I like the superhero genre.
On the surface, this is no surprise. After all, at a glance, superheroism and transhumanism have a lot in common. Superheroes are a cut above "the rest" of the population, and are stronger, faster, and smarter and have powers and abilities that we can only dream about. They can do things that no person today can do. Transhumanism has similar goals; future humans may be stronger, smarter, faster and healthier than humans today, and they have seeming superpowers - the ability to think faster, the ability to see through several wavelenghts of the electromagnetic spectrum unaided, the ability to communicate "telepathically" courtesy of computers and a wireless network that they are intimately wired into, the ability to smell like they want, perhaps change their facial features and look like things that aren't even really human. Some of the more popular superpowers exist in nature and can be replicated no problem; flight can be accomplished with wings (so long as you have suitable air pressure and gravity that's not too high), which can be attached or perhaps even grown. Seeing in the dark unaided may be one of the first superpowers that humans achieve naturally; growing up, infravision was a trait of the near-human races like Elves and Dwarves in AD&D, and that's something we may accomplish. Immunity to diseases, defeating cancer, and the ability to remain young and "pretty" (for a certain value of pretty; different people find different things attractive and there's no one uniform image of what "beauty" is, no matter how much the media wants to convince you otherwise) for longer periods of time and even biological and perhaps digital immortality - all of these things are possible, but they're further down the road and for now, exist only as "super powers" in comic books and spells inside of fantasy stories.
That's on the surface. Under the surface, there's something more insidious going on. And this is where we run into my major problem with the superhero genre in specific, but fantasy in general (fantasy less so, because I'm sure there are fantasy stories that deal with the democratization of magic and how common it is, and how much it changes lives for the better - the "steampunk" sub-genre in general seems to aim for this, if not always get there. However, urban fantasy is really bad for this, by virtue of the existence of a "masquerade". People can't have these toys, because only an unelected few are 'mature' enough to use them. It plays into the same emotions that conspiracy theories, like 9/11, Oklahoma City, the JFK shootings, Atlantis, ONI, Roswell, and to a lesser degree, Birtherism, which is based more on militant ignorance and stupidity than the above emotions, among others, play into - regret, paranoia, fear and cynicism. A more practical reason is because it keeps up willing suspension of disbelief, but these are still emotions being tapped into at the cost of keeping up that suspension).
Transhumanism is when you take all of the marvels I detailed above and make them available to everyone. The basics - smarter, faster, healthier, stronger, the ability to control your biological sex and reproduction cycles, "prettier" (again, for a certain value of pretty), and biological immortality - should be made available to everyone with no cost, while the additional stuff treated, like night vision, wings (if possible, and I don't see why not) and others treated like cosmetic surgery. The thing is, transhumanism is us taking this technology and setting it up so that everyone has access to it, regardless of economic level, class, race or biological sex.
The Superhero novel does not do this. The genre does not propose taking these great powers that make superheroes strong and figuring out why it works, and then giving those powers to the common man. Nowhere do scientists try to figure out why Superman is like he is, and synthesize some sort of genetic treatment that can make everyone like that. The closest that I'm aware we come is when Lux Luthor does it, and as we all know, Luthor is a villain.
My personal philosophy is transhumanism. But I like the superhero genre; and because of this, there's a fair amount of cognitive dissonance that comes along with that. I recently made a post about my take on the Dark Knight Rises; it was made shortly after the movie, so I hadn't had long enough a time to let it sit. As I have, and I've gone back and looked at the genre, and read some comments surrounding it, it's only served to crystallize my opinion of the genre.
Superheroes are answerable to nobody. They go around and they exact their own law - sure, it's the law as we know it, but they only follow that because they chose too, not because someone makes them. Superman could tear down the entire United States government and conquer the world. The fact that he doesn't, though, doesn't make it any more possible. They have these powers, these smarts, this technology, that they continually tell the rest of the world that "[we're] not ready for" yet, making them the arbiters of this secret knowledge, not unlike the old wizard who sits in his tower all day and hordes knowledge, rather than sharing it. Pop quiz: dragons are villains because they horde treasure. So why aren't superheroes villains because they horde the knowledge of their power, and their own technology?
Why, oh why, can they get away with "you can have it because you're not ready yet"?
Why, oh why, can they get away with flying around and enforcing their law on little people who aren't half as powerful as they are, operating outside of the boundaries of the police?
Why can they do this stuff, and is there any way to change this genre - salvage it - so that it's not so anti-intellectual and anti-progress?
