Of Comics and Conservatism

I'm so late to the party that it has already packed up and moved to a different venue, but I just read three extraordinarily good comic book series: All-Star Superman, Watchmen, and The Dark Knight Returns. Each of them is tremendously well-written, and each is terrifically thought-provoking (Watchmen in particular gave me an instant existential crisis). While they don't all address political ideas at the same level, I think there's plenty to draw from each of them, especially from a conservative standpoint. While I doubt any of them were intended to make any kind of explicit case for a particular political orthodoxy, I believe they contain and convey some basic truths that help inform the views of the so-called Right.

If you're like I was a few days ago and haven't read these, here is your official spoiler warning.

I'll start with All-Star Superman. Its plot revolves around Superman dying of a sort of super-cancer, having been tricked by Lex Luthor into absorbing too much solar radiation for even his Kryptonian body. The radiation makes Superman more powerful, but dooms him to self-destruction. He sets about completing as many final tasks as he can, like revealing his secret identity to Lois Lane and releasing the shrunken, bottled Kryptonian city of Kandor. He does many things to benefit mankind, including using his newly-freed microscopic Kryptonian brethren to cure previously incurable disease. His god-like abilities save mankind from destruction, but he realizes, due to his mortality, that this is not enough. He needs mankind to be able to live without him, to find a way to defend itself.

In this process, he provides the most brilliant and noble scientist in the world with his genome in order to clone a new breed of Supermen. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor, not satisfied merely to cause Superman's demise, steals the superhero's formula for giving humans superpowers and proceeds to attempt world domination. He is, of course, foiled, but exclaims to Superman that he could have saved the world, if only Superman had let him. Luthor hates Superman because he views the presence of such a being as anathema to human progress. Of course, Luthor equates human progress with his own dominance, as his actions profess.

Contrast the two examples of human brilliance in their interaction with Superman. They both seek power, but one seeks it for a benevolent, controlled purpose, while the other seeks it for his own sake. It is not the power itself that is evil; Superman demonstrates this when he fights off rogue Kryptonians who seek to dominate Earth. It is the character of he who wields it and the manner in which he does that determines its morality.

In the midst of all this, Superman also decides to create a parallel human planet, one without his interference. This human civilization, at an accelerated pace, plays out much like the real world's, even culminating in an alternate Nietzsche postulating the Übermensch: the Superman.

This leads me to my conclusion: Superman is the ultimate thought experiment. The man who can do everything must choose what he does and how much he does of it. His choice is incredibly noble: he does not dominate the world for either good or evil. He does much to aid it, but refuses to take away mankind's freedom to make moral choices, does not take away its ability to find its own solutions. He does this by entrusting the literal power of himself to mankind, but not just any part of mankind. Mankind he trusts. Mankind that is noble. Power itself, gained through circumstance or ingenuity, is not automatically good; in fact, in the hands of someone amoral like Luthor, it is exceedingly dangerous. Power needs restraint if it is to be good. Superman represents the ultimate ideal: power voluntarily limited.

I will move on (more succinctly, I hope) to Watchmen. The question pervading the story is: who watches the Watchmen? More specifically, what keeps those who claim to protect humanity accountable to that claim? Can anyone do that but themselves? What is the responsibility of those with such power?

In the world of Watchmen, the government has tried to tame this power. It forced masked vigilantes to retire and employed some of them: the violent, repugnant Comedian and the radioactively transformed god-man Doctor Manhattan. Meanwhile, the vengeful, uncompromising, and violently pragmatic Rorschach refuses to surrender or compromise. The Comedian turns up dead, and Rorschach fears a conspiracy to kill off the former heroes. To skip a tremendous amount of plot details, everything is part of a scheme by Ozymandias, another former hero, to unite the Cold War world by perpetrating a grand, violent lie: an invasion by other species, one of his own creation. Ozymandias forces Manhattan, Nite Owl, and Silk Spectre to hide the truth, convincing them that to undo the lie would be to bring back even worse destruction via nuclear war. Rorschach refuses to comply, and Manhattan kills him to keep the secret safe. Manhattan departs this world, weary of mankind, but tells Ozymandias that nothing is ever done. The world is left to live in its new unified utopia. Meanwhile, Rorschach's journal, which documented his investigation right up until before the final confrontation, finds its way to a low-budget right-wing extremist news rag, and seems about to be published.

It would be impossible to delve into all the nuances of this story, but there a few things I can draw out here. When Ozymandias's fake alien invader explodes in New York, the scene is a microcosm of humanity. A couple violently fights; a psychiatrist, depressed by his experience with Rorschach and his wife's selfishness, tries to intervene; a newspaper salesman, trying to renew his benevolence toward mankind, watches helplessly; a pair of detectives, disgusted by the atrocities they've witnessed, approach to control the situation. The whole human spectrum of evil, grace, love, hate, prejudice, friendliness, fear, courage, and all other qualities find themselves here, on this street corner.

Rorschach has long been disgusted with humanity, fighting for justice on principle, not benevolence. Manhattan struggles to bring himself to care about petty humanity. Silk Spectre and Nite Owl try to simply get by and overcome their personal demons. And Ozymandias believes the only way to save humanity is to irrevocably manipulate it. None of these attitudes are presented as the correct one, but what's clear is that humanity is tainted, yet not worthless. Governments cannot solve the selfishness of mankind, because they are made up of people who share the same motivations. There are, essentially, two ways to improve humanity: people individually decide to recoil from selfishness, or they are forced into harmony by an unstoppable outside force. The former may be too improbable to rely on; the latter may be too irredeemable to allow.

