Of intellectually and morally challenged Angels and their ineffable God who works in mysterious ways
First off, please be careful of spoilers if you continue reading, I will be referencing material from 5.18 but the material is not limited to only 5.18.
Thank you Supernatural Wiki!! All quotes supplied in this post was referenced at the below site, I know I couldn’t have completed this post without them.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=Category:Canon
+++++++++
Of intellectually and morally challenged Angels and their ineffable God who works in mysterious ways
The one unambiguous conclusion drawn regarding Angels at the end of 5.18 is that Angels are the servant of the will of God. Equally palpable fact is that the Angels have no idea what God’s will is, particularly his will towards Dean Winchester.
After all, examine the ending of 5.18 where Dean for the first time, takes hold of his own destiny and finally regains faith in himself and in his brother and their just cause, and the will to 'do it' his own way. Was this not according to the will of God as delivered by Joshua in 5.16? And who is the agent most responsible for this transformation but Zachariah?
And wasn't it equally obvious that Zachariah with his blind obedience to the mantra that 'there's no other choice. There’s never been a choice', didn't have a clue regarding the inevitable result of his clumsy meddling and bullying ways?
So while God in SPN has been accused of being an absentee parent but what he really is, is a really sneakily Machiavellian strategist of the first order.
Despite accusations of being an ‘absentee dad’, it is possible to intuit the presence of God from the beginning of the SPN narrative. John Winchester - as a character, he represents not just the dad of the Winchester boys, he also serves as a parallel example of the ‘absentee dad’ creating an inextricable link between the image of the Parent and of God - was ‘revealed’ in 1.09 Home as having kept track of Dean and Sam’s adventures from the beginning in secret. Likewise, though not yet seen, it is possible to infer God’s presence in SPN, starting most noticeably in 1.12 Faith.
In 1.12, we are introduced to Roy, a blind faith healer who selects Dean because the Lord guided him to pick Dean to be healed. Given the new evidence in 5.16 when God admitted through Joshua that he had taken far more direct action in Dean’s life than was usual, there is far greater significance in Roy’s words when viewed with the luxury of hindsight. Where initially his words were greeted with doubt and suspicion, now we can hear the truth in Roy’s words to Dean that the Lord guided him to look into Dean’s heart and see ‘a young man with an important purpose. A job to do. And it isn’t finished’.
If we accept the premise that God has directed Dean and Sam to Roy and Sue Ellen, then this is what he has achieved by the end of 1.12; Dean has been saved so that he can ‘finish’ his ‘important’ job and by arranging for Dean to be saved by Roy, the imprisoned Reaper is free, Sue Ellen is punished and Order has been restored to the world.
As Layla says, 'God works in mysterious ways'.
Layla was introduced in the episode Faith as a young girl dying from a terminal illness also waiting for the miracle cure and her lost chance highlights the exquisite torment suffered by Dean as he realizes that his new life had been paid for, not just by the unknown guy who dies in his place, but also by this gentle and good woman. Layla is special because she is the one person in SPN who truly understands what it means to have faith, that faith isn’t something that you have ‘when miracles happen. You have to have it when they don’t.
Although her appearance was brief, Layla represented a singularly rare perspective of an adult in a show which to date has relentlessly and repetitiously shown majority of its characters to be callow, crude, childish and seriously lacking in the ability to reflect and contemplate, to plan and reason. Starting with Dean and Sam Winchesters, the characters of SPN have overwhelmingly rely on the following three ways to deal with their grief (problems) and that is - through drinking, using expletives/verbal attacks and physical violence.
* * *
To test this hypothesis please apply the following list to each SPN character, be they Human, a MoW, a Demon or an Angel and see how many characters are left, once everyone who has ever answered positively to one or all of the following is eliminated;
* * *
And if we establish that there is a significance lack of maturity in the composition of the characters populating SPN-verse, then how does this impact on the narrative?
The first and most glaring effect is the creation of an ‘adult-less’ universe in SPN where events cascade and unfold similarly to that of those in ‘Lord of the Flies’ whose characters are caught up in events beyond their understanding and as a result become belabored in the attempts to recreate society by application of rules partially remembered, distorted and finally disregarded.
