How We Get There Matters - Ends and Means
Feb. 17th, 2004 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyThis isn't meta and it isn't a rant, it's a personal exploration of my own beliefs. As such, it's less open-ended than I try to be normally - in fandom essays and meta, I prefer asking questions to answering them, but when it comes to my own life, finding answers is important.
My mom works for a company called Tri-Met - it's the Portland-Metro area public transport service. The 'motto' of the company used to be 'how we get there matters'. Recently, it was decided that that was too judgemental and the new motto is 'see where it takes you'. Personally, I preferred the old one.
One of the things that pre-vamped Lawson says is that you don't win a war by any means necessary, you win it by doing the right thing. The ends don't justify the means. This is also what drove Buffy in The Gift: the end of saving the world did not justify the means of killing an innocent girl.
One of the lessons that Buffy tells over and over is that of ends and means. Taking care that while Buffy fights monsters, she doesn't become one.
Can a truly good end justify horrible and cruel means?
The problem lies in priorities. Depending on what a person values, the answer can be yes or no. To Buffy Summers, the world isn't worth saving if the cost is innocent blood. To Rupert Giles, innocent blood is not too high a price to pay for saving the world. In a sense, it's the fight between the forest and the trees - a map of the world versus individual portraits.
Surely saving the world is worth sacrificing a principle or two. A life or two. Yet, I ask, as Buffy did - is a world that asks these choices of people a world worth saving?
Why we fight matters - but so does how. Lawson... after he was vamped, he still fixed the sub - he still had the mission, had his orders, but he'd lost his purpose. He's lost why he was fighting, because he no longer saw that the men are the mission - that they have to be, or the mission is worthless.
One of the reasons that I'm thinking of this is because of the book Ishmael. I've read it twice now - once a couple of years ago, and once just recently. In so many ways, the messages of the book resonates throughout BtVS and AtS.
In my head, I'm always quoting the Jossverse. When it comes to... the world outside my own head, it's Anyanka's words that come to mind - "This is the world we made." It is, after all. The world we live in now is the result of thousands of years of cause and effect. When people wonder why God let something happen, I wonder why they think that it has anything to do with God - free will is a powerful thing and we've been using it for quite some time. So many of the horrible things that people blame on an uncaring deity can be directly traced to the choices that people have made.
In therapy, we were taught that something cannot be changed unless it is claimed. Every single day, billions of people make choices that make this world what it is. We have no one to blame but ourselves. We were born to a wonder of a planet that has more than enough resources to go around. Instead, this is what we choose, over and over. And when we deny our responsibility then we deny ourselves the chance to change things.
Because this is the world that we made. And America is what it is because this is what the people here choose. And I don't exempt myself - I'm just as much a part of the system as anyone else who works a salaried job. I was born into this world and it's hard to see the way out. This culture, this life, is all I've ever been taught.
We don't choose the hand that we're dealt, but we choose how we play - whether or not to go for broke or play it safe. Whether or not to be honest or cheat.
What I'm working towards is a way to get out of this game entirely, find one that I like.
For now, I'm playing the game, because I do like to eat and to have enough money for the fun things in life, but this isn't where I want to be in a year or five.
My mom works for a company called Tri-Met - it's the Portland-Metro area public transport service. The 'motto' of the company used to be 'how we get there matters'. Recently, it was decided that that was too judgemental and the new motto is 'see where it takes you'. Personally, I preferred the old one.
One of the things that pre-vamped Lawson says is that you don't win a war by any means necessary, you win it by doing the right thing. The ends don't justify the means. This is also what drove Buffy in The Gift: the end of saving the world did not justify the means of killing an innocent girl.
One of the lessons that Buffy tells over and over is that of ends and means. Taking care that while Buffy fights monsters, she doesn't become one.
Can a truly good end justify horrible and cruel means?
The problem lies in priorities. Depending on what a person values, the answer can be yes or no. To Buffy Summers, the world isn't worth saving if the cost is innocent blood. To Rupert Giles, innocent blood is not too high a price to pay for saving the world. In a sense, it's the fight between the forest and the trees - a map of the world versus individual portraits.
Surely saving the world is worth sacrificing a principle or two. A life or two. Yet, I ask, as Buffy did - is a world that asks these choices of people a world worth saving?
