¶31By working hard and saving my money, I intend to become an immortal superman. Naturally, many still question the realism and propriety of such a goal; they see this kind of ambition as both foolish and vulgar. I hope to show that those who are willing to settle for mortality and humanity just do not understand their predicament or their opportunity, how lowly they are and how exalted they may become.
¶39Some have already decided to try for immortality and transhumanity, including the dozen or so chrononauts now lying frozen in their voyage through time. But to most onlookers their motives remain somewhat obscure and their vision unclear. What do they love in life, that they cling to it so tenaciously? What marvelous future do they foresee, that they are determined to experience it? In that far season, what strange flowerings do they imagine, that they tug so insistently at Heinlein’s “door into summer”? And to what mighty works, what soaring projects, do they imagine they can contribute?
¶61So far, the goal of superhumanity for ourselves--for living individuals of our generation—seems to be shared by scarcely anyone outside of the cryonics societies, by not a single philosopher, scientist, or writer of acknowledged status and immediate influence. For most of the touted "thinkers," even superhumanity for our descendants is viewed ambivalently and erratically. The eminent philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, for example, voiced a gloomy and pessimistic view: "It may well be that in its individual capacities and penetrations our brain has reached its organic limits." And, "After the long series of transformations leading to man, has the world stopped? Or if we are still moving, is it not merely in a circle?" He thought future progress might be mainly collective and spiritual.168 But he also had a higher, if wavering, vision:
¶122From Gilgamesh to Olaf Stapledon
¶135Friedrich Nietzsche was the man who popularized the term “superman” (*übermensch*), and who became a patron saint of the Nazis; he was a creature of many contradictions in his person and in his writing. It is as easy to demolish his illogic as to admire his literary bravura, but this is not our primary interest, which rather concerns any new or constructive ideas he may have had concerning the purpose of life and the quality of the superman.
¶136The Nazi version of the Master Race was indeed close to Nietzsche's take-off point in delineating superman; he spoke of ". . . blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters. . . ." It is interesting to note, however, from our place in history, that he regarded not the Germans but the *Russians* as the archetypical blond beasts of Europe, and said, "A thinker who has at heart the future of Europe will in all his perspectives concerning the future calculate upon the Jews and the Russians as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces."131
¶160The last quotation above is probably closest to Shaw's personal view. How do we know? For one thing, there are various warnings about trying to attain superhumanity; in the play, the Devil remarks about ". . . the fool who pursues the better before he has secured the good;" also, "Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human." Furthermore, Shaw's superman is admittedly desired mainly to perfect our social and political organization, and the author plainly thinks that all this demands is a lot of Fabian-Shavians.
¶166*Gods*, *Men Like Gods*, and finally in *Star-Begotten*. Each time he served up a very thin soup, with nevertheless a flavor worth tasting.
¶168“Let us admit,” said Keppel, “that this is attempting the most impossible of tasks. The hypothesis is that these coming supermen are stronger-witted, better-balanced, and altogether wiser than we are. How can we begin to put our imaginations into their minds and figure out what they will think or do? If our intelligences were as tall as theirs, we should be making their world now . . . You make me feel like the sculptor’s dog trying to explain his master’s life to the musician’s cat.”178
¶171He was wrong to sneer at gadgetry, which is an essential part of our salvation. We already have the two-thousand-mile-per-hour planes, and will soon have the wrist radio; they are not just toys or status symbols. But he was right in calling for more subtlety and delicacy in postulating superman, and made an effort at least to hint at some possible transhuman traits: "(They will move) easily and gracefully, as one does who has no conflicting nervous impulses . . . They will be much more *alive to things* . . . immensely amused . . . They will be busy, laughing people."
¶182*The Epic of Gilgamesh* comes to us from the relatively recent past, and while some of its concepts are on a scale of cosmic grandeur, it is generally earthbound. The epics of Olaf Stapledon span galaxies of space and giga-years of time, his novels comprising “future histories” that are in some ways unmatched in scope.
