Black Panther and the Secret of Vibranium
Nifty stuff, Vibranium: stronger than diamonds, this magical meteoric metal from outer space can absorb massive amounts of energy and, judging from the movie Black Panther, it also has curative powers. You can forge it into a weapon (a shield, a club) or you can weave it into some pretty snazzy clothing. To quote an old sketch from Saturday Night Live, it’s a floor wax and a dessert topping.
Black Panther’s fictional nation of Wakanda sits atop a seemingly bottomless supply of Vibranium, allowing Wakandans to live in a sealed-off secret Eden.
Vibranium, of course, is human energy. (The name itself suggests vibrating brain.) Like human energy, most Vibranium is potential; most of it remains untapped.
The central conundrum of Black Panther, then, is this: Do we keep our precious human energy secret and to ourselves, or do we share it: how much, with whom, and to what end?
Erik Killmonger, Black Panther’s antagonist, wants to distribute Vibranium to the oppressed people of the world, whom he expects will use it to rise up against their oppressors. But if human history teaches us anything, it’s that the odds are stacked against Killmonger’s plan.
Most likely, the oppressed would use Vibranium to fight among themselves, which for millennia is what oppressors have taught the oppressed to do. Armed with Vibranium, the oppressed would vie for dominance within their own sphere, while a renegade few use Vibranium to create terror or to speed up the anarchic “revolution” that they imagine will bring them to paradise, in this world or the next.
The oppressors, meanwhile, would converge on Wakanda to rip every last ounce of Vibranium from the earth so that they could crush the oppressed (and Erik); then the oppressors would fight among themselves for dominance. In pursuit of “closing the Vibranium gap,” they’d bring about Armageddon.
Sound familiar?
Two things we can know for sure about Vibranium, or human energy:
- it has value only when it’s mined; and
- its power is unlocked only when it’s applied.
Ah, but how much, and where, and to what end?
The sad fact (perhaps too tragic for any superhero movie) is that each of us sits atop a wealth of Vibranium — of productive, powerful, healing energy — which most of the time, we don’t mine it all, or we remain content only to scratch the surface from time to time, as a lazy animal scratches an itch.
We squander our time with pointless distractions. We read below our reading level. We avoid solvable problems in favor of pounding away at things beyond control. We invent excuses to avoid opportunities for growth. We choose the easy path over the hard one, and doing nothing over doing something. Worst of all, we indulge in self-pitying negativity to convince ourselves that we are not sitting atop a bottomless supply of Vibranium and that instead, we are what our worst critic (or our worst inner critic) says we are.
I have met the Black Panther, and he is us. His suit of Vibranium, which fits him as snug as skin, is our skin: the literal embodiment of our human energy and super power.
Wherever and however we put our Vibranium to use, let it not be wasted.
And let it not remain buried under the earth: we will all get there soon enough.
TIM LEMIRE is a writer and author based in Rhode Island. This is his website.