And like the lost children of ‘Lord of the Flies’, the characters in SPN place an overwhelmingly high value on the Parental presence and lose sight of the value in developing “self-actualization”.
In SPN, love and regard and esteem is measured in terms of physical proximity rather than by development of emotional closeness and mutual understanding. Thus in the narrative, when Dean is haunted by the fears that everyone he loves will ‘leave’ him, this has always been translated as represented through physical absence, through death or distance. And when Meg, a Demon compares the superiority of her God Lucifer, to Castiel’s God, again, the measure of this superiority is based solely on the criterion of their relative ability to access the presence of God.
Re 5.10 where she taunts Castiel with "Your god may be a deadbeat. Mine-mine walks the earth."
This equalization of love with presence is a particularly childish way to view relationships because it is not possible to truly assess true value of a comparison rooted solely in physical proximity without an adjoining attempt to evaluate the relative merits and benefits created by that proximity.
This view is reliant on the simplistic interpretation of reality through creation of linkage of ideas such as the equation of physical presence and attention with a desired emotional outcome, and ignores the intricate interweaving of internal and external elements that bind and affect each and every relationship.
And the dominant perspective presented in SPN is this child’s view of the world.
In a previous post "God is not a deadbeat dad" - When watching Supernatural, always turn on your x-ray vision., I presented the argument that absence, and lack of direction and/or direct action, did not necessarily denote lack of regard by the parent, but can instead be seen as a gesture of trust and faith and especially of respect, shown by one adult to another. In other words, the best way for a parent to help a child grow up is to dissociate from the continuing parent/child relationship so that the two adults could learn to interact as adults.
However this was an argument that was inferred from the messages implicit in the narrative and not stated explicitly by any character in SPN.
The viewpoint with dominance is that of the child who is angry with the absent parent, the child who is unable to realize the potential benefits of the parent’s absence except by engaging in nihilistic behavior.
Even Joshua, who acted as the voice of God in 5.16 was blinded by his concern for Dean who was so visibly losing faith before him, and could not see the love inherent in the message that he delivered.
In fact none of the Angels shown so far in SPN has displayed the kind of faith as had been exemplified in Layla because none of them are listening to the word of the Lord.
A notable characteristic of the Angels (especially in SPN) has been that they are beings of enormous power but it has always been power un-tempered by commensurate intellect and faith.
In other words, they are bullies.
And bullies are cowards who hide their fear and lack of understanding by inflicting pain and misery on those they perceive as weak and easy targets.
From Castiel, who raised Dean from Perdition and then promptly threatened to throw him back when he wasn’t satisfied that Dean had shown him sufficient respect; to Uriel whose first and best preferred solution was purification through obliteration; to Zachariah, ‘the employee of the month’ and self professed epitome of petty vindictiveness through to Michael; the Angels have denigrated and deprecated humanity with a surfeit of contemptuous slurs and invectives while simultaneously cajoling and threatening and demanding that Dean fulfill his destiny.
The Angels are incapable of seeing any other future for Dean except to become Michael’s vessel because as Michael says, they believe that ‘Free will is an illusion’. And yet, he is unable to realize the inherent contradiction of his own words, which is that if there really is no such thing as free will and there is no alternative to a predestined path, then there is no point in trying to force Dean to follow his destiny since regardless of whatever Michael does or does not and however Dean might try, the plan will play itself out perfectly. Therefore, if Michael truly believed in what he was saying, then he would neither be so driven as to travel back in time to make a personal appeal nor be so desperate as to bring Adam back to life in a last ditch attempt to force Dean’s decision.
And this brings us back to the paradox of the ineffable God who has gifted free will to those who will not exercise the will to express this gift and to those who will actively work to deny anyone who dares to try.
The examples of Lucifer, Anna and Castiel, and lets not forget Gabriel, serve to remind us all that Angels, whatever they say, are as capable of learning and wielding free will as anyone else in SPN.
And like so many others with free will, the Angels are willing to compromise truth and mercy and anything else as long as it is expedient to their cause and it is this characteristic of theirs that leads Sam to caution Adam that "the angels are lying to you. They're full of crap."
As was verified by Zachariah’s eventual confession to Adam, although Zach does make the disclaimer that he ‘didn’t lie’ when he told Adam that he was ‘the chosen one’, just neglected to provide the full information that Adam had been chosen to be ‘a clammy scrap of bait’ for Dean.
