Professor X Was Right? Maybe?
Okay, so this was inspired by an issue of
New X-Men by one of the grand ****ing masters of comic books, Grant
god damn Morrison. Don't know him? Kill yourself. Or just read
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth for one of the most "bat****" crazy comic stories of all-time. Anyway, I tried finding the specific Xavier speech that I wanted to post a picture of, but couldn't, so you'll just have to hope I can remain coherent as I write this/drink beer.
My previous post, Magneto Was Right, thoroughly put me in the Magneto camp, and in a realistic world with realistic human nature I stand by that 100%. Two different races with one having such genetic advantages, and the other having the benefit of power and numbers, would never in a million years end in anything but genocide by one or both factions. Magneto
is right, make no mistake.
But a speech by Xavier in
New X-Men has given me pause so far as the Marvel universe and it's comic book morals are concerned. Magneto's interpretation of human nature is based entirely on observation and skewed, if realistically accurate, logic. But Professor X, at the age of eleven or twelve was subjected to his mutant awakening as the world's greatest telepath. I've never really "grokked" the magnitude of what this must have entailed and I suspect the vast majority of people haven't either.
At an extremely impressionable age Charles Xavier discovered his powers, but had no control over them. The entirety of humankind and their thoughts, emotions, desires, hatreds, loves, fears, hopes, etc were revealed to him in all of their horror and glory as he unwillingly plunged into the depths of their psyches. Personally, the idea seems destined to leave any person a gibbering wreck, unable to deal with the extreme nature of such an experience. But not Charles Xavier.
Charles Xavier is a man of strength and conviction the like of which is usually seen but once in a generation. And what conclusion did he come to about the nature of man during this traumatic experience of being able to understand all of the human race to their very core, past all of their lies and rationalizations, past their delusions and knee jerk reactions? What conclusion did
a child come to? That man, while fearful of the unknown, was at heart good.
How powerful is that? Who among us would be willing to bare the core of our soul to another in a way that even we cannot with ourselves? Who among us would be confident enough in our own virtue to take that chance? Yet Charles Xavier saw us for what we are and decided to love us. Perhaps even unconditionally.
While I might not believe in such utopian ideas about the nature of man in the real world, in the comic book world this beautifully silly notion can ring true. And apparently it's quite possibly the truth. No matter how dubious I might be about the real world applications of this outlook, people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. changed the world with the same ideas, so maybe I'm just a cynical *******. Either way, no matter how much of a hateful bastard I might be, Professor X represents the side of humanity which I would strive to be like if I wasn't the aforementioned hateful bastard, and there is a tangible power in that.
So I raise a toast (with my Steel Reserve) to Professor Charles Xavier, a better man than you or I, in the hope that he's right, not just in his own world, but ours as well.