As generally written? As smart as a loaf of bread.

His intellectual capacity varies widely depending on who’s writing him.

But that’s not his fault. He’s afflicted with Plot Induced Stupidity at least once an issue. When you’ve got a guy who can bounce bullets off his chest, lift an ocean liner, out-calculate a computer, and be faster than a beam of light on a good day, he has to mess up before you can start your story.

• Genetically speaking? He’s descended from the genetically-enhanced genome of a super-intelligent species and whose parents were at the top of the food chain among them. He should be one of the smartest beings on the planet, Lex Luthor, Ray Palmer and Batman included.
• Given Superman’s/Kal-El’s parents being considered as 8th level intellects (we’ll get back to that in a moment) Superman must at least possess the POTENTIAL to be an 8th level intellect and even untrained would still likely possess the intellectual capacity to be one of the most intelligent beings living on the DCU Earth.
• Given some of his intellectual feats he should be able to claim a seat at any table at Mensa right alongside Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne. We’ll get to some of those later.

This page clipped from Action Comics #3, page 4 is shown quoting Jor-El’s considerable intellectual capacity.

DC has defined Jor-El and Lara being lead scientists on the planetary Science Council.

Defining Intellect in the DC Universe

• Some are creative geniuses, capable of creating and envisioning new  sciences often without equals: Metron, Lex Luthor, John Henry Irons, Mr. Terrific, Ray Palmer, Gorilla Grodd.

• Others possess mechanical or engineering geniuses capable of creating new, often unique machines or artificial intelligences: Professor Ivo, Will Magnus, T.O Morrow, Hiro Okamura, Victor Stone and the Brain.

• A number possess situational, physical, or other intellectual talents due to their longevity, physical training or other intellectual enhancement: Darkseid, Superman, Adam Blake (Captain Comet), Joker, Vandal Savage, Bruce Wayne, Terry Sloane, Doc Savage, Lady Shiva, Bronze Tiger, and Richard Dragon.

A holdover from the previous DC Universe

One such measuring tool was the use of the “genius levels of intellect” scale rated from one to twelve, with twelve being the maximum. Yes, there are rumors of a 16th level intellect but canon writings only take the scale to 12. Given the difficulties in determining how such intellects are rated:

• There is no objective scale that has been clearly determined
• The five known measures are still highly subjective

The five markers set down by DC in the previous continuities of the DC Universe were:

Highest level of genius intellect currently defined is a 12th level intellect.

• this has been displayed as the ability to consciously have 12 simultaneous thought processes at a genius level of intellect being performed concurrently.
• Intellectual capacity at that level is capable of developing sciences and concepts beyond the comprehensions of even other known geniuses and associated with the potential to master an unlimited number of disciplines.
• Such intellects are capable of memorizing entire libraries of information, multitasking and building entire mental simulations with the speed and accuracy of supercomputers. It has been hinted, however, that intellects at a level greater than ten are inherently unstable and prone to erratic behavior.
• Brainiac 5 of the Legion of Superheroes, and the original planetary computing machine Brainiac are considered to be at this level. Silver Age Brainiac (depicted below) and his more machine-like aspect in the late Post-Crisis and in the New 52 Universe are also considered to be one of the most intelligent beings in the Universe. However, things outside our Universe could, conceivably be more intelligent. (See: Metron.)

Brainiac is from the planet Colu. His “Twelfth-Level intelligence” makes him the smartest being in the entire Universe. He is also the coldest. From shrinking cities to annihilating entire alien races, Brainiac views the Universe as his own personal lab and will commit any act in the name of science. He is also especially fascinated with Superman and his wealth of Kryptonian Knowledge. This version of Brainiac was obsessed with all things Kryptonian and the Silver Age Superman was significantly more scientifically adept than any version of the character since the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Superman has been shown far less intellectually capable since the Man of Steel series in 1986.