Apparently Angels in SPN has no moral boundaries, seemingly comfortable with deliberate distortion and manipulation of truths, not to mention use of bribery and torture as primary means of persuasion.
Which in turn casts considerable doubt on the claim that Castiel and Uriel used back in 4.16 that Dean is the ‘most qualified interrogator’, an excuse used to force Dean to face Alistair and to exercise all that he had learnt as Alistair’s protégé. Given Zachariah’s gleeful enjoyment of the violence he exacted on the Winchesters whenever he had the opportunity and the establishment of torture as a tool of indoctrination used against Anna and Castiel, this claim now appears highly spurious. By this stage in the narrative, it is highly unlikely that Heaven has any shortage of ‘qualified interrogators’.
This repetition of use of force and manipulation as means of persuasion isn’t just due to the Angels’ lack of respect for humanity, what it is, is an attestation of the Angels’ lack of understanding of humanity. The Angels (likewise Demons) show staggering lack of imagination in their attempts to persuade/force Dean. Their blatant attempts at bribery are so crude and vulgar as to induce cringing embarrassment, not only in the audience but also in Dean, leading him to request a ‘bail on the holodeck’.
The Angels’ attempts at forcing Dean through direct or indirect torture proved even less efficacious as their first attempt forces the direct intervention of God, who restored Castiel and sent him to rescue the Winchesters and their second ends with death of Zachariah.
The reason for the Angels’ consistent failures is that they simply do not know how to actually assess and understand who they are dealing with. To understand what it means to be a human. This is not going to happen as long as they only see humans as ‘monkeys’ and ‘flannel wearing maggots’.
One example of an Angel who is working on his understanding is Castiel, albeit, it is a little difficult to tell whether there is a difference in learning to understand humanity or in becoming a human. Certainly Anna was enamored of humanity and made a valiant attempt at emulating humanity but it could be argued that she ultimately failed in this, given that her eventual solution was the elimination of the current timeline by assassination of John and Mary Winchester. This preference for total negation of choices rather than continuing efforts at resolution is an Angel characteristic (and yes, this can also be characteristic of megalomaniacs). And then there is Gabriel, the Trickster may have spent his time amongst humans, but his intention isn’t so much to understand humanity but rather to indulge in his enjoyment of judging and punishing mankind for its foibles.
The missing level of understanding of humanity by Angels (and Demons) in this show is that of ‘self-actualization’. A concept developed by Maslow as the fifth and final level in the hierarchy of human needs critical in the understanding of human motivation. Wherein he describes the desire to achieve full potential as ‘the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming’. Without necessarily ascribing to the concept that human needs can be organized into a hierarchical formation, it is possible to utilize Maslow’s theories to determine that intrinsic to any attempts at persuasion is an understanding of the motivation which drives the person to act.
When examining Dean Winchester, what has been made abundantly clear by the show is that his driving motivation is to ‘save people’, to ‘save everyone’.
By focusing on his so called weakness for his family, the Angels have completely missed this critical need in Dean’s character and by failing to address this need, all their attempts to persuade/force him were predestined to fail.
So why are the Angels ignoring this aspect of Dean’s character?
It could be because in their ‘childishness’ they are unable to comprehend the necessity of satisfying the needs of the individual as a being separate from the family unit. Note the constant appeals to Dean’s need for love and acknowledgement from his father, his brother by both the Angels and Demons. He is either taunted by devaluing his worth to his family or he is threatened with the loss of his family. The Angels are unable to recognize or deal with Dean as a being separate from his family.
The first Angel to see Dean as separate from his family is Castiel and he is only able to do so, because in Castiel’s eyes, there is a bond just as powerful and as all consuming between him and Dean. Echoing Dean’s rage, his despair, his desolation, in 5.18, Castiel’s physical attack on Dean is accompanied by the accusation that ‘I gave everything for you. And this is what you give tome.’
Even as John Winchester had been presented as a shadow of God, then Castiel is now being developed as a shadow of Dean.
And like Dean, Castiel is also unable to go past his own sense of grievance but again like Dean, regardless of his anger or his sense of betrayal, he is true to Dean to the end - even to the point of sacrificing himself by using his own body as the nexus of banishment. So even though Castiel has not yet expressed or shown understanding of the concept of self actualization, he is in fact in the midst of undergoing this transformation.
