Zelig 2181
Remembering Bill Mantlo's Paradox at forty-five
♱ Rurik Christwalker ♱ has been writing about our enemies’ ideal of a two-tier society with them at the top: e.g.,
Thus: under Aristotle and Maimonedes, you and I are incapable of having any Virtue™ at all.
At the best, we are simply expected to behave, but we cannot develop actual Virtue™ because that is reserved for citizens or Chosen, who fall under the higher set of laws. You will never be a Spartan, essentially. And, because we are not virtuous, we can be treated like helots. Because, again, we are bad on a definitional level — we have no Virtue™!
[…]
Aristotle rationalizes his two-tier system by claiming some humans are naturally slaves or suited to subordination. Like, if you were born a Getae, a Goth or a Goy, you simply wouldn’t understand Aristotle’s concept of virtue, because you weren’t inculcated in it by the education system of the state, as an example.1
Our self-appointed masters define themselves as the virtuous - and us as the virtueless, the helots to their ‘heroes’, the Untermenschen who ‘deserve’ whatever they dish out.
And I must confess that almost all of us peasants do have a high tolerance for ‘elite’ nonsense. Many even volunteer to die for it.2
So I see nothing to stop us from being “cast into the Thunderdome” as Neoliberal Feudalism put it:
Under this system, the general population will get poorer and poorer, with more and more crime, homelessness and filth [sounds like Hawaii now!], until only the ultra-rich [like Larry Ellison who owns 98% of a Hawaiian island] will be able to avoid being cast out into what is colloquially known as the “thunderdome” by living in armed, gated compounds, much like rich South Africans and Brazilians do today.
What happens after that?
Might SM Stirling’s Domination become a reality?
Citizens, who are free and can vote, comprise only a small fraction of the Domination [of the Draka]’s population. Over 90% of the population are slaves. When the British Empire bans slavery, the Draka [who were originally part of that empire] avoid emancipation by labeling their slaves “serfs”. At first, serfs are officially debt laborers who can earn their freedom, but this is a feeble legal fiction. This pretense is dropped when the Draka withdraw from the Empire, but the word “serf” remains the standard term. Serfs have no rights, and forbidden to handle money. Their testimony is inadmissible in any court. Any child born to a serf mother is a serf. (Sex between a male serf and a female Draka is a capital offense for both parties.)
At first serfs are all African blacks, and Draka citizenship is open to all whites although Nordic, Anglo Saxon and Celtic types are especially welcomed. Because Draka expansion is based solely on enslaving conquered peoples, they soon have serfs from other races, including whites. As Draka social mores diverge more and more from those of free societies (and the Draka are more and more widely hated), they evolve an ideology in which they are “The Race” — the natural overlords of all humanity. Those non-Draka not already enslaved are “feral serfs” who represent a permanent threat to the survival of the Draka. Thus the Draka are dedicated to enslaving all humanity, since the only alternative is the extinction of The Race.
[…]
Under the influence of Draka philosophers such as Elvira Naldorssen, the traditional Draka white-supremacism is replaced by Draka-supremacism, with the Draka viewing all of non-Drakan humanity as their cattle. Elvira explains the ideology of the Domination, the utter amorality of which will lead enemies of the Draka to refer to them as ‘Snakes’:
Others have conquered and ruled; we alone conquer for conquest’s sake and Dominate for no other purpose than Domination itself; the name we half-consciously chose for our state is no accident. We and we alone have spoken aloud the Great Secret; that the root function of all human society is the production and reproduction of power—and that power is the ability to compel others to do your will against theirs. It is end, not means. The purpose of Power is Power.
The Draka will conquer the world for two reasons; because we must and because we can. And yet of the two forces the second is the greater; we do this because we choose to do it. By the sovereign Will and force of arms the Draka will rule the Earth, and in so doing remake themselves. We shall conquer and beat the Nations of the Earth into the dust and reforge them in our self wrought Image; the Final Society without weakness or mercy, hard and pure. Our descendants will walk the hillside of that future, innocent beneath the stars, with no more between them and their naked will than a wolf has. THEN there will be Gods in the Earth.
In the Final Society, the line between Draka and serf is rigid. The Draka convert themselves into a posthuman species, Homo drakensis, and
produce a genetically altered new serf race, Homo servus, which is incapable of rebelling. This is accomplished by making servus vulnerable to dominance and sexual arousal pheromones, as well as changing their genetic temperaments toward the emotional and nonaggressive. Thus they can dispense with the brutal repression needed earlier, and entrust serfs with sensitive positions such as theoretical physics. Because of additional chromosomes added to the drakensis genome, drakensis and servus cannot interbreed, precluding any “half breed” versions of the drakensis “Master Race.”
A ‘paravirus’ is mentioned as the method of converting Homo sapiens serfs to Homo servus, the sex cells being transformed with the result that infected human parents give birth to servus children.