• The entire 31st century Earth’s population is considered to be at a 9th level of intellect. Future Earth, super-smart general level of intelligence for Humanity on Earth. But this was the collective intellect of the species. Which probably means individuals were only at 6th or 7th level with the outliers pushing the numbers collectively higher. But this implies any citizen of the 31st century was smarter than ANY average citizen of the 20th century by a wide margin.
• The scientist Jor-El of Krypton was individually considered at the 8th level of intellect.
• The average citizen of Colu is individually considered to be at the 8th level of intellect.
• The entire 21st century Earth’s population is considered to be at a 6th level of intellect.
• One last marker: Lex Luthor has been estimated of being a 7-9th level intellect and arguably one of the smartest humans on the DC Earth.

Given these ratings and the recent reveal that Jor-El is at least an 8th level intellect and considered by “The Collector” to be Krypton’s leading scientific mind, and Lara was also considered a first rate scientist on Krypton, this means Kal-El has the genetic potential to be considered a genius of that order.

Assuredly with his mind’s enhancement under a yellow sun, he is certain capable of being one of the most intelligent beings on the DC Earth. His greatest weakness is likely a lack of significant exposure to information and education to challenge his intellect to achieve its greatest state. In the modern DC Universe, Superman has been shown to use his natural aptitutes for skill acquisition and super computation in addition to a genius-level aptitude with using his powers and abilities.

Is Superman’s thinking affected by his powers?

In the canon DC Universes, Superman’s raw intelligence is considerable but rarely challenged. Kal-El is the son of two of Krypton’s top scientists but his time on Earth, in most continuities, he is not challenged to utilize his super-intellect to its greatest capacity.

One of the greatest standard display of his super-intellect is his Fortress of Solitude. Pre-Crisis, Silver-Age Superman, particularly in the 1960s and early 1970s was the most scientifically inquisitive and skilled version of the character.

• He built his Fortress of Solitude by himself, no Kryptonian super-crystals as seen in the Donner Superman movies.
• He created a shrink-ray so that he could visit the Bottle City of Kandor, shrunken by the evil Brainiac. He would also create a technology for the Kandorians to be free of their bottle prison.
• He tended a zoo of alien animals he saved from extinction within the Fortress. No idea how he made food for them, but they always looked health and exotic…
• He created his Superman robots to help tend the Fortress, stand in for him when he needed to protect his secret-identity and to assist him when he needed to assist in more than one place at one time.

• While the robots lacked all of his abilities, they were quite capable of standing in for him for most issues. They did possess a degree of superhuman strength, flight and heat vision. He also programmed their artificial intelligence.
• He maintained a laboratory where he conducted experiments (of an unknown nature), he maintained an armory of super-weapons from all over the known galaxy, and occasionally built devices (the Supermobile and other exotic equipment).
• He also maintained a communication array that he used to talk with aliens all over the galaxy.

Post-Crisis Superman

Superman, as he has been written from the Post Crisis Era to the last iteration of the DC Universe, was not considered to have as great a superhuman intellect. The early Post-Crisis version of the character by John Byrne was meant to emphasis the MAN, not the SUPER, so his life as Clark Kent was the focus of these early stories.

• However, he would rediscover technologies from Krypton, utilize them as he needed and archive them within the Fortress of Solitude. He would rebuild his Fortress a number of times to improve security.
• He would also use hybridized Kryptonian and human technology created by John Henry Irons (aka Steel) and would also utilize alien technologies over time (Thanagarian).

• Whether this will remain true in the latest DCnU remains to be seen. Lacking a super-human intellect did not mean he was not intelligent, after all he was the son of the greatest scientists of Krypton, Jor-El and Lara-El. But he did not get the grounding in science he would have needed to equal his parents capabilities. His current Fortress is still an impregnable stronghold filled with technology from all over the galaxy. While he may not be considered a super-genius, his ability must be significant enough he is able to rebuild and maintain his Kryptonian stronghold on Earth.

That said, it is obvious that his natural abilities far exceed a Human’s for a variety of reasons he displays every time he uses his powers.

• He does possess a photographic memory.
• He is able to remember everything he has read and can draw upon it at will.
• He has taught himself surgery, at superspeed no less. It is theorized, if he made the effort he could learn and retain any particular skill he had an interest in applying himself to.

• It is unclear if this is a byproduct of his powers or a natural Kryptonian ability. He is also able to speak every language he has encountered or bothered to learn.
• His brain must process its activity and neural connectivity at a rate far greater than ours.
• This can be surmised by the fact that he is able to utilize super-speed with both precision and accuracy and has done so pretty much from the beginning of his media career.