And if Castiel can learn to develop self actualization then maybe all Angels have the potential to develop the potential.
One key barrier to such puissant creatures as Angels (and Demons)’s ability to understand and comprehend humanity might be that omnipotence makes such development unnecessary. Possession of sufficient might renders the question of right irrelevant. There is no need to develop problem solving skills when in possession of enough power to eliminate problems. What need is there of creativity when you can create reality? There is no need to fear prejudice when nothing has the power or ability to hurt you. This then might be why God invented humanity and forced the Angels and Demons to deal with them by his deliberate absence.
So that we learn. So that we all learn.
It’s just that what we learn and what we are supposed to learn isn’t necessarily what the Angels think we are supposed to learn.
At the end of 5.04 - a holodeck adventure courtesy of Zachariah because indubitably Angels who can really travel to the future and foretell the future will become moribund by the same paradox as that created by Predestination ie. You can’t change something that’s already happened and if you can change it, it hasn’t happened yet - this is what Dean tells Zachariah.
“Oh, I've learned a lesson, all right. Just not the one you wanted to teach.”
The irony (in a show steeped in ironies and hidden meanings) is that the lesson Dean learns is the lesson Zachariah was teaching, Zach just wasn’t aware that he was teaching it.
When you listen closely to the Angels of SPN, you can hear the words of God.
Ignore the snarky delivery and the condescending brow beating and just listen to their words.
At the end of 4.17 (yet another holodeck adventure), Zachariah tells Dean that “You get to change things”… “So”… “are you ready to stand up and be who you really are?”
At the end of 5.18, Dean tells Sam that “So screw destiny, right in the face. I say we take the fight to them, and do it our way.”
And it is Michael who point out that “Think of the million random choices that you make, and yet each and every one of them brings you closer to your destiny. Do you know why that is? Because it’s not random. It’s not chance. It’s a plan that is playing itself out perfectly.”
It is Michael who has forgotten that ‘the plan’ is God’s plan and that Angels are the manifestations of God’s will.
Thank you Supernatural Wiki!! All quotes supplied in this post was referenced at the below site, I know I couldn’t have completed this post without them.
http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=Category:Canon
+++++++++
Of intellectually and morally challenged Angels and their ineffable God who works in mysterious ways
The one unambiguous conclusion drawn regarding Angels at the end of 5.18 is that Angels are the servant of the will of God. Equally palpable fact is that the Angels have no idea what God’s will is, particularly his will towards Dean Winchester.
After all, examine the ending of 5.18 where Dean for the first time, takes hold of his own destiny and finally regains faith in himself and in his brother and their just cause, and the will to 'do it' his own way. Was this not according to the will of God as delivered by Joshua in 5.16? And who is the agent most responsible for this transformation but Zachariah?
And wasn't it equally obvious that Zachariah with his blind obedience to the mantra that 'there's no other choice. There’s never been a choice', didn't have a clue regarding the inevitable result of his clumsy meddling and bullying ways?
So while God in SPN has been accused of being an absentee parent but what he really is, is a really sneakily Machiavellian strategist of the first order.
Despite accusations of being an ‘absentee dad’, it is possible to intuit the presence of God from the beginning of the SPN narrative. John Winchester - as a character, he represents not just the dad of the Winchester boys, he also serves as a parallel example of the ‘absentee dad’ creating an inextricable link between the image of the Parent and of God - was ‘revealed’ in 1.09 Home as having kept track of Dean and Sam’s adventures from the beginning in secret. Likewise, though not yet seen, it is possible to infer God’s presence in SPN, starting most noticeably in 1.12 Faith.
In 1.12, we are introduced to Roy, a blind faith healer who selects Dean because the Lord guided him to pick Dean to be healed. Given the new evidence in 5.16 when God admitted through Joshua that he had taken far more direct action in Dean’s life than was usual, there is far greater significance in Roy’s words when viewed with the luxury of hindsight. Where initially his words were greeted with doubt and suspicion, now we can hear the truth in Roy’s words to Dean that the Lord guided him to look into Dean’s heart and see ‘a young man with an important purpose. A job to do. And it isn’t finished’.
