This essay will:
- Define what your Super Powers are;
- Explain the relationship between Super Powers and the goal of life, meaning of life, and purpose of life;
- Describe how people might find their Super Powers; and
- State how and why the Fellowship of Reason provides opportunities for you to exercise your Super Powers;
Look! Up in the sky!
It’s a bird!
It’s a plane!
It’s Superman!
Yes, it's Superman! Strange visitor from another planet who came to
earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who
can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and
who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan
newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American
way.
(Opening sequence from the television show “Adventures of Superman,”
1952-1958)
Examples
Before giving a definition of
Super Powers let us consider some examples.
Every member of the
Fellowship of Reason has Super Powers.
·
One of our members presides over an
invitation-only film club twice a month from his home. This special member loves
classic films, is a great teacher, and is—thanks to years of hard work and
careful planning—retired and able to devote hours and hours to the exercise of
his Super Power.
·
One of our members hosts two book
clubs and a taped lecture and discussion group four nights per month. After the
fashion of Gertrude Stein’s famous literary and artist salon in Paris, our
special member guides our musings with tender loving care. Here is what
Wikipedia has to say about salons and certain special women: “Women could be a
powerful influence in the salon. Women were the center of the life in the salon
and carried a very important role as regulators. They can select their guests
and decide about the subjects of their meetings. Those subjects can be social,
literary, or political. They also had the role as mediator by directing the
discussion.” Those who know will immediately recognize our special member in
this Wiki description.
·
One of our members conducts the
operations of the Fellowship of Reason. This special member has an unsurpassed
ability for planning, organization, and execution. Thanks to this special
member, the world experiences the Fellowship of Reason as an efficient,
responsive, and meticulous organization.
·
One of our members is a flutist of
exceptional talent. While her day job involves life and death evaluations of
thousands of medical images, she is an artist in both fields: music and
medicine. From time to time, she rehearses her instrument in order to thrill
FOR audiences with her music.
These are just a few of the
Super Men and Super Women of our acquaintance in the Fellowship of Reason.
There are many more, but you get the idea.
There are several features of
Super Powers that we call to your attention.
Literary Gigantism
In fantasy literature there
are many super human beings. Superman, Batman, Wolverine, Mr. Fantastic, the
Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing are examples. The reader might
discount my title “Super Powers,” because the Super Powers of which I speak are
quite different from the “powers” of fantasy Super Heroes.
Overstatement, hyperbole,
magnification or gigantism is a common literary technique used to call
attention to an event or person or feature for a variety of purposes (e.g.
emphasis, ridicule, irony, humor, etc.). James Joyce uses the technique (he
calls it “gigantism”) in the Cyclops chapter (12) of his famous tome, Ulysses. In one episode, the throwing of
a biscuit tin after our hero Leopold Bloom causes an earthquake, saying of it:
“there is no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our island since
the earthquake of 1534.” Let us not be fooled into thinking that because of the
prevalence of gigantism in literature that the thing magnified does not exist.
Human beings do have unique
and special powers. It is the existence of these unique and special powers in
real human beings that allows literature to magnify those powers in our
imaginations.
The Right Circumstances
Unmagnified, a unique and
special power has real-life features different from Superman’s fantasy powers.
Recently, I was on a driving trip with a friend. We were pulling into a service
station when we observed a lone driver pushing his automobile up the small hump
between the roadway and the gas plaza of the service station. The driver was
out of gas. My friend stopped our car in the road. I jumped out and helped push
the other driver’s car to the gas pump. I exercised my Super Power. Here are
the some of the features of my Super Power: I had the physical capacity (speed,
strength, health, and mass) to help the man. I was in the right place at the
right time. I was ready, willing, and able to help. It cost me nothing to help.
It gave me pleasure to help. I was rewarded in the store of the service station
by a hearty handshake and thank you from the other driver. At that moment, I
exercised my Super Power. (Who, what, when, where, how, and why must all have
correct responses in order to exercise a Super Power.)
A real-life Super Power is
not merely a capacity to act, but also the circumstantial presence in place and
time to be able to act. You might say, of course: “I could do that.” My
response is: “No, you could not. Only I was present at that moment and in that
place.”