¶183Written from 1930 to 1950, Stapledon’s efforts by the calendar belong to the modern era of science fiction (dating from the old *Amazing Stories* magazine of Hugo Gernsback, beginning in 1926), but Stapledon does not convey a modern flavor; there is something distinctly quaint and old-fashioned in his writing, in both the approach and the particulars. None the less, he may have contributed more than any other single writer to concepts of superman.
¶184To begin with, besides conveying a sense of wonder and awe with unusual effectiveness, he tried repeatedly to remind us of the open-endedness of life and the mounting magnitude of future challenges, as opposed to the stagnant utopias of many authors: “The mental and spiritual advances which, in your day, mind in the solar system has still to attempt, are overwhelmingly more complex, more precarious and dangerous, than those which have already been achieved . . . Out of every victory shall come that which makes a greater struggle necessary.”161
¶185Like many others, he tended to emphasize ethical and emotional aspects of superman; but unlike most others, he sometimes managed to pin down a few particulars, if not in full, at least in hints. One of his stories concerns a superdog—as capable as man intellectually, but trapped by his still canine nature. His “Second Men”—the first in a chain of successors of *homo sapiens*—have a generalized emotional and aesthetic sexuality and other differences: “. . . the lusty admiration which at first directs itself solely on the opposite sex is the appropriate attitude to all the beauties of flesh and spirit in beast and bird and plant.” Parental interest is also universalized, and there is a “. . . passionate spontaneous altruism . . . wars were so hampered by impulses of kindliness toward the enemy that they were apt to degenerate into rather violent athletic contests, leading to an orgy of fraternization.”
¶187He saw with the mind’s eye an early Neptunian couple engaged upon an act which to them was one of shocking licentiousness and excruciating delight, but to the Terrestrial eye was merely ridiculous. This guilty pair stood facing one another, their mouth-aprons removed. From mouth to crimson mouth there stretched a curious fruit, not unlike a much-elongated banana. With mobile lips both he and she were drawing the object into the mouth, and eating it progressively. They gazed into each other’s kindled eyes, their cheeks aflame. Clearly they were both enwrapped in that exquisite sweet horror which is afforded only the fruit that is forbidden.161
¶188While this has serious flaws, it has the inestimable virtue of being definite. Elsewhere, he often presents his suggested superhuman traits in name only, with nothing of detail or consequence. His “Fourth Men” are great brains forty feet in diameter, who nevertheless do not seem very bright. His “Fifth Men” are built of improved bone, muscle, and nerve tissue, but of unspecified capabilities; much worse than this, their faculty of telepathy is almost totally unexplored in its implications. (Later writers, to be sure, have not done much better; this is an immensely rich lode for someone willing to do some real work.)
¶189In general, Stapledon is very weak in technology, gadgetry, biology, and psychology. As a writer, he can neither plot nor characterize. In short, he is little more than an amateur philosopher. Yet he grappled manfully with themes that intimidated those better qualified; he forged ahead where the professional hung back or turned aside. He insisted that there is a Big Picture, and he took it seriously. If there is something slightly Quixotic about the mismatching of his goals and capabilities, still he deserves our respect and gratitude.
¶192Of Holmes' personality traits, the outstanding is vanity; he is always posturing and soliciting flattery, as Dr. Watson frankly concedes. In fact, we get the impression that Holmes has chosen his tawdry and ill-paying profession because it gives him endless opportunity to strut and to humiliate others, both colleagues and criminals. We may again dubiously reflect: Does the superman require a foil? If a legitimate foil (the criminal) were lacking, would he seek victims elsewhere? Could he tolerate a world full of peers?
¶220Natural evolution, even assisted by eugenics (planned breeding), is generally slow. Stapledon imagined billions of years were required to produce his Last Men, and modern science-fiction writers blithely create galactic societies with only slightly modified people in them. But it is clear that genetic engineering will produce radical alterations in a very few centuries at most. Change will not be gradual, but explosive; we are on the verge of a sharp discontinuity in history.