• Once he adapted to Flash’s movement, he was able to turn the tide and predict his movement, much to Flash’s chagrin.
• This was displayed most often during his Pre-Crisis era when he would have a yearly race with the Flash around the world.
• Their challenge was to keep the race sub-sonic because Superman would case catastrophic damage as he pass areas creating sonic booms. (The Flash does not have this problem, because of his speed aura. He only creates sonic booms if he wants to.)

Superior Proprioception :

• Since Superman can control his bodily movement and proprioception (his awareness of where his body is in space) with pinpoint accuracy, it stands to reason his brain’s processing speed and neural activity are both faster, more precise, better networked, and able to be controlled at a level far better than a Human brain.
• Since it is unlikely, but not necessarily impossible, for his brain to speed up the flow of electrical activity past what the normal brain can, it is more probable he has a greater neural density, allowing more neural pathways for the signals to pass through.

More neural connections, more conceivable brainpower

• Having a greater network density could conceivably give Superman the potential for improved cognitive ability, especially if both sides of his brain are connected by a thick bundle of neural materials (in Human’s this is the corpus callosum) which coordinates activity between the left and right sides of the human brain.

• Since we have never been given access to the Kryptonian brain, we make assumptions it is much like the Human brain. But even subtle differences could give Superman far greater abilities.
• Modifying the density of the barriers between the halves of the human brain would allow a human increased language capabilities, ambidexterity, incredible artistic and musical capabilities. If the Kryptonian brain were similar he would also have such increased abilities. Pre-Crisis Superman had all of these powers and more.

Instinctive, intuitive use of superhuman abilities

• The most likely reason we would assume Superman (and by proxy all Kryptonians) have greater intellectual capacity is that their brains allow them to control their superhuman abilities at an intuitive level with only a few days of training.
• In the cases of physical fit, or well trained individuals, they are able to control their powers in hours. Precise control takes far longer, but for the ability to utilize their superhuman potential in a matter of days, implies their brains are far more sophisticated, capable of incredible feedback mechanisms and shows the Kryptonian brain to be a finely tuned organ.

 

In Summary

• If anything can be determined by this essay, the best thing we can determine is that Superman, the character, is rarely shown using all of his mental capacity as can be inferred by these ideas.
• Likely because, if he were written using his abilities to their fullest potential he would be even more difficult to write because it would remove him from his relationship to normal humans.
• Superman could be as smart or smarter than Batman if he applied himself the same say Bruce Wayne has. Theoretically if he had teachers on the caliber of the Kryptonians, he should be able to learn as much as his parents did or even more since he has exposure to technologies that he did not invent.
• The safest way to explain it is, since he aspires to be human, and possesses incredible natural talent, he has never tried to apply himself to see what ELSE he could do if he tried. Superman is a jock and writers are thankful for that.

Apocrypha: All-Star Superman

People often look at the graphic novel/movie version of “All-Star Superman” as a sample of Superman utilizing his superhuman intellect. While he does use his abilities to their fullest there, this particular Superman is an Elseworlds version of the character, not a mainstream continuity version. The DC Animated feature film All-Star Superman was based on the comic book series All-Star Superman.

As noted in Wikipedia:

• All-Star Superman is a twelve-issue comic book series featuring Superman that ran from November 2005 to October 2008. The series was written by Grant Morrison, drawn by Frank Quitely, digitally inked by Jamie Grant and published by DC Comics. DC claimed that this series would “strip down the Man of Steel to his timeless, essential elements”.
• The series was the second to be launched in 2005 under DC’s All-Star imprint, the first being All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. These series are attempts by DC to allow major comics creators a chance to tell stories showcasing these characters without being restricted by DC Universe continuity. [emphasis mine]

• The All Star Superman was not a single Superman but an amalgam or archetype of the iconic hero across his entire heritage encompassing all of his previous incarnations.
• This was done to allow a well known writer to try and expound on the legend of Superman unrestricted. Grant Morrison used elements from across the history of the character to create a single story that embodied every Age of Superman.
• All-Star Superman is not the canon character of Superman, he is the paragon of the archetype.