Just like a real-life Super
Power is not to be denied because it has not been magnified in fantasy, so it
is not to be denied because, in fantasy,
another person could exercise the Super Power. A real-life Super Power is to be
distinguished from a fantasy Super Power by magnitude and circumstance.
So you see, our classic film
expert, our salon hostess, our executive director, and our doctor/flutist, all
are present the right place and at the right time to exercise their Super
Powers. Who, what, when, where, how, and why? All answers are correct. One
might fantastically say: “the stars are aligned.”
Definition
A Super Power is a human
ability exercised under circumstances presented to the actor providing the
actor a deep and gratifying experience of being alive.
Readers will recognize within
this definition mythologist Joseph Campbell’s famous formulation:
People
say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s
what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of
being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will
have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually
feel the rapture of being alive.
―
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
The Meaning of Life
Having defined Super Powers
let us turn to the second of the four goals of this essay which is to state the
relationship between Super Power and the goal, meaning, and purpose of life.
There is a famous and ancient
Hindu story illustrating the manifold nature of the truth. The story has many
forms, but the gist follows. Four blind men are asked to touch an elephant and
to describe what they have experienced. One touches the tail and says: “It is a
rope.” Another touches the side of the elephant and says: “It is a wall.” The
third touches a leg and says: “It is a tree.” The fourth touches the tusk and
says: “It is a spear.” The four blind men discuss their findings and fall into
a violent quarrel over who is right.
In the same way, the goal,
the meaning, and the purpose of life might be talking about the same Truth from
slightly different perspectives, each one being an important part of the entire
Truth.
In the Fellowship of Reason
we assert, following Aristotle, that the purpose of life is happiness. Our
philosophy is called Eudaimonism after the Greek, meaning “well-being-ism.”
Certainly, being happy and having well-being are related, if not identical.
Above we have quoted Joseph
Campbell, who asserts that we are seeking deep experiences of being alive. His
formulation, too, seems integrally related to happiness and well-being.
One of my personal favorites
is the assertion that the goal of a man or a woman is the creation and
preservation of the values that sustain human life.
How are these four
ideas—happiness, well-being, deep experiences of being alive, and creating and
preserving values—related? Well, I claim that they are all the same elephant—her
tail, her side, her leg, and her tusk.
They are related by the
concept of Super Powers as follows. In order to create and preserve the values
that sustain human life, the actor must have Super Powers. The actor must
exercise his Super Powers in the circumstances that are present to the actor.
When the actor exercises his Super Powers, he or she enjoys a deep experience
of being alive. Such an experience is also one of well-being. When one
experiences well-being, one is happy. It is all the same elephant. The action
is the exercise of the Super Power. The existential consequence of the action
is the creation and preservation of the values that sustain human life. The
physical consequence is well-being. The psychology consequence is happiness.
So, you see, Super Powers are
a really big deal.
Finding Your Super Powers
Now let us explore the third
of the four goals of this essay: How shall people find their Super Powers?
Mythologist Joseph Campbell,
again, has an answer for us: “Follow your bliss.”
Montessori schools are all
over this concept. The famous core of the Montessori program is to encourage
the child to explore his or her environment with physical and mental activities,
allowing the child to go down paths of his or her own choosing in order to
discover the child’s life passions.
We are all familiar with
failures to “find your bliss.” Many people are in jobs that do not provide for
the worker “deep experiences of being alive.”
We have said before that life
has two demands: 1) survival, and 2) meaning. Survival comes before meaning and
so one must have a job even if it is not the person’s dream occupation. The
quintessential image of the person who is following their bliss is the
“starving young artist.” She works as a waitress in New York while going to
audition after audition seeking a role in which to exercise her Super Power,
acting, dancing, singing, playing her instrument, whatever.
Sometimes, we discover our
Super Powers only late.
In my own case, I have a
little Super Power story. I studied French in middle school, high school, and
college. When in 1990 Atlanta won the right to host the 1996 Summer Olympics, I
wanted to be a volunteer and so I started to work on my French, the second
official language of the hosted French visitors in our home. We travelled to
French speaking countries. When the Olympics came, I was a volunteer. I
continued with my French thereafter. Just over two years ago, the French
teacher quit at my son’s Montessori school and the school, after 35 years
teaching only French, switched to Spanish. I became the French teacher to six
legacy 11th graders who had studied French for 11 years and did not
want to switch to Spanish. My students have graduated. Nevertheless, I was
invited back to teach French to five more 10th graders who wanted to
study French. So, I am exercising my Super Power as the volunteer French
teacher at my son’s Montessori school.
