False Dichotomies

Professor Charles Xavier and Magneto play out an important conflict that sits at the heart of the Marvel Comics world. As mutants - bestowed with amazing gifts - they debate, and often come into conflict over the way mutants and humans ought to live.

Xavier is an Utopian idealist, who believes in the peaceful coexistence of living things. His friend and opponent Magneto survived a childhood in Nazi concentration camps (Pak, 2009) to emerge as a powerful mutant - determined that mutants, this newly evolving branch of humanity, should never face the horrors he and others endured.

Over time both have fallen from their paths and approaches. Xavier the utopian fell to manipulation and coercion to bring about these ends (Kerouac, 2009). And Magneto the survivor, driven by pain and determination, began a campaign to establish supremacy over a humanity he had come mistrust, fear and hate.

And with that fall came the lapse of their leadership amongst mutants. Leadership then fell to Scott Summers - Summers better known as Cyclops, Xavier's premier student - who spent years as the leader of Xavier's X-Men, a self-policing force for mutants. In this position he tried to implement the vision of peaceful co-existence. Yet Summers was also a tireless tactical and strategic leader, as resolute in the defence of his people as Magneto.

Cyclops epitomises the moderate course - not as a 'weakened compromise' but as an improvement upon the exposed weaknesses of extremist solutions. This is an important point in exposing the flaws of extremism and its tactical antipathy towards the middle.

The problem with that antipathy is that it ignores the purpose of the middle ground - as the place where progress occurs.

It is the middle where the goals and methods of all sides are weighed up with the evidence and solution are devised. Solutions which aim at the best for all worlds - where all parties resolve to get the things they want with harming others - by the harm principle.

But it's more than that. The middle is the place where you can expose the failings of extreme courses; identifying the best parts of those courses and carrying on with them (sans their worst elements). Cyclops' course marks progress from the beliefs and ideals of both Xavier and Magneto - a whole new stage. In essence: evolution.

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References:
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+ Jason Kerouac's 'Retcon THIS! – Professor Xavier is a Jerk'; 8 March, 2009.