If we accept the premise that God has directed Dean and Sam to Roy and Sue Ellen, then this is what he has achieved by the end of 1.12; Dean has been saved so that he can ‘finish’ his ‘important’ job and by arranging for Dean to be saved by Roy, the imprisoned Reaper is free, Sue Ellen is punished and Order has been restored to the world.
As Layla says, 'God works in mysterious ways'.
Layla was introduced in the episode Faith as a young girl dying from a terminal illness also waiting for the miracle cure and her lost chance highlights the exquisite torment suffered by Dean as he realizes that his new life had been paid for, not just by the unknown guy who dies in his place, but also by this gentle and good woman. Layla is special because she is the one person in SPN who truly understands what it means to have faith, that faith isn’t something that you have ‘when miracles happen. You have to have it when they don’t.
Although her appearance was brief, Layla represented a singularly rare perspective of an adult in a show which to date has relentlessly and repetitiously shown majority of its characters to be callow, crude, childish and seriously lacking in the ability to reflect and contemplate, to plan and reason. Starting with Dean and Sam Winchesters, the characters of SPN have overwhelmingly rely on the following three ways to deal with their grief (problems) and that is - through drinking, using expletives/verbal attacks and physical violence.
* * *
To test this hypothesis please apply the following list to each SPN character, be they Human, a MoW, a Demon or an Angel and see how many characters are left, once everyone who has ever answered positively to one or all of the following is eliminated;
- Do they drink? Especially when emotionally upset?
- Are they verbally abusive? Using pejoratives and expletives to express their feelings?
- Are they physically violent, especially as a means of releasing or relieving their emotions?
* * *
And if we establish that there is a significance lack of maturity in the composition of the characters populating SPN-verse, then how does this impact on the narrative?
The first and most glaring effect is the creation of an ‘adult-less’ universe in SPN where events cascade and unfold similarly to that of those in ‘Lord of the Flies’ whose characters are caught up in events beyond their understanding and as a result become belabored in the attempts to recreate society by application of rules partially remembered, distorted and finally disregarded.
And like the lost children of ‘Lord of the Flies’, the characters in SPN place an overwhelmingly high value on the Parental presence and lose sight of the value in developing “self-actualization”.
In SPN, love and regard and esteem is measured in terms of physical proximity rather than by development of emotional closeness and mutual understanding. Thus in the narrative, when Dean is haunted by the fears that everyone he loves will ‘leave’ him, this has always been translated as represented through physical absence, through death or distance. And when Meg, a Demon compares the superiority of her God Lucifer, to Castiel’s God, again, the measure of this superiority is based solely on the criterion of their relative ability to access the presence of God.
Re 5.10 where she taunts Castiel with "Your god may be a deadbeat. Mine-mine walks the earth."
This equalization of love with presence is a particularly childish way to view relationships because it is not possible to truly assess true value of a comparison rooted solely in physical proximity without an adjoining attempt to evaluate the relative merits and benefits created by that proximity.
This view is reliant on the simplistic interpretation of reality through creation of linkage of ideas such as the equation of physical presence and attention with a desired emotional outcome, and ignores the intricate interweaving of internal and external elements that bind and affect each and every relationship.
And the dominant perspective presented in SPN is this child’s view of the world.
In a previous post "God is not a deadbeat dad" - When watching Supernatural, always turn on your x-ray vision., I presented the argument that absence, and lack of direction and/or direct action, did not necessarily denote lack of regard by the parent, but can instead be seen as a gesture of trust and faith and especially of respect, shown by one adult to another. In other words, the best way for a parent to help a child grow up is to dissociate from the continuing parent/child relationship so that the two adults could learn to interact as adults.
However this was an argument that was inferred from the messages implicit in the narrative and not stated explicitly by any character in SPN.
The viewpoint with dominance is that of the child who is angry with the absent parent, the child who is unable to realize the potential benefits of the parent’s absence except by engaging in nihilistic behavior.
Even Joshua, who acted as the voice of God in 5.16 was blinded by his concern for Dean who was so visibly losing faith before him, and could not see the love inherent in the message that he delivered.
In fact none of the Angels shown so far in SPN has displayed the kind of faith as had been exemplified in Layla because none of them are listening to the word of the Lord.