On the whole and for the most
part, parents have Super Powers. They are Super Parents. Circumstantially, my
wife and I are the best possible parents for our two beloved sons. See how this
works: By exercising our Super Powers as parents, my wife and I are creating and
preserving values that sustain human life, to wit: our children. While doing
so, we enjoy deep experiences of being alive. We and our children enjoy
physical and mental well-being. We are flourishing. We are happy in our
parenting. And this can be said for every parent in the Fellowship of Reason
and for most parents in the world.
Sometimes, very often in the
case of parenting, a meaningful existence is gifted.
For those not gifted with
meaning, I do not propose that I can improve on Joseph Campbell’s advice:
“Follow you bliss.”
The Fellowship of Reason and Super Powers
Our final topic is the
relationship between the Fellowship of Reason and Super Powers.
The Fellowship of Reason
survives and thrives on the Super Powers of our members. We are unique among
moral communities* in this respect.
*The Program for our monthly
meeting called FORum has this to say about moral communities.
We say about moral communities:
A moral community is a community of persons united by a common interest
in a particular moral philosophy. Example: A religious congregation is a
faith-based moral community. A reason-based moral community is a community of
persons united by a common interest in a reason-based moral philosophy. Example:
The Fellowship of Reason® is a rational moral community.
Here is a secret known only
to our leadership about FORum. Once a person performs at FORum, he or she will
take a greater interest in the Fellowship of Reason by seeking a leadership
role or increasing their membership level to Contributing or Lifetime. (After
Vera Norman recounted her amazing life story at FORum (she was a Holocaust
survivor), she devoted the remainder of her life to supporting the Fellowship
of Reason, among her many other interests.)
Please do not tell anyone
about this secret.
The reason is that in
performing at FORum the performer is exercising his or her Super Power! Whether the performance is Master of
Ceremonies, Sunday school, Celebration of Freedom, Celebration of Talent, or
Oratory, the performer enjoys a deep experience of being alive. The performer
creates and preserves values that sustain human life. The performer experiences
well-being. The performer flourishes. The performer is happy.
Such is the gift of exercising
one’s Super Power.
Notice our rules, too. We
have only one rule: stay within the time limits. We never pre-screen a
performer. We never order, prescribe or proscribe a topic. We (the leadership
of FOR) know what we are looking for. We are looking for an exposition of the
performer’s passions. We want to see what gives the performer deep experiences
of being alive. As a consequence, we, the audience, enjoy a performance that is
passionate, informative, and very important, often sacred. FORum is frequently
a thrilling experience for the audience, especially for insiders (you are now
all insiders) who know what is going on.
Our special members, called
out at the beginning of this essay, the classic film expert, the salon hostess,
the executive director, and our doctor/musician, and all of our performers in
all of their capacities, behind the scenes or on the stage of FORum, exercise
their Super Powers because of the gift that follows.
Conclusion
Lest I disappoint my loving
critics (who are themselves exercising Super Powers in their criticism), I
cannot shrink from pointing out the relationship between Super Powers and the
Beautiful. The Beautiful, as I have said (following St. Thomas Aquinas),
consists in wholeness, harmony and radiance.
When a person exercises her
Super Power, she experiences wholeness. Her whole person is performing at full
capacity. Her internal state (her deeply held values and interests) and her
external reality (her actions) are in harmony. The result is radiance of
experience for the performer and for the audience. It is a Beautiful thing to
witness the exercise of Super Powers. It is Beautiful thing to exercise one’s
own Super Powers.
We have learned that Super
Powers are not fantastic. A Super Power is a human-size capacity exercised when
the right answers to the questions who, what, when, where, how, and why are
present. We have learned that when a Super Power is exercised, values that
sustain human life are created and preserved, the actor enjoys deep experiences
of being alive, she has well-being, she flourishes, and she is happy. We have
learned the while some Super Powers are gifted (like parenthood); others are
found by following your bliss. We have learned that the Fellowship of Reason is
uniquely aware of Super Powers and provides our members with opportunities to
exercise their own Super Powers.
Look! Up in the sky!
It’s a bird!
It’s a plane!
…
…
…
No. It’s you!
