"I spend a lot of time thinking about these stories, as well. I spend a lot of time talking about this with other people who also spend a lot of time thinking about it. We actually get a lot out of it. We are able to take a text and analyze it and tear it apart and apply it to something. We are able to take a fictional character and think about the situations this character has faced and we can then speculate on how this character would react in another situation. We can wonder what this means for us as people and how this affects our own outlook on the world. We can look to the fake person that someone else created and find something of value in our own lives. . . .
None of this is new. Humans are kind of built to respond to stories and fiction. It just pings more in some people than in others.
As far as me wasting my time...no, I don't think so. I'm interacting (and not just online) with other people, I am thinking and I am more spiritually at peace now than ever. I feel involved."
Exactly! Just about every religion in the world at least started out in the way you've described above, and for all of Freud's talk about The Future of an Illusion, etc., and how religion would soon go the way of the dodo, most people in the world today would hesitate to say (out loud) that anyone else's religion is a selfish waste of time, or not worth talking about -- especially on one's own LJ and among one's own interest group.
I know most of us make some distinction between our fandoms and our religious beliefs (if any), but when you're dealing with a "text" as rich and deep and mythological as the Buffyverse, I think the distinction becomes a lot harder to define.
Making meaning for oneself and one's community, talking about the stories that mirror our lives or fears or hopes and trying to find the Truth that underlies all good fiction . . . this is never a waste of time.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 09:54 pm (UTC)None of this is new. Humans are kind of built to respond to stories and fiction. It just pings more in some people than in others.
As far as me wasting my time...no, I don't think so. I'm interacting (and not just online) with other people, I am thinking and I am more spiritually at peace now than ever. I feel involved."
Exactly! Just about every religion in the world at least started out in the way you've described above, and for all of Freud's talk about The Future of an Illusion, etc., and how religion would soon go the way of the dodo, most people in the world today would hesitate to say (out loud) that anyone else's religion is a selfish waste of time, or not worth talking about -- especially on one's own LJ and among one's own interest group.
I know most of us make some distinction between our fandoms and our religious beliefs (if any), but when you're dealing with a "text" as rich and deep and mythological as the Buffyverse, I think the distinction becomes a lot harder to define.
Making meaning for oneself and one's community, talking about the stories that mirror our lives or fears or hopes and trying to find the Truth that underlies all good fiction . . . this is never a waste of time.
In my humble and very individual opinion.