Parts of this essay originated on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange. I am the original author. All Rights Reserved.

Other Quora articles on the Man of Steel

• Why exactly does Kryptonite hurt Superman?
• Why doesn’t Superman fly away when he sees Kryptonite?
• Which superheroes can defeat Superman?
• Are all Kryptonians as powerful as Superman? If not, why not?
• What is the difference between the Pre-Crisis version of Superman and Post-Crisis version of Superman?

In this second issue of the Ultimates, Marvel’s most powerful team of Avengers, we learn a secret of the enigmatic and terrifying force of Nature, the mighty Galactus.

When we last left this ultimate superteam which consists of Blue Marvel, Spectrum, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and Ms. America they were planning to solve a problem which had, up until this point, had baffled even Reed Richards; removing the threat of Galactus consuming the planet Earth at some point in the future.

Now as a regular comic reader, you know Earth has a pretty good track record against the Devourer of Worlds. We are at least 4 wins and 0 losses. But we should keep in mind, to lose once would be the only loss we need to have.

This group of Avengers has decided they would tackle the largest threat they could think of in the hope that if they could help Galactus, he would be a powerful potential ally. But how do you get one of the most ancient beings in the Universe to owe you a solid?

By fixing a problem he didn’t think he had. They staged what for all intents and purposes appeared to be an intervention. “Galactus, you have a planet-eating problem. It’s time for you to stop.”

Galactus was not amused.

The Audacity of the Black Panther: Sounds like it would be a great book title, doesn’t it? Here he is talking to Galactus like he would a recalcitrant student…

What I liked about this book:

1. Transparency: The Ultimates are claiming, unlike superhero groups before them, they would be transparent and accountable. Thus they would be transmitting and recording what they were doing, in real time, to presumably every leadership agency/government on Earth.
2. But is it wise? I think this is both bold and a tiny bit problematic. Can they maintain that stance when things go wrong? I mean at the scale they seem to be approaching problems, when one goes south, nothing stops their problem from tracking them back to Earth…
3. Accountability: From an external universe perspective, why is the first group of almost totally minority Avengers under such a tight management protocol. Not since the Henry Peter Gyrich days, has an Avengers group has ever had such a high degree of visibility and accountability.
4. As a person of color, it made me think of places I’d worked and was forced to consider an extreme level of scrutiny just to get and keep a job. A job I’d later had no such requirements before I came to work there. Let’s just say there were trust issues…I am certain I will be accused of reading too much into that so, we move on.
5. Everyone looks great, the art, the display of their abilities, strengths and weaknesses are excellently depicted by the art. Kenneth Rocafort and Dan Brown are an extreme team. As I have mentioned, the art is both chaotic, visually rich and yet still flows; the Panther’s transition and the Galan’s (Galactus’ previous name) were both awesome depictions of the harshness of their transformation to new states of being.

Galactus’ origin hasn’t been seen in this level of detail for a long time. It was nice to see it again, since he may show up more than once and a bit of background on him in his more Human form makes him easier to relate to for new readers.

I have a question for anyone who dares to answer: Isn’t this the Fantastic Four’s origin, complete with “tak, tak, tak” sound effects? Are all the cosmic rays out there buying their sound effects from the same vendor? Is this event meant to be related to the Fantastic Four or was this a quiet homage to the now out of favor First Family? Tell me I’m wrong…

I noticed his conversation with the aborning Universe was missing but perhaps it wasn’t necessary for this particular story. I’ll hunt that down for you later.

What I didn’t like:

Okay, let’s assume this team of heroes is smart. Really smart. Smart in a way that defies description smart.

• Are we suggesting they were able to find an informational resource that Reed Richards (who on Earth, is one of the cornerstones of being intelligent) never thought to consult?
• The Panther drops a name, “an honorary Watcher” when he explains himself to Galactus. Does this mean he somehow gained access to the Watcher’s (Uatu) files?
• Are we to believe, it was the act of translocating into Galactus’ worldship which gave him access to Galactus’ mind and 13 billion year old memories? How did the Panther know what to search for? Is Galactus’ memory so perfect he can retain and search for anything he wanted the first time in mental contact? Why didn’t the Panther go mad after searching through the mind of a nigh-immortal space god?
• It is this very searching of Galactus’ memory which bothered my overall mental pacing of the story. I thought it would be at least two issues before the resolution to the Galactus Problem would be revealed.

