Monday 3 January 2000

Pic of the day: I was sort of hoping you would look at the hands.

This time I made sure to read Nova Notes for yesterday ( Jan. 2 ) before going to work. There, Al Schroeder comments on the Harry Potter books (which I recently read and enjoyed, by the way). In particular, Schroeder is sceptical to the treatment of the "muggles" - the non wizard population. They are portrayed as criminally stupid and/or unimportant. Even the word "muggle" doesn't sound like something you'd call your best friend. And they are kept ignorant of all wizard affairs. To top it all off, being a wizard is obviously genetic in Potterworld. The majority of wizards have parents who are wizards and witches, though a few wizards are born from muggles and a few non-wizards are born from wizards. This means we're looking at something akin to racial segregation. Is this a good thing to teach today's children?

Let us see at another take on this problem: The X-men comic books from Marvel comics. (Actually this topic fills several of Marvel's series, but the X-men is the central mutant team.) In Marvel's world, a new race is gradually emerging: The mutants, Homo Superior. Their perhaps foremost spokesman is the semi-evil mutant Magneto, one of the first of his race. He is convinced that ordinary humans can not accept a superior race of men in their midst, and that the normals will kill the mutants unless subjugated by force. His view is colored by his memories of Holocaust, where his original family was wiped out. He sees the German treatment of the Jews as the typical human reaction to anyone doing better than average. And perhaps he is right?

Still in these comic books, we have the X-men and other mutants who have been trained at Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Xavier dreams of a world where humans and mutants can live together in peace and harmony, and he encourages his students to defend a world that hates and fears them. Some of them have even sacrificed their lives doing so. In Marvel-world, some humans accept the mutants, even to the point of being personal friends with them. But those are few. Most people are sceptical, and the masses are easily manipulated by power-hungry men playing on their fears. Defending the "flatscans" - the ordinary humans - is generally a thankless task.

Realistically - as such things go, with works of fiction - I suspect that Harry Potter & co would meet the same attitude if Hogwarts was changed into Professor Dumbledore's School for Gifted Youngsters. Most people would probably be highly sceptical to anyone who could fly broomsticks or turn people into toads.

(Incidentally, this reminds me of my favorite lightbulb joke:
"How many witches does it take to change a lightbulb?" "Change it into what?")

At this point, the educated reader will probably by herself have remembered the witch hunt that went on for several hundred years off and on, in which anyone suspected of supernatural powers was in danger of being tortured and killed. And they were not the first. The first christians, who dabbled in exorcism, healing, resurrection and such, were also hunted down in a strikingly similar manner. Would it be any different today?

You don't need to be able to fly to feel the segregation. It's enough to be a nerd, or even a geek. This is pretty well documented, since so many writers are (or have been) nerds. Is it even reasonable to expect people to understand someone who is half again as intelligent as they are? It is not just a question of processing power, in which one person spends an hour where others would use an hour and a half on the same task. Especially in creative work there is a stunning difference in quality, where one genius may easily outcompete a large team of mediocre performers.

During my first seven or so years at school, I suffered much at the hands of normals. It did not help at all that I often treated them as idiots. Well, they were idiots, so I felt this was reasonable. Most of them could not even read when they started school (despite being older than I was at the time). Much less type, certainly not with decent spelling and grammar. And this difference persisted: While I was reading my encyclopaedia of entomology, the normals were spending all their time chasing balls or doing their homework. Certainly they deserved whatever mockery might come their way?

Something changed. I guess it was me. The fog of childhood was only barely starting to lift from my brain, but by some lucky stroke (I have no idea why) I chose to drop accounting and take metal and wood crafting instead. So while all the vaguely ambitious normals and pluses were pondering in the classrooms above us, I and a few of the less literate boys spent hours down in the cellar, sawing and welding and what not. It was a great time. I was as clumsy with the machine tools as these young boys were at reading, but I made some really good friends.

Another reason why I chose this topic for today: Yesterday as I was making the January 99 entries compatible with my current format, I came upon the Jan 8 entry. In which I reflected on the fact that a normal person (with an IQ of 100) is as far beneath me in intelligence as a severely retarded person with an IQ of 60 is beneath the average. As the average voter is supposedly an average person (actually, he is not) this means that I, as a state employee, work for idiots. (Not that I could not have observed this directly.) Such an impression must this have made on me, that I forgot to use paragraphs in my original text. And also forgot that it was now 1999, not 1998...

Oh well, I have fixed it now. But I guess there is something to learn from this too, don't you think?