A notable characteristic of the Angels (especially in SPN) has been that they are beings of enormous power but it has always been power un-tempered by commensurate intellect and faith.
In other words, they are bullies.
And bullies are cowards who hide their fear and lack of understanding by inflicting pain and misery on those they perceive as weak and easy targets.
From Castiel, who raised Dean from Perdition and then promptly threatened to throw him back when he wasn’t satisfied that Dean had shown him sufficient respect; to Uriel whose first and best preferred solution was purification through obliteration; to Zachariah, ‘the employee of the month’ and self professed epitome of petty vindictiveness through to Michael; the Angels have denigrated and deprecated humanity with a surfeit of contemptuous slurs and invectives while simultaneously cajoling and threatening and demanding that Dean fulfill his destiny.
The Angels are incapable of seeing any other future for Dean except to become Michael’s vessel because as Michael says, they believe that ‘Free will is an illusion’. And yet, he is unable to realize the inherent contradiction of his own words, which is that if there really is no such thing as free will and there is no alternative to a predestined path, then there is no point in trying to force Dean to follow his destiny since regardless of whatever Michael does or does not and however Dean might try, the plan will play itself out perfectly. Therefore, if Michael truly believed in what he was saying, then he would neither be so driven as to travel back in time to make a personal appeal nor be so desperate as to bring Adam back to life in a last ditch attempt to force Dean’s decision.
And this brings us back to the paradox of the ineffable God who has gifted free will to those who will not exercise the will to express this gift and to those who will actively work to deny anyone who dares to try.
The examples of Lucifer, Anna and Castiel, and lets not forget Gabriel, serve to remind us all that Angels, whatever they say, are as capable of learning and wielding free will as anyone else in SPN.
And like so many others with free will, the Angels are willing to compromise truth and mercy and anything else as long as it is expedient to their cause and it is this characteristic of theirs that leads Sam to caution Adam that "the angels are lying to you. They're full of crap."
As was verified by Zachariah’s eventual confession to Adam, although Zach does make the disclaimer that he ‘didn’t lie’ when he told Adam that he was ‘the chosen one’, just neglected to provide the full information that Adam had been chosen to be ‘a clammy scrap of bait’ for Dean.
Apparently Angels in SPN has no moral boundaries, seemingly comfortable with deliberate distortion and manipulation of truths, not to mention use of bribery and torture as primary means of persuasion.
Which in turn casts considerable doubt on the claim that Castiel and Uriel used back in 4.16 that Dean is the ‘most qualified interrogator’, an excuse used to force Dean to face Alistair and to exercise all that he had learnt as Alistair’s protégé. Given Zachariah’s gleeful enjoyment of the violence he exacted on the Winchesters whenever he had the opportunity and the establishment of torture as a tool of indoctrination used against Anna and Castiel, this claim now appears highly spurious. By this stage in the narrative, it is highly unlikely that Heaven has any shortage of ‘qualified interrogators’.
This repetition of use of force and manipulation as means of persuasion isn’t just due to the Angels’ lack of respect for humanity, what it is, is an attestation of the Angels’ lack of understanding of humanity. The Angels (likewise Demons) show staggering lack of imagination in their attempts to persuade/force Dean. Their blatant attempts at bribery are so crude and vulgar as to induce cringing embarrassment, not only in the audience but also in Dean, leading him to request a ‘bail on the holodeck’.
The Angels’ attempts at forcing Dean through direct or indirect torture proved even less efficacious as their first attempt forces the direct intervention of God, who restored Castiel and sent him to rescue the Winchesters and their second ends with death of Zachariah.
The reason for the Angels’ consistent failures is that they simply do not know how to actually assess and understand who they are dealing with. To understand what it means to be a human. This is not going to happen as long as they only see humans as ‘monkeys’ and ‘flannel wearing maggots’.
One example of an Angel who is working on his understanding is Castiel, albeit, it is a little difficult to tell whether there is a difference in learning to understand humanity or in becoming a human. Certainly Anna was enamored of humanity and made a valiant attempt at emulating humanity but it could be argued that she ultimately failed in this, given that her eventual solution was the elimination of the current timeline by assassination of John and Mary Winchester. This preference for total negation of choices rather than continuing efforts at resolution is an Angel characteristic (and yes, this can also be characteristic of megalomaniacs). And then there is Gabriel, the Trickster may have spent his time amongst humans, but his intention isn’t so much to understand humanity but rather to indulge in his enjoyment of judging and punishing mankind for its foibles.