All things considered, pacing, artwork, story, elements of style, the book is still a solid purchase. I am hoping there will be a callback to this story at some future date which explains in greater detail the long-term ramifications of the Ultimates’ audacity and the Care and Feeding of Galactus…

The book gets a solid four out of five from me.

The Care & Feeding of Galactus (Review: Ultimates #2)

Chekov’s Gun and ISO-8

*Article and un-review contains spoiler potential materials, proceed with caution.

What’s not to love about Ultimates #1?

Minority superheroes? Check.
Bad-ass minority superheroes? Check.
Proactive superheroes? Check.
Ambitious superheroes? Absolutely! Check!

Holy cow, is this the superteam the Avengers should have been?

A group of superheroes who plan to be forward thinking and solve problems before they become an issue. I expected them to have resolved global warming by some time in the afternoon, right after they handled world hunger and my inability to get a parking space during the Christmas shopping season.

Despite the coolness factor in the above cover, I had a couple of questions:

• Why are the world’s most powerful minority heroes shuffled offworld, except for the Black Panther who is physically the weakest of the group.

• Though I can appreciate their agenda of dealing with problems before they become problems for Earth, I am not certain why they didn’t start on Earth and THEN go into space. Charity starts at home and spreads abroad, after all… Aren’t there some issues on Earth which could have had some Avenger attention?

• What happened to the science advisor who should have been working at Marvel by now, since they seem to be trying to revamp and revitalize their universe, I assumed they were going to work on getting some continuity and some science advice?

Science in the Marvel Universe

There isn’t any. Oh god, I wish there were. Maybe I can get that job as their science advisor…

• Okay Marvel, I understand you wanted to take advantage of your recent universal reboot to alter the underlying physics of your new Marvel Universe (that isn’t a real reboot, but we’re taking advantage of its reboot-like conditions) to introduce what I will dub ISO-8.

• Why? Because calling it neutronium makes me want to hit the person who told you to use that term. Neutronium is an actual something in THIS universe.

• Neutronium (sometimes shortened to neutrium[1]) is a proposed name for a substance composed purely of neutrons. The word was coined by scientist Andreas von Antropoff in 1926 (before the discovery of the neutron) for the conjectured “element of atomic number zero” that he placed at the head of the periodic table.

• However, the meaning of the term has changed over time, and from the last half of the 20th century onward it has been also used legitimately to refer to extremely dense substances resembling the neutron-degenerate matter theorized to exist in the cores of neutron stars; henceforth “degenerate neutronium” will refer to this.

• Science fiction and popular literature frequently use the term “neutronium” to refer to a highly dense phase of matter composed primarily of neutrons.

• When you use a word like Neutronium in your comic, people who know something about science have seizures and foam wildly at the mouth while they rant incomprehensibly in tongues asking why you didn’t give it a new name like: galactimanium, mcguffinium, unobtainum, cocoastrum, illiaster, underminium, super-compressed stellar matter, quantum minerals, stable virtual particles, you get the idea, right? I could do this all day.

• Why not create your new material, give it a name and THEN call it ISO-7 or ISO-8 and no one would have even blinked. If you want to take this time to try and create an underlying physical or technical explanation to the incredible energies used by your characters all these years, I am all for it. But if you’re going to do that, then do a decent job. Explain it, make it reasonable and then stick with it.

• There has already been talk of something dubbed Isotope-8 which presumably is the same thing but the nature of this substance has not been clearly defined other than its some kind of “force multiplier”. Expose it to a force and it can extend the nature, harmonics and intensity of said force. Not strictly a catalyst since it can be changed in the interaction.

• For now, it is something new to the Marvel panoply of mysterious forces manipulated by cosmic beings making them able to do things mere mortal beings can only imagine. It makes sense. This capacity for beings to have powers that are orders of magnitude greater than most normal fundamental force in the Universe might explain how flesh covered entities could still manipulate powers whose destructive capacity was unrivaled by most technology. I hope whatever ISO-8 is, it stays rare.

