How will I become a super hero? A kid conversation about enhancements

Wednesday, January 25. 2012

How will I become a super hero? A kid conversation about enhancements

Overheard in the Taylor house:

Son: (with grumpy face) Mom you don't like human enhancements do you?

Me: No, I don't

Son: (with even grumpier face) Then how will I become a super hero?

Me: You don't need to be enhanced to be a super hero. God loves you just the way you are. It is wrong to take drugs or do other stuff to make yourself super human, especially if you are already healthy. What if someone bad gets enhanced and hurts a lot of people? Or what if only rich people can get enhanced and then make life harder for everyone else? What if it gets so that you need lots of drugs or artificial limbs to play sports because talent and hard work aren't good enough to compete anymore? Or if you need a cyber-brain to go to college or be a doctor? What happens if normal people want to be part animal or glow-in-the-dark or just a brain walking around in a robot? What if parents enhance their children and the children don't like their enhancements?

Son: (Long pause) But I want to be a super hero, Mom.

Husband: Every kid wants to be a super hero when they are 9. I wanted to be one too when I was his age.

Me: True. But this generation could actually use technology to fulfill their childhood fantasies of becoming super human making the "haves" have even more and the "have nots" have even less. Once we allow healthy people to make themselves super human, a society with the enhanced ruling over the unenhanced is inevitable.

Son: What about Spiderman?

Me: His enhancements were an accident.

Son: What about the Hulk?

Me: Again an accident.

Son: The Fantastic 4?

Me: Terrible space accident. I mean look what happened to the Thing.

Son: The X Men?

Me: They were born that way and some of them hate it. Imagine if your parents did that to you on purpose and you hated it.

Son: Chuck?

Me: CIA experiment on a normal guy. Wrong. Remember the Intersect hurt both Chuck and Morgan's brains.

Son: Captain America and Wolverine?

Me: Healthy men (small and mutant, but healthy) experimented on by the military. Very wrong thing to do.

Son: (sad face) Mom, you don't like human enhancements.

Me: No I don't. I think they are wrong and bad for everyone. We need to love ourselves and each other just the way we are. That is the way to be happy and to be a real hero.

Son: I bet you Satan likes human enhancements.

Me: Yes, son, I believe he does. I believe he does.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Transhumanism at 10:22 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Wolverine was a mutant to begin with. The experiments only plated his skeleton with adamantium. The super healing and the claws are from his mutation. So he fits in better with the X-men explanation.

You could point out that Batman became a superhero through physical training and hard work (and a massive inheritance). There is the down side of him loosing his parents and all. On second thought, scratch Batman.

#1 Baron Korf (Homepage) on 2012-01-25 11:45 (Reply)

I disagree about Wolverine. His natural healing ability he was born with. But the adamantium was definitely an enhancement.

#1.1 Rebecca Taylor on 2012-01-25 12:05 (Reply)

True, but adamantium is minor in comparison to his innate mutation of healing, claws, sense of smell, quasi-feral instincts.

However, the movies may have changed the story so that his claws are not biological, but from the "yellow tights" days, the enhancement was only the metal plating. He actually goes through a period of no adamantium when Magneto rips it out of him. He can't cut things as easy with the bone claws, but they are still sharp and dense enough to be lethal.

#2 Baron Korf (Homepage) on 2012-01-25 12:14 (Reply)

Wait, so if it's an accident it is automatically bad? Why is that?

What about a superhero who voulenteered? Why is it inherently evil for Captain Amercia to consent to radical alterations to his body?

#3 April (Homepage) on 2012-02-06 20:18 (Reply)

If they are natural mutations then they are not enhancements.

Enhancements are purposeful interventions on otherwise healthy people to make them "super-human." Example genetic engineering for an unnatural amount of muscle, cognitive enhancing drugs, or chopping off a perfectly good limb and replacing it with an artificial one.

What was done to Captain America, whether he volunteered or not, was unethical. Government experimentation on a healthy man to create a weapon for war. I would call that inherently evil.

#3.1 Rebecca Taylor on 2012-02-07 08:50 (Reply)

Been off the blogosphere for a long time and came here to read your always outstanding work. (Thanks for all the great info above, BTW.) After this comment thread, I'm checking my computer settings to be sure my geek son didn't reset the default to one of those fantasy discussion forums before he moved out!

#3.1.1 cminor on 2012-02-28 17:14 (Reply)

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