In the real society to come, will the tiers similarly become biological?
Why stop there? Why not create multiple Servant Species specialized for labor on the other planets of the Solar System and the Moon?
These Servant Species are the Saturnians - tall and reedy, with strange finlike crests on their appendages. Mercurians who gloss white-hot and wear heat suits to keep their temperatures up in the thousands of degrees centigrade. Jovians whose massive nostrils filter oxygen from among the abrasive gases of Jupiter. Pluvians who are blue-skinned and swathed in fur. Martians who wear water-circulating all-concealing robes to protect them against their world’s dust storms, and Neptunians, about whom the Terrans laughingly saw the less known, the better.
[...]
The Lunans themselves, the first Terrans to be genegineered, are short, squat, and heavily-muscled, primarily bred for work in Luna’s mines.
I doubt most people reading this will have descendants. Dissidents these days are often childless. But if you do have children - or you have family and friends with children - imagine that their descendants no longer even look human two centuries from now. The gap between Homo drakensis and Homo servus is nothing compared to the Grand Canyons between the Servant Species.
In 2181, there is one man who can cross those canyons … effortlessly.
Maybe “man” is not the right word … anymore. Mark Esterhase was born male in the mid-twenty-second century. But now he (?) is beyond male and female - beyond human!
He is paranormal … parahuman … Paradox!
Writer Bill Mantlo and artist Val Mayerik’s creation Paradox first appeared in the final issue of the tryout magazine Marvel Preview forty-five years ago yesterday.
I missed that issue at the time and only found it twelve years later.
I first found Paradox in his second and only other appearance for many years - the cover story of Bizarre Adventures #30 (February 1982).
I recall reading a library copy of that magazine in 1988 and buying my own copy from a comics store in 1992. That second story by itself made sense to me when I first read it, so I had no idea it was a sequel until I discovered the first story in a back issue box. Maybe even the very same box on the very same day.
Those stories didn’t leave much of an impression on me when I first read them over thirty years ago. However, at least I never forgot their premise. Rereading the first one last night and the second one today stirred decades-old memories. And I’d like to think I’ll remember Paradox even better now.
Paradox speaks to me because the title character is like me: a being who defies borders. I have lived, worked, and studied across the USSA and Eurasia in the years since I first read it. I’ve left my narrow Japanese world in Hawaii and lived among Whites, Blacks and Jews as well as Asians. I’ve even had a Moslem landlord. I’ve spent my life studying languages and cultures other than my own.
And I’ve long wanted to be like Paradox, a being genetically engineered with the ability to morph into any species of human - Terran original or gengineered Servant. Either gender.
He is a sci-fi version of Woody Allen’s Zelig, the protagonist of one of my favorite films.
Woody Allen plays Leonard Zelig, the human chameleon. He is a man who just wants to fit in with the people around him, so he actually begins to adopt characteristics of the people he surrounds himself with. This means his skin color changes, his body size changes and he even begins to adopt other people’s points of view. In one story he is said to have gone from Republican to Democrat in the span of a few minutes, fervently debating topical political issues.
I am the anti-Zelig. I stand out everywhere I go, even in Japan. I have often been the only one of my kind. If I were like Paradox - like Zelig - I could fit in, at least on a superficial level. I’d be White among Whites. Black among Blacks.
But deeper differences would remain. I feel like Paradox, a being who has been everywhere yet fits nowhere.
He has one foot on each tier.
On the one hand, he is a Interplanetary Security Agency agent. A tool of the Terran Empire. And a Terran human by birth. A member of the master caste.
On the other hand, he empathizes with the Servant Species that he can become. Because he is as much them as he is Terran. Hence the dissidents among them trust him … but perhaps only up to a point.
How does he resolve that conflict?
I’m out of time, so I won’t spoil the answer.
The fictional Draka people of SM Stirling’s Domination might say something similar:
Like, if you were born a serf, you simply wouldn’t understand the Draka concept of virtue, because you weren’t inculcated in it by the education system of the state, as an example.
Until the Draka engineered themselves to become a new species, they were made by that system. The Draka
are, to a man (and woman), superb physical specimens, unbelievably strong with startling muscle definition, astonishing stamina and reactions, and are the equal of several elite enemy soldiers, due to their fanatical and relentless dedication to fitness, physical conditioning, endless combat training and diet. Draka men and women are trained for combat from their infancy. Free Draka troops can be disciplined by superior officers for neglecting to keep their physiques and fitness sharply honed to the highest possible standard, although this would be extremely rare, as poor physical conditioning would be seen as an affront to one’s family and reputation. Their physical regimen is expected to be maintained in times of relative peace, as the Draka are almost always on a permanent war footing.
I have been horrified to see children of War on Terror veterans embrace the military. Almost no one learns anything. I know only one vet who wants their kid to have nothing to do with the armed forces after they wasted years of their life in the ‘sandbox’.