• I hope there is just enough to keep Galactus fed, who because he has the technology to find it, will only find enough to keep him from feasting on inhabited worlds and not have any left over for shenanigans like star-busting or galaxy-destroying. And what ever you do, don’t let Walt Simonson get his hands on any. Shaka-craka-doooommm!!!

Outside of this particular scientific bit of handwavium, I enjoyed what I suspect will be a Chekov’s gun because I believe this new cosmic meta-material shall be involved in what I will call…

The Feeding of Dangerous Predators

This is the worldship of Galactus, Taa II. Look upon its majesty in awe and terror! This is one of the oldest known artifacts in the Marvel Universe. Larger than entire planets its where the oldest being in the Universe hangs out between his planetary milkshakes.

Roll Call: In case you’ve been living under a rock: Blue Marvel, Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel, Spectrum, America Chavez, and the Black Panther.

 

• Blue Marvel is one of the most powerful metahuman beings from the planet Earth. An incredible triple threat, he has immense physical strength, electromagnetic manipulation abilities and a genius-level IQ ranking him with the big brains of the Marvel Universe.  He beat the Avengers single handedly, beat the Sentry, too. Here he is waxing on about the new fundamental aspect change to the Marvel Universe. I went over that in the Science section.

• Black Panther – King T’challa: One of the greatest minds on Marvel’s Earth, the Black Panther is coordinating the events his team is currently operating on in real time from his mission control center. Wherein he causes diplomats from other countries to tremble in his presence and ask nervous questions in which he answers in certainty enough to make anyone more than a little fearful.

• I don’t know who provided the ansible (a fictional technology which allows the ability to communicate across the universe in real time with some as yet undiscovered FTL or entangled communication stream) but it was a necessity for this team to communicate at the distances they work at.

• I assume Galactus doesn’t hid his worldship in a convenient location. Which begs the question, how did they know where to find it? Does Google offer intergalactic mapping?

• Spectrum: Monica LeBeau. A personal favorite, a woman whose full spectrum of powers…sorry, dwarf most people’s imagination.
• She can move and react at light-speed, can project any form of electromagnetic energy she is familiar with as a weapon or anything else she can think to use light for.
• She can render herself almost complete immune to most physical forms of attack. She is a thing of beauty.

I told you, I love me some Monica, plus I wanted to get that data picture and show Monica in action. You also get a piece of America Chavez doing her superspeed thing.

• America Chavez: a Latino woman whose history is a little fuzzy at the moment but what I saw of her says, multiversal-dimensional galactic-level teleporter and the physical ability to be seen moving by Spectrum when she enters her lightspeed mode. Normally things stand still when Spectrum is in light-speed mode, but America Chavez is moving, fighting and tearing alien metals apart with her bare hands at super-speed. Terrifying.

This needs no caption. Just read and be amazed. I was.

• Captain Marvel – Carol Danvers: Used to be quite the energy projector herself, but it would appear somewhen recently her powers were changed a bit. She can still project energy but it seems she needs a bit of a jumpstart from another energy projector. Once she gets going, she can at least temporarily output as much energy as her previous Binary identity could. Not happy with her power alteration, but okay, I understand why it was done.

Carol looks great in this new costume. I am really loving the look. Earth’s mightiest hero? Now that is something I and quite a few mightier heroesmight take umbrage with.

This is one of the most powerful versions of the Avengers lineup, I have seen in a long time. Who the hell are they going to go up against in their first appearance? Whup. Never Mind.

 

No less than the Devourer of Worlds, the Mighty Galactus!

• I have a few issues with some of the things revealed in this first installment of the Ultimates, but overall, a job well done. If this is truly about feeding Galactus and keeping him from attacking living planets, then it should be interesting first few issues.

• I didn’t say much about it and it deserves some mention, the art, colors and inks are very good and while it took me a moment to get used to the kinetic markers in the backgrounds of the layouts, after a while I used them to frame the action and the style grew on me.

• The art is visually satisfying and the picture of Galactus at the end was suitably stunning. Galactus is looking well-fed and so immense we only get to see half of him. Nicely done.

