People sometimes talk about a person thinking he/she is invincible or has some kind of superhuman powers. For the sake of needing a term here, I’ll just refer to it as “superhero syndrome”. Often times, this syndrome is referenced to and riddled with negative connotation. But really, the typical run-of-the-mill every day superhero is just simply a human who has acquired some kind of special powers or capabilities somehow. So, why is “superhero syndrome” a bad thing?
I was a bit of a comic book geek growing up, and I’ll still watch just about any movie that is a remake of a superhero story, like Superman, Batman, Fantastic Four, Watchmen, and dozens of others. It’s a soft spot I have for fantasy. There’s one interesting thing about superheroes, though, that can resonate with any of us. Most of them were at one time just normal humans and became superheroes through some tragedy or an event that exposed them to some sort of mutant element. Bruce Wayne became Batman after he witnessed the murder of his parents and vowed to help stop all evil. Peter Parker gained super human powers after he was bitten by a mutant spider, but only became Spiderman after he witnessed his uncle’s death and felt responsible for it. The Fantastic Four only became fantastic after they were exposed to some mutant elements while on a scientific mission, and used their superpowers to protect the world.
Then there are the villains in the superhero world. Villains are typically born out of these same types of tragedy or exposures to mutant elements as superheroes. They experience a tragedy or they might be at the wrong place at the wrong time in some experiment-gone-wrong situation and turn into another being or acquire superhuman powers. Unlike superheroes, however, these villians become filled with anger and hatred, and they quest to forever project that hatred onto the world and punish others for the tragedy they experienced.
Superheroes and villains are both born out of similar circumstances, but simply choose to use their experiences…and newfound superhuman powers….in different ways. Superheroes strive to make the world better. Villains plot to destroy it. For these reasons, it makes sense that superheroes and villains represent the good and evil of their fantasy worlds, and that we often use them as metaphors for good and evil in our every day constant “real life” world.
Many of us love superheroes because they represent the wonderful and the sometimes invisible element of goodness in the world. However, we “normal humans” might connect to these super humans because we have one important foundation in common- the human element. Both normal humans and super humans are still human underneath everything else, which brings with it being vulnerable and fallible. Superheroes are still born somehow, they can still be hurt, they can still experience triumph and exhilaration, they can still make mistakes, they can still fall in love, and they can still somehow die.
Tragedies, triumphs, and elements to which we are not typically exposed can transform us in the smallest of ways, without us realizing the process, or the biggest of ways, where maybe we can feel the overwhelming growth pains of muscles ripping or a heart breaking or some new energy running through our body at a critical single moment. These things will happen to all of us. It’s how we take those tragedies and exposure to elements and turn them into experiences that determine whether we become the superhero or the villain. So through these experience, striving to have “superhero syndrome” and using those tragedies and exposure to elements in a quest for more goodness in the world and a better life- well, that’s certainly a pretty fabulous thing to be able to do, and something that’s not too “superhuman” for any of us.
