I was watching Smallville the other night and they did an episode in which Clark is taken over by a phantom from the Phantom Zone. The phantom wanted to take control of Clark's body but first needed to imprison his mind. To accomplish this the phantom but Clark's mind in a world in which he has never had superpowers, in fact he has been locked up in a mental institution for being Schizophrenic. I found this whole episode to be parallel with the idea of the "evil demon", the demon being the phantom in the show. The phantom tried to trick Clark into believing in a false reality for its own evil purposes. This whole episode of course reminded me of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which an almost identical experience is had by Buffy. In this show Buffy also awakes in a mental institute and is told that all her experiences in Sunnydale were merely figments of her imagination. In the end of this show Buffy chooses to believe in the world of vampires and demons that she knows and we see doctors consoling her parents telling them that Buffy has slipped back into her dream world. I find this show to be especially compelling because it suggests to me that there could be alternate realities and what matters is what we choose to believe because that is what reality is, what we believe in.
posted by Jor-El at 9:25 PM
2 Comments:
I can agree with this to some extent. I think we can argue about what's real and true and how we can tell until we die, but in the end we just have to make an educated decision that we can back up and just believe in it. However, I don't think it's right to say that reality is whatever we choose to believe in. That leads into the class discussion of the lie What's true is what's true for me. If we believe this then we can't ever say our view is right or someone else's is wrong because everyone's view is right for them.
And maybe some people would argue that this isn't so bad, it's tolerance. (Oh, I hate that word.) But from a Christian stand point, that can't be true. If everyone's right about whatever they believe, then why bother being Christians? If every religion is right (which isn't even possible since Christianity, for example, is based on the fact that it's the only way into Heaven) then we could live however we want and still be fine.
I don't know if I agree that this has anything to do with tolerance or opinion. I'm not saying that we should agree to disagree on a social issue or anything like that, this is about what is real, not what is true. If I was to argue anything it's the question of whether or not there is a master plan or predestination, whatever you want to call it, that's moving the whole world, or if we are each left to our own reality.
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