Why we fight matters - but so does how. Lawson... after he was vamped, he still fixed the sub - he still had the mission, had his orders, but he'd lost his purpose. He's lost why he was fighting, because he no longer saw that the men are the mission - that they have to be, or the mission is worthless.
One of the reasons that I'm thinking of this is because of the book Ishmael. I've read it twice now - once a couple of years ago, and once just recently. In so many ways, the messages of the book resonates throughout BtVS and AtS.
In my head, I'm always quoting the Jossverse. When it comes to... the world outside my own head, it's Anyanka's words that come to mind - "This is the world we made." It is, after all. The world we live in now is the result of thousands of years of cause and effect. When people wonder why God let something happen, I wonder why they think that it has anything to do with God - free will is a powerful thing and we've been using it for quite some time. So many of the horrible things that people blame on an uncaring deity can be directly traced to the choices that people have made.
In therapy, we were taught that something cannot be changed unless it is claimed. Every single day, billions of people make choices that make this world what it is. We have no one to blame but ourselves. We were born to a wonder of a planet that has more than enough resources to go around. Instead, this is what we choose, over and over. And when we deny our responsibility then we deny ourselves the chance to change things.
Because this is the world that we made. And America is what it is because this is what the people here choose. And I don't exempt myself - I'm just as much a part of the system as anyone else who works a salaried job. I was born into this world and it's hard to see the way out. This culture, this life, is all I've ever been taught.
We don't choose the hand that we're dealt, but we choose how we play - whether or not to go for broke or play it safe. Whether or not to be honest or cheat.
What I'm working towards is a way to get out of this game entirely, find one that I like.
For now, I'm playing the game, because I do like to eat and to have enough money for the fun things in life, but this isn't where I want to be in a year or five.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-17 11:46 am (UTC)And I always ask the reverse of the question: How much do you love the world?
Because it's easy to do good, to be the hero, when the price is low. But it's harder to give when more is asked. Do you have enough love to save the world, when the price is high.
Because there is no easy choice. To not save the world, when you have the choice - is to destroy a mass number of innocents by ommission. We cannot keep our innocence forever - the test, IMHO, is how much of our love we can keep even after the innocence is lost.
I don't really think Buffy vs. Giles in The Gift is really a dichotomous choice. The real dichotomy is Buffy in The Gift and Buffy in Becoming. Giles kills Ben because Ben needs to be killed and because Ben should be killed. Buffy kills Angel because she loves the world too much to let it go to hell. Buffy is prepared to let it all end over Dawn in The Gift because she doesn't have the love anymore.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-17 11:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-17 11:55 am (UTC)These are the questions I love to struggle with, too. The only ones really worth struggling with. And they're why I'm going to miss AtS so very, very much.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-17 11:59 am (UTC)One of the things that pre-vamped Lawson says is that you don't win a war by any means necessary, you win it by doing the right thing.
I thought it was a lovely sentiment, there to remind us that he's Nice, but... I mean, this is the war where the "good guys" dropped two nuclear bombs, refused to direct resources to bomb the railways to Auschwitz, and left Dresden a big pile of ash and rubble. And the only way we can justify any of that, even slightly, is by claiming the ends as essential. (And each of those things had a debatable impact on the actual ending of the war anyway.) Which is probably what the writers are trying to say on that one. (Buffyverse in Real World Issues Shocker! "OMGLOL"!)
One of the lessons that Buffy tells over and over is that of ends and means. Taking care that while Buffy fights monsters, she doesn't become one.
Which is probably one reason S7 makes me smack my head against the wall... because she's become distanced and Alone. And doesn't seem to realise this.
Yet, I ask, as Buffy did - is a world that asks these choices of people a world worth saving?
That's interesting in that it fits into that thesis that the entire Buffyverse is the hallucination from Alone Again - the idea that the world is optional, almost. (Bleh, I'm not saying it right. Anyway.)
We don't choose the hand that we're dealt, but we choose how we play - whether or not to go for broke or play it safe. Whether or not to be honest or cheat.
*sigh* And the better your hand the more likely you are to cheat. :(
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:00 pm (UTC)Because it's easy to do good, to be the hero, when the price is low. But it's harder to give when more is asked. Do you have enough love to save the world, when the price is high.
