rfmcdonald | [BRIEF NOTE] CFTAG Report (Reply)

I met with

schizmatic at the usual place and time (1 o'clock, Starbucks at the intersection of Yonge and Wellesley). Various topics were discussed.

Spike, we concluded, is the tragic hero of the Buffyverse. Like Angel, he ends up with a soul. Unlike Angel, Spike ended up getting a soul because he wanted to acquire one, this desire being created by his love for Buffy. First he wanted to simulate goodness, to appear outwardly good; then, he wanted to actually be good. All this, in pursuit of a love that could never be consummated.

Joss Whedon is a genius; he should belong to the Canon. Yes, he participates in popular culture, but so did Shakespeare, who (too often) has been removed from his origins in the dynamic slums of the South Bank of Elizabeth London by his membership in the Canon.Dr. Shannon Murray's insight that Shakespeare was the Spike Lee of his era makes sense, especially given the nature of some of his less-performed plays (Titus Andronicus, anyone?).

In East Asia, the strength of Christianity appears to be roughly proportional to the amountof disruption caused to traditional societies by the intrusion of the West. Following some brief skirmishes with the West, Japan was able to rapidly consoldate itself and become an imperialist power itself; Christianity remains weak. China was not directly colonized by the West, but it did lose various peripheral bits to Western powers, suffered a massive invasion by Japan, and went through various revolutions which devastated dynastic China; it has a variety of fast-growing underground churches. Korea, finally, experienced not only a highly disruptive period of industrializing colonialism under Japanese rule, but it suffered through the Korean War, which killed a tenth of the Korean peninsula's population and destroyed the last physical remnants of old Korea; Korea is the only Asian country where Christianity might become the dominant religion.

Reflecting on Ghost in the Shell, we noted that we know very little about neurochemistry and the functionings of the nervous system and human consciousness. (One reason why drug abuse doesn't appeal to me: I really would like my neurons to continue to fire, and at the proper times.) Ghost in the Shell defines human identity in ways which transcend the biological individual to encompass the wider social and cultural environment, and even other individuals. The atomistic concept of identity developed over the previous millennium is dissolving: Descartes' epistemology remains valid, but not his concepts of identity. (We'll pass quietly by his uncredited borrowings from the saints Anselm and Augustine in this area.)

It would have been cool for the writers of Season 6 Buffy to have portrayed Willow not as someone out for blood, but rather as someone whose power increasingly made her lose touch with reality. I think it would have been tricky for the writers to sustain, but if they had managed the trick the results would have been gripping.

schizmatic came up with an interesting WI: What if the Arabs, in the course of their occupation of Latin-speaking North Africa, they came upon the Digest of Roman law and translated it into Arabic? He goes into more detail at soc.history.what-if.