• But how do you sustain a series based on the idea, of putting one of the most dangerous entities to have ever existed in the Marvel Universe on the payroll and expect me you are going to be able to keep the intensity up?

• I was dubious about Annihilation and all of their spinoffs, and I was more than pleasantly surprised. So I will hold out for this series and let it convince me of its merits.

Right now, it gets five stars from me. I am eager to see what’s next.

 

Chekov’s Gun and ISO-8 (Ultimates #1)

Answer by Thaddeus Howze:

Lean into it.

Did you think you would be exempt from the very thing that makes the Human experience meaningful?

Let's Imagine the alternative… Let's imagine you were Immortal, and unable to die, by any means.

• In the early years, after you discover your immortality, you would be ecstatic. You would find yourself appearing to be about thirty years old (or whatever age you think you were most amazing as a person, it won't matter, there will always be someone who won't like you because of that age, so go with it).
• You would be able to survive any injury, no matter how great. Even Death would not take you. Awakening from even murder as if it were little more than going to sleep and reviving physically if not mentally whole.
• After a couple of times being murdered and the trauma there-in, you resolve to take self defense seriously and train yourself up to be a fairly competent combatant. After ten or twelve years of serious study, and you would study because you know what losing means, you are able to fight off 90% of the most well trained fighters on Earth.

• If you enjoyed martial combat, you may spend some time improving your skills further by fighting against the best fighters in the world. Why? Because you can. That's why.
• After a decade of fighting, making money, and traveling the world, you "retire" into obscurity only fighting in death matches underground to replenish your cash, since you NEVER lose.You make a bit of extra cash killing the hit-men who eventually want to discover your secret and aren't above doing whatever it takes to get that secret out of you.
• You decide this isn't the life for you and invest your money with people who understand you will kill them if they steal from you. You kill one or two of them and the rest take you more seriously. Your cash flow is assured.

• You then have to find someone who can help you die, from time to time and get a new identity. This takes quite a bit of time and ultimately the risk isn't that you will die, but that you will end up in jail. Spending time in prison is the last place you want to be.
• Once you secure an ID team of folks who are reasonably skilled and able to stay bought, you disappear from sight and begin the life you really needed. The one where you lean into life and do everything possible.

This too will eventually pale. Why?

• Because after you have sky-dived, run with the Bulls, deep-sea explored, become a legendary photographer, made a fortune on the stock market, driven a race car, climbed Mount Everest, went back to school in a different country for the twentieth time, learned as many languages as you were inclined to, eaten at the best restaurants money can buy.
• What do you do now? You indulge the days exploring your artistic talents and capabilities. It doesn't matter if you were completely tone deaf or visually inept. You have time on your hands. You can get better. You pay for the best teachers and when you aren't with them, you are with the friends you make, temporarily while you are wherever your latest skill quest has taken you.
• You get a job you don't need because money isn't necessary for you. You can survive without food, water, or any kind of natural interaction at all. So everything you have in the world is for the comfort of other people. You may utilize them and enjoy the comforts but you realize after thirty or forty years of fortune, then misfortune that the world is ephemeral and you had wealth once, you can have it again.

After your eightieth year, even if your body is still sexually responsive (and we'll be generous and say that it is) people will begin to lose their appeal. Why?

• Because it's no longer a challenge to get anyone into bed. During one of your hedonistic phases, you decided you would use your charms to gain access to every kind of sexual pleasures the world had to offer.
• From top to bottom, from left to right, you have experienced a panoply of sexual extravaganza, from the willing to the resistant, you have sated yourself at the smörgåsbord of sex.
• The truth of the matter is, people aren't that complicated and after your eightieth birthday, getting anyone into bed is only slightly more difficult than masturbation. You can almost read their minds. You can see their insecurities, you can plumb their emotion depth with the same speed and facility as reading the newspaper
• You can manipulate their mental states and timing isn't an issue anymore. If they need you to wait, you know this and wait. If they want you right now, you oblige. Sigh.

You chose her because she wasn't that into you. She's not feeling you right now, but after you whip your eighty years of conversational legerdemain on her, she won't be able to resist you. Yawn.

