the context of social impact. The world’s most significant people are devoting themselves to solving the biggest problems. One key thing I’ve learned from the guests on my show is that teamwork is the ultimate superpower.
The risk in profiling people, as I do here, is that we see an individual as a superhero. Seeing someone that way could cause us to do two things that could be counterproductive.
First, we may be tempted to rely on the superheroes among us. Knowing that someone genuinely wonderful is working to address a problem—think climate change, for example—could cause us individually to do less than we could or should.
If I see Bill Gates, who was on the show a few years ago, investing and donating billions to address climate change and decide that he’s got this, I could feel allowed to do more climate damage. I’d never think of it that way, but if I stop donating to climate change nonprofits and choose not to inves…