Word!
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:00 pm (UTC)But that last number grows by the day, and I'm not sure that I have the heart to believe in its worth. As time passes, I do find myself questioning things more and more. Because I'm not a huge fan of... not the world so much as our culture. Takers, the lot of us.
Because none of us are asked to choose between the world and one person - it's not a decision that we're called to make. Instead, we choose between culture and nature, or people and the world.
And this culture always chooses people over the world. It choose its own people over other people.
I remember, in high school, when we learned about 'manifest destiny', I thought it was stupid funny - how could anyone believe all that? I don't think that it's funny anymore. I see it everywhere, in so many people. That simple sense of ownership - that we own the world and can take it to hell if we want to.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:02 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:03 pm (UTC)They actually teach that?!
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:04 pm (UTC)Exactly - I love this season because it's asking questions that are very similar to the ones that I ask.
These are the questions I love to struggle with, too. The only ones really worth struggling with. And they're why I'm going to miss AtS so very, very much.
So true.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:06 pm (UTC)They didn't teach it as something to believe in, they taught it as an explanation for why early Americans thought that they had the right to own all this land that was already being used.
But I can see it all around me - it's a culture thing, a western world thing, and we haven't outgrown it, we've internalized it to the point that it doesn't need to be said in words anymore.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:12 pm (UTC)Exactly - I don't think that it is justifiable. Showing that killing people is wrong by killing people isn't a lesson that sticks.
Which is probably one reason S7 makes me smack my head against the wall... because she's become distanced and Alone. And doesn't seem to realise this.
I don't know, I got the sense that she knew, she hated it, but she couldn't see how to fight without turning off her feelings (shades of Angel&Co. in the wake of Jasmine).
That's interesting in that it fits into that thesis that the entire Buffyverse is the hallucination from Alone Again - the idea that the world is optional, almost.
Well, living in this world is. To use the card metaphor, you always have the option to fold. But that puts you out of the game, out of possibly changing things for the better.
And the better your hand the more likely you are to cheat.
Sadly, that's true most of the time.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:18 pm (UTC)It's peculiarly sick that we make all these films/books/etc to the end that "war bad" and that centuries of, y'know, actual wars haven't given us a bit of a clue on that one.
Well, living in this world is.
Who was it that said "the only choice you ever really get is whether or not to kill yourself"? Meh, probably some dead philosopher. I don't trust those.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:24 pm (UTC)As for plot-holes, I think the plot-hole in S5 is a little more damaging, because the story had potential to make sense. S7 made so little sense before "Chosen", with so many vast plotholes and missteps, and false-starts, that the specific plot-holes of "Chosen" just aren't worth the scrutiny anymore.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:31 pm (UTC)God, yes. I like watching those movies, but I didn't need them to figure out that war sucks like a great big vacuum cleaner.
Who was it that said "the only choice you ever really get is whether or not to kill yourself"? Meh, probably some dead philosopher. I don't trust those.
Pfft. Dead philosophers. If they were so great, they'd have figured out how to live forever.
Personally, I'm a big believer in choice - when you stop believing in choice, you've lost any chance of ever making things better than they are. It's shooting yourself in the foot.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:31 pm (UTC)To me, when I look at "The Slayer" - I don't just see a mythic warrior or symbol of death - I see a public servant. Obviously, you get tested on what your values are, and what you wish to serve - but when Buffy announces that she'll damn the world rather than even contemplate Dawn's death - she's not The Hero anymore. She's a hero, but not The Hero. So to speak.
That simple sense of ownership - that we own the world and can take it to hell if we want to.
Yeah. Except that, a large aspect of the public interest, community focus model hinges upon the understanding that if we send the world to hell, we go to hell with it. Which, IMHO, is a very hard message to sell - and not a message enough of our community leaders are sending back to their constituency. (Points again to Tax Policy)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:33 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 12:34 pm (UTC)I just think it's a blown storytelling opportunity that they didn't really follow through on this aspect of the story. That Buffy had it in her to live as she had before S5, and might yet have it in her again, is something I loved about the character.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-17 01:26 pm (UTC)Except that it's not. Because it's in us. It's a flawed world, where men are not angels. And there are frequently choices wherein one cannot choose without choosing an evil course.
