Humanity: What if we were ‘more than human’?

By Ausama Anwar:

We’ve all lived life as being a human, and we’ve never imagined living as something else – something bigger maybe, or something smaller – so as to be grateful for the shape we live in (as humans). So here the adventure begins. One of the crazy-minded writers tries to create a character in one of his novels who can be something more than ‘human’. And that man is Alan Moore. Maybe many of us have heard of him, or at least of one of his amazing-outstanding novels which have been the basis for some worldwide movies, such as ‘V for Vendetta’, ‘Watchmen’ and ‘From Hell’.

We are here now to talk about one of his graphic novels, ‘Watchmen’, which has a character who is ‘more than human’. ‘Watchmen’, directed as a movie in 2009 by Zack Snyder, tells us about some superheroes who work to make the world a better place, and due to that goal most of them get killed or die. One of the most exalted superheroes, named Dr. Manhattan, has powers to teleport things, make himself bigger in shape, blast humans by just giving a hand sign, know the future and what’s going on in the places where he is not, and much more. In the movie they call him a superman first, but after his involvement in the Vietnam war, some people call him a God, and that’s for his supernatural acts and power.

For Doctor Manhattan, or Jon as his real name is, this power changed his life, and his way of thinking about life and the universe. It’s like he is not himself as he was. The movie shows us the experience of being more than a human, and makes us think about what we might face.

First of all, a human’s only hope of being human or staying in the ‘humanity cycle’ is Morality. When morality leaves any human body, there isn’t any purpose in calling someone human, (that’s what I believe obviously). So the first thing we gonna lose from being ‘more than human’ is morality, and that’s what happened to Jon. He doesn’t have any feelings toward humans, he killed dozens of them in Vietnam, and also he doesn’t mind killing his superhero-mates when he has to. That’s what we expect from a human in the absence of morality. Some ancient scholars put their fingers to the human mind and said that it’s the only thing that makes us something more than apes or other species, but of course that’s not true. Feelings come from the heart or other chemical changes on our body, and they make morals, not the mind. Jon (Doctor Manhattan) has the mind of at least ten men, but the morality of an ape, or – out of respect to our ape-loving friends, even if we just say he has the morals simply of carnivorous animals – the point here is that morality is what keeps us in the humanity cycle, not other things.

The second point we learn from Doctor Manhattan is that we cannot ESCAPE from human nature because, if we do, we can’t live – or, if we have super powers, we would just leave Earth. Jon loses most of human nature by becoming more than human. He can’t have sex anymore, he can’t feel anymore, he can’t taste or eat anymore, he can’t enjoy anything anymore. That’s what makes him BEYOND ‘natural’ and makes him to decide to leave earth. All those things, we can’t even imagine living without those natures, but what if we had to? We would just kill ourselves or – if we had superpowers like Jon – we would leave earth to humans and travel to the galaxies. What I am saying here is, one of the negative things we face from being more than human is a lack of human nature, which won’t let us live.

The big challenge that Mister Moore tackles here is in conceiving someone more than yourself (human), and creating its ideas. What I see and people see about Doctor Manhattan or Jon as positive points are that he has supernatural power, which makes him ‘more than human’. But, seriously, even the positive points are truly Positive? I don’t think so. I believe having superpowers makes the joy of life less. We can teleport, and we will miss bus rides and cab fees; we can kill people easily, and we won’t have any enemies to encourage us; we know the future and everything that occurs, and we will not able to live!

I think being human is a gift to humans, and I’m really grateful for it.

Ausama Anwar was born in 1994, in the capital of the Kurdistan region, Hawler. He is a writer and author of two books published in Kurdish. ‘A Gate to the Intellectual’ is dedicated to youth generally with an intellectual background. ‘Hidden Idea: Some Samples from Movies’ is a work of creative movie analysis. Ausama is also a journalist at ‘Yakgrtw’ newspaper, and leader of a society youth group called ‘Zamwa’.