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| 'Super Humans' |
I have
been amazed while watching the Paralympics to see what some of the athletes have
overcome to be where they are, and how they have used a limit to drive them to
achieve. The 2012 Summer Games will include
about 1,100 athletes from 170 nations. They include athletes with spinal cord
injuries, amputated limbs, blindness or other visual impairments, cerebral
palsy, mental handicaps and other disabilities, including multiple sclerosis
and dwarfism.
I recently visited the London Museum of Medicine at the Wellcome Collection in London. There was a whole exhibit questioning the morality of making super humans. The general concept was that we have imagined super humans for decades - marvel comics providing every kind of superhuman under the sun, and many love the idea of a super human with powers above and beyond others, to save the planet from evil and such. One artist made a fake (but scarily convincing) documentary, showing a group of ten Americans who agreed to let plastic surgeons give them a super-power, as voted by the general public. This was quite terrifying to watch, showing individuals who were excited to have extreme surgery and go through such pain to have a certain 'power' as voted by random strangers around the country. I wonder, would this ever be reality?
I recently visited the London Museum of Medicine at the Wellcome Collection in London. There was a whole exhibit questioning the morality of making super humans. The general concept was that we have imagined super humans for decades - marvel comics providing every kind of superhuman under the sun, and many love the idea of a super human with powers above and beyond others, to save the planet from evil and such. One artist made a fake (but scarily convincing) documentary, showing a group of ten Americans who agreed to let plastic surgeons give them a super-power, as voted by the general public. This was quite terrifying to watch, showing individuals who were excited to have extreme surgery and go through such pain to have a certain 'power' as voted by random strangers around the country. I wonder, would this ever be reality?
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| "Knight Warrior" |
Unfortunately,
just this week a lad has been in the news, who in my opinion is a super-eejit.
Rob, aged 19, has claimed his super power is the ‘supernatural desire to make
the world a better place’. Ok sunshine, how are you going to do this? Give to Charity?
Volunteer? Oh no, of course, you’re going to run round Greater Manchester at
night in a £200 custom-made Lycra costume on ‘patrol’. Alone. Now I don’t mean
to slam this lad, he’s got good intentions. But encouraging teens to dress up
and go out alone at night to fight crime? What he’s doing is so dangerous and
foolish. Is dressing up at night and putting yourself in danger really being a super human?
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| Prosthetics better than legs? |
Oscar Pistorius last month made history, being the first double-amputee
to compete in the Olympics. Many have debated that his synthetic limbs may be better
than actual legs - making it unfair for him to run with able bodied people. And
experts say that with future improvements in prosthetics, this may be the case.
Could the limited become the unlimited, the super humans? Could we one day have
a world where people use stronger prosthetics to replace weaker human body
parts? I think the museum
at the Wellcome Collection made a strong point - the ability to make ourselves
stronger is something which in the wrong hands could get carried away with and
taken to extremes.
However, I
would unquestionably argue that the good that technology has done for disabled
people is truly amazing. At the museum I saw some of the first false legs used
for children - wooden with painted red shoes for girls and brown for boys. They
were shabby, looked awfully uncomfortable and were fixed in one position. Yet I
did not see them as a creepy thing of the past, but as a first caring step
towards helping children that otherwise could not walk. These constant
developments have enabled many of the athletes on our TV screens, as well as
members of the public, to live better lives.
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| Martine Wright - inspirational |
To round things up, I think the best superpowers for any human are motivation
and outlook. Although this is not as cool as being able to stop time (without ‘Bernard’s
Watch’), fly, or write with our feet (come on, we’ve all tried it…), I
think that having drive and motivation is the best way to achieve something ‘superhuman’.
Some of the athletes shown on TV have the most inspiring stories – Martine Wright
sat next to a suicide bomber in the 7/7 attacks and lost both legs. She then
went on to be a Paralympian, saying “My
motivation, one of my motivations, is I truly believe I was meant to do this
journey” – she took what had happened and used it to go on and achieve great
things she otherwise would not have. Inspiring eh?!
I am genuinely inspired by the Paralympic athletes, and I think that it is fantastic that humans round the world accept each other now irrespective of disabilities and such, which as we all know even a few decades ago, was not the case. Let’s celebrate humanity; we are all super humans, together… to the rescue!
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