HOW SUPERMAN CAME TO FLY - (A PARABLE)...

As most 'old-timers' will know, SUPERMAN couldn't actually fly in his early years - he jumped. Hurdling a skyscraper or leaping an eighth of a mile was how he got around at the start of his career and that's pretty impressive when you think about it. I'd certainly be happy with being able to do that, wouldn't you? Then something changed - he seemed to be no longer just propelling himself through the sky by the power of his legs, but hovering in mid-air, changing direction, etc. Just how did the 'Man of Tomorrow' acquire this startling new power? Simple - he started to fly simply because he looked as if he was flying. And he first started to look as if he was flying in the MAX FLEISCHER cartoons of the early '40s.

If you watch these cartoons today, you can clearly see that Superman is launching himself into the sky via the method of leg-propulsion - jumping, in other words. However, this is Supes we're talking about - he can't simply be careening through the clouds in an uncoordinated, haphazard manner. Superman has to be in charge of the situation (and himself), has to appear graceful, noble, dignified, to say nothing of 'god-like' - someone who is as much at home up in the heavens as he is down here on Earth. That's why, once he was airborne, the animators depicted him as being able to twist, turn and hover, quite unaffected by gravity. However, he wasn't really flying (or, at least, in the early cartoons, he wasn't supposed to be) - it just looked as if he was.

And because he looked as if he was flying, audiences came to think that he was flying. And because audiences thought he could fly, it was thus ordained. "People think he can fly - so make 'im fly!" Simply put, the thought became father to the deed. It wasn't long before Superman was flying in the cartoons and the comics.

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Call me cynical, but it seems to me that's how certain minority interest groups who exist on the fringes of society gain ground. Whatever agenda they're pushing, their first step is to silence dissent by slyly casting doubt on the motivations and credibility of anyone who is the slightest bit dubious or critical of their aims - and embarrassing or bullying them into silence.

Then, in the seeming absence of criticism, over time it looks as if there's no resistance to them - that they've been accepted and approved by the mainstream. Then, because it appears as if they've been assimilated into the wider community, people eventually come to believe that they have been. And because people believe it to be the case, it thus becomes so. Like rushing water erodes the rock beneath it, we are eventually worn down into submission - without even realizing it or how it happened. Then we wake up one day and the world has changed - and not necessarily for the better.

Perhaps we should all exercise caution in what we allow ourselves to believe, eh? And not just believe or accept it because it appears to be the case or because we are told that it is so. As someone who I'm sure was very wise once said: "Appearances can be deceiving."

So let's not be deceived.