I made this rather last minute for the WHY EXPLORE SPACE competition, but because of some unfortunate technical issues, didn’t get it uploaded on time. I missed the deadline by like 10 minutes, but I thought I’d put it up here anyway.
UPDATE: It seems they extended the deadline a day so I could enter. Voting starts Sunday at noon. SO VOTE HERE, I guess.
No this isn’t about who would win in a fight between Superman and Goku. Specifically this is about a particular mainstream Japanese hero character I see over and over again in Shonen action based Anime / Manga and how it compares to mainstream American super heroes. Of course I don’t mean to say there aren’t characters on both sides that break the mold, only that the type I describe seems interestingly prevalent in modern mainstream media.
Growth Mindset
For me, the biggest difference is that Japanese super powers are based around a growth mindset. The hero must train hard to unlock his hidden potential. Even if he is the chosen one of some kind or come from another planet, it doesn’t come for free, it takes hard work. Most American super heroes were born with their powers or gained it all at once through some happenstance beyond their control. They will usually go through an awkward period of learning how their powers work, but it will be more about discovery than training.
By that I really mean, they will hate the science fiction of today. In all likelihood a passive experience like a movie or TV show will be of no interest to them at all. But lets just say it is still relevant, or at least it can be converted into a new entertaining format for super humans. In this case I think the new humans would only be able to, at best, muster some amount of historical appreciation. At worst, they may find it quite stupid and insulting, assuming post humans are capable of being insulted.
It seems to me that most science fiction stories are cautionary tales. They are so often about the failure of scientific advancements to account for the human spirit. I touched on this in an older post. Scifi today has to appeal to the emotions of people today. Continue reading
Well, hello there. Can you speak? Can you say “apple”? No? Well, let’s just jump through this portal and see what our soul says at the other end.
I see you enjoy playing with the funny physics of this world. Place two portals on the floor and toss a cube into there and watch it bounce out one, twirl in a graceful swimmer’s turn, and dive back into the portal to bounce out again. I also notice you like to place two portals on each of those parallel walls to look at yourself in an unending sequence of portals. You seem quite enthralled with your backside, watching yourself move around and shimmy from side to side. I wonder what Freud would say about that? And sometimes you enter the portal and stand there, frozen in space, unable to move forward or backwards. Is it fear that prevents you from moving forward? Or maybe it’s the comfort of being in the portal itself, a snug cocoon between the future and the not-so-distant past.
Recently I travelled back in podcast time and listened to an old episode of Radiolab that covered memory and forgetting. It may have been one of the most fascinating episodes I have listened to so far.
Human brains are incredibly fragile things. The other organs, such as the liver and heart, feel solid and strong. They are dense, rich collections of tissue that hold together firm like buckey-balls. But the brain, in contrast, is a very loose collection of neurons and gray goo, seemingly held together by magic. I had heard that the texture was similar to jello, so was quite surprised when I did feel one to find that it was much softer than expected. If it is like jello, it is like jello that is a few minutes shy of completing the firming process and is likely to fall apart in your hands if you try to pick it up. And somewhere in this crumbly wet mess that we call our brains is our soul. And our memories.
I have long thought that one of the biggest problems with corporations is that they are designed to diminish accountability and personal responsibility, much like the military, like a controlled mob mentality, like the act of multiple people pulling switches to electrocute a singe man. Beyond that, their only driving force is to make money. So the things they do, particularly when they get too large are going to seem evil to an individual person. They will only act in a way that seems moral if that action just happens to line up with their profits. They will only tell the whole truth by coincidence, and when intentionally telling convenient truths, they will be so edited they function as lies. When a company does something that outrages the public, almost none of the people working there feel directly responsible. After all no one did anything wrong, they just signed a piece of paper, submitted a report, kept their mouth shut, felt responsible only for doing their jobs. Even the CEO and board of directors feel more responsible to the shareholders than to their own conscience. To me it seems like they are serving an invisible beast with an insatiable appetite
You are a conscientious person. You pay your taxes, and vote when it’s convenient and not raining. You always drop your empty soda cans in a blue bin and bundle newspaper with designer twine to set out on your curb for recycling day. You even bought a bike, intending to ride it to work. Think of all the greenhouse gas you can prevent by consuming a few extra calories as fuel for that bike ride instead of sitting in that gas guzzling monstrosity. In fact, you don’t even need to worry about the extra calories you need to consume, as you’ve been doing it for years in preparation.
But alas, there is one thing that you haven’t quite thought about while preparing your living will. How will you be buried? What is the most environmentally conscious way you can depart this earth, minimizing your carbon footprint at the critical moment of one week after your death?
I want the future. I want flash-bang twirly things with lots of glitter. I want machines to tell me in a Kevin Spacey voice that they want to help me. I want clean energy, allergy free cats, and a little umbrella in my coconut drinks.
I think I want a Roomba. The Roomba is the future. You place it down in a room, twirl your finger, and it vacuums your floors. Just like that. After it is done slaving away for you and avoiding the stairs, little Roomba spins around and makes it’s way back home to charge itself. Because that’s what things do in the future, they work wirelessly and then charge themselves. Contrary to what I want, I’m pricing Dyson Vacuum cleaners. Even though the Dyson is more expensive, heavier, and – most importantly – I have to do the manual labor myself, I’ve started pricing Dyson’s. And I’m not alone. Everyone I know has a Dyson. It doesn’t matter that the Roomba does everything everyone has ever said they have wanted in a vacuum. They still go with the large machine that does more or less the same thing as the other large machine they already have, only it does it slightly better.
As the science of gene manipulation advances, we may one day find ourselves able to easily alter our own desires and ambitions to suit our particular situation. I would suggest that all our actions are in service of our emotions, that rational thought only allows us to more efficiently serve our feelings. Our minds let us work hard right now for a grater reward in the future. Some are simply slaves to a compulsion that will never really pay of, but it is still an emotional drive. Hopefully for those people, getting there is all of the fun. In any case, we do what we are compelled to do or not to do.