¶233In the first category, there are several subdivisions. First, there is the obvious lode of *variance* among men. Most races need warm beds, but the Indians of Tierra del Fuego sleep nude in a climate worse than Chicago's. Most of us just want to lie down, but now and then we notice a Jim Ryun or a Dick Fosbury. And by far the majority of men can function in bed at most once a day, but Dr. Kinsey assures us there are those who can jump in and out like jackrabbits, several times a day, week in and week out. (Or so they say.)93 Since such capacities are known to exist, they must have some anatomical and physiological basis, which can be discovered and (eventually) duplicated by various means, including not only genetic manipulation but also treatment of the mature individual by chemistry, surgery, special virus inoculations, and other means. This is not exactly self-evident, and it is conceivable that certain traits tend to be mutually exclusive, making it difficult for a single individual to embrace them all, even if desired; but the overriding presumption is that, once we thoroughly understand something, we can duplicate its effects sooner or later, and even improve on them. As supermen, *all* of us will have the important talents of the *best* of us, and anyone who doesn't like the monotony can choose to remain inferior.
¶288The dentist can use hypnosis--or teach the patient to use autohypnosis--to interfere with normally ungovernable pain signals (or with their interpretation or processing) to eliminate the annoyance. I can wiggle my ears, individually. J. B. S. Haldane claimed he could detect the opening of his pylorus, and the passage of waste materials along his sigmoid flexure—a sensation not unlike a "belly full of snakes."64
¶644There will still be problems, but to some extent they may create their own solutions. If a new variety is really a superman in all respects, he will realize, far better than we, the error in mistreating inferiors and the folly of boastfulness or arrogance. But there may be many limited supermen, especially in the near future, and they will not necessarily have balanced judgement; some of them may be only strong, and not very sympathetic or wise. Still, at least two factors should tend to save the situation: heterogeneity and upward mobility.
¶693The Communist, and the humanist, may be thought “nobler” than the Christian or Moslem (*i.e.*, crazier) because they make their sacrifices without hope of personal reward in any afterlife; they labor, and if need be suffer, merely for the “holy joy of doing good” for the community, or for posterity. The very purity of this dedication reveals its absurdity.
¶696These observations may be reminiscent of the tired views of cynics and hedonists, and it may seem that the answers of the traditional moralists apply. One such answer is that the cynic’s argument, carried to its logical conclusion, strips life of all meaning and savor; that every loyalty becomes equally meaningless and arbitrary. Another answer, or perhaps a different form of the same answer, is that experience proves the sense of reverence is fundamental in man and requisite for mental health. But in fact, the new questions are not the same as the old questions, and the old answers have not retained their force, as I shall attempt gradually to show.
¶886The universe is vast and mysterious, its qualities and values hidden either in distance, smallness, complexity, subtlety, darkness or dazzlings that bewilder eye and mind. To attempt to fathom its depths in the manner of the traditional philosopher is a task which may be likened to that of a dog trying to build a bridge over the Mississippi. To begin with, he needs tools; working only with jaws and paws, he finds the job hopeless. But even if he had the tools and could handle them, he would not live long enough to make a dent in the task. And even if he had greatly extended life or the help of many others, he could neither handle the tools nor organize the work. In short, he must fail simply because bridging the Mississippi is not a job for a dog.
¶887Just so with the philosopher. To begin with, one cannot unriddle the world simply by reasoning it out, as the Greeks thought; one has to go out into the world and tinker with it; one needs tools—microscopes and telescopes and oscilloscopes and spectroscopes and much, much more that we have yet to imagine. Nor is it other than arbitrary and unreasonable to suppose that an ordinary lifetime could suffice for the work; much more likely, millenia of effort by the entire race will be required. Finally, it seems also arbitrary and unreasonable to imagine that merely human intelligence can operate at the required levels; instead, we shall probably have to improve the very physical structure of our brains before we can expect to make important progress. We must, in fine, become immortal supermen—not to gloat over our accomplishments and strut among the stars, but simply to do our work, the only work there is.
¶957Again, his phrasing of the goal seems ill chosen—to become "divine," "deities," "gods." This phrasing brings unpleasant and inaccurate connotations, such as a desire for worshippers and a static utopia. This last, especially, is astonishingly shallow and short-sighted.