Fangasmic

This falls on our radar because certain members of the FG crew are absolutely embarrassing yuppies who hang around Slate.com all day long just hitting the F5 key, and it's an intriguing bit of analysis about the idea of heaven. Given fourth and fifth season trajectories on Supernatural, it's worth some discussion.

First off, the article on Slate is catalyzed by a book, Heaven, which digs up some interesting nuggets, probably the most interesting of which boils down to two points, which become even more interesting in the context of Supernatural, the series:

(1) The concept of heaven is constantly changing, influenced and shaped by the needfulness of whatsoever culture is calling upon it at any given time, and Johann Hari writes, "Show me your heaven, and I'll show you what's lacking in your life." Heaven was water for the desert-dwellers, freedom for slaves, and for sex-starved suicide bombers, it's 72 virgins, Hari says. If this is true, it casts last week's Dark Side of the Moon in an interesting light: was the partitioned nature of heaven its reality? Or some sort of construction in Dean and Sam's head? After all, they saw a ribbon of asphalt leading to the Cleveland Botanical Gardens -- who's to say that everything else they encountered wasn't somehow colored, too? Unless everything Ash and Pamela wanted was a monochromatic palette of BEING LEFT ALONE, too.

(2) The idea of a paradise after death for good behavior is, all things even, a fairly new concept:

"We know precisely when this story of projecting our lack into the sky began: 165 B.C., patented by the ancient Jews. Until then, heaven—shamayim—was the home of God and his angels. Occasionally God descended from it to give orders and indulge in a little light smiting, but there was a strict no-dead-people door policy. Humans didn't get in, and they didn't expect to. The best you could hope for after death was for your bones to be buried with your people in a shared tomb and for your story to carry on through your descendants. It was a realistic, humanistic approach to death. You go, but your people live on."

That's a big turnaround from the way I'd always conceptually understood the relationship of ancient cultures with a distinct paradise. (To be sure, this is specifically Judeo-Christian; many other and much more ancient cultures had their own post-life journeys, like those that inspired the building of pyramids and the fields of Elysium, where warriors retired after death.)

More than that, the article (and book -- oh, so derivative) posits that the idea of something after death, that something more was needed, came after the scattering of bones destroyed the guarantee that you would be near your loved ones in death. Circling right back around, because if heaven is the sterile, segregated space Dean and Sam visited in Dark Side, then I don't know. I'm pretty good with wrapping it up Earthside, and I'm not entirely convinced Sam and Dean wouldn't be, too.

(Oh, also, Michael Shanks was on it. SHUT UP. YOU'LL NEVER BE MY DANIEL JACKSON.)