Finally, I will address The Dark Knight Returns. Quick and dirty plot summary: Batman is middle-aged and retired, but finds he can't sit idly by as Gotham City loses all control in the face of evil. He comes back, inspires a new Robin, makes the media explode with coverage and debate, prompts the Joker to return, and punches Superman in the face.

He punches Superman in the face.

Anyway, two scenes intrigue me the most. One is a series of aftermath interview snippets paired with the climactic conclusion. An extremely selfish businessman, a priest who tried to help people, and another man who got caught up with the mob and feels ashamed all recount their experiences. Commissioner Gordon, about to retire, manages to organize people into putting out a fire, showing the strength of human benevolence. Meanwhile, the selfish mob has to be corralled by Batman and his new Mutant recruits. Like in Watchmen, the reader sees a wide spectrum of humanity at its worst and best. The other scene is at the very end. Batman, having faked his death (after punching Superman in the face), organizes and trains his new vigilante force to keep the peace. His makeshift army includes former Mutants, some of which had become overly violent toward criminals in his name. He leads them in both effectiveness and restraint, using them to combat evil without causing it. While police, government, and reformative psychiatrists had been powerless to stop the Mutant leader, Harvey Dent, and the Joker from perpetrating their horrors, Batman leads Gotham to solving these problems from within, even making it a bastion of civil solemnity in the midst of nuclear crisis.

There's a definitive theme in these comics (and implicit in the very nature of the Batman mythos) of the insufficiency of law and order. Some evil is too great to legislate away. This evil cannot be merely overpowered, either: Superman's intervention is not the solution. Good character and decisive action have to combine to stop evil and know when to stop itself. This is why Batman is a hero: he fights, but does not dominate. He knows better than to think evil can be punched out of existence. He will not become what he combats. He is unwilling to kill, even for justice. He will not carry out a role as judge, jury, and executioner to extreme lengths. Unlike Superman, he can't do everything, but like Superman as portrayed in many other comics, he doesn't want to.

I hope, at this point, you've discerned what I'm trying to glean from these three works. There is a theme these comics share, that when humanity is guided toward morality through force and dominance, it is a sham and a travesty. Even if the power to do such a thing were gained, it would ultimately fail. Evil can be limited externally, but that is not enough. Humanity has to change from within. Heroes, paragons of virtue, can arise and be examples, but they cannot force change, because then they cease to be heroes. In Watchmen, Ozymandias admits this, calling his own actions evil, albeit necessary in his mind. 

My interpretation of these comics is this: the morality of mankind cannot be viewed collectively. We cannot be reduced to an average or an equation. The heart of moral life and action lies within the individual, whether he be weak or powerful. Even the best, most powerful man must check his own action, lest he become a tyrant. 

To me, progressivism is the utter antithesis of these ideas. It espouses collective moral growth and the use of power as a net good. These comics, as I understand them, reject or at least challenge these notions.

Thus, in some sense, I believe I can call these brilliant works of illustrated literature (whether self-consciously or not): conservative.

Conquering Death: Our Sisyphean Feat

First: read/skim through this article in the Washington Post about wealthy people funding research into, essentially, finding a technological solution to death.

Now, here's what I think about it: it's very sad.

A quote from that: "I believe that evolution is a true account of nature. But I think we should try to escape it or transcend it in our society." This is where the dominant secular mindset is: everything is material, yet the material is unsatisfactory in its transience. They, in a sense, want to reject nihilism. But they have so completely removed the spiritual from their worldview, it doesn't occur to them. Their only solution is to attempt, through material means, to transcend the limits of the material.

I would argue this is impossible, given what we know about the physical. Even if we could physically augment ourselves to stave off physical death, how do we maintain this state? What fuels this preservation, Eventually, I believe you hit a wall. What may last long will not last forever. And yet, the rich pursue this end because they cannot resolve this question, also a quote from the piece: "How can a person be there and then just vanish, not be there?"

Religions in general offer their solution: spiritual life or existence in some form. The concepts of afterlife and spiritual presence vary, but basically, they offer that the physical is not the hard limit to being. This, however, has been rejected by those that call themselves intellects. They have concluded that there is only the material and sensory...

@Thorrison Hence the unending quest to immanentize the eschaton.
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) April 6, 2015

As a Christian, I hope these people can be reached by the Gospel, because it offers the only true solution to mortality and the limits of the flesh. Christian faith is in not only spiritual life and regeneration, but in the fulfillment and restoration of the physical. We talk often of "saving souls," but God doesn't just do that. He remakes the body, reclaims the creation. Eternal life is not an ethereal, distant realm of vague ghostly existence. It is, after the Last Day, perfect physical life.

Humans fundamentally seek a life free of pain, free of decay, free of mistakes, and full of maximized happiness in mind and body. This is what God offers freely through Christ's sacrifice and resurrection. The only "catch," from our perspective, is that you don't get it all right now.

Well, that's not the only catch. The other catch is that you have to trust in someone bigger than you. Someone you can't fully understand. Those things are hard for us: patience and trust. So we say, "No, I/the smart people will figure it out." Because of this fallen state of mind, we choose the futile over the free.

This is what makes me sad to see these attempts at conquering the material through material means. There's an answer right there, waiting. Physical perfection is promised, right alongside spiritual perfection. They are, in essence, the same thing, and happen at the same time.

This promise gets discarded as a fairy tale for the small-minded. And yet, the top-ranked humans try to accomplish the very same thing. They throw money at the existential problem of human frailty. Money! Perhaps the only thing more fleeting than our own lives!

Thus, I offer that the human condition is not only the fact that we have to face an end, but also our futile efforts to stop that confrontation. We try to roll that boulder up to the top of the mountain, where release from our pain dangles before our eyes. In the end, we are crushed.

I wish I could show these people the better path and convince them to follow it. But I can't. Only God can.

He's the one offering, after all.