• If you are truly lucky, you find someone who feels you, connects with you and eventually decides to stay with you. You have to lie, at least in the beginning. You will have to explain to them eventually why they are getting older and you aren't. You love them intensely. Moreso as they weaken and age. Are you fertile? Maybe, let's say you can have children but they are rare and their lives are just as mortal.
• So your beloved dies in forty years and you have children who realize their father will outlive them. Perhaps they love you anyway. Perhaps you never tell them. It depends how things work out after the first couple of wives/husbands and then kids.
• If you had a good experience, your children appreciate your amazing gift and become accomplices in your Immortality charade. They help you with covers, places to launder your money, if you need that sort of thing. By now, you have connections everywhere, not because you love people but because you NEED them to navigate the world. Your anonymity becomes more precious, the more identities you outlive. Having kids helps.

Okay, kids, we're going to take this picture and help grandpa find a new identity while he watches us age and die. Cheese!

• But eventually you move out of the lives of your children and grandchildren because you are an anomaly most of them want nothing to do with. It's not that they don't love you. You are just so divorced from the Human experience, you are a bit creepy to them. You are that old relative who says things they can't relate to, and even though you make ever effort to keep up, the world at your 150th birthday is very different from the one you grew up in.
• Is your memory perfect? Hmm. That's a good question. If it is, you will be able to remember every experience you have ever had. Makes it easy to blend into the world in some ways and harder in others. If memory is perfect, you may find it difficult to acquire new abilities. But if it isn't perfect, you may find you need to document your journey to remember those things that are important to you, as your mental hard drive begins to overfill.
• You aren't sure who these journals are for, but if you are the only Immortal in the world, no one can see it the way you do. So you keep these journals for the day when maybe you stop caring about the world or your place in it.

• You watch cities go up. You survive earthquakes and other natural disasters, year after year. You watch your loved ones die again and again. The weight of the world weighs on you after two centuries. You need to do something different.
• Perhaps you think you should help make the world a better place. You are a formidable fighting machine at this point. You have survived a few wars, a few coups, a couple of insurrections and know your way around the battlefield. Perhaps a well placed murder or two might make the world more effective, more efficient, perhaps people don't need to die needlessly because you have the capacity to see the greater good that needs addressing.
• But should you be doing this? Should you be taking control of the fate of the world as its only truly permanent resident? Who decided you should do this? Are you certain of your sanity at this point?

• Two hundred years of watching generations of Humans, live and die, having experienced every possible permutation of the human experience, do you feel qualified to, from the shadows, direct the course of Human endeavor?

Of course you do. Who has more experience than you do? At this point you make an enemy of every government on Earth, whether they know about you or not. And I assure you, someone knows you exist. When you decided to make the world over in your image you made a whole bunch of people upset.

You're okay with that. It will give you something to do over the next five hundred years.

This thought-experiment was done to convince you that living your life is what you would do, no matter how long you lived. The logistics would be different and the outcomes might be less magnified but no less interesting for the effort made.

• You get out of life what you put into it. You can be an amazing individual if you are willing to work or you can be a complete loser if you sit on the sidelines of life expecting things to come to you.
• They won't. The only difference was as an Immortal YOU HAVE TO FILL UP YOUR TIME. You don't have other choices.
• As a mortal, you HAVE to choose what you want, how you live, the choices you make, the people you choose, the diseases you want to avoid, thus the lifestyles you have to be mindful of. You can't do everything so you have to choose strategically.
• What can you do with the skills you possess, in the time you have left, with the people you love, and what result will you consider a success when you run out of time at the end?

No, you don't have the luxury of time than an Immortal might have. But you also don't have to endure generation after generation of soul-crushing loss.

• If the idea of life ending is more than you can bear, then as an Immortal you would be more miserable than you can imagine because around you, EVERYTHING would be dying, while you watched.
• That's the reality of living. We are all dying. Lean into it. Run toward it.
• Live life as intensely as your heart condition will allow. And do as much as you can to change the world for you and yours. It's not what you do in life that matters as much as who remembers what you did for them while you lived.

Legacy is what you seek, not Immortality. Change the world and then yield your place in it. It is the natural order of things.

Even stars die.

How can I get over the fact I am going to die?