Supernatural beings and holy warriors

Supernatural is well into its fifth and presumably last season. Each season is better than the last as the writing and acting has gone from good to brilliant. The writers and Mr. Kripke have posed several compelling questions in the previous seasons. I wanted to add to them with this short essay on the older Winchester brother. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section. :-)

Dean Winchester – holy warrior by choice or destiny?

Key words–free will; determinism; Supernatural; TV

1. Introduction

Determinism is generally defined as the belief that all future events are causally dictated by past events, current conditions, and the laws of nature. On the other hand, free will is a fundamental prerequisite to give meaning to human life and to our struggle for freedom. We certainly seem to make choices on a daily basis, some feel easier than others, some are conditioned by instinct, and some are based upon pure intellectual reflection. Although the two concepts at first sight seem conflicting, they do not necessarily exclude each other.

The concept of free will has religious and ethical implications. In ethics, this means that individuals are responsible and accountable for their deeds. In religion, it means that an omnipotent god or gods do not exert their power over our free will and choices. It does not mean, however, that our choices are random and unpredictable, but more on that later. On the other hand, an omnipotent god will know in advance what our actions will be, and in this case, the principle of free will becomes questionable. But if we look at this from another perspective, there are examples when an individual is denied free will, i.e. getting robbed, assaulted, being forced into doing something against their will. Therefore, if we can be denied free will that means we initially had it. Or so it seems.

Our decisions are influenced by many factors, be they external such as cultural or social pressures, psychological, genetic or other. Surrounded by these factors and adding our knowledge, desires, urges, and instincts we still feel we can make a choice. Yet science continually proves that our world follows deterministic laws and that we're no freer than Earth is free to choose a different orbit around the Sun. In everyday life, the dilemma of free will and determinism may not seem terribly important, but when one is faced with life and death decisions on a daily basis – as Dean Winchester is in Supernatural – it suddenly gains more weight.

2. The angel, the prophet, the human

In “It’s a Terrible Life” (4.17) the angel-boss of Castiel, Zachariah, when Dean asks him why he removed his memories for a day, answers, “To prove to you that the path you’re on is truly in your blood. You’re a hunter. Not because dad made you, not because God called you back from Hell, but because it is what you are.” And, “You’ll do everything you’re destined to do. All of it.” How free is Dean Winchester then? As Thomas Flamson says in his analysis of the deterministic Whedonverse, “the deterministic nature of apparently free choices is commonly illustrated through the metaphor of prophecies.” (2007: 39) The introduction of a prophet into the Supernatural mythology in “The Monster at the End of This Book” (4.18) didn’t only bring much needed comic relief at the beginning of the otherwise angst-ridden episode and a nice tribute to the show’s fans. The fumbling, tormented writer, Chuck Shurley, doesn’t seem fit to piece together much of a story, yet he’s been chronicling (albeit unknowingly) the lives of Sam and Dean Winchester for years. As Castiel reveals to Dean, Chuck is a prophet. What he writes happens.

However, Dean doesn’t want to accept that, particularly after Chuck divulges that Sam will succumb to Lilith that same night. In fact, Dean is determined to do anything and everything to prevent it. In order to do this, he leaves Sam in a motel room, stuffing hex bags into every nook and cranny to keep the demon away, and goes park the car so he wouldn’t be driving around and wouldn’t crash into a van and get flowery band aids as Chuck predicted. But in doing so, he leaves Sam alone so he can burn the hex bags and clears the path for Lilith because, unlike Dean, he is determined to meet her. When Dean leaves the Impala at a parking lot, two miscreants try to break in, causing Dean to cross the street incautiously, getting knocked down by a van and patched up by a girl who likes to play the doctor and who sticks flowery band aids to his cheek. By trying to prevent the prophecy coming true, it seems, he did exactly what was needed for its fulfillment.

Just when the situation (and Sam) seems doomed, Castiel appears in an answer to Dean’s prayers and gives him a hint that could help save Sam. Prophecy averted? Not necessarily, as we have never seen the end of Chuck’s vision. For all we know, it could have been intended from the beginning for Dean to interfere and banish Lilith, only Chuck has not received his latest missive from above yet. The writers of the show used a nice little trick by only giving Chuck tiny snippets of the future at a time, this way they avoided revealing the whole prophecy and then having to break it in order to avoid a premature ending of the show.