Letting an innocent girl die is an evil act. And yet, to let six million innocents die should the world end (regardless of what is asked of you) when you and only you are capable of saving them... is that not evil too?
This is the world we live in. We can hope and pray and wish for nothing but black and white, but there will always be moral ambiguity, and shades of gray between the black and white. The test is - where do we draw the lines and say "this gray is too black" - and how do we gain the knowledge, intuition, and skill to do better at drawing these lines.
That's the hero's test. To say "you can't fight evil without doing evil" is to abdicate that test, is to give up on the hardest parts of the fight in order to retain innocence. And that's important, but for the hero - that way lies futility. That's the Saint's path.
The hero isn't pure, isn't innocent, because men aren't pure. We aren't angels. The hero's test isn't to retain as much innocence as possible, in the hopes that evil will flee from our purity. The hero's test is to see the grays for what they are, but still know how and when to draw the lines and walk them.
Are people means, or ends in themselves?
Date: 2004-02-17 04:21 pm (UTC)Which kind of connects to the other side of the "means and ends" conversation: do you treat people as "means" to an end (as something to be USED in order to achieve a greater good), or as "ends" in and of themselves (as person to be served or loved, but never to be used, never to be accumulated like notches on a bedpost or gun handle or "saves" adding up to an "all-expenses-paid-trip-to-Shanshu" when you've collected enough)? As soon as you regard anyone else's life as a means to an end, even if that end is saving the world, and THEREFORE decide that you have the right to take away their choice and take away their life because of something you can buy with it, you're getting onto shaky ground, in which simply being slightly less monstrous than your adversary is considered "good enough for government work."
Re: Are people means, or ends in themselves?
Date: 2004-02-17 04:30 pm (UTC)For me, the meaning of the cross in Christianity or the meaning of sacrifice of any kind comes down to the idea that the person laying down their life has to be doing it out of choice, as a gift of love, rather than through coercion. If Jesus didn't have the choice to say "No" and the power to walk away from the Garden of Gethsemane, then the cross IS what many people have accused it of being, an act of "child abuse" on the part of God. And how could an act of abuse redeem my life or anyone else's?
Means, Ends, stumbling in the woods
Date: 2004-02-17 04:38 pm (UTC)For whatever reasons, S5 Buffy/S2 Angel was the season of arguing about Total War.
I had just finished reading Sir Basil Liddel Hart’s book Indirect Strategy. A very contemplative book in its latter sections. Well, all of it really, trudging as it does out of the trenches of WWI France.
Having read about 2000+ years of warfare in Western Civilization, the reader can’t help but be guided to think about cause and effect. The ways that the wars and tensions that came before led to WWI, which led to WWII, which leads chains on down. Choices and the necessity of considering not just the immediate implications of a choice, but the world that that choice will help create. Now. Five years. Ten years. 100 years.
And I consider Buffy’s choice, which really isn’t about saving the world or an innocent. “The last thing she’ll see is me standing over her defending her,” or something like that, which implies that Buffy does understand she’ll die defending Dawn, who will then die, the gate will be closed and the world will be saved. Okay, so the world was always safe, but SunnyD would have been a hole in the ground. Then we get into mathematics. How many innocents should be balanced against one? Is it a 1000 to 1 ratio? 100 to 1? 2 to 1? 1 to 1?
We choose.
And the choices we make create the world and that world is created and destroyed minute by minute. Which is why Buffy’s choice of Option C is so…there is no box, only lines.
For some reason, I’m reminded of the end of the Shadow of the Batwoman, where one of the main characters asks Batman how he retains his focus on the line that should not be crossed, because as soon as that character put the mask on, the line disappeared.
“How we get there matters.” Finding a game that we like, with rules that we can live. Taking the long view on the road less traveled by and huh, confusing and mice ate my map.
I don’t know, if you figure it out, let me know.
The Real Gift
Date: 2004-02-17 05:01 pm (UTC)Imagine Angel sent to hell with a kiss. How did Angel feel when he got to hell? Buffy wasn't about to do that do Dawn. Dawn was going to die. Buffy just wasn't going to let her feel rejected in her last moments, even if it cost Buffy's her own life.
