Imagine if you will, "Fortune" as a finite and quantifiable resource.
In this scenario, every individual maintains a dynamic pool of fortune that's always 100% full, but split into two types. fortune and misfortune. The exact ratio within each individual changes based on unconscious trading during their interactions with others. i.e., If one individual's fortune increases, then their misfortune will have proportionately decreased. This also means that an individual they were interacting with will experience the opposite effect, decreasing their fortune, and increasing their misfortune with inversely identical proportions to the first party.
For the scenario, this is how the system works, but all trades are unconscious and no one knows the system exists.
One day you're bestowed the ability to accurately measure and manipulate the fortune levels of any individual at will. You can bless people by increasing their fortune, or you can curse people by increasing their misfortune. However, the catch is that when you manipulate the levels like this you exchange those levels with everyone else in the system instead of just yourself. So if you raised one person's fortune by 50% of their maximum capacity, then you'd decrease their misfortune by the same amount, and everyone else on the planet including yourself would have their misfortune increased, and their fortune decreased, by the same amount divided by the amount of people in the system.
Now, considering how many people exist, this isn't much. Blessing or cursing an individual or two isn't going to make any noticeable difference on a global scale, and no one is likely to notice anything strange going on. However, the more you concentrate on one side or the other, the more likely people will start to notice a trend.
Anyway, this brings me to my question. How would you use this ability? Would you use it to provide great blessings to a few people from whom the world would ultimately benefit, at the cost of cursing the rest of the world just a little? Would you use it to provide great curses to a few irredeemable villains who deserve it, and bless the rest of the world just a little as a bonus? Would you support one nation to the detriment of all others? Would you destroy one nation to make the rest of the world a better place? Would you try to maintain a balance and bless and curse the same amount of people in order to provide blesses and curses to specific targets without any repercussions to uninvolved parties? Would you do nothing at all, and let nature do what nature does?
In this scenario, every individual maintains a dynamic pool of fortune that's always 100% full, but split into two types. fortune and misfortune. The exact ratio within each individual changes based on unconscious trading during their interactions with others. i.e., If one individual's fortune increases, then their misfortune will have proportionately decreased. This also means that an individual they were interacting with will experience the opposite effect, decreasing their fortune, and increasing their misfortune with inversely identical proportions to the first party.
For the scenario, this is how the system works, but all trades are unconscious and no one knows the system exists.
One day you're bestowed the ability to accurately measure and manipulate the fortune levels of any individual at will. You can bless people by increasing their fortune, or you can curse people by increasing their misfortune. However, the catch is that when you manipulate the levels like this you exchange those levels with everyone else in the system instead of just yourself. So if you raised one person's fortune by 50% of their maximum capacity, then you'd decrease their misfortune by the same amount, and everyone else on the planet including yourself would have their misfortune increased, and their fortune decreased, by the same amount divided by the amount of people in the system.
Now, considering how many people exist, this isn't much. Blessing or cursing an individual or two isn't going to make any noticeable difference on a global scale, and no one is likely to notice anything strange going on. However, the more you concentrate on one side or the other, the more likely people will start to notice a trend.
Anyway, this brings me to my question. How would you use this ability? Would you use it to provide great blessings to a few people from whom the world would ultimately benefit, at the cost of cursing the rest of the world just a little? Would you use it to provide great curses to a few irredeemable villains who deserve it, and bless the rest of the world just a little as a bonus? Would you support one nation to the detriment of all others? Would you destroy one nation to make the rest of the world a better place? Would you try to maintain a balance and bless and curse the same amount of people in order to provide blesses and curses to specific targets without any repercussions to uninvolved parties? Would you do nothing at all, and let nature do what nature does?