Because, in truth, Dean couldn’t have broken it, with or without Castiel’s help, because “[t]he essence of determinism is […] predictability.” (ibid: 41) Despite us thinking that we are free, our actions are always results of a series of causes and effects. As mentioned before, factors such as our character, current circumstances, past experience, knowledge, culture, and society all determine our choices. And precisely because there are so many factors involved it is hard to predict our actions and this gives us the illusion of free will. However, the decisions can be predicted if someone has all the information and the capacity to enter it into a complicated formula that will give the end result.

Angels, demons, and prophets possess more information than humans and have a better capacity to use it. Hence the impossibility of Dean ever having the slightest chance of breaking Chuck’s prophecy. God, whose messenger Chuck is, can predict Dean’s actions ad infinitum and take them into account when ‘writing the future’ through Chuck. The prophecies this way “actually serve as triggers, leading the characters they speak of to pursue a predictable line of action, in turn creating the conditions that will actually fulfill the prophecy.” (ibid: 41) This begs the question: was Chuck planted by the angels in order to prompt Sam and Dean in the desired direction? The only clue that could answer that, i.e. what motivated the Winchesters to investigate the Golden Comics shop in the first place, hasn’t been revealed in the episode.

Let us now look at more depth into the issue of predictability. Although in a severely inferior position when faced with the whims of the angels and demons, Sam and Dean stand on a far more equal ground when their adversaries are human. Bela Talbot at first seemed like a fierce, even insuperable opponent. But that was all due to her extremely well tuned antenna for people, particularly hunters, which was a result of years of experience of dealing with them. Her only advantage was that she took the time and calculated the Winchesters’ next move by taking into account the circumstances and their characters. In “Time is on My Side” (3.15), Bela knew the Winchesters would give anything to catch her and get back the Colt that she had stolen so they could try and protect Dean when his time to die came. So she spread the word about her whereabouts, knowing how tightly-knit the community of hunters was. The news, indeed, reached them and as expected Dean went after her. But that was exactly what she needed to execute her plan of finding their location and killing them in order to get out of the deal with Lilith. But once Dean managed to make a step ahead of her, she lost her advantage. When Dean correctly interpreted the clues in her motel room and her behavior, he swiftly concluded that she had made a deal with the demon and that the Hell Hounds would soon be after her. Bela suddenly didn’t appear so annoyingly smart and quick anymore, but only terrified for her life. She became predictable and therefore an easier opponent.

3. Making the choice

This predictability is also a way to explain how free will and determinism can co-exist despite the seemingly opposite tendencies. Although predictability means that our future actions and decisions can be foreseen or known in advance, there is a limit. Like in chess, you can only predict a certain number of moves, meaning that the result and winner cannot be known from the beginning – this is the only way the game still has sense. The distant future, thus, remains unclear and unidentified. This in turn makes us feel free to do whatever we want. However, our actions are not random, they are still determined and conditioned by all previous and current events, only we can’t see it. The grand plan, the blueprint is too big to unfold it in a format small enough for the human eye to see it whole.

If we return to Zachariah’s quote at the beginning of the previous section [2.1], there are two points that should be made. The first part of the quote points to Dean having free will: “To prove to you that the path you’re on is truly in your blood.” After experiencing a day of his life as Dean Smith, a latte-drinking employee of a big corporation, and defeating a ghost with the help of a tech support guy, Sam Wesson, Dean realizes corporate business is not his cup of latte. The decision is not solely his, a lot of Sam’s convincing is needed to prompt Dean to make the choice. But he made the choice because hunting is in his blood.

On the other hand, “You’ll do everything you’re destined to do” does not sound like he has much choice. Yet this only goes to show how the two seemingly adverse principles can and do coexist. Yes, it is his destiny in the grand scheme of things to stop (or die trying) the Apocalypse. God, or at least Eric Kripke, knows how things will progress and eventually end. But Dean was put in a situation where his path was open to take any direction he wanted. He could simply accept that raise, yet something in him prompted him to decline and change his life, or so he thought until he realized he only returned to his previous, true life. So if anything, the situation Zachariah put him in only gave him more options, a possibility to leave his previous life behind because he wasn’t burdened with his loyalty to dad (or even Sam), he was suddenly tabula rasa. Yet, he chose the hunter in him.