The missing level of understanding of humanity by Angels (and Demons) in this show is that of ‘self-actualization’. A concept developed by Maslow as the fifth and final level in the hierarchy of human needs critical in the understanding of human motivation. Wherein he describes the desire to achieve full potential as ‘the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming’. Without necessarily ascribing to the concept that human needs can be organized into a hierarchical formation, it is possible to utilize Maslow’s theories to determine that intrinsic to any attempts at persuasion is an understanding of the motivation which drives the person to act.
When examining Dean Winchester, what has been made abundantly clear by the show is that his driving motivation is to ‘save people’, to ‘save everyone’.
By focusing on his so called weakness for his family, the Angels have completely missed this critical need in Dean’s character and by failing to address this need, all their attempts to persuade/force him were predestined to fail.
So why are the Angels ignoring this aspect of Dean’s character?
It could be because in their ‘childishness’ they are unable to comprehend the necessity of satisfying the needs of the individual as a being separate from the family unit. Note the constant appeals to Dean’s need for love and acknowledgement from his father, his brother by both the Angels and Demons. He is either taunted by devaluing his worth to his family or he is threatened with the loss of his family. The Angels are unable to recognize or deal with Dean as a being separate from his family.
The first Angel to see Dean as separate from his family is Castiel and he is only able to do so, because in Castiel’s eyes, there is a bond just as powerful and as all consuming between him and Dean. Echoing Dean’s rage, his despair, his desolation, in 5.18, Castiel’s physical attack on Dean is accompanied by the accusation that ‘I gave everything for you. And this is what you give tome.’
Even as John Winchester had been presented as a shadow of God, then Castiel is now being developed as a shadow of Dean.
And like Dean, Castiel is also unable to go past his own sense of grievance but again like Dean, regardless of his anger or his sense of betrayal, he is true to Dean to the end - even to the point of sacrificing himself by using his own body as the nexus of banishment. So even though Castiel has not yet expressed or shown understanding of the concept of self actualization, he is in fact in the midst of undergoing this transformation.
And if Castiel can learn to develop self actualization then maybe all Angels have the potential to develop the potential.
One key barrier to such puissant creatures as Angels (and Demons)’s ability to understand and comprehend humanity might be that omnipotence makes such development unnecessary. Possession of sufficient might renders the question of right irrelevant. There is no need to develop problem solving skills when in possession of enough power to eliminate problems. What need is there of creativity when you can create reality? There is no need to fear prejudice when nothing has the power or ability to hurt you. This then might be why God invented humanity and forced the Angels and Demons to deal with them by his deliberate absence.
So that we learn. So that we all learn.
It’s just that what we learn and what we are supposed to learn isn’t necessarily what the Angels think we are supposed to learn.
At the end of 5.04 - a holodeck adventure courtesy of Zachariah because indubitably Angels who can really travel to the future and foretell the future will become moribund by the same paradox as that created by Predestination ie. You can’t change something that’s already happened and if you can change it, it hasn’t happened yet - this is what Dean tells Zachariah.
“Oh, I've learned a lesson, all right. Just not the one you wanted to teach.”
The irony (in a show steeped in ironies and hidden meanings) is that the lesson Dean learns is the lesson Zachariah was teaching, Zach just wasn’t aware that he was teaching it.
When you listen closely to the Angels of SPN, you can hear the words of God.
Ignore the snarky delivery and the condescending brow beating and just listen to their words.
At the end of 4.17 (yet another holodeck adventure), Zachariah tells Dean that “You get to change things”… “So”… “are you ready to stand up and be who you really are?”
At the end of 5.18, Dean tells Sam that “So screw destiny, right in the face. I say we take the fight to them, and do it our way.”
And it is Michael who point out that “Think of the million random choices that you make, and yet each and every one of them brings you closer to your destiny. Do you know why that is? Because it’s not random. It’s not chance. It’s a plan that is playing itself out perfectly.”
It is Michael who has forgotten that ‘the plan’ is God’s plan and that Angels are the manifestations of God’s will.