Of course, the feats of the overman (or "superman," the Übermensch) are not telepathy or regeneration or psychokinesis. They are creation, the ability to challenge and to provoke thought. The overman is an artist and a crusader, an atheist in the conventional sense (but not in the Feuerbachian sense — and here I give a knowing nod to PureDoxyk).

The X-Men are an excellent role-model for a new youth that will arise, that are arising; they feel alienated, disenfranchised; they have no genealogy worth mentioning, no list of noble ancestors. They want to forge a new lineage, to chart a new course. They intend to be future of our culture; their (or should I say, "our," since I'm clearly one of them) hatred of the old mode does not represent an inversion of the old culture, but a regeneration and an evolution.

The mutations may be figurative, but the soul is the same. We look around, and see our world dying, our culture collapsing in on itself; but we live today in the Age of the Phoenix. And what will arise will surprise us all.