Dean had already made this choice once before in “What Is and What Should Never Be” (2.20), when he again landed in an alternate universe created by a Djinn. Perhaps that decision was even harder to make as he got to taste the life he could have if he chose not to be a hunter, yet he chose to return to his ‘true’ life and to his calling.

4. The importance of free will

Dean’s fight for free choice continues even in the anthropomorphic version of Hell and transcends death and human limitations. When a show like Supernatural takes place on the playground of gods, playing by their rules seems to be a necessity. For no one more obviously than for Dean who has been sent to Hell and lured into torturing other souls in order to jump-start the Apocalypse.

In “On the Head of a Pin” (4.16), Castiel says, “When we discovered Lilith’s plan for you … we laid siege to Hell and we fought our way to get to you … But we were too late.” From the deterministic point of view, it must have been clear that Dean would eventually succumb to the pain, but he had fought for thirty years before he finally gave in. As Alistair, the demon, admitted in the same episode, they had already planned for Dean’s father to unleash the Apocalypse, but he persevered. This knowledge makes Dean feel even worse, and he says, “Why didn't you just leave me there then?” Castiel’s answer to that is, “It’s not blame that falls on you, Dean. It’s fate.” However, this does not give much hope to Dean, in fact, he seems to have given up altogether when he refuses to try and stop the Apocalypse, “I can't do it, Cas. It's too big. Alistair was right, I'm not all here, I'm not strong enough. I guess I'm not the man either of my dads wanted me to be. Find someone else. It's not me.” He lost his belief in his ability to stop the sixty-six seals from breaking and in his free will.

For the same reason, Zachariah warns Chuck when he wants to tell Sam and Dean what will happen next, “People shouldn’t know too much about their own destiny.” (4.18) Knowing too many moves ahead makes the game uninteresting and the winner known ahead of schedule. Dean’s sense of self worth and determination only return when Zachariah shows him in episode “It’s a Terrible Life” (4.17) that despite everything already being planned out, fated, he still has a choice as was proven when he decided to leave his job as a marketing expert and become a hunter. With the return of the illusion of free will he is again able to see meaning in life and in his struggle to stop Lucifer.

5. Conclusion

Since Zachariah, as the messenger of the Lord, has a better insight into the matter let us use his words to sum up. “All I’m saying is, it’s how you look at it.” (4.17) Determinism and free will coexist and complement each other. Both principles are needed for the world to function; determinism is a precondition to avoid total chaos in the universe, free will is what drives us on. In Supernatural, underneath the mythology and urban myths, this dilemma is an important issue. It raises questions such as: Is Dean Winchester being sacrificed for the grater good? Can he say no and does it even matter? If he was ‘forced’ into this fight by fate and he didn’t consciously choose it, does that make him less of a hero?

From the perspective of God, who ordered for Dean to be pulled out of Hell, it seems things on Earth are already decided, he only needs the players to act them out. And Dean can keep hope and the belief in his free will as long as he only gets one page of the script at a time. And isn’t it heroism fighting a fight, regardless of whether you have chosen it or not, when you don’t know whether you have any chance at all of winning it?

6. Cited works

Flamson, Thomas. 2007. Free Will in a Deterministic Whedonverse. In The Psychology of Joss Whedon, An Unauthorized Exploration of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, ed. Joy Davidson, 35-49. Dallas: BenBella Books.

Winner announced

The winner of the giveaway is: Dem81! Congrats!


The rest of you can order the book here: http://www.cinnamonpress.com/titles-anthologies.htm (towards the bottom of the page)

Anthology of award winning short stories and poetry

Storm at Galesburg brings together the best stories and poetry submitted for the Cinnamon Press Writing Award.

The title story by the widely published reviewer and short story writer, Jeremy Worman, is a slow build, full of atmosphere and impeccably controlled. With other stories by award winning Welsh author, Huw Lawrence; the young Irish writer attracting attention for his forensic attention to detail and ability to describe the strange, Miceál Kearney; European writer, Brigita Pavsic’s haunting, honed style and a poignant, disturbing tale from Guatemalan based author, Cassandra Passarelli, the prose in this anthology is sure to delight and engage readers.