On that platform, both women realized how much they did love each other and through that love found an alternative to Dawn dying. Living doesn't mean breathing. It means having passion and feelings. Buffy doesn't tell Dawn to go on with the daily drugery that is life. She tells her to *live.* That is different from being alive.
Just how I see "The Gift."
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 03:37 pm (UTC)Because instead of serving the community, she's focusing on one piece of it. I definitely agree about Buffy's role - she is basically a mystical cop, judge, and executioner, because she pretty much has to be when it comes to that stuff.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 03:43 pm (UTC)I don't know that I can agree with that. I think, like Buffy, that there's always a third option, the one that people aren't thinking of.
Letting an innocent girl die is an evil act. And yet, to let six million innocents die should the world end (regardless of what is asked of you) when you and only you are capable of saving them... is that not evil too?
But it wasn't Buffy who was capable (rather, it was, but they didn't know that at first). It was Dawn. It was Dawn's ability to save the world. And if she'd chosen to jump (I think that she would have, no matter what, if Buffy hadn't come up with a third option), then it wouldn't have been evil, because (as it was in Buffy's case) it was her choice.
This is the world we live in. We can hope and pray and wish for nothing but black and white, but there will always be moral ambiguity, and shades of gray between the black and white. The test is - where do we draw the lines and say "this gray is too black" - and how do we gain the knowledge, intuition, and skill to do better at drawing these lines.
We do have to draw lines, but there's a difference between bad choices and evil ones. Honestly, I don't really get many choices between good and evil in my life. I've made some bad choices, but not evil ones.
That's the hero's test. To say "you can't fight evil without doing evil" is to abdicate that test, is to give up on the hardest parts of the fight in order to retain innocence. And that's important, but for the hero - that way lies futility. That's the Saint's path.
The question, I suppose, lies in each person's definition of evil. And a lot of that lies in how the question is framed.
The hero isn't pure, isn't innocent, because men aren't pure. We aren't angels. The hero's test isn't to retain as much innocence as possible, in the hopes that evil will flee from our purity. The hero's test is to see the grays for what they are, but still know how and when to draw the lines and walk them.
I think that people can be unpure and not innocent and still be good people. Innocence isn't the same thing as goodness.
Re: Are people means, or ends in themselves?
Date: 2004-02-19 03:49 pm (UTC)Exactly. Buffy had the right to give up her own life for the world, but not anyone else's. Angel's a special case in a lot of ways - it is Angelus who opened Acathla, and all of Angelus is derived from Angel's own personality, though warped and twisted. Even at that, if she could have given her own life for that, she would have. And if Angel had known the whole situation, I think that he would have, too.
Which kind of connects to the other side of the "means and ends" conversation: do you treat people as "means" to an end (as something to be USED in order to achieve a greater good), or as "ends" in and of themselves (as person to be served or loved, but never to be used, never to be accumulated like notches on a bedpost or gun handle or "saves" adding up to an "all-expenses-paid-trip-to-Shanshu" when you've collected enough)? As soon as you regard anyone else's life as a means to an end, even if that end is saving the world, and THEREFORE decide that you have the right to take away their choice and take away their life because of something you can buy with it, you're getting onto shaky ground, in which simply being slightly less monstrous than your adversary is considered "good enough for government work."
Which is what Angel is always struggling with. He's a very controlling person (as did the Watcher's Council - that was their whole things).
Re: Are people means, or ends in themselves?
Date: 2004-02-19 03:50 pm (UTC)Re: Means, Ends, stumbling in the woods
Date: 2004-02-19 03:59 pm (UTC)We choose.
True - it never would have gotten as far the whole world, especially since it was growing outward. Dawn would have been dead before it could affect the world - even most of the country, probably.
And the choices we make create the world and that world is created and destroyed minute by minute. Which is why Buffy’s choice of Option C is so…there is no box, only lines.
It's the only choice that made Buffy think that the world was worth saving, so I'm glad she found it.
“How we get there matters.” Finding a game that we like, with rules that we can live. Taking the long view on the road less traveled by and huh, confusing and mice ate my map.
The key is diversity, which we do not have enough of (have you ever read Ishmael?). The problem is that in Western society (I'm not venturing guesses about cultures that I don't know), we only have the one game. We can't say - "Well, why can't I just live somewhere where I can be self-sufficent and answer to no one," because everywhere we go in the country is owned by someone - if not that, then the government. There's no freedom - it's all bound up in ownership.