On the surface, this is no surprise. After all, at a glance, superheroism and transhumanism have a lot in common. Superheroes are a cut above "the rest" of the population, and are stronger, faster, and smarter and have powers and abilities that we can only dream about. They can do things that no person today can do. Transhumanism has similar goals; future humans may be stronger, smarter, faster and healthier than humans today, and they have seeming superpowers - the ability to think faster, the ability to see through several wavelenghts of the electromagnetic spectrum unaided, the ability to communicate "telepathically" courtesy of computers and a wireless network that they are intimately wired into, the ability to smell like they want, perhaps change their facial features and look like things that aren't even really human. Some of the more popular superpowers exist in nature and can be replicated no problem; flight can be accomplished with wings (so long as you have suitable air pressure and gravity that's not too high), which can be attached or perhaps even grown. Seeing in the dark unaided may be one of the first superpowers that humans achieve naturally; growing up, infravision was a trait of the near-human races like Elves and Dwarves in AD&D, and that's something we may accomplish. Immunity to diseases, defeating cancer, and the ability to remain young and "pretty" (for a certain value of pretty; different people find different things attractive and there's no one uniform image of what "beauty" is, no matter how much the media wants to convince you otherwise) for longer periods of time and even biological and perhaps digital immortality - all of these things are possible, but they're further down the road and for now, exist only as "super powers" in comic books and spells inside of fantasy stories.
That's on the surface. Under the surface, there's something more insidious going on. And this is where we run into my major problem with the superhero genre in specific, but fantasy in general (fantasy less so, because I'm sure there are fantasy stories that deal with the democratization of magic and how common it is, and how much it changes lives for the better - the "steampunk" sub-genre in general seems to aim for this, if not always get there. However, urban fantasy is really bad for this, by virtue of the existence of a "masquerade". People can't have these toys, because only an unelected few are 'mature' enough to use them. It plays into the same emotions that conspiracy theories, like 9/11, Oklahoma City, the JFK shootings, Atlantis, ONI, Roswell, and to a lesser degree, Birtherism, which is based more on militant ignorance and stupidity than the above emotions, among others, play into - regret, paranoia, fear and cynicism. A more practical reason is because it keeps up willing suspension of disbelief, but these are still emotions being tapped into at the cost of keeping up that suspension).
Transhumanism is when you take all of the marvels I detailed above and make them available to everyone. The basics - smarter, faster, healthier, stronger, the ability to control your biological sex and reproduction cycles, "prettier" (again, for a certain value of pretty), and biological immortality - should be made available to everyone with no cost, while the additional stuff treated, like night vision, wings (if possible, and I don't see why not) and others treated like cosmetic surgery. The thing is, transhumanism is us taking this technology and setting it up so that everyone has access to it, regardless of economic level, class, race or biological sex.
The Superhero novel does not do this. The genre does not propose taking these great powers that make superheroes strong and figuring out why it works, and then giving those powers to the common man. Nowhere do scientists try to figure out why Superman is like he is, and synthesize some sort of genetic treatment that can make everyone like that. The closest that I'm aware we come is when Lux Luthor does it, and as we all know, Luthor is a villain.
My personal philosophy is transhumanism. But I like the superhero genre; and because of this, there's a fair amount of cognitive dissonance that comes along with that. I recently made a post about my take on the Dark Knight Rises; it was made shortly after the movie, so I hadn't had long enough a time to let it sit. As I have, and I've gone back and looked at the genre, and read some comments surrounding it, it's only served to crystallize my opinion of the genre.
Superheroes are answerable to nobody. They go around and they exact their own law - sure, it's the law as we know it, but they only follow that because they chose too, not because someone makes them. Superman could tear down the entire United States government and conquer the world. The fact that he doesn't, though, doesn't make it any more possible. They have these powers, these smarts, this technology, that they continually tell the rest of the world that "[we're] not ready for" yet, making them the arbiters of this secret knowledge, not unlike the old wizard who sits in his tower all day and hordes knowledge, rather than sharing it. Pop quiz: dragons are villains because they horde treasure. So why aren't superheroes villains because they horde the knowledge of their power, and their own technology?
Why, oh why, can they get away with "you can have it because you're not ready yet"?
Why, oh why, can they get away with flying around and enforcing their law on little people who aren't half as powerful as they are, operating outside of the boundaries of the police?
Why can they do this stuff, and is there any way to change this genre - salvage it - so that it's not so anti-intellectual and anti-progress?