The poetry represents some of the best new voices to listen for, with excellent writing from Sally Lewis, Will Kemp, Ben Parker, David Underwood and Aisling Tempany. Lyrical writing which explores the boundaries of language, love and identity.

Storm at Galesburg i s an anthology to savour.

Book giveaway

As mentioned in my previous posts, there will be the launch of the Storm at Galesburg anthology in London, this Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Pages of Hackney bookstore. If you're in London, stop by, there will be authors reading their stories and poetry, you'll get a drink and a chance to chat with a few of the writers. Unfortunately, I can't attend the reading.

But, to make up for it, I'll be giving away one copy of the anthology. All you have to do is comment to this post. You have until Friday 25th, 12 GMT. I'll announce the winner next week. Now comment away. :)

What's in a Word?

The connection between language and other human behaviours never ceases to amaze me.


What's in a Word?

Language may shape our thoughts.

By Sharon <http://www.newsweek.com/id/183003> Begley | NEWSWEEK

Published Jul 9, 2009


When the Viaduct de Millau opened in the south of France in 2004, this
tallest bridge in the world won worldwide accolades. German newspapers
described how it "floated above the clouds" with "elegance and lightness"
and "breathtaking" beauty. In France, papers praised the "immense" "concrete
giant." Was it mere coincidence that the Germans saw beauty where the French
saw heft and power? Lera Boroditsky thinks not.

A psychologist at Stanford University, she has long been intrigued by an
age-old question whose modern form dates to 1956, when linguist Benjamin Lee
Whorf asked whether the language we speak shapes the way we think and see
the world. If so, then language is not merely a means of expressing thought,
but a constraint on it, too. Although philosophers, anthropologists, and
others have weighed in, with most concluding that language does not shape
thought in any significant way, the field has been notable for a distressing
lack of empiricism-as in testable hypotheses and actual data.

That's where Boroditsky comes in. In a series of clever experiments guided
by pointed questions, she is amassing evidence that, yes, language shapes
thought. The effect is powerful enough, she says, that "the private mental
lives of speakers of different languages may differ dramatically," not only
when they are thinking in order to speak, "but in all manner of cognitive
tasks," including basic sensory perception. "Even a small fluke of
grammar"-the gender of nouns-"can have an effect on how people think about
things in the world," she says.


As in that bridge. In German, the noun for bridge, Brücke, is feminine. In
French, pont is masculine. German speakers saw prototypically female
features; French speakers, masculine ones. Similarly, Germans describe keys
(Schlüssel) with words such as hard, heavy, jagged, and metal, while to
Spaniards keys (llaves) are golden, intricate, little, and lovely. Guess
which language construes key as masculine and which as feminine? Grammatical
gender also shapes how we construe abstractions. In 85 percent of artistic
depictions of death and victory, for instance, the idea is represented by a
man if the noun is masculine and a woman if it is feminine, says Boroditsky.
Germans tend to paint death as male, and Russians tend to paint it as
female.

Language even shapes what we see. People have a better memory for colors if
different shades have distinct names-not English's light blue and dark blue,
for instance, but Russian's goluboy and sinly. Skeptics of the
language-shapes-thought claim have argued that that's a trivial finding,
showing only that people remember what they saw in both a visual form and a
verbal one, but not proving that they actually see the hues differently. In
an ingenious experiment, however, Boroditsky and colleagues showed
volunteers three color swatches and asked them which of the bottom two was
the same as the top one. Native Russian speakers were faster than English
speakers when the colors had distinct names, suggesting that having a name
for something allows you to perceive it more sharply. Similarly, Korean uses
one word for "in" when one object is in another snugly (a letter in an
envelope), and a different one when an object is in something loosely (an
apple in a bowl). Sure enough, Korean adults are better than English
speakers at distinguishing tight fit from loose fit.

In Australia, the Aboriginal Kuuk Thaayorre use compass directions for every
spatial cue rather than right or left, leading to locutions such as "there
is an ant on your southeast leg." The Kuuk Thaayorre are also much more
skillful than English speakers at dead reckoning, even in unfamiliar
surroundings or strange buildings. Their language "equips them to perform
navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities," Boroditsky wrote
on Edge.org.