Of course, I have issues with the idea that we can own land in any case ('nothing alive or capable of creating life should be owned' is how I feel on my radical days). And the importance placed on money is both sad and amusing to me - it's just a shortcut, a way to make the transaction of goods and services more efficient. I don't think that it should or does mean anything apart from that.
And it's not people that are messed up - it's this culture. People lived for thousands of years without screwing up the world, after all, and they could do it again if they wanted to.
Re: The Real Gift
Date: 2004-02-19 04:02 pm (UTC)So true, as expressed in 'Going through the motions' - surviving and living are two different things. And, for Buffy, she knew that she couldn't continue to live (though she could have survived) if she let Dawn die, if she let Dawn think that the world was more important.
Spoilers for Why We Fight
Date: 2004-02-19 04:08 pm (UTC)Except that there isn't always a third option, and there isn't always unlimited time. When he's on that dying sub, with it's dying crew, Angel has two choices. Let Lawson die a human death, and doom the crew. Or turn Lawson to save them. There was no third option.
And if she'd chosen to jump (I think that she would have, no matter what, if Buffy hadn't come up with a third option), then it wouldn't have been evil, because (as it was in Buffy's case) it was her choice.
But Buffy had a choice to make: save the world if it means killing Dawn. And it's a choice she abdicated. I'm not saying that "The Gift" required her to carry it through, but she had to be able to make it. Which she wasn't. It's a notable comparison - God does not spare Isaac until Abraham admits willingness to make the sacrifice. Abraham has to answer the test posed, and though he is not actually made to pay the cost, he still must answer.
Life doesn't always work that way. And I despise that, in the "Gift" Buffy is given the out. To me, that's why death is her gift. Buffy is allowed to die, so that she won't have to face her toughest test.
Re: Spoilers for Why We Fight
Date: 2004-02-19 04:19 pm (UTC)But choice was still available to both Lawson and Angel - and Lawson, I think, knew what he was asking for. He was smart, he figured out what Angel was ('because you know each other'). Choosing to sacrifice yourself isn't evil.
But Buffy had a choice to make: save the world if it means killing Dawn. And it's a choice she abdicated. I'm not saying that "The Gift" required her to carry it through, but she had to be able to make it. Which she wasn't. It's a notable comparison - God does not spare Isaac until Abraham admits willingness to make the sacrifice. Abraham has to answer the test posed, and though he is not actually made to pay the cost, he still must answer.
She didn't even have to kill Dawn - she had to be willing to let Dawn die. Dawn was willing to make the sacrifice.
Life doesn't always work that way. And I despise that, in the "Gift" Buffy is given the out. To me, that's why death is her gift. Buffy is allowed to die, so that she won't have to face her toughest test.
I don't know if it's a test that I can believe in. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this right... I'm trying to find a real world equivalent of the situation - maybe a volatile hostage situation? But even then, the choice is not generally life against life.
Re: Spoilers for Why We Fight
Date: 2004-02-19 04:43 pm (UTC)But what Lawson wants is only part of the equation. In the end, Angel still has to make a choice of his own - he has to choose whether or not to turn Lawson into a Vampire. And that's a still a profane act - the cross is going to burn Angel and VampLawson, regardless of the circumstances. If Lawson wasn't willing to sacrifice himself, then what would Angel do? Would he turn Lawson anyway, and then compel him to repair the ship in order to save the crewmembers? Or would Angel let them all die, because Lawson was unwilling to cooperate?
She didn't even have to kill Dawn - she had to be willing to let Dawn die.
That's true. But she still didn't have to.
We can cut the Gordian Knot, say we don't believe in the test - but at some point during the hero's journey - often at critical points - the hero actually does have to respond to the tests placed before them.
*Dreaded Sports Metaphor*
When you play baseball, the only pitches you get to swing at are the ones the pitcher throws you. And you have to deal with them. It's your choice to swing, and you can foul pitches off to try to get the pitcher to throw you something more favorable - but in the end you either swing or don't at what you face. In "The Gift", Buffy draws a walk. And I dislike it, because JW tried to tell us that she hit a home run.