Science has only scratched the surface of how language affects thought. In
Russian, verb forms indicate whether the action was completed or not-as in
"she ate [and finished] the pizza." In Turkish, verbs indicate whether the
action was observed or merely rumored. Boroditsky would love to run an
experiment testing whether native Russian speakers are better than others at
noticing if an action is completed, and if Turks have a heightened
sensitivity to fact versus hearsay. Similarly, while English says "she broke
the bowl" even if it smashed accidentally (she dropped something on it,
say), Spanish and Japanese describe the same event more like "the bowl broke
itself." "When we show people video of the same event," says Boroditsky,
"English speakers remember who was to blame even in an accident, but Spanish
and Japanese speakers remember it less well than they do intentional
actions. It raises questions about whether language affects even something
as basic as how we construct our ideas of causality."

Begley is NEWSWEEK's science editor.

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/205985

Storm at Galesburg II

Another anthology post. This is the official description of the collection from the Cinnamon Press website:

Anthology of award winning short stories and poetry

Storm at Galesburg brings together the best stories and poetry submitted for the Cinnamon Press Writing Award.

The title story by the widely published reviewer and short story writer, Jeremy Worman, is a slow build, full of atmosphere and impeccably controlled. With other stories by award winning Welsh author, Huw Lawrence; the young Irish writer attracting attention for his forensic attention to detail and ability to describe the strange, Miceál Kearney; European writer, Brigita Pavsic’s haunting, honed style and a poignant, disturbing tale from Guatemalan based author, Cassandra Passarelli, the prose in this anthology is sure to delight and engage readers.

The poetry represents some of the best new voices to listen for, with excellent writing from Sally Lewis, Will Kemp, Ben Parker, David Underwood and Aisling Tempany. Lyrical writing which explores the boundaries of language, love and identity.

Storm at Galesburg is an anthology to savour.

Hauting style, huh?

Storm at Galesburg

The short story and poems anthology, Storm at Galesburg, by Cinnamon Press will be launched on the evening of 24th September at Pages of Hackney bookstore in London.

Although the anthology features one of my stories, To Love or Be Haunted, I'm not sure I'll be able to attend the reading, but if you go to the launch you won't be disappointed. Jeremy Worman, the author of the winning story, will read at the event. He's a well published writer, he taught at several universities, and has now finished a detective novel Entanglement.

Once I get my copies of the anthology, I'll have a contest here, so be sure to check back in September for a free copy of the anthology! :)

Online publishing and Michael Stackpole

In this piece Michael Stackpole talks about the advantages of online publishing.

"Stackpole is convinced that both established and fledgling authors need to embrace new content delivery methods or fade into irrelevance." True, we have to embrace them, however, a new author is far less likely to be noticed in the vastness of online publishing. If a publishing house stands behind them, then that gives them certain authority, but if they decide to publish their work online, at least some people will look at the author's credentials, see they haven't had anything published in print form, and dismiss them as a serious writer before even reading their work.

"Selling stories directly though his website generates a payment before the buyer has even finished downloading the story, and the profit margin on even a short story is far higher than on a paper novel." If only it were that easy.

"Rather than simply changing the method of delivering stories to readers, Stackpole believes digital formats will change the nature of the stories themselves." On this issue, I agree. The nature and form of the stories is changing due to online publishing. Not only is pure text sometimes substituted by other media, but it also has to be more concise and to the point. Blogologist Alister Cameron suggests that written text should be cut by 50 % before being published online due to a shorter attention span of online readers.

"(Stackpole) described how the method of writing old pulp stories could easily be adapted for modern audiences by eliminating certain ubiquitous but unecessary subplots and adding a bit of character development. A serial detective story should be, "70 percent case, 30 percent soap opera," with a little more soap in a later story to satisfy readers interested in a character's developing personal life." Can you get any less creative than that? What about if you add just one percent of philosophy or political issues? Are you then destined to fail? I've never imagined I'd hear such a statement from a writer. But I guess you do what you have to do to pay the bills, right? ;)

What's your opinion? Is online publishing lucrative? Is it an